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.