To make learning resources more available to students and instructors, provide access to them on the Web. Just think--no more trips to a copy shop! Copyrighted resources need to be password protected, in accordance with USG BOR guidelines for fair use that deem a password-protected electronic copy the equivalent of a paper copy in the library. WebCT courses have password protection built in, and Web sites can be password protected.

Some of the ways to make resources available on the Web are to:

1. Link to other sites that have the resource
2. Use commercial providers
3. Rely on Pullen Library pages
4. Take paper copies to DocuWeb
5. Put them in a course management system, e.g., WebCT
6. Put them on a university or personal Web site

For faster loading and downloading and more flexible viewing, HTML pages created with an HTML editor work best. Other formats are possible, and sometimes other formats are all that's available, e.g.,

1. HTML pages created through other programs, e.g., Word, Excel, or Access
2. Adobe *.pdf files
3. Word *.doc files
4. Native formats: Excel *.xls and Access *.mdb

Request a WebCT course or a Web site on a GSU server. Server space may also be available in units and colleges.

How can I reduce the administrative overhead for multi-section courses?

Here are some possibilities:

1. Make course materials available on the Web, in WebCT or on Web sites
2. Accept student work on the Web, e.g., in WebCT, and return graded work to students similarly
3. Make grades available to students on the Web, e.g., in WebCT
4. Use Web tools, e.g., WebCT, to administer quiz and exam questions and to grade objectively-scored quiz and exam questions

To avoid an email deluge, turn off the email tool (e.g., in WebCT) and direct students to post their questions and comments (all of them except for those of a purely personal nature) to an electronic bulletin board, where other students can respond to questions/comments and all students can see the responses. This approach reduces the email load on instructors in two ways: it reduces the number of duplicate questions, and it relieves the instructor of the need to respond to questions/comments that students are able to respond to. Instructors need to monitor the bulletin board topics and contribute to them on a regular basis.

To manage the flood of posts to the bulletin board, create distinct topics (as many as you need) for organizing the postings. If you do not want students posting to WebCT's Main topics (where the message flood first occurs), put a message there directing students to post their questions/comments to the appropriate topic and move or delete any posts there. This little bit of discipline will go a long way to organizing the postings so that everybody can find what they're looking for.

How can I communicate with the instructor fleet?

To communicate with instructors, use the Web. Some possibilities are to use:

1. A WebCT course for the course to provide a bulletin board, chat room, folders for course materials
2. One or more Web sites to make materials available to instructors, e.g., materials for the next term and for grading purposes.

Is there an easy way to put a lot of materials in many WebCT courses?

One way to load many WebCT courses, e.g., one course per section, with the same materials is to create a shell WebCT course for that purpose, from which the individual section courses can be cloned.

Can I minimize the number of WebCT courses, i.e., put all the sections in one course?

Yes, all the sections could go in one WebCT course, which would minimize the upkeep in WebCT and eliminate the overhead of moving between them. Another advantage of putting all sections in one WebCT course is that there would be a bigger pool of students to pose and answer each other's questions. If there are 500 students in a course, it wouldn't be long before a question on the bulletin board would be answered. Because WebCT quizzes can be timed and released to students on the basis of variable values, e.g., section number, students in different sections would only be able to access their own quizzes. There may, however, be good reasons for multiple WebCT courses, e.g., separating groups of sections for which different teaching approaches are being used.

How can I make students aware of their progress?

To make students aware of their progress (including the lack thereof), provide periodic quizzes on the Web, e.g., in a learning management system such as WebCT, which can score objective questions automatically and let students view the results and response-specific feedback.

How can I coax students into spending time on learning?

One way is to give students multiple attempts at quizzes so that they can monitor their growing skills. WebCT can select quiz questions randomly from a database of questions so that subsequent "attempts" at the quiz are fresh questions. Textbook publishers often have test banks in loadable formats for WebCT.

1. Make periodic quizzes available on the Web in a time window before class meetings. To obtain points for the quizzes, students must complete them before class meetings, which will encourage preparation for class sessions. Learning management systems permit instructors to set specific time windows for access to quizzes.
2. Create bulletin board topics for work student are to complete prior to a class meeting. Post questions (or have students post questions) in the week before the class and require students to respond prior to class.
3. Give course credit (small amount) to those that pose or answer questions on course content on the bulletin board. Those with questions stimulate the exchange just as much as the answering students. Reward quality, not quantity. Appreciate especially concise and accurate responses with a private email or public comment.

1. Survey the students in WebCT about the course and tailor it their preferences. For example, in the first week, let them "vote" on office hours so that you can minimize the "by appointment" load. Ask students to indicate on which topics they might like more notes or exercises. Post notes or exercises to support weak areas reported in surveys. Spend a little more time on these topics during reviews. This allows a customized feel even though you might already have notes/exercises for all topics. Posting "as needed" gives the larger sections a more personal feel.
2. Have a "topic" for each week's office hours. This encourages students to come when the topic coincides with their weaknesses. This cuts down on the surge prior to midterms and keeps common questions together.

Because students calibrate their expectations of the performances required of them in a course based on exam questions, use exam questions that require higher levels of thinking. To help students calibrate their learning before the first exam, provide sample questions for them, e.g., through quizzes in a learning management system such as WebCT.

Some believe it is possible to assess critical thinking with objectively-scored questions, e.g., Yeh in the 12/01 Educational Researcher. Using objectively-scored questions, especially if they can be scored automatically in a learning management system like WebCT, makes it easier to assess critical thinking for large numbers of students. Collecting response data automatically would also facilitate evaluating the discriminatory ability of individual questions and assessing learning across sections and terms.

Yes, you can have students publish their work in WebCT with the group presentation tool. Many students can't stand the idea that someone might see work that doesn't represent their best efforts, which promotes attention to one's work products. At first, it may be sufficient to mark or check the published work randomly. Some instructors just give credit if something of about the right file size is loaded (deep dark secret), but this behavior may be found out. Published student work could be the basis for bulletin board topics or questions.

Students can learn from each other through use of collaboration tools such as electronic bulletin boards and chat. Instructors will need to explain to students what kinds of behaviors are expected of them for what purposes in what quantity in what time frames.

To promote participation, announce in the syllabus your schedule for checking the bulletin board and then post a message when you log in for that purpose. This encourages students to help each other yet lets them know that what they can not collectively solve will get instructor attention at regular intervals.

Yes, just create a discussion forum on the bulletin board for each group, which group members can use for their own exchanges.

Some of the ways to help students develop collaborative behaviors are to:

1. Model the behaviors for students and explain what you are doing.
2. Set ground rules for participation, e.g., here is guidance for one master's course.
3. Show students examples of productive and not so productive discussions and explain what's different about them.
4. Demonstrate that collaboration has the potential to improve learning, which would enable all the benefits that accrue to greater learning.

Because it is captured as it is entered, the text of bulletin board postings and chat sessions can be analyzed for the level and kind of learning that is occurring. There are many ways to assess this kind of text, many of which fall in the general category of content analysis. Here are some ideas about how to analyze the learning in discussions. Although the focus of these ideas is chat, the ideas apply equally to bulletin board postings.

Because it is captured along with students' participation, the instructor's participation on a bulletin board and in chat can be analyzed similarly. For example, one could analyze discussion text for teaching presence as part of an analysis of cognitive and social presences in a community of inquiry.

The first step to deterring unauthorized collaboration is to make it clear to students, e.g., on the course Web site, what the course expectations are with respect to what one does with others and what one does alone. Include a link to the policy on academic honesty in the GSU Student Code of Conduct. The second step is to prosecute vigorously the most egregious examples and make that action known to students. Being hard-nosed about this matter early in the course is more likely to be effective for more students.

One approach is to refrain from making assignments that seem to prompt the unauthorized behavior. For example, instead of assigning grades based on projects that students could copy from each other, base the grade for that work on students' completion of equivalent work they create on an individual basis in a controlled environment.

To make the consequences of not learning more apparent, detect the failure to learn in a controlled environment, e.g., on an exam, and point out to students the wages of declining to build one's own competence. Doing this will require having a substantial portion of the course grade coming from student performances in controlled settings.

Here are some strategies for detecting plagiarized papers. Some approaches for decreasing the likelihood of receiving plagiarized work are to:

1. Make assignments that are too new to have accumulated plagiarizable files by selecting contexts from current events and putting them on the web only at the beginning of the preparation period
2. Require progress submissions, e.g., outline and successive drafts

Yes, major course changes might be evaluated by running analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) models like the following that require data that is available from institutional records (ORATOR reports in OASIS now and BANNER as of fall 2002). The covariates, e.g., GPA et al., adjust the analysis for systematic differences across students and sections that are often associated with differential performance.

Grade distributions in a downstream course

1. means
2. std devs
3. form

learning experience in upstream course:

1. before the change
2. after the change

To assess instructor effects on learning, consider analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) models like the following one, which assumes that a common exam is given. The covariates, e.g., GPA et al., adjust the analysis for systematic differences across students and sections that are often associated with differential performance. An analysis of downstream course performance might also be helpful.

Student scores on exams

1. means
2. std devs
3. form

section