OnlineUpdates

=Updates on running online courses= toc

11/23/08
Notes from Kitty Galaitsis: - there is now a Second Life space that is available for use in CCDE, still in development but there are apparently some ways to practice using it and a few online instructors are doing this (music, counseling progs.)

Notes from Gene Schwalb: - UMass is now looking to adopt a standard for online education called "Quality Matters", which is a point-by-point checklist of expected and preferred practices for holding online courses - the handout given at the meeting is supposed to be emailed to online prog. directors; this is a way to help instructors match online prog. design and have courses be peer-reviewed for extra help (does not address the delivery, only the course design) - presentation located at http://media.umb.edu/qmadmin -there was a discussion about combining use of social networking with Blackboard system and someone brought up that they use the ning in conjuction with courses as a place for online sharing of work and discussions - there is now a way to send an audio email through WIMBA, which just means that instead of sending written feedback to students, instructors can send an audio message which creates a different type of more personal tone in the feedback

Other technical notes: -now a new LMS admin person, Kalindi Mehta, replacing Bhavesh -an important change is that all instructors and students will need to (obtain and then) use their UMass email address for all logins to all systems, as there will be a single authentication system which is supposed to make using the various systems easier -the helpdesk vendor for online systems is now PerceptIS, so there is now a new phone number (see below), and there is expected to be better service and it should be faster for faculty to get through

PerceptIS Support for UMass Boston: Phone: (888) 300-6920 Chat: http://help.perceptis.com/umass_boston_chat_user_info.php Email: bostonsupport@umassonline.net

-there was some discussion about the date to allow grades to be shown to online students and when student course evals. are completed, it was not clear so this is being worked out to make sure that last day of evals happens before grade release