That Professor Houston...and Visual Design

Thanks for a great discussion regarding Professors Houston and Sheffield. Some people still need to catch up with that discussion, so I won't post the final debrief here. But look for that in the Discussion soon. I think the consensus so far is that Professor Houston is the more likely copyright violator. But there have been some arguments that were pretty good about Professor Sheffield too.


Through this discussion it is obvious that copyright is a tough issue and requires everyone to use their judgment. The only way you know 100% for sure if your use falls under Fair Use is when the judge rules in your case. But no one wants to deal with that!


Just like the people on this discussion probably gave you new things to think about, so will involving others when you are trying to determine fair use for your own class materials. Reach out to colleagues, librarians, and instructional designers to get feedback on fair use determinations. Do your best to balance fair use for the benefit of your students and for the protection of copyright holders.


Now on to Visual Design. This was a particularly difficult module to write because there is so much great information and so many things to share with you. If you think I missed something that you have a question about, be sure to post it in the discussion. I have many resources that I didn't share with you lest I create too much of an external cognitive load. (You will know what that means by the end of Module 5 if you don't already.) 


I did not tackle the issue of fonts because in most of the tools you will use, those are fairly constrained. Sans serif fonts, such as Arial, work best for the web. So try to stick with those. I also wanted to share this video with you. It uses different characters to represent fonts, so if you like different fonts, you will love this video!

In this module, you will add your course header and icons. This is kind of a magic moment when your course really starts looking like a course! If you hate your custom graphics or need other letters or numbers, let us know sooner rather than later.

As a reminder, we are approaching a checkpoint on December 6. If you have not completed modules one through four, please finish up soon. Double check your Assignment tool for assignments that were returned for completion.

We know that you are in the final crunch for the semester and are looking forward to the holiday break to spend some quality time with your course. Just be careful not to get too far behind. You want to be able to spend some quality time with the special people in you life too!

Keep up the great work!

Andrea

More Legal Stuff...From Accessibility to Copyright

We are wrapping up Module Three. This was not an easy module and it likely stretched you a bit technically. That's okay! Hopefully you end the module with a deeper understanding of what it takes to build an accessible course and understand the benefits of Universal Design for Learning.
This week's module, Module Four, will discuss copyright. The amount of information on this topic could fill an entire 16-week, so know that this module just scratches the surface of the issue. It will give you a basic understanding, but use the links and resources to expand your understanding if you want to know more than just the basics.

This activities for this module will not take you very long to do. It is a light week! The module is not due until next Monday, Dec. 6, to accommodate holiday plans. Module Five will be released on Monday, Nov. 29 and will also be due Dec. 6. If you have downtime over the weekend, it is a great time to focus on developing your content. We like developing in Word and the Quality Course Content Outline Template that is on your flash stick will help those pieces come together in the online course. The more planning and preparing you do, the easier the process!

As a reminder, check your Assignment tool to make sure we have not returned assignments to you for further work. You have a checkpoint coming on December 6. This is when we send an update to your Deans and Chairs to let them know how you are doing in the course. We will let them know how many modules you have completed and give them an update on your course development progress.

Well, as many of you who are teaching now understand, I have some grading to do!  Keep those assignments coming in. Remember that you are developing your course as you go, so put some effort into creating things that you can actually use in your course as you complete the assignments!

Enjoy your holiday festivities!

Tracy and Andrea

Wrapping Up and Moving On

First, let's wrap up module two. You all did a great job responding to each other and providing feedback. Tracy, Liz, and I appreciate the veteran instructors stepping up and sharing their experiences and the less seasoned instructor's willingness to put questions and concerns on the discussion boards.

Last week, your discussion was focused on Transformative Learning. How can your online course transform students? What can you do to facilitate the transformation? There were so many good ideas like using multimedia tools,incorporating service learning, case studies, role playing, self reflection, and more. To help capture your comments, we created a Wordle that displays common words you used in your posts. Check it out! 

This week we turn our attention to Universal Design for Learning and Accessibility. You will learn a lot in the module, so I won't spoil it here. This is a very important module though and your activities for this module will be a little more challenging than last week's from a technical standpoint. But don't worry! Pay particular attention to the resources listed on the Application Activity Summary (4.1 in the Table of Contents). You will find tutorials and step-by-step guides to walk your through. You will be adding all of these activities to the Practice Module in your course development shell.  

This week also gives you a bit of a breather on focusing on your course design. If you need to spend a little more time planning out your module and creating learning objectives, now is a good time. If you finish with this week's activities, jump in and start writing some lessons or experimenting with some cool tools. Just to get you started, here are a few of my favorites:

 

An Online Scrapbook/Visual Book Tool

http://www.mixbook.com/edu

An Online Magazine Creator

http://www.issuu.com/

Tool that Allows Interactive Voice, Video, Phone Call, or Text Responses to Instructor-Posted Media http://voicethread.com/

A Great Wiki Tool

http://pbworks.com/content/edu+overview

An Online Blog/Poster Tool

https://posterous.com/

Using the Internet for a Web Quest

http://webquest.org/index.php

An Online Poster Tool

http://edu.glogster.com/

Tracy, Liz, and I will be contacting you soon to set up individual meeting times. As always, don't spend too much time in frustration as you work on your course. A quick redirect to an online resource or letting you know what button to click can often save you hours of frustration. So let us know if you need help and keep up the good work!

Andrea

Building Course Structure all the way from Florida!!