Summarizing 13 weeks of teaching an Online Class

We have finally reached week 13 and Thanksgiving Break. This blog will report on what it was like to teach 723 students in an online course with tools that were (to put lightly) not mature. During the course of thirteen weeks my high hopes and expectations were crushed. No wonder I was MIA as far as reporting progress. I will divide my report on what transpired during these 13 weeks into three categories: Aplia, SAM 2010, and iLearn (customized version of Moodle).

Aplia

Aplia is a separate software application that is being used for testing & homework focusing on Stair & Reynolds:  Fundamentals of Information Systems: 6th Edition.  An electronic copy of the book is included within Aplia. Students access Aplia with the following link – http://www.aplia.com. Aplia requires purchase of an access code, an Internet connection and a browser.   

On paper everything sounded great. Well not quite! All that the Aplia people had to do was convert the text so it can be read with a Flash reader and prepare assignments for each chapter. They got the first part right, and as for the second part, well they had previously created questions for another Stair & Reynolds textbook so why not copy them over, even though the questions don’t pertain to the textbook being used. After 4 weeks of chaos and frustration, the Aplia people finally reviewed all the questions and made sure they were correct.

SAM 2010

SAM 2010 is a separate software application that is being used for training, testing & homework using Excel 2010.  Students can access SAM 2010 with the following link – http://sam2010.course.com. Each student is required to purchase their own individual copy of SAM 2010.  

SAM 2010 Assignments: Are included with the version of SAM 2010 used for this course.  Students submit their  Excel 2010 assignments for grading.  Grading is automated with feedback provided by the program. 

SAM 2010 Projects: Are included with the version of SAM 2010 used for this class.  Students upload their completed Excel 2010 projects for grading.  Grading is automated with feedback provided by the program. 

Quizzes and a final are also given in SAM 2010.

SAM 2010 requires a high-speed Internet connection, Adobe Flash Player and a browser.

Here is a list of problems that we encountered:

1.      The wrong text was included in the package.

2.      Although SAM 2010 runs on Macintosh computers, it is not supported 100% and should NOT be used. Student projects will not receive full credit.

3.      Scheduling of exams was not being correctly setup by the system.

4.      Students would complete their assignments, only to find out they were not being recorded in the grade book.

5.      Flash had problems simulating keystroke for the spreadsheet (e.g., right click).

None of the problems were addressed and we had to find workarounds for all of them.

iLearn

iLearn is the “learning management system” that is being used for the course.   iLearn provided the following capabilities for the students:

Calendar:  The calendar in iLearn provides students with the due dates and times of their assignments and quizzes.

Course Materials: iLearn was used to distribute the syllabus, additional course materials (such as PowerPoint slides) and general directions.  Students must have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on their computer to view most documents.

News Forum:  The “News” forum in iLearn was used for communication and general information / updates to the course.

Student Forum: This forum was setup for students to help each other out with assignments, projects, and general information.

Course Forums:  Course forums have been created in iLearn. Students must contribute to each forum by the assigned date.  The contributions were graded.

Grades:  Grades and general feedback were posted into iLearn for student review of their progress. Grades for all SAM 2010 and Aplia assignments had to be manually transferred into iLearn by the instructor.

Quizzes:  Quizzes and the final were given in iLearn focusing on the course textbook.

iLearn the homegrown version of Moodle was the only component of the system that operated as expected.

We had originally planned on conducting surveys and creating videos of presentations for students. These plans were put on hold because of all the problems with the Aplia and SAM 2010 components.

The good news is that by week 13, we (the students and the instructor) had worked through all the problems and students were doing well in all their assignments and had learned to stay on top of their weekly assignments and submit them as early as possible in order to avoid last minute failures.

In future posts, I will discuss what I have learnt from my online experience and what suggestions I have for the future.

Preparing the syllabus and creating the courses in Aplia, SAM2010, and iLearn

The 2^nd phase of teaching a large online class is setting up the components of the system. In my case, the components consisted of Aplia, SAM 2010, and iLearn (customized version of Moodle). The master plan for how the student interacted with all the components is the syllabus.

In preparing the syllabus the most important issues to address are what materials are going to be delivered, which component is going to be used for delivery and how do all the components interact.

The Aplia platform will be used to deliver the MIS material and grade the student assignments.

The SAM 2010 platform will be used to deliver the Excel tutorials, grade the assignments, projects, quizzes, and final.

The iLearn platform will be used for grading the forums, MIS quizzes and MIS Final.

Based on the component decision, a master schedule was created as presented in the course outline in the syllabus ISYS 263 Course Syllabus - Fall 2011. For the MIS portion in Aplia 10 assignments were included. For the Excel portion in SAM 2010, 5 assignments, 4 projects, 2 quizzes, and one final were included. For the iLearn portion, 4 forums, 4 MIS quizzes, and one MIS final were included.

The next step in this phase was to setup the components:

1.       In SAM 2010 based on the Parsons textbook the assignments, projects, quizzes, and final were setup. This task took about 2 hours (with prior SAM 2010 training). Attention must be given to when each assignment is available and due.

2.       In Aplia based on the Stair textbook, the assignments were setup. Creating the course and scheduling the assignments took about 2 hours (with prior Aplia training).

3.       In iLearn setting up the weekly schedule and scheduling the forums, assignments, quizzes, projects, and finals took about 5 hours (with prior iLearn training).

4.       In iLearn setting up the grade book. A decision was made that each assignment would be graded on a scale from 0 – 100. Thus, the grade book in iLearn must reflect the weights apportioned to each category as laid out in the syllabus. Setting up the grade book in iLearn took about 2 hours (without any prior grade book training).

5.       Setting up the Excel grade book worksheet. Don had created a template for the Excel grade book worksheet that would act as repository for all the grades and could then be exported into iLearn so that students could review their grades at a central location. The diagram below, explains the grade work flow that is going to be used throughout the semester.

With all the components in place, we are ready to handle students. A welcome e-mail was sent to all the students enrolled in the class (by this time the number enrolled had exceeded 725) with the first instructions. In the email they were told to expect a weekly email with a summary of the previous week’s activities and a discussion of the current week’s assignments. All the emails were posted on iLearn in the NEWS FORUM in case some students for some reason didn’t receive the email.

I analyzed why the number of students kept growing and I found out that non-business students enrolled in the online course as part of fulfilling their General Education (GE) requirement. In the introduction forum some of the students explained that they had a dual purpose, they wanted a class that wouldn’t require presence, and they wanted to learn Excel.

In my next blog, I will discuss the first week’s experience and forum grading.

Preparing to teach a large online Information Systems course

In the spring of 2011, I accepted the assignment to teach a complete online class ISYS 263 - Introduction to Information Systems. The course includes both IS theory as well as applied learning of spreadsheets. At first, teaching a course to 650 students without any TAs seemed like a daunting task. Concerned about making the right pedagogical choices, I reached out to the Higher Education Teaching and Learning community on linkedin.com with the post: "I am going to teach a large online class in the Fall (650 students), what suggestions do you have?" and received within a span of a month over 90 responses and some great suggestions.  As an aside, the number of students enrolled has now reached 700.

During the summer, I worked with a colleague, Don, to put together the syllabus and choose the vendors that would facilitate teaching an online course efficiently and effectively. It quickly became apparent that www.Aplia.com would be the vendor of choice for the e-book because their system allowed for automated quizzes for the learners. The fact that the college of Business at SFSU had been very successful in delivering a Business Communication class to over 800 undergraduates per semester added to our comfort level in choosing Aplia. Since the course also included a spreadsheet component, we needed to choose a tool for independent learning and testing of spreadsheets. We chose SAM2010 from Cengage (sam2010.course.com).

Finally, we had to settle on the textbooks for both Aplia and SAM2010. After surveying the available textbooks, we settled on two: "Stair / Reynolds, Fundamentals of Information Systems, 6th Edition" for the IS portion and "Parsons, Oja, Ageloff and Carey MS Excel 2010, Brief" for the spreadsheet. Both books would be purchased by the learners in e-book format. In the next post, I will discuss putting together the syllabus and creating the courses in Aplia and SAM2010.