Student Profile Images

Karen Kaemmerling, Social Science Division Chair, is guest speaker again this week. 

Is this your student?

Many of our students want to feel a connection to their fellow classmates and instructor.  One way to build a sense of community among your students is to include a profile image of yourself that will appear in the Discussions and Classlist, and to encourage your students to include images in their own profiles.  Here is the link from the student wiki to help students set up their Profile Pictures: http://at.ccconline.org/students/wiki/How_do_I_change_my_Profile_picture%3F

Eventually, you may have a student use a picture that is inappropriate.  When you contact that student, refer him or her to the Student Handbook Mutual Respect Policy at http://at.ccconline.org/students/wiki/Student_Handbook#Student_Handbook_-_Inside_the_Classroom. In such a case, you should also communicate with your Program Lead and Division Chair.

-Karen Kaemmerling

Quality Time: Do You Accept Late Work?

Karen Kaemmerling, Social Science Division Chair, is guest speaker this week.  Please feel free to join the conversation in the companion Community thread!

Each semester this is a question that we are all likely to get from a student.  Early on I decided the personal decision for me would be “yes,” because I wasn’t comfortable hearing all the life issues that come up for students.  I did not want to be responsible for deciding between a family facing a sick child in the hospital crisis and a dying parent and whether a student should get an extension. 

For me, I accept all written assignments up to one week late with no questions or explanations needed.  This takes care of all technical issues, personal problems, and “stuff” that our adult learners face.  After the one week, each assignment loses a certain number of points for lateness, but I still accept all work up to the final day of class.

However, I do lock discussions on the close date and bar any additional participation.  To me these are participation grades and essential for the collaboration/communication piece between students with each other and me about the content of the course.

While I’ve had this policy for my classes in place for numerous semesters, last spring I received a lot of feedback from a variety of students who commented things like “Even though I didn’t take advantage of the late assignment grace period, it was a relief knowing I could be a day late if my child didn’t get better.” Or “I really appreciated the grace period and feel it helped me ultimately be successful in this course and learn what I was supposed to.”

In some cumulative courses like Math, a late policy like this could be very troublesome.  However, each CCCOnline instructor might have a slight variation to what I’ve described, and no matter what your policy is, it should be outlined in the syllabus and advertised especially at the beginning of the course with students.  In the Cultivating Excellence Discussion in the CCCOnline Community, please share your late policy, how it works for you, and what your experiences with late work and students have been, and any other ideas you have on this topic.

-Karen Kaemmerling

Quality Time is a series of posts concerning course quality issues, best practices, and/or CCCOnline policy.

Course Readiness for Summer

*Below is a reminder from our Faculty News Blog.*

As you prepare your Summer courses, please remember to follow the Course Readiness Checklist.

 

Note the Checklist now reflects the requirement that all faculty use their cccs.edu email addresses for student contact outside of D2L. (Please remember to update your email address in both your Syllabus and your Instructor Widget.) Thanks!

Conference News

This week, Aarthi Ramesh, CCCOnline Coordinator of Training & Professional Development, reports:

It's been a very productive experience so far and I'm learning a lot. Karen Kaemmerling, our previous CCC training Coordinator, has been a fantastic guiding beacon through this transition process. I'm excited we'll also be working together on the Annual CCCOnline Faculty conference committee along with Elizabeth Dzabic, Beth Kitts, Ben Vega, Carol Verver and Lisa Marie Johnson. Yes, the plan is on and we are scheduled for September 30th, 2011:)).

We'll be sending out an announcement soon, but meantime friends, please feel free to chip in with ideas and suggestions you think Training and Professional Development needs to consider in the weeks to come as well as sessions you want to see at the Annual conference.

Next week, due to staff schedules, we will not be posting to the Cultivating Excellence blog.  We’ll be back the week of 5/30.  Have a happy Memorial Day.

Welcoming Our New Coordinator of Training and Professional Development

It is our pleasure to introduce Aarthi Ramesh, the new CCCOnline Coordinator of Training and Professional Development.  Welcome, Aarthi!  Please read on to make her acquaintance:        

Aarthi’s contributions to CCCOnline have included being the # 1 requested instructor each term, a Vista Volunteer, a D2L mentor, Gold Medal Faculty award winner numerous times, a facilitator/presenter at several CCCOnline conferences and higher education meetings, and Associate Chair of Health Sciences. She's married to a computer engineer and has 2 girls. His first name is her last name - a cultural thing, she says. She lives in Denver with her family for most of the year but loves traveling a lot and has successfully instructed from various parts of the world on numerous occasions. The world indeed has shrunk on the virtual medium!

Virtual collaboration, she believes, is an evolving process that is molded through our successes and setbacks and team work is one of the critical components to making this machinery function effectively. Having been part of CCCOnline for close to a decade though in an adjunct position, Aarthi looks forward to the innovation, challenge and outreach the Training and Professional Development Coordinator position brings her way as she joins Lisa Marie Johnson on the Training and Professional Development team.

Ending the Term / Most Successful Wrap-Ups?

Last semester, we posted some quick reminders about wrapping up the term.  Check them out here and also, please let us know the most successful wrap-up strategy you’ve used in your own classes.

See you in the Cultivating Excellence discussion in the Community!

eLcc Report 2: Augment Reality Assignments

My favorite presentation at the eLcc conference was presented by Chris Luchs and Kae Novak about using augmented reality assignments in courses and as cross curriculum assignments. Check out their Prezi Presentation http://prezi.com/zqe2luhdrfc8/augment-your-reality/ to learn more.

Scenario based learning, Authentic Assessments, and Augmented Reality Assignments in many ways are the same concept with different names. Students and instructors become players in a carefully constructed role playing “game.” A “client” contracts the students for a project. The instructor, and possibly course designer, engage the students as professionals in an appropriate field, but have some pre-made clues and guidance tools in place to provide at opportune moments to help students be most successful. Like a Murder Mystery party, the hosts (instructor) will release information as the party progresses to guide the guests to the clues and the solution. Instructors have a variety of tools to provide obvious and subtle hints to their students such as twitter, websites, and discussion.

Sound like a daunting task for an instructor to create and conduct by themselves? My suggestion is experiment with an augmented reality assignment on a small scale. For example, in collaboration with an English Instructor, history students become writers for a historical journal like the Journal of American History. The English class becomes the editors of the Journal and using the articles written by the historians selects the best for publication or provides editing comments for consideration and future approval on the rejected articles. To make the scenario most believable, students in the history class should believe they have submitted their writing to a real historical journal (in fact, they could submit directly to a journal of their choice) and the English students should believe they are truly evaluating professionally written articles for publication. You may even want to have a “visitor” to the class from the Historical Journal that explains why they are excited about the opportunity to work with the class. If not a real visitor, maybe a "letter" to the class from the Journal describing the scope of what they are trying to do by working with them.

If you are ready to create an augmented reality assignments for your students, contact your chair. The summer is a great time to plan, and I look forward to you sharing your examples in the Cultivating Excellence discussion in the CCCOnline Community.