Excited to be Receiving Blackboard Exemplary Course Catalyst Award at BbWorld 2014

May 9, 2014 By Jason Rhode 1 Comment

Blackboard Catalyst Award WinnerI was excited to learn that my Blackboard course, ETT 510: Instructional Media and Technology, which I designed and taught online during Fall 2013, has been reviewed by the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program and received the distinction of being named an Exemplary Course. Below is the email notice I received from Lauren Krznaric at Blackboard:

On behalf of Blackboard and the Exemplary Course Program Directors, I am pleased to inform you that your course, Instructional Media and Technology, has been recognized as a 2014 Blackboard Catalyst Award for Exemplary Course. Congratulations on this achievement! You join a select group of educators and course designers from around the world whose courses have earned the Exemplary Course designation.

One of my reviewers, Leah Chuchran, shared these kind comments on Twitter:

Below is a sampling of some of the great feedback I received from reviewers of my course, including:

This is a really well-designed course. I kept trying to find a ‘weak link’ in the course navigation but just couldn’t do it! This is good, right? It’s not an easy feat to design a course that is clear to navigate, robust in content and not feeling like I am lost somewhere trying to find something. The units make sense and the links within keep everything organized. The downloadable syllabus and the schedule were also easily accessed – so important! Exemplary work.

It is evident that Dr. Rhode has a passion for higher ed/online education AND design/development skills. It’s also evident that he enjoys the facilitation side and teaching both theory and practice and engaging with learners. The audience for this course really is awesome and ripe for a well-developed course – what more could one ask for? The embedded YouTube videos and especially the channel are an excellent addition to the course. Aggregated content in this fashion is so valuable for the learners. I really enjoy the fact that the synchronous sessions are scheduled and the students are expected to attend in this online class. I think that really is important and should be integrated as much as possible in the online environment.

The learning activities truly embody the student-content, student-student and student-instructor theory and practice. The learners were offered an opportunity to gain many new skills, even if there was a “stretch” involved. I love how the learners were surveyed about their technical skills so you could gauge your audience. The journal activity seems to be a key component and allow you to “take the temperature”. In addition, I really enjoyed both the ID model presentation as well as the tech-integrated ID plan assignments. Especially the models/templates that were provided – I can imagine how much time this saved both parties in the process.

I think that learner support was one of the main foci for this course, from the course design to the variety of content to support learning to the learning activities in which students were given opportunities to perform and shine.

The course design is exemplary. It’s easy to navigate and it just makes sense. It provides the learners with all of the necessary information to be successful and to jump right in and feel like they can begin learning the subject at hand, not how to get to the content and activities.

The learning activities are awesome. Assessment of each of the activities is thorough and clear with the rubrics. Each of the activities is appropriate for the audience.

Student engagement is obvious throughout, including in the discussions and the group projects. The feedback on the various assignments were also important in creating engagement.

I truly hope it is nominated as one of the Bb Exemplary Courses for 2013. It truly is one of the most well-designed courses I’ve seen.

The Blackboard Catalyst Awards will formally be presented at the Blackboard Catalyst Awards Luncheon on Thursday, July 17th at Blackboard’s annual worldwide user conference, BbWorld. As an exemplary course winner, I’ll be preparing a poster presentation for BbWorld, a screencast course tour, and also may be giving another information session at BbWorld (if proposal is accepted) with tips for exemplary course design in Blackboard.

Thank you to all my NIU ETRA Technology Specialist cohort students in the course this past fall and for your valuable feedback that guided the course design and delivery. I’ve previously shared my tips learned through the experience with other faculty and am currently in the process of designing a new course, ETT 511: Advanced Instructional Media and Design following the same principles of quality course design.

I was also thrilled to hear that the NIU MOOC that my colleagues Stephanie Richter and Tracy Miller helped develop has also received the Exemplary Course Award, also to be recognized at BbWorld!

For faculty who have never considered participating in the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program, I encourage you to do so! More details are available at blackboard.com/ecp

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#ETT511 Course Podcast – Summer 2014

May 8, 2014 By Jason Rhode Leave a Comment

ETT 511 - Advanced Instructional Media DesignIn addition to the course videos being available on YouTube for #ETT511 this summer, I’ll plan to try also making audio-only versions of my weekly course videos available as a course podcast that you can subscribe to using any podcast app of your choice (options include Downcast, Instacast, Apple’s Podcast app, or others to and be able to then easily download & access all future course podcast episodes directly from your smart phone or tablet.

The course podcast will contain audio-only versions of all course videos (so, you can choose to either view the videos or listen to the audio in podcast form). You don’t need to watch both, unless you would like to hear the same message twice 🙂

Here’s the podcast URL you can use to subscribe to our course podcast in your podcast app of choice:

http://justcast.herokuapp.com/shows/371/audioposts.rss

I’ll be curious to hear at the end of the course whether you preferred the audio or video option for my communications in the course.

Filed Under: ETT 511, Teaching Tagged With:

How to Create a Course Podcast Using Dropbox and JustCast in 5 Easy Steps

May 8, 2014 By Jason Rhode 4 Comments

I’ve been a long-time proponent of podcasting in education and I shared back in 2012 how to create a course podcast using Dropbox. The process I shared at that time, while free and workable, was still a bit cumbersome a presented a few minor technical hurdles that faculty needed to overcome in order when implementing. I recently learned of a new tool, JustCast, that removes the previous technical hurdles and makes podcasting using Dropbox super simple!

This 2-minute tutorial demonstrates how easy it is to create a podcast using Dropbox:

JustCast Tutorial

I decided to give JustCast a try myself. Below are the steps I took to setup a course podcast for my summer course, ETT 511: Advanced Instructional Media Design, in less than 5 minutes! Before following my steps below, you’ll need to first have a Dropbox account, which you can sign-up for free at dropbox.com.

Step 1: Sign-up for a Free Account

After I viewing the tutorial at justcast.herokuapp.com, I signed-up for a free account. In a matter of just a couple of clicks, I had approved the JustCast app in my Dropbox account. After logging in, my JustCast Shows page looked like this:

JustCast Shows

Step 2: Edit “example” Dropbox Folder Name

As part of the JustCast install process, it creates a folder called “justcast” in your “Apps” folder in your Dropbox folder. Within that “justcast” folder will be a subfolder called “example” that is meant to be the placeholder for your first podcast. I renamed that folder to the name of my course podcast, “ETT 511 – Summer 2014” so it appeared as follows:

renamed podcast folder

Step 3: Place .mp3 File in Podcast Folder

With my course podcast folder renamed to “ETT 511 – Summer 2014” I then simply dragged and dropped the .mp3 file for my first podcast episode into that folder within Dropbox on my computer, which then sync’d with my Dropbox in the cloud. Once sync’d, I could see that the audio file for my first episode was within my Dropbox/Apps/justcast/ETT 511 – Summer 2014/ folder
Podcast file
For each new episode to be added in the future, the new .mp3 file will simply need to be added to this folder.

Step 4: Edit Podcast Details

I then went ahead and edited my podcast show details in JustCast. Clicking the “Edit” button I added the following show details and attached a square graphic to be used as the thumbnail artwork for the podcast.
edit show details

After saving the edited show info, the podcast appeared in my list of shows as follows:
edited podcast show details

Step 5: Share Podcast RSS URL

The final step was to click the “RSS” button for my show to get the RSS feed for my course podcast, which is http://justcast.herokuapp.com/shows/371/audioposts.rss

podcast RSS feed

Students can copy/paste this URL into their own podcast app of choice, such as Downcast, Instacast, Apple’s Podcast app, or others to subscribe and be able to easily download & access all future course podcast episodes directly from their mobile device.

I’ve been very impressed thus far with JustCast, even though it is currently just beta. I plan to continue using it for my course podcast this summer and I’d encourage other educators looking for a simple and free podcasting solution to give it a try! The free plan currently limits to 100mb of uploading per month, with an unlimited monthly upload option for just $5/mo.

Have you tried JustCast and/or found these steps helpful? What has been your experience thus far with podcasting using Dropbox and JustCast? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Filed Under: Blog, Tutorials Tagged With: , ,

#ETT511 Course Videos – Summer 2014

May 8, 2014 By Jason Rhode Leave a Comment

As previously shared, I plan to incorporate a number of communication media options for students in ETT 511: Advanced Instructional Media Design. After the very popular implementation of video from my last online course, which I recently presented at the Sloan Consortium International Symposium on Emerging Technologies for Online Learning, I plan to incorporate video once again in my online course this summer, using YouTube’s built-in recording and captioning capabilities. While these videos will be embedded within the Blackboard course for my students, I’ve also setup an unlisted YouTube playlist that my students can subscribe to in order to easily access and view on their smart phones and/or tablets.

The beauty about a YouTube playlist is that the video with playlist can be easily embedded within any LMS or other web-based tool. Here’s an example of the video with playlist embedded:

Here’s an example of an alternative embedding option, just a single video without the playlist:

I plan to also experiment with audio versions of the videos, distributed as a podcast. More details to come in a future post about the workflow and process I’m exploring.

Filed Under: ETT 511, Teaching Tagged With:

Preparing for #ETT 511 – Summer 2014

May 8, 2014 By Jason Rhode Leave a Comment

ETT 511 banner
I’m looking forward to the opportunity to teach online this summer the course, ETT 511: Advanced Instructional Media Design, for Northern Illinois University’s Department of Educational Technology, Research & Assessment. Students enrolled in this course are a part of an online cohort pursuing a Master’s in Education in Instructional Technology with a K-12 Type 10 Technology Specialist Certification. It’s an honor for me to teach as part of this US News #1 Ranked Online Program.

During this accelerated (10 week) online course students will explore advanced design of mediated instruction as they engage in a wide variety of activities, designed to help them meet the following course objectives:

  1. Review current literature regarding message design principles in design and production of materials.
  2. Apply message design principles to the evaluation of existing instructional materials.
  3. Apply message design principles to the design and production of instructional materials in print, slide and video formats.

As I design and develop this online course, I plan to follow the best practices I’ve previously shared for designing exemplary courses in Blackboard and will be trying a few new features and techniques along the way. In addition to using the built-in interaction and collaborative features of Blackboard, I plan to incorporate blogging, videos, and podcasts as supplemental media options for my students in addition to course news and reminders via Remind101. I’ll also be tweeting using hashtag #ett511 and will be encouraging my students to do the same.

I’m also going to go out on a limb and share my experience and tips for incorporating these new techniques in Blackboard here on my blog, so stay tuned. My goal in doing so is to not only share my experiences for other faculty but also to give my students a behind-the-scenes look at how I’ve gone about incorporating the media elements into their course, should they so wish to use them as a model in the future.

Speaking of blogging…my students will be setting-up their own blogs in this course as they begin developing their own “digital footprint” while also gaining valuable experience communicating using a combination of media elements. In an attempt to model the possibilities for my students, I’ll be blogging for my students here and plan to preface all my course-specific posts with #ETT511. I may include other posts as well as I feel they may be appropriate.

If you are one of my students reading this…get ready, it’s going to be a great course!

Filed Under: Blog, ETT 511, Teaching Tagged With: