Thanks again!!!

Your workshops were engaging, humorous, and informative. Thank you for taking the time to prepare and present at conference.

Thanks,
Ann

Ann Rankin
Coordinator/Instructor Basic Skills Distance Learning
Randolph Community College
336/633-0126

I am a distance learner, and when I go to you website to access the schedule for EMT con-ed (wordpress.kellyk.com) it comes up with the page not displaying correctly. It sends me to the “resource” page and has a search box. None of the links on the side with allow me to move off of this page. I wasn’t sure if you had changed your website. Please let me know.
Thanks so much,

Cara Rogers
Haywood County Rescue Squad

First question: You can use a “Skydrive” from http://www.windowslive.com to post large files and share the information. I suggest you look into something like articulate or impatica to streamline and copy protect your files. They are both 3rd party services and are fee based.

Secondly: You bring up a great point regarding the creativity and subjectivity of some courses. These courses are difficult to use MC/TF questions and allow creativity. In this case Caps become important to help control the workload. There are other tricks you can use such as Immersive Learning Solutions, discussion areas, and games.

The goal is not to dumb down material, but to help reduce the amount of extraneous work that the instructor is doing. There are many places where a subjective question is asked when an objective question is perfectly acceptable. The point I was trying to make was to review your course and determine when and where this should be done.

I was only able to attend Friday afternoon’s session. I wanted to thank you for the hints and assistance with trying to streamline my B.B. courses. I have passed the information and this website along to my wife, who teaches online classes a few CC schools throughout the state.

I have two questions that you might be able to answer. The first concerns converting PPT to smaller and usable file for the BB server to handle. Right now, I am using PPTs and PDF files, but I use many graphics with my Geology courses and the server just cannot handle it. Are the programs you recommend (Impatica & Articulate) free to download or do they require a school License Agreement for this software.

I would love to try anything new so – #1) my students can download my huge files (the book publisher uses huge picture files), #2) each semester, Tech. Services eliminates all extra files because the course exceeds the allotted space allowed, and #3) I am not just “giving away” my I.P.Rights so people can “steal” it, and #3).

My second question concerns the course content and assessment of students. In order to “Work Smarter, Not Harder”, you recommend changing your assessments to all multiple choice and true/false questions. I understand that this cuts down much of the grading time, changing to automatic, computer based grading.
My concern, which is shared my many of my colleagues in the Social Sciences, is are we “dumbing-down” the college courses by making the assessments close-ended questions? Are we changing courses that by definition are descriptive, open-ended, and creatively thought provoking and asking students to be very cut-and-dry, black-or-white, yes-or-no courses?
As college instructors, are we loosing touch with what it means to teach and evaluate COLLEGE COURSE MATERIAL? By evaluating with rigid assessments are we dumbing-down and robbing our students of the skills needed to succeed outside of the classroom? From my educational experiences, my best instructors and courses, and the courses in which I recall information, come from those courses in which I had to be descriptive, creative, and use writing skills.
My question to you would be is there another way to keep the rigorous academic standards of a college course and a college experience without resorting to MC and T/F questions in order to make grading more simple?