For the past month, I have delivered a presentation, along with Richard Cyr, about what we have done with Biology 12 aka "Intro Bio Lab". We have delivered it about five times so far by my last count. This post attempts to boil down my part of the presentation based upon the one slide I spend almost all of my time on: the courseware structure of Biology 12.
Three Ways for you to Enjoy this Post
For this post, I provide the key image from my presentation with a bunch of text beneath it to support it. For those not in the mood to read, I have also included a VoiceThread where you can sit back to watch and listen instead. And for those who are into viewing presentation slides with no presenter, I've also included the Google Presenter version of Richard and my presentation.
The Image that Describes It All: How Online Bio12 is Built
My part of the presentation entails me talking for about 15 minutes to this single image. It is meant to represent the courseware structure of the Biology 12 course that was delivered this spring to 372 students in Bio 12 and Bio 110. This slide began as a drawing on my office whiteboard a few months ago as a means to help me get a complete visual picture of how we have pieced this course together. I might as well have titled this "E-Learning Authoring and Delivery in the Cloud" or something to that effect because that is what we have done with Bio12.
Take a look at it, decipher it as best you can and then read the bullet items below for some description. For those who don't feel like reading, skip down below to my VoiceThread version where you can listen to me try to explain the courseware structure quickly.
Content Structure of Biology 12: Spring 2010
I will describe this from the bottom up:
- Student Access Through ANGEL: The students' experience entails them logging into ANGEL and accessing their course, like so many other courses. However, ANGEL is used only as a "passthrough" to get to the content. The content DOES not exist in ANGEL. The content actually is created and hosted on the...
- Blogs at PSU platform: We authored and published the course content in this platform. Biology wanted this course to be "open" so we marked the content with a Creative Commons license. This is the hub of our "course development in the cloud" approach. Take a look at Module 4: Graphs to see the look and feel of a typical module. We embedded rich media within the course and one of our 'anchor' media delivery strategies was to use...
- VoiceThread: VoiceThread is a web-based application that allows you to create online media albums in which you can upload images, videos and documents. You can then comment on each media element via webcam, microphone or text and then share this 'thread' with others via weblinks. For most of the modules, our SME used it to create annotated presentations. We then embedded these into the content in the Blogs at PSU module content pages. See this example that explains how to calculate Standard Deviation. Another "cloud" app was...
- Kaltura: This is a video editing, publishing and hosting application service. Our SME was comfortable enough to create a video on his own and simply provide the link. Just like VoiceThreads, we simply embedded it in the content page.
- YouTube: Our SME found a number of applicable videos and we, once again, merely embedded the video into the content pages. Are you noticing the pattern? For other elements of course delivery, we used...
- Google Docs: Google Docs is the mother of all web-applications that allow for sharing and collaboration. The design team used it exclusively for development activities but that is a story for another post. For now, I'll focus on it's use in the delivery of the course:
- Module Assessments: We employed a strategy of students doing their assessment work in a google doc and then handing it in. Watch this tutorial to see it in action.
- Course Evaluation Surveys: We used Google Forms to create and deliver surveys. This made life easy, trust me.
- Content/Exercices: We put embedded Google Spreadsheets for students to practice certain calculations. This helped prepare them for their assessment work.
Watch and Listen to the VoiceThread Version
I've created this VoiceThread where I attempt to verbally explain the courseware structure. Click on the play button below to play the VoiceThread within this page. You can also choose to view this VoiceThread in a separate browser where it will be more clear visually.
View the Full Presentation
For those who are somehow still hungry for more, you can spin through the slides of our entire presentation titled "Innovations in the Redesign of Biology 12". Enjoy!
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