Agenda

1. Telecommunications in Education: Examining Distributed Teaching and Learning Environments (EDER 677 L.91 )Sept 19 Topics:Information Literacy&WWW Tools and Design PrinciplesGraphics for the Audiographic Conferencefrom Calgary, September 26

2. Agenda • Housekeeping: • Note Course Home Page Additions to: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~ekowch/677/677home.html • Assignments / Evaluation Guides • Please form your collaborative groups by Tuesday, Oct. 1 and email me your preferred topic/date and the names of people in your group - I’ll book you in on a first come, first serve basis (from my WebCT email) • 1. Information Literacy: Getting resources from the Web into your Course • We will explore and demonstrate the range of resources and information on the WWW and offer tips about accessing them. • Search Tips • Resource Gold Mines • Peer Reviewed articles, and Journals • 2. Authoring: Web Tools and Design Principles • An overview of very basic tools and page / site design principles • A review of construction tools • Export applications • Editors (code vs. wsiwig) • Course management tools (like WebCT) • Getting files on the net: web hosting and transfer protocols

3. Housekeeping.. New notables… • A review of the Assignments, Evaluation, guides, etc… • Please form your assignment groups and email the dates/names to Gene by Oct 1st, please. • A New 677 Café (Chat) feature in your WebCT space - another channel for communication

4. Review: Assignments / Deliverables • A publishable paper (25%) Due Oct 17 • Participation (20%) Ongoing • Personal Distributed Learning (PDL) Portfolio (30%) Due Dec 5 • Including: • A personal narrative explaining your ideal PDL with: • Summary of your text discussion facilitation • An Interpretation of that experience • Summary and Analysis of your audiographic conference facilitation • Collaborative (teaching online) proposal (5%) Due Oct 3 • Your online project - a teaching environment (20%) Due Dec 3

5. Information Literacy

6. Information Literacy Defining Literacy lit·er·a·cy n • 1. the ability to read and write to a competent level • 2. knowledge of or training in a particular subject or area of activity (OED, 2002) The “text” for a CMC Online course can by anything from sounds to images to “text”! How do we “write” online? Distributed Learning CMC channels are highly mediated, and you get to design everything! We use sounds, images and text. This means we need to be able to design a message (recall SMCR) so the learning objective is accomplished. We need be “knowledgeable” about how to get/reference online resources and how to create online learning environments. This is Instructional Design. • First, we need to know how to find online messages…

7. The Three L’s of Searching Language – use specific terms, and appropriate terminology for best results. Searching by phrases can be useful, as can paying attention to Capital Letters, and using wild cards. Logic – Read the help files for a particular search engine to determine how to translate Search logic into the particulardialect of the tool you’re using – e.g. Boolean, +’s and –’s, “all/any of these terms”, etc Limiting – Limit searching to a particular field – title: to find the good stuff fast; image: to find the images or URL/domain: to restrict to specific kinds of web pages

8. Search Engines vs. Subject Guides Search Engines – are good for specific information, images, names etc. The indexes are updated monthly. Subject Guides – are better for exploring what’s available on more general topics or subjects. Start here, and narrow topics down….

9. Search Engines Northern Light – http://www.northernlight.com Tip: Use * as a wildcard – e.g. instruct* for instructors, instruction, instructional Google – http://www.google.com Tip: Use allintitle: to limit the title; use inurl: to limit to a type of site Tip: Use this site to find images only, or Canada - only content. Altavista Canada – http://altavista.ca Tip: Search here to limit your search to Canadian sites Tip: some High school students are up on the latest and best search engine tactics… (search engines are like VCRs, it seems…)

10. Subject Guides Library of Congress Subjects & Search: *** (fantastic) http://www.loc.gov/ About.com http://www.about.com National Library of Canada http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/caninfo/ecaninfo.htm MRC Library Internet Subject Guides http://www.mtroyal.ab.ca/library/Subguide/libsubguide.htm

11. Here are a few of my favorite resource links…. Check them out when you have a moment… • http://aera-cr.ed.asu.edu/links.html ****** • http://aera-cr.ed.asu.edu/links.html ** • http://www.dlrn.org/ • http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/gen/aset/edtech_pubs.html • http://www.nla.gov.au/ajol/ *** • http://ednet.edc.gov.ab.ca/ict/ ** • http://www.cln.org/ • http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/ ** • http://www.plato.com/

12. Evaluating the Information / Resource • Check the address for clues: - edu/org/com : Academic Sites • Check types of domains at http://www.iana.org/gtld/gtld.htm • Check geographical domains at http://www2.iana.org/gtld/gtld.htm • Signed and dated is better than anonymous and ageless • Validity is an issue: Is the source Credible? • Ask Why the site exists? (information/persuasion/advertising) • Refereed Journals offer the best source of information for academic work • Your library has an increasing array of online journals: • http://www.ucalgary.ca/cgi-bin/library/article.cgi?database=local//ftp/Web/library/sfgate/dbs/dbindex&maxhits=250&br=xxedu1&directget=1&application=library&xxtitle=Key+Education+Indexes+and+Abstracts

13. Creating Resources that can be found.. authoring Why some sites are easier to find than others…hidden “labels” or tags in code… • <TITLE>tags • META tags What you can do to help people find your material • watching the letter case in your “tags” - use the “sensible” case (?) • why it’s important to sign and date pages How to find out who has linked to you (in Northern Light) • link:http://your address

14. Beyond Online Resources… • Now that I know how to support instruction, what is the nature of the instruction that I will create? • Think like an architect, then like a builder… • Think about Designing a learning environment (your Online project will be such a construction)

15. Instructional Design:Considering SMCR as you imagineand Build online Learning Environments and Communities • The effective principles of planning and organizing teaching and learning • Concepts that are intuitively understood and used by instructors every day • Use of technology or distance education requires systematic and disciplined use of these principles. • Here are great links to the ID models that you will study in EDER 675 or 673 (with me!).. Just for the curious… A Hypertext History of Instructional Design http://www.coe.uh.edu/courses/cuin6373/idhistory/index.html Instructional Design Models http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/idmodels.html Instructional Design Theories Site http://www.indiana.edu/~idtheory/home.html

16. One Instructional Development Model

17. (some simplified)Key Stages in the ID process to consider when developing Online Learning “Architecture” Analysis Stage (hmm… what am I into here? Figuring out the needs of the learners and the system that will deliver learning) • Analysis of the setting • Analysis of the student needs • Analysis of good practice / history • Analysis of the expected learning outcomes from this creation Design Stage (creating plans for building the space) • Interaction types: Which mode is best to achieve these outcomes? • What will the pacing be like? • How will sync and async events form the learning experience? • Which medium (computer) and applications might work best for my objectives? • Which types of Web based learning activities might accomplish the learning outcomes?

18. The Early (pre) Analysis Stage What sort of beast am I looking at? Is this online environment (and the web) right for my teaching style and my students’ learning style? • A Learner (audience) Analysis will tell you. What kind of student learning do I want the web to support? • Learning and Content Analysis will answer this question.

19. The Early (pre) Analysis Stage • Where and how will my students be able to access the web and its resources, access each other, and access the instructor? • A Setting Analysis will help you answer this question • What can the web do for me and my students? • A Needs Analysis will help you answer this question

20. The Analysis Stage - Setting Analysis “Where will my students be able to access the web, each other, and the instructor?” a) From a classroom b) From one of the school’s computer labs during a scheduled lab period c) From the school library or an open computer lab d) From home e) Other? (cost of online connections.. Etc).

21. Analysis Stage - Setting “How will I use the web with my students? Why use the web?” Educational Models for the WWW a) For Self-directed learning - the WWW is used as a stand alone learning tool for students (e.g. online tutorials and quizzes) b) For Distance or distribution - the WWW is used only for dissemination of educational material to distance students, such as course descriptions, educational software c) To Augmentation lecture - the WWW is used to complement classroom based teaching (e.g., on-line communication tools, activities, lecture notes, assessment features) d) Virtual classroom - the WWW is used with emphasis on collaboration and computer mediated human interaction (good design/redesign is critical) e) What is the setting of the student? Have they the technical and knowledge base to engage in these resources? How much “overhead” will this be to them? f) Remember: Online resources that you do not author can “move” over time….

22. Analysis Stage - Needs “What institutional resources are available?” • Student support • Financial support • Workplace • family • Instructor support • Technology/media support

23. Analysis Stage - Needs “Can the web be a catalyst to enrich and enhance the learning experience for my students?” • These folks say flexible, just in time resources can empower learners… Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education(Chickering and Gamson, 1987) http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/7princip.htm • Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as a Lever(Chickering and Ehrmann, 1997)http://www.tltgroup.org/programs/seven.html(you read this last week…. Does it apply?) [yes…?] • Seven Principles of Effective Teaching: A Practical Lens for Evaluating Online Courses(Graham, Cagiltay, Lim and Duffy 2001) It all boils down to good teaching with a resource… resource librarians have been onto this for years !! http://horizon.unc.edu/TS/default.asp?show=article&id=839 Whisper..… it can take more work to provide online resources for students… The needs and capacity of the instructor are important too…

24. Analysis Stage - Needs Some Basic Principles of Good Practice that work in all online environs. In an online environment, learners generally certain needs regarding instructional practice: 1. The environ encourages contacts between students and teachers 2. The environ develops reciprocity and cooperation among students 3. The situation employs active learning techniques 4. The environ / instructor gives prompt feedback 5. The instruction emphasizes time on task 6. The instructor communicates high expectations 7. The environ and instructor respect the diverse talents and ways of learning • Are these “online needs only?” [no].

25. Analysis Stage - The Learner Learner Analysis - Knowing the learning participants: Guiding Questions • is my idea for an online environment age appropriate? • Literacy levels matter, attention spans matter, supervision needs, pacing… • gender ratio - am I giving fair chance to both voices? • am I to accommodate full-time vs. part time learners • previous skills (computer literacy, independent learning skills, ) previous education • what is the relevance of this area of study to learners? • what are the known pre-requisites for this class or course ($, time, space, machines) • what infrastructure do the learners have available: Internet access ? Web space?…

26. Analysis Stage - The Learning Learning Analysis:Student Learning and Outcomes • Personal Teaching Goals Inventory (TGI) try this with your students http://www.uiowa.edu/~centeach/tgi/index.html This tool offers the learner a Self-assessment of instructional goals b) Course or Program Specific Learning Outcomes: Know the objectives and ask “Can the learners achieve this?” with adults, ask “Is this relevant or real?” c) One example: MRC College-Wide Learning Outcomes - thinking skills - ethical reasoning - communication - group effectiveness • information retrieval & evaluation - computer literacy • Corporate environments can have very clear learning outcomes in mind. Designers match the goals with learners and settings.

27. Design Stage “What are the potential pedagogical strengths of a computer in the hands of a student, compared to other utilities? • Visualization • Communication -verbal, aural, textual • Collaboration • Organization • Problem Solving • Research • Calculation • "Doing it again thoughtfully” • Repetition

28. Designing with the Web in mind… Group Assignment 1 Breakout Session Case Situation: Consider one university or K-12 course. You have been asked to think about converting this classical face to face course to an online environment. You know you will need resources from the web, because you can’t afford the $40 - $300 /hr development cost to make your own resource and put it on the web. What are the top 5 considerations you have in framing this problem? What are your ideas? • IndividualThink (take 1 minute to generate your own list of ideas) Then I will connect you into audiographic sub groups • In 4 PersonSub-Groups (take 5 minutes to compare and add to your list) • Full Group (Take 10 minutes to generate a group list) and place it on the whiteboard.

29. Design Stage - Activities that work Web-based learning activities • Posting instructional material to a common “place” gives a sense of community • “places” to speak synchronously can build a sense of community • Creating web based resource links for reference, on a theme (grouping resources) • Multimedia Elements (movies, sound… interactive games, VR) help engage learners a lot. • Communication design… • E-mail • Threaded discussion forums • Chat rooms • Interactive video forums • Audioconference sessions • Document sharing - living documents, chat, email… audiographic whiteboarding • Journals - personal or shared reflections aid synthetic learning • Assessment opportunities - various, depending on the situation.

30. Where we are on the Agenda • Housekeeping: • Course Home Page Additions to: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~ekowch/677/677home.html • Assignments / Evaluation Guides • Please form your collaborative groups by Tuesday, Oct. 1 and email me your preferred topic/date and the names of people in your group - I’ll book you in on a first come, first serve basis (from my WebCT email) • 1. Information Literacy: Getting resources from the Web into your Course • We will explore and demonstrate the range of reources and information on the WWW and offer tips about accessing them. • Search Tips • Resource Gold Mines • Peer Reviewed articles, and Journals • 2. Authoring: Web Tools and Design Principles • An overview of very basic tools and page / site design principles • A review of construction tools • Export applications • Editors (code vs. wsiwig) • Course management tools (like WebCT) • Getting files on the net: web hosting and transfer protocols

31. Now that we’ve got an idea of how to design for WWW in our learningenvironment…. How do we put things on the WWW?And how do we make sure the screen looks “ok” enough not to distract from learning?

32. Reference material & Live Links Coming up..… • 1. An overview of export tools, web editors and course management tools • 2. Principles of screen design activity a (“take-home” collaboration, done in Groups of Three

33. Reference material & Live Links Student Portfolio Assignment Let’s take a look at the Course home page.. It’s all explained there…. That’s where you’ll need to put things on the web… http://www.ucalgary.ca/~ekowch/677/677home.html

34. Reference material & Live Links Fear not, gentle reader… • The creation of web materials is something that we do in full courses, as with Instructional design. • That said, we have experts in our class who can help you learn simple Composer page creation, and to ship your file to the acs server. • We have staff in the Doucette trained to help you and they are wonderful. • I will set up a special Centra session for those who need help on this… let’s see how this goes (Leo has a presentation too). • Let’s take a look at the following reference materials first… and see how it goes! Be patient, there is help all around. I learned this mostly from a fellow masters’s student, who will always be one of my heros!

35. A simple concept -- we create a Web page as a special format of file, And we place it where the WWW can Get to it! Drop your file onto A special server that Connects to the WWW The server deals with requests from the outside world to see your file. ftp Create a page of stuff in Netscape composer Ie: Save as: myportfolio.html on Your hard drive The web carries only files of type .html Your html files can contain pictures of type .gif or .jpeg Or movies, or sounds… Reference material & Live Links

36. Reference material & Live Links Web Editors and Course Management Tools Key Concepts: • FTP Access • Export Tools • Web Editors • Courseware Management Environments • This section is borrowed and revised from Norm Vaughan, with thanks. Norm taught this class last year.

37. Reference material & Live Links FTP (file transfer protocol) Access.. First, you need software that will ship things from your PC to the server. Here it is: FTP Tools PC Computers - the software you can download • WS_FTP Download Site http://www2.mtroyal.ab.ca/506LE.exe • WS_FTP Tutorial http://www2.mtroyal.ab.ca/ftp/ Apple Computers • Fetch Softworks http://fetchsoftworks.com/ or • http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/internet_utilities/captainftp.html

38. Reference material & Live Links U of C - FTP Access - moving your files onto the server Using your FTP software (previous page .. WS_FTP, WebSling, Fetch) you can ship files if you access the server correctly… her is how • Host Name: ftp.acs.ucalgary.ca • Host Type: username • UserID: – aix account (same as WebCT access) • Password - aix account (same as WebCT access) • Account – (leave blank) • If you are using IE the path will be: • ftp://username@ftp.acs.ucalgary.ca • If you are using Netscape: • ftp://username@ftp.acs.ucalgary.ca/u#/username

39. Reference material & Live Links U of C – Web Site Address http://www.ucalgary.ca/~aixusername/ Tips: • Be sure to copy files into your public_html folder • Use of an index.htm file • File names on the web are case sensitive and do not accept spaces • Remember that graphic images (.gif, .jpg) are linked not embedded in your html pages – they need to also be ftp’d to the server • For permissions and other info – refer to the following site: http://www.ucalgary.ca/it/web/personal.html

40. Reference material & Live Links Export Tools HTML Export Tools - Issues • Examples - MS Word, MS Excel, Adobe Pagemaker, Composer • Because of the nature of HTML, many of the Export tools will produce pages with very inelegant HTML code. Sometimes they produce code that is not compatible across browsers. This makes a mess. • Export tools are useful in allowing a user to re-purpose existing material onto the web. They aren’t necessarily the right tool to use when building a web page from scratch, but they are a good start if you can’t do HTML coding. • Westin Yoshimura is a genius at helping you with Netscape Composer, and he can help you a lot - (wyoshimu@ucalgary.ca) • Doucette Library call 403-220-6052 • While the exports are getting better, there will probably always be a market for web editors, tools designed specifically to author web pages.

41. Reference material & Live Links Export Tools HTML Export Tools • Microsoft Word will let you convert .doc & .ppt files to .html (it is tricky) http://www.microsoft.com/ • Corel WordPerfect does the same for their word processor product http://www.corel.com/products/ • Adobe PageMaker does this too, http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/pagemaker/main.html

42. Reference material & Live Links Web Editors HTML - Code Editors • Code Editors like HomeSite allow you to work directly with the HTML code. They automate the placement of code and assist in previewing the pages. They save you having to remember all of the different HTML codes and their various modifiers. • In other words, you need to know a lot less about web page making.. But this is still a lot more involved than Composer and ftp -ing it to the acs1 server. • Allaire Homesite http://www.allaire.com/Products/homesite/

43. Reference material & Live Links Web Editors HTML - WYSIWYG Editors • WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) editors like Macromedia Dreamweaver allow you to interact with elements directly on the page in a graphical manner, and produce the code behind the scenes. • We teach you this in higher edtec courses. • Most WYSIWYG editors will also let you modify the HTML code, and good ones will not try to correct your modifications. • Other examples of WYSIWYG editors are Adobe GoLive and Microsoft FrontPage.

44. Reference material & Live Links Web Editors HTML - WYSIWYG Editors - Examples • Adobe GoLive http://www.adobe.com/prodindex • Netscape Communicator http://www.netscape.com • Netscape Communicator Tutorials http://www.mtroyal.ab.ca/adc/workshops/biol/tutorial.htm • Macromedia Dreamweaver http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/ • Microsoft FrontPage http://www.microsoft.com/ Reference Site:http://www.atl.ualberta.ca/articles/web/editorsummary.cfm

45. Reference material & Live Links Courseware Management and Development Environments • For the most part, HTML editors still assume some understanding of how to structure a site, how the files and directories that make up a site relate, and how to build web page. • In contrast to these are a new breed of software which we call “Courseware management environments” • These are usually server side tools or servers which allow instructors to build online course materials without having to learning any html or even WYSIWYG editing tools. • With these, sometimes don’t have to know Composer or HTML code. Just a lot of other stuff. • They usually provide some predetermined ways of interacting with students (static web pages, threaded discussions, chats, evaluations) and ways of building content using only a web browser, or at times some proprietary client software.

46. Reference material & Live Links Courseware Management and Development Environments Course Development Tools - Examples - Check these out. • Blackboard CourseInfo http://www.blackboard.com • Learning Space http://www.lotus.com/home.nsf/welcome/learnspace • TopClass http://www.wbtsystems.com/ • The Learning Manager (TLM) http://www.thelearningmanager.com • WebCT http://www.webct.com/

47. Reference material & Live Links Courseware Development Environments: Online examples of large online distributed learning environments Course Development Tools - References • University of Pittsburgh http://www.pitt.edu/~washburn/ccs.htm • Course Management Discussion Board http://scrtec-ne2.unl.edu/wbc/ • Online Educational Delivery Applications – Comparisonshttp://www.ctt.bc.ca/landonline/

48. Principles of Screen Design • Making your information easy to see and learn is essential. • There are many web sites to help you do this. • The most important concept: Clarity. • Use white space, white backgrounds are best, and make sure you can navigate back to “home” from every page, so no one gets lost. • See the next page for excellent links on screen design:

49. Screen Design Principles: Resources • A great primer on web page development http://www2.mtroyal.ab.ca/%7Envaughan/norm/webtoolsintro/v3_document.htm • The top ten mistakes we make when we begin making web sites by Jacob Nelson http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html • A place to learn more about web page creation - a bit more involved… http://www.bignosebird.com/ • Free web page development software and the ability to host your web site for free as well. http://www.homestead.com/ • The U of C’s site for new web page makers.. Great stuff; http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~smzess/htmlpage/htmlfram.htm • This site has been designed as a tutorial to teach basic HTML programming to people with little or no programming experience, who would like to create their own web page http://www.ucalgary.ca/~smzess/ • A nice step by step guide.. http://www.cs.trinity.edu/%7Ethicks/WebSiteDesign/WebGuidelines.html NAVIGATION • How to build an easy to navigate site: (excellent) http://www.sev.com.au/webzone/design/navigation.asp Try these out, and surf to find more sites… many resources for this will be on the course home pages soon, linked under this topic but these are plenty!

50. Reference material & Live Links Principles of Screen Design (Exercise), Due for next Class (for Oct 10th) • There’s no way to learn like practice! Team up for this one with someone in the class. As long as everyone has a partner, the size of the group does not matter… (this is where you should team up with experts if you like, and share the work). • Review the page construction and navigation sites on the previous page. • Before we meet on Oct 10, Create a web page where you Include the two lists in the body of the web page:  • List One: Create a list of • good design principles for personal home and/or graduate student portfolio pages. • This list should include the elements that make a pleasing home page and that invite continued reading and exploration, and links to sample sites. • List Two: Create a list of • Distance Learning Sites. This list should include links to distance learning sites and • Some of your thoughts on what makes this a good or bad learning site. • Please Send me the URL for your web page before October 10th please, along with a list of who is in your group. I will link your submission to the class home page (via email)