New DE Center on Campus

The new DE Center is located at the LH (formerly known as AD) building, room 298.  The Center provides friendly support for our faculty and students.  Come over and check out our new facility which includes a student lounge area, a faculty training/meeting room, our friendly DE staff, and coming soon, a multimedia center.
Be on the lookout for the upcoming open house later this month :)

Google Announces ADA Improvements in Docs, Calendar, and Sites Apps

Interesting article by Google, see link below.  If you follow the http://google.com/accessibility link provided within, you can learn more specifics on what Google is doing to improve universal accessibility for users.  At Casper College, all students upon registration are given a MyCC Google account which contains not only Gmail, but also Docs, Calendar, Sites, Chat, Google Talk, and support for mobile devices.  Students log in using their CC username and password.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/enhanced-accessibility-in-docs-sites.html

DE Team
distance_ed@caspercollege.edu

Smarthinking Online Training Dates Announced

Christine Lustik, Ph.D., former Director of Distance Education at WWCC, in Rock Springs, WY, and now an Implementation Specialist for Smarthinking, is putting on a series of webinars specifically for Wyoming faculty, outreach centers, advisors, librarians, tutors, and anyone else that works with students when they need academic help. 

Do you need to understand what Smarthinking is and exactly how it can help your students?  These webinars are for you!

These webinars will:

• Show examples of essay feedback and describe our writing feedback goals;

• Review the nursing topic options;

• Talk about exciting new content areas to be covered within the next month, such as Microsoft Office;

• Talk about who our tutors are and the training they receive; and 

• See how your students interact with live tutors

So pick a time, put it on your calendar, and sign up now!

Day	Time (mountain time)	Registration Link
October 17, Monday	12:00 pm (noon)	https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/401015753
November 1, Tuesday	9:00 am	https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/832773488
November 2, Wednesday	3:00 pm	https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/338215856
November 3, Thursday	4:00 pm	https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/159748808
November 4, Friday	12:00 pm (noon)	https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/404252169

Christine Lustik, Ph.D.
Implementation Specialist,
Smarthinking
(307) 466-4170 (office)
(307) 262-8778 (mobile)
www.smarthinking.com

Fall 2011 and Previous Courses Moodle Links

• Fall 2008 - Summer 2010 - http://moodle4me.caspercollege.edu/2009 (logins remained the same as they were during that time and may not correspond with your current Casper College account.  These courses are scheduled to be archived at the end of September.
• Fall 2010 - Summer 2011 - http://moodle4me.caspercollege.edu/2010 (logins are the same as your Casper College account)
• Fall 2011 - Summer 2012 -  http://moodle4me.caspercollege.edu/ (our current default Moodle4Me link.  Logins are the same as your Casper College account)

Moodle4Me Links Faculty Reminder

The new academic year courses, 2011-12, are presently located in a separate link, http://moodle4me.caspercollege.edu/fall2011/. 

Current (2010-11) and previous (2008-2001) academic year courses are located at:

• Fall 2008 - Summer 2010 - http://moodle4me.caspercollege.edu/2009 (logins remained the same as they were during that time and may not correspond with your current Casper College account.
• Fall 2010 - Summer 2011 - http://moodle4me.caspercollege.edu/ (our current default Moodle4Me link.  Logins are the same as your Casper College account)

On August 15, we will be "swapping" the current Moodle4Me instance link with the new 2011-12 link.  After this date, the new academic year Moodle4Me courses will default to: http://moodle4me.caspercollege.edu/  
and the 2010-2011 year courses will be located at:
http://moodle4me.caspercollege.edu/2010 
 
Logins will still match your Casper College account.  If you do not see all of your courses or cannot log in, please let us know.

New Services Offered by Distance Education

Distance Education appreciates all the time you take to prepare great quality instruction for our students and would like to offer you more support.  As a result, we are offering two new services applicable for publisher-provided materials that can be imported into your Moodle4Me course shells.

• Questions banks - Contact person: Teresa Millan, AD 282, ext 3882, email: tmillan@caspercollege.edu
  To prepare: Start thinking of specific chapters and question types you need imported
• Content packs - Contact person: David Siemens, AD 298F, ext. 3330, email: dsiemens@caspercollege.edu
  To prepare: Confirm with your publisher representative that the materials are in IMS format, a generic form of compressed packet

When contacting Teresa or Dave for these services, please take into account that requests will be addressed in the order they are received.  Also, please have on hand the necessary information (CDs or links along with any logins provided by the publisher) to provide what we need to help you.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions :)

Faculty Tips - Plagiarism Prevention Beyond Citation Training

An interesting article on Faculty Focus, written by May Bart, addresses a few tips to prevent plagiarism among higher education students:

Get to know your students - Early on in the course, quick assignments can provide a comparison base.  This is also a great time to get students familiarized with Smarthinking, Casper College's online tutoring service that allows a 24-hours turn around on submitted papers.  Access is via single sign-on Moodle4Me > Smarthinking block.
Require up-to-date research - Less than five years old.
Require revisions - As the instructor, you can also require the submission of any Smarthinking paper  review along with each assignment submission.  
Require a journal -  This part can be a preliminary discussion post to have students share their research process.
Vary the audience - By assignment, group, and/or module.  
Use tools such as Turnitin - Turnitin is an online service that provides quick statistical reporting of text found on the Internet.  If your students know you are checking, they may invest more time in their quality of writing.

To read the full article and comments, click HERE.

Merits of Copyright

In a recent article published by Jennifer Howard in the Chronicle for Higher Education publication, several points were mentioned in reference about the abuse of copyright-protected material, its inherent quality, and the need for better avenues of access for colleges and universities. Click HERE to read the article.

Creative Kaltura Uses

Kaltura is one of the technologies we use at Casper College, via Distance Education, to share multimedia content on the web. Some of our pioneers in using Kaltura videos were Marty Finch and Todd Jones, Business Ag instructors.

Aside from our more traditional use within the Moodle4Me course environment, the Agriculture department has made available some of the latest Ag Lecture videos on their website http://www.caspercollege.edu/agriculture/index.html and click the video icon.

One more way to support innovation and education for a lifetime. Do you know of an unique use of technology in our institution? Share it with us :)

Making a Course Available for Students

Instructors in a Moodle course (teacher role), can change availability of a course shell. This feature is very helpful so you can make your course visible to enrolled students (anyone listed under People > Participants) prior to the start of classes, up to 7 days. Students will be enrolled into Moodle approximately 10 days before the first day of the semester. When courses are not available to students, the names will appear in gray, once they are made available, the font color of the tittle will change to red.
Steps to make your course available:

1. Log into Moodle4Me
2. Go to the course you want to make available by clicking on the course name
3. Navigate your mouse cursor to the Administration block
   
4. Click on Settings
   
5. On the course settings page, scroll down to the "Availability" section
   
6. Change the "Availability" setting to "This course is available to students"
   
7. Click the Save changes button at the bottom of the page

After the initial enrollment, as students add/drop courses, Moodle updates this information within 48 hours. If you do not have access to a course or have questions, feel free to contact us at: distance_ed@caspercollege.edu