Moodle Workshop Presentations

If you were unable to attend or are interested in reviewing the Moodle workshop presentations hosted by the Administration, COI, ITC, FPD, and DTC committees, here are the links to parts 1 and 2 which we divided into parts because of the length of the video..

After you select the link, it takes about a minute for EACH of the videos to load. If you’re trying to view these off campus using a slower connection, e.g., DSL or cable modem, it make take a little longer to load.

• Part 1
• Part 1 version 2 – smaller display but faster loading
• Part 2
• Part 2 version 2 – smaller display but faster loading

New TurnItIn-Moodle Training Videos

For those Moodle users, you can now add a TurnItIn assignment to your Moodle course shell. Here are a few links to the TurnItIn Vendor’s website:

1) Moodle Assignment Setup

http://www.turnitin.com/resources/multimedia/training/turnitin/Integration/Moodle_Assignment_Setup/Moodle_part_1.htm

2) Moodle Originality Report

http://www.turnitin.com/resources/multimedia/training/turnitin/Integration/Moodle_Originality_Report/Moodle_part_2.htm

3) Moodle GradeMark or Peer Review – We did not purchase either of these features as part of our license.

4) User Manuals -Users may also access our Turnitin User Manuals focused on the use of Turnitin through Moodle courses:

http://www.turnitin.com/static/integration_manuals_versions_moodle.html

Your instructors and students are also welcome to utilize our searchable Help Center at:
http://www.turnitin.com/static/knowledge_base/knowledge_base.html

If you are interested in using TurnItIn separately from Moodle, then you’ll need a Turnitin account. Contact Laurie Vasquez at vasquez@sbcc.edu or at X2724 for a separate account if you need Turnitin training.

Prelim survey results of teacher instructional web-use

Here’s a link to some of the results of our recent survey of faculty re instructional web-use…

How do students see the results of their quizzes in Moodle?

Given that you really don’t have a fake student in Moodle, it’s difficult for teachers to see how students view the results of their  quizzes.

Here’s what you should tell students to do:

1.  Select the link  for the Moodle quiz or exam in the course.

2.  Select picture link (will open  in new window) and to see any one of the three links that a student could choose to view results of her individual quiz/exam.

David Wong reaches 25 year milestone

Okay, you gotta be wondering why I have to write about myself here. Well, I’ll do all of us a favor and save that for some time in the future. Anyway, here’s a pic of all of us.

Left to Right, Mark Ferrer, David Wong, Superintendent/President Serban, and Dr. Douglas Hersh.

Moodle Quizzes, time limits, and zeroes

If you are seeing students’ quiz results with a grade of zero and a time spent over the quiz which is greater than the quiz duration you’ve set, here’s why:

A student is given a zero if (1) he disables javascript in his browser which prevents Moodle from automatically submitting his quiz at the end of the duration AND (2) he has gone over the quiz duration you’ve set by MORE than 60 seconds. No javascript means NO counter as well

Students are given a warning that JavaScript must be enabled to continute with the quiz, but the system does not stop them from taking a quiz.

They can still take the quiz but they can get into trouble IF they go over your duration by MORE than 60 seconds. You as the teacher will also see that he went over the duration in my example below by more than 60 seconds which gave him a zero even though he got one correct. My quiz was set for 1 minute but with no javascript enabled the student could take longer before saving and submitting his quiz.

This example shows what a teacher will see if a quiz is taken without javascript enabled. The student exceeded the quiz time limit and the grade is 0.

How do you enable javascript in your Internet browser?

Look for the preferences option in your browser menus and select/enable the javascript option. Then restart or close and reopen your browser.

Finally, if a student closes his Internet browser window before the quiz duration has ended, the Moodle system will warn him that ANY questions he may have answered to that point will not be saved (see example below).

Changes will be lost message.

Also, the Moodle quiz system will continue to count down as though the student were still taking the quiz. And if for some reason, the student does not reattempt the quiz before the duration has ended, the student will get a zero for his quiz score.

Quiz score showing 0.

Branded Moodle theme in-progress

The Moodle contractor still has a number of small fixes to do in the Branded theme  that is available for the weekly or topical formats.  In particular you’ll find links that are not visible due to the mixing of black and other colored links.  In particular, the question text is not visible if you use the “secure window” feature in the quiz/exam tool.  Instead, administer the quizzes/exams without this feature selected.

We filed a bug report with the Moodle vendor re this specific quiz problem and we will asking them to review the theme carefully for other bugs like this one.

Portal – Getting access to all enterprise systems under one umbrella

If you’re confused about which computer technology system does what, here’s a LINK to a picture of a table that will hopefully help you better understand the relationship between the technologies available and the types of tasks you may be interested in completing.

a table of our enterprise computer systems and the types of activities you may be interested in completing

Fall 2009 Faculty Teaching & Learning Seminar

Here’s the tentative list of workshops for this fall 2009’s Faculty Teaching and Learning Seminar. Note, that you can sign up via the faculty flex web site at http://flex.sbcc.edu for these seminars. The location of each of the seminars is listed at the end of the title of the workshop, e.g., FRC for FRC, PS 101, etc. Any questions re the seminars should be sent to Marilyn Spaventa at spaventa@sbcc.edu.

August 20 – Planning Your First Class (FRC)
Marilynn Spaventa, Dean Educational Program
Topics for this first lesson include: generational differences, check list for first day, class expectations, making a good first impression, engaging students the first day, first day activities, key student motivators, and CATS. (Faculty Resource Center)

September 11 — Classroom Assessment (PS 101)
Learn what SBCC English and Math assessment scores can tell you about the students in your classes. Presenters: Gail Tennen, Eng. Assessment Coordinator, Robert Elmore, Math Assessment Coordinator.
Fred Marschak will demonstrate how he uses iClickers in his Astronomy classes to engage students and assess learning.

September 25 —Vocabulary Building
(ECC 3)
Margaret Prothero, English Skills Professor
Join a lead a highly interactive session which provides participants with many strategies for teaching interdisciplinary vocabulary skills. Examples of activities that are based upon open and closed word sorts and various vocabulary graphic organizers accessible from the web will definitely give the participants activities that they will want to use in their next class to build a stronger understanding of content based vocabulary.

October 9— Does Slideware Make You Stupid? Technology and the Community College Classroom (Library Classroom)
Matt Mooney, History Department Faculty
Reflections and discussion on using technology in both face-to-face as well as online classes at Santa Barbara City College.

October 23 — Technology and Accessibility (Library Classroom)
Laurie Vasquez, Assistive Technology Specialist
1) Laurie will provide information on how to ensure that the technological resources you use are accessible to all students.
2) Feedback on peer evaluations. This is the opportunity for faculty pairs to provide feedback and support to each other after peer observations and for everyone to share concerns and successes

November 6 — Dealing with Difficult Students (Faculty Room– Library)
Alyson Bostwick, instructor/counselor will lead a lesson in conflict management. Faculty will learn the basic steps for handling potential conflicts that occur in or out of the classroom.

Wordpress and IE

Thanks again to the many folks using the Wordpress – WP.org forums for reminding me that copying and pasting from Word or another word processing app to a wordpress (WP) blog is a no-no. One of the back-burner jobs I finally got to this summer was to debug why my WP site was not showing the sidebar on the site homepage using Internet Explorer (IE). This wasn’t a problem in Firefox but so many of you still use IE.

Apparently, sometimes when you copy and paste text it, of course, copies some other Word formatting garbage. In doing so, you inadvertently copy the notorious “[if gte mso 9]” source. IE has a BIG problem with that.  To fix it in your WP site, choose the HTML tab  of the offending post and delete the extraneous garbage and voila, your posts and sidebar should be visible.

Also, veteran WP users (http://wordpress.org/support/topic/215124) recommend, that if you’re going to compose in Word, then paste your Word doc first into Notepad or simpletext or BB edit. Then save it and copy it from Notepad into your WP form.