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

WebEx One-Click For MS-Windows Systems

You can easily create a new lecture, start a meeting, or a training session using the One-Click Productivity Tool. After you have an active WebEx account (click here to request one), login onto the Casper College WebEx site. One-Click allows you to quickly set up and/or start a session. You can change the default topic name later, if you like.

When the Productivity Tools option, "Would you like to set up WebEx Productivity Tools for your desktop?", shows up on your screen, click on the Yes button, then Save the file on your computer desktop.
If you do not see the message, you can also click on the Productivity Tools option on the left side of the MyWebEx page and then the Install Productivity Tools button.

Double-click on the downloaded tool (ptools.msi) and follow the installation prompts.

Once installed, you should see a round blue/green ball shortcut icon on your desktop.

Double-click on the icon







Click on Edit WebEx Settings






Under the Account Tab enter:
-Site URL: https://caspercollege.webex.com
-User name: Your WebEx given username
-Password: Your WebEx password
"Remember my password" checkbox (optional)

Under Instant Meetings select:
-Meeting template
TC:Training Center Default
Training Center Training session
Enter the default Training topic (e.g., Class Lecture, Virtual Office, Online Meeting). The topic can be edited later.
Password is optional - Not needed for Moodle4Me
-Audio Conference
Use VoIP only
(Leave other defaults)


Under One-Click deselect:
-"Always stay on top of desktop"
-"Start WebEx when Windows starts"

Click the OK button.

You are set up! If you would like to change your defaults, go back to the settings screen, edit, click Apply to save the changes, and OK to close.

Link for Moodle4Me Site News

This can link you directly to the Site News Posts for Casper College Moodle4me:
https://moodle4me.caspercollege.edu/mod/forum/view.php?id=3

Cisco WebEx Webconferencing and Collaboration at Casper College

		Fast connecting, multi-use webconferencing!
What does this mean for you? Now you can get more done faster than ever. Skip back-and-forth emails and time-consuming trips. Meet colleagues or students right from your desk—wherever they are. Have virtual office hours from the office or home. Record your class lectures and make the links available to your students in Moodle4Me Connect and interact with your students synchronously in a virtual environment Conduct or participate in virtual meetings while saving on travel and lodging Get started today 1. Go to Casper College Distance Education > Faculty Resources tab > Faculty Forms section to request a user account 2. Join a WebEx training session using your new account.at WebEx University 3. Start meeting online! Remember to request an account so you can participate in the WebEx University training sessions. Use Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Safari browsers and a DSL or better internet connection. For more information, go to http://caspercollege.edu/distance_ed/webex.html.

New SmarThinking Single Sign-on Access

New for Fall semester and onwards is single sign-on for SmarThinking online tutoring services. Students will log into Moodle4Me using their WebAdvisor username/pin. After successful login, students will click on the "Connect to SmarThinking" link located on the right side of the MyMoodle page.

SmarThinking will run a quick check to verify that all needed plugins are installed and up-to-date and may redirect to a system message window, if there are any maintenance announcements. If there are no announcements, then the redirection will take students to the main SmarThinking page.

For more information about the SmarThinking service, access the links below or go to http://www.smarthinking.com/

• Technical Requirements
• Tutoring Schedule
• User Guide
• Student Handbook
• Instructor Handbook
• Sample Tutorials

Moodle's New Look for 2010-11

We have upgraded Moodle's look to be cleaner, more accessible and secure.  That said, Moodle underneath is the same user-friendly course management system as before. Check it out at: http://moodle4me.caspercollege.edu/fall2010/ and let us know what you think by posting a comment.  We appreciate your feedback!

Copyright and Fair Use - From Stanford University

A great explanation of fair use of copyrighted material published by Stanford University Libraries.   The site explains in a very clear manner some of the complexities of copyright law and share best practices in education.  The link provided addresses fair use, but other related topics are also published in the website.

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/index.html

Webconferencing Tools

 

Elluminate

Live Class Sample Using Elluminate: http://media.cop.ufl.edu/e-example/

DimDim

WebEx

SMARTHINKING Online Tutoring Service

Available now, free for all registered Casper College students, the SmarThinking Online tutoring service.  Students can log in by clicking on the "Connect to SmarThinking" link on the MyMoodle page after  logging into Moodle4Me.  

Technical Requirements   
Tutoring Schedule   
User Guide  
Student Handbook   
Instructor Handbook 
Sample Tutorials

Technical Support: Contact SmarThinking by phone toll-free: (888) 430-7429, ext. 1 Monday - Friday 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM (EST) or by sending an email to support@smarthinking.com.

Moodle4Me Login Help: Call DE Student Support 307-268-3882, Monday - Friday 7:30 AM - 4:30 PM (MST) or send an email to distance_ed@caspercollege.edu.

  
Note: Usage is determined as follows:

• Live drop-in sessions: "Metered" to the minute of time spent working with an e-structor plus 5 minutes for administration
• Submitted questions: 25 minutes
• Submitted essays or career writing: 40 minutes
• Paragraph Submissions: 25 minutes
• Pre-scheduled sessions: 35 minutes (30 minutes spent working with an e-structor plus 5 minutes for administration) Please note that the school account will be charged 35 minutes unless you cancel at least 48 hours before the appointment time.