Education Commons^™

Developing A Library Widget For The Campus Lms, Eric A. Kowalik

Eric A. Kowalik

In the Summer of 2014 the Raynor Memorial Libraries was given the opportunity to add a library widget to all course homepages in Desire2Learn, Marquette's Learning Management System (LMS).

The widget, developed with HTML, CSS and jQuery, allows students to search the library catalog and link to various library services such as ILL and E-Reserves directly from within a course site.

Recently, Google Analytics has been added to the widget allowing the libraries to analyze usage and student searches by course. Come learn about the development and implementation of this widget.

Like what you see? The code is open source …

Higher Education At The Margins, Eric A. Kowalik, Heidi Schweizer, Ken Daily, Jon Pray

Eric A. Kowalik

Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins (JC:HEM), is an initiative of the Society of Jesus that brings Jesuit higher education to those at the margins of our society. It provides courses and degrees to refugees via the volunteer activities of online course providers from many Jesuit schools and draws on the rich Jesuit tradition of higher education. We explain how Marquette University has worked to develop courses for JC:HEM and provide ways your institution can partner to contribute courses and resources to this endeavor.

Meeting Qm Standards Through Modular Design, Paula Jones

Paula Jones

The Quality Matters (QM) standards are benchmarks that educators strive to follow as they develop online courses. The QM standards are based on current literature focused on course delivery rather than course design. One method of course design that educators can use to provide organized, sequential and navigational web-supported instruction is through the use of modular instruction (use of modules). What is unique about the modular structure shared in this session is the use of an "Introductory Module" as a starting point in the course, plus the structure of the "Content Modules" that include links to communication boards that support …

Best Practices To Promote Learning Through Web Conferencing: Resources, Tools And Teaching Methods, Paula Jones, Maryann Kolloff, Fred Kolloff

Paula Jones

Web Conferencing and synchronous learning have a specific place in online learning. In fact, Web Conferencing is recognized as a highly collaborative and social learning environment. Web Conferencing can support effect online pedagogy in a number of ways. First, Web conferencing provides tools that support communication between the student and the instructor enabling presence to be established and/or maintained throughout the course. Second, web conferencing provides a didactic communication between two or more users. This provides opportunities to interact and offer feedback on topics relevant to the course. Thirdly, web conferencing allows students to talk through issues or questions they …

Offering Professional Development Opportunities For Faculty On Methods Of Developing Critical Thinking In Online Courses, Paula Jones, Maryann Kolloff, Fred Kolloff

Paula Jones

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the how one university created a successful faculty professional development program that offered training and support on how to develop student critical thinking skills. Selected literature related to building student critical thinking skills through online environments are reviewed. Participants attending this presentation will receive an overview of the professional development program and the incentives offered. In addition, information on the Paul & Elder model will be summarized, as it was used in the program. Furthermore, this report will provide at least 3 examples of instruction from online courses at one south-eastern university …

Students' Perspectives On Humanizing And Establishing Teacher Presence In An Online Course, Paula Jones, Maryann Kolloff, Fred Kolloff

Paula Jones

The challenge in designing and developing online courses is for faculty members to establish their teaching presence by humanizing the online classroom experience for their students. The authors use the community of inquiry model developed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) to examine the attributes of teaching presence in an online course. This study then evaluates students' perceptions relating to the significance of producing a video for an online course that introduces the instructor to students and see if a specific introductory video will help to establish the instructor's teaching presence for the students. The data collected from this study, …

An Evaluation Of A Wiki Tutorial On Web Accessibility For Uc Irvine Web Programmers, Eric A. Kowalik

Eric A. Kowalik

Education is shifting from the real world classroom to a virtual Internet world where learning can occur at any time and any place. The development web sites and virtual learning environments ultimately fall to programmers who create the code, unfortunately many programmers have not been educated about the necessary steps that need to be taken to ensure the web sites they create are accessible to all learners, even those with disabilities. This project includes a review of literature on web accessibility and a collaborative web based training tutorial designed to educate programmers at the University of California, Irvine about web …

Humanizing And Establishing Presence In An Online Course: The Role Of Introductory Videos In Distance Learning, Paula Jones, Maryann Kolloff

Paula Jones

Some faculty may find it difficult, if not impossible, to provide a similar classroom experience online as is provided typically in a face to face class. Faculty members can find it even more difficult to establish an instructional relationship with students in an online course as they do in a face-to-face course. Online learning is known to be more solitary and students report that they feel somewhat disconnected from the class when they take a course online. The challenge in designing online courses is for faculty members to establish their teaching presence by humanizing the online classroom experience for their …