Students have to have an email address that is theirs and theirs alone, for at least two reasons. First of all, ETUDES-NG gets confused if more than one student uses the same email address. Secondly, student privacy! Students could, theoretically sue an instructor for sharing information such as a grade, or similar with an unauthorized person. If a student shares an ISP account with the other members of his/her family, then the student should get a private hotmail, yahoo, or similar type of account for class use.
Colleges are responsible for their own student help desk. Check with your college's distance learning program for services provided. We provide faculty support for those who go through training and they become members of the special Users' Group.
That being said, here is what one instructor had to say: I am using Etudes-NG to teach one of my courses this semester (fall '05). I have been pleasantly surprised to discover that my students have had relatively few problems in learning how to negotiate the program -- there has been very little confusion.
I do think that it is important to begin with as few tools as possible and add them as they are needed. For example there is no need to have the Gradebook or Tests & Quizzes turned on until they are needed. Limiting the number of items in the menu at the start of the course will help to stem the confusion.
I also make a point during the first to weeks to reinforce where things are by noting it in my instructions, e.g. Take Quiz 1 located in Tests & Quizzes (see the menu on the left side of your screen).
A great way to ensure that your students are not immediately lost is to have some initial assignments that are no pressure that make the student work their way through the course. I have seen a Treasure Hunt used to have the student move through the course. I use a bonus quiz that is based on the course directions - which they must read thoroughly in order to get to a password that is needed to enter the quiz. I have the students get information about each other (using Discussion & Private Messages) and then submit the information in the Assignments area of the course. I have also now added a sample quiz so that they can see what the clock looks like when an assessment is timed. And, of course, some sort of FAQs page is always useful. I don't know about NG, but I can say that students have amazingly few problems getting around in ETUDES.
No, there is no spell-check in the editors for students. It is not a bad idea to advise students to always type their work in Word, and save it, prior to posting it online. Not only this allows them to spell-check it, but they'll always have a local copy should they lose their connectivity.
Get into the habit of using the site navigation instead of the back button. This is a web application - not plain web pages, so depending on the action that you are attempting to leave, the software is not going to like the Back button. It may have to send some information to the database, and you are leaving it hanging; it needs you to cancel or finish what you are doing. Imagine shopping online and hitting the back button in the middle of processing order. No web system likes that.
So, you need to finish the process that you are in the middle of. Scroll to the bottom of the window and click on "done," “finish,” "save and submit," "update" "save as draft" or whatever it may be. In most cases, it may simply be the "Cancel" button since you probably went into something to view it instead of doing something.
Another thing that you can do to reset a tool back its home page is to click on the "reset" icon (looks like a jiffy lube) at the top left corner of every tool's container.
Using multiple windows with editing screens open of different modules or assignments will cause you to override content! It doesn't have to do with "local" cache, but your server "sessions." It's a good idea to change your practice.
The save feature (button) is not meant for frequent saves, but rather for you to save your submission as a draft (take the dog for a walk, think about what you said), and come back later to submit for grading. It is much better to compose your replies off-line in your word processor and paste it in the assignment box when you are ready. This way, you have a local saved copy.
Uploaded files reside on a large (200G) file server connected to the ETUDES-NG application servers. We are required by law to keep everything archived for two full years. And, that's what we'll do. After that, old terms get backed up on tapes and removed from the servers. So, at any given time, you have access to two years worth of courses.
We are not working with flat files here in either scenario, so file corruption is not an issue. PDF files are great for printing (handouts/references) - not for reading/learning on the web. You pretty much have to print these to read them.
The problem is related to your monitor display setting. My guess is your display resolution is set at 600 x 800 -- setting it to a higher resolution should solve your problem. You should be able to change the display settings in "Control Panel" > "Display" > "Settings." I have mine set at 1024 by 768.
It is on the list, but at the bottom. There are other critical user requirements outlined for the next 18 months, at least, before student tracking, such as integration of Assignments tool with gradebook, integration of discussion tool with gradebook, prerequisites for modules, and the list goes on and on... Primarily functionality to aid teaching and learning.
For now, to track students, you are better off measuring their performance based on what they actually say and do. The system does time-stamp just about everything, so if faculty assign tasks, discussions, little quizzes, etc. regularly, they can tell how students are doing.
Gosh! Tough question. The majority of my online instructors report that their highest enrollment comes from our distance learning website (as per their surveying students). We include online course syllabi and "blurbs" highlighting new courses and programs.
We get tons of traffic in our DL website during the registration period, and if you have a detailed syllabus, with clear expectations and outlined coursework, it helps a lot. Depending on your discipline, other lists may help. Our computer science instructors say that the 2nd best source for getting students is Craig's List.
When I taught English composition and the research paper online at Lake Tahoe Community College in the late 90's, a third of my students were outside of the area, mostly Los Angeles. Upon asking them how they found out about my classes, it was a unanimous: the CVC (California Virtual Campus) Catalog. You might want to add your courses there. Students are shopping!
Your best bet right now is contacting division deans of colleges with online programs to find out if they are interested in adding (more) online sections for your course. Contacting colleges who are ETUDES Alliance members (30 of us) is a plus, as your course will be in the standard CMS they use and it's in the same servers. Having a course in the system that you can demo and online teaching experience, will help you get online teaching assignments.
This project (ETUDES Alliance) is a great network for getting teaching assignments. I get inquiries from deans very often about needing an online teacher for x, y, or z course and post announcements. In my to-do list for spring is to set up a website (program, actually) where deans can post openings AND interested faculty can put up their vita and bio and interest in teaching online. I have been asked about this so much that I decided to proceed with the above - I see it as a great marketing service that I believe will add value for the members of our community.
2/22/06