Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Teachers Should have an Angel (online shell)

Angel is a place to put your stuff - online: a learning management system (LMS) also called a Course Management System (CMS). Here we use Angel mostly for fully online or distance learning, but other campuses provide an LMS for any class offered. You want to have Angel for an on-ground class, such as:
  • Copyright protection. Having content behind a password protected shell/firewall/ whatever, may keep the college from getting sued. Copyright law is ambiguous - sometimes intentionally so, and anyone can benefit from an added layer of protection. See Dr. Rosemary Talub’s Presentation from SIDLIT.
  • Students who transfer will have to use an LMS - Blackboard at KU, KSU Online at KSU or Moodle at Baker. They function similarly.
  • Students want it.
Students and faculty have widely and wildly different expectations. The embedded tables are from an Educause article which provided a meta-analysis of over 100 universities and community colleges. Our own Chan Tung published similar results.

Also, although the process may differ from department to department, it requires a) institutional approval b) at least a semester advance notice c) that you take a "course" online from OES - to learn the system and get the students' perspective.

Because instructors may not know what section of a course they will be teaching or if it will fill, it’s challenging to arrange to have web-enhancement, particularly for an adjunct.

What are other obstacles, resistance, do faculty have to web-enhancement?

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