CAE Gazette
News you can use from CCCO's Center for Academic Excellence
Webinar Reminder: "Brainfuse: An Introduction to Our New Tutoring Service"
Thursday, Jan 22, 2015, 01:00 PM
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D2L Discussions: Grid View is Back!
Within D2L's discussions tool, here's how to update from "Reading" to "Grid" view. (Currently the default view is the "Reading" view.) The Grid view allows instructors and participants to see an entire discussion, and all its threads, at a glance.
Where to find ProfHelp
For the ProfHelp D2L Request Form: Assistance will be provided within 24 hours. Response times over the weekend will be longer, 24-48 hours. For the ProfHelp CCCS Email Request Form: Your password will be reset by CCCS-IT. Hours are M-F, 7:00-5:30 p.m., except for CCCS holidays.
Using Turnitin's Originality Reports & GradeMark
Webinar Reminder: "Virtual Brown Bag: Discussions, Announcements, Grades"
Thursday, Feb 5, 2015, 01:00 PM
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And finally . . . a few words on student engagement
Student engagement is one of the critical elements of a successful online course, as discussed in many professional articles, surveys and studies regarding online education*. Engagement can be carried out in several ways: through discussion posts which acknowledge student input, ask further questions, etc. It also can be accomplished thorough announcements in the News section of the course which add further information about the subject being studied, or about the specific assignment in the current unit of the course. Grading comments can even be an opportunity for further engagement, when they provide the student with specific information about their work in an assignment.
From a Fall, 2014, CCCOnline course in Colorado History, here is just one example of good engagement with a student in a discussion. In this example, the student's input is acknowledged, further information is provided by the instructor, and the student is asked a question:
"Bob: There were actually people in Colorado prior to the proto Puebloans, namely the Clovis and perhaps others who followed the herds south from the Alaskan land bridge, and whose weapons and implements we find from time to time in Colorado. But, you are right, the oldest long-term settlements are found in the Mesa Verde and other so-called Anasazi areas. Why did the Indians live in the cliffs, do you think?"
*One of those articles is summarized below:
Student engagement in online courses does not require one specific activity by the instructor; instead, multiple means of interactivity should be used. This was one of the findings of M.D. Dixson when she conducted a survey which was completed by 186 online students, from a broad cross-section of online college courses. Dixson's study, published in the Indiana University Journal of the Scholarship and Teaching of Learning, found that student-student, and instructor-student communication are strongly correlated with higher student engagement with the course. And, students in the survey who reported that they had multiple methods of interacting with other students, and of communicating with instructors, had significantly higher levels of engagement with the course. The methods of interactivity noted were discussions with good instructor interaction, email messages to students, announcements on the homepage of the course, and required student interactions, such as group projects or peer reviews.
Dixson, M. D. (2010). Creating effective student engagement in online courses: what do students find engaging? Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 10(2), 1-13. Retrieved from
http://josotl.indiana.edu/article/view/1744/1742