"Putting You in your Online Course" - Tips and a Fun Video

On Friday 3/20/2009 Dr. Patricia James visited the College of San Mateo and shared her tips on teaching online. Her presentation was entitled "Putting You in your Online Course". Dr. James is Dean of Instruction, Library and Technology, and Distance Learning, Mt. San Jacinto College

INTRO: It takes about 3 semesters to get used to teaching online.
-- 1st Semester- gulp!
-- 2nd Semester- get rhythm and fix things that didn't work
-- 3rd Semester- OK!

Before getting down to business, we viewed a fun video "Can't Help Teaching Online.wmv"

TIPS:

1. Set aside time to do research each week.
2. Consider setting up a ning.com outside your course management system as a "backup" to meeting space.
3. Make students responsible for backing up all their own work.
4. Set up your e-mail that automatically sends a "receipt" for student work.
5. Add your voice. Use audacity.com or camptasia (allows screen capture and voice over at the same time)
6. Note that MOST students do not print out info from online. Often they read from a smartphone.. So, when putting information online, use 60 characters across, background buff (not white). Also fonts for online should be san serif, verdana, or helvetica.
7. Add your own photo and other, somewhat related photos.
8. Each new week, make announcements. Provide regular, effective contact.
9. Welcome each student the first week
10. Read and Grade as you go. (don't spend time going back and re-reading)
11. Use CCCConfer (uses Elluminate webconferencing platform). Now you can save what you do as a webcast as mpeg file. This is ideal for tutoring or Office hours. If you use it during the week, CCCConfer will caption it for you.
12. More tools. Jing.com is a free screen capture tool and can capture video too! Download JINGPROJECT.com. You can annotate images and do voice-overs. Episelen.com. Create an ePortfolio if you have an .edu address it is free.

RESOURCES: www.msjc.edu -> online learning -> faculty resources -> general Distance learning resources. See also www.merlot.org