Online Teaching Tools Workshop

Course Elements: On-Line Reading

• If you put a public domain text on-line, you can take advantage of the resources of the Web by adding hyperlinks to additional information about issues in the reading. (For print, copyrighted materials that you cannot put on-line, consider a page of on-line resources students use to supplement the print reading assignment.)  
  

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• Advantages: 
  • Create interest in the reading by including visual and audio illustrations of the text 
  • Add study questions, some with on-line links, to improve self-study 
  • Add bibliographic material to demonstrate availability of other materials on-line and encourage further learning 
• Disadvantages: 
  • This can only be done with public domain materials
  • This type of resource is very labor-intensive for the faculty member to setting up.
  • The hyperlinks you set up within the text have a nasty habit of disappearing, so you need to regularly check for 'broken links"
• Example:
  • " Philosophy of Art", CSU Long Beach
  • BioMedical Ethics

   

Course Elements: Discussion Groups

On-Line Discussion can complement your in-class discussions in various ways. It can provide an opportunity for students to engage with each other in considering issues in the reading, both before and after you have considered it in class. It can provide a way for you to raise additional questions that you don't have time to cover in class. It also can provide a way for students who are shy in in-person discussions to get involved.  

Optional discussions

You could set up an on-line discussion group that is available to students, but not required.  

Advantages:  

• This provides an outlet for additional discussion needs for the course that some students will appreciate. 
• By making this optional, you will not overwhelm beginners with the technology demanded of the course, nor will you absolutely have to train them in whatever discussion format you use. 

Disadvantages:  

• If this is not required, you might end up with a very small group of "regulars" and limited value to the discussion. 
• If students are not required to participate with some regularity, you will be unable to use the discussion group to post information to the class or raise extra questions about the course material. 

Required discussions 

Consider requiring that students participate regularly in the on-line discussion to ensure that this is a vital part of your course. You might assign some points for participation to provide the necessary incentive.  

Advantages:  

• Reluctant students will be nudged to try this form of communication. Especially for students who are shy about in-class participation, this will lead them to discover other ways of participating. 
• You will be able to take advantage of this added dimension for your class's interaction. 

Disadvantages:  

• If no training is provided on-campus, you will need to arrange a training session in one of the campus labs. 
• Some students will come to resent this extra workload, and you might need to make adjustments in the other expectations for the course. 
• Flaming can get out of control quickly, requiring that you monitor the discussions closely throughout the semester. 
• You will need to devise some method for tracking participation to see that the course requirements are met. 

What software ?  

At present, you can choose from different approaches to on-line discussion:  

HyperNews- An asychronous communication tool available to COC faculty by arrangement with CSUN.

The Dialogue Chamber- The Communication tool included with ETUDES

Collabra: This is the newsgroup software in the Netscape/Communicator 4 package. (This was called UseNet under "Netscape News," included on the Netscape Web browsers of 2.0 and higher.)

Advantages:  

• HyperNews,the dialogue Chamber and Collabra messages can be "threaded" by topic, date or recipient, so you can see a series of related conversations. This is an enormous advantage over e-mail.
• The software allows you to send an electronic response to an individual person who posted a message or post a follow-up comment to that specific comment in the group.
• Newer versions of Netscape (anything from 2.0 up) include a newsreader which makes this easier to use than it used to be. 
• if you set up your group on Collabra, students can access it with any usenet program, including IE and older Netscapes.

Disadvantages:  

• If there is no formal training on campus for students, you might need to arrange for a training session that you conduct in one of the campus labs. HyperNews and the Dialogue Chamber are fairly intuitive, but some students might not be successful on their first try. For beginners, Collabra is no more self-evident than e-mail. Indeed it is much more confusing, as they first have to configure their software for your news server, subscribe to your group, and learn to read and post messages.

Students working from home on commercial ISPs often have trouble using this. You can set up your  Collabra group with access for all e-mail addresses from your home campus. But some ISPs do not have software on their programs which is easy to configure for access to your group, and you will find it nearly impossible to help them in the abstract without using that particular ISP yourself. 

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