Maintaining Student Engagement and Motivation

Maintaining Student Engagement and Motivation

Some very interesting points brought out by Dr. Newberry on our Talkshoe session the other day. Having taken a few classes from Dr. Newberry, I can now understand his thinking when laying out his on-line classes. Probably the best resource we have for designing our own is from the classes we have taken from him.

It is nice seeing the course outline right away on blackboard. I appreciate how each class is given an assignment and an objective and we know going into the assignment, what our expectations are. The orientation at the beginning is a must for laying out the course objectives, expectations, and to ensure that all students are logging in right away to the course material.

I have found in the past that I am reluctant to initiate communication with a professor, but by sending the emails to us on a weekly basis, Dr. Newberry is eliminating the awkwardness of it. I look forward to the weekly emails. They are a great motivator and a reminder. Taking on-line classes, I find I can get a little off task during a busy, hectic week (Even as I am typing this in an Auckland Hotel lobby)

The Social presence created by a simple greeting with each students name gives the class a more personal feel, even though there is never, or rarely any face to face communication. (Where was the pizza meeting?)

I hope to model my future project on the examples that Dr. Newberry has presented to us over the past semesters. The presentation made me reflect on all the ways that we communicate and made me look deeper into why certain things are done in certain ways.

ADA Assigment

Assignment 1: Evaluate an eLearning webpage for accessibility issues.

Name of Evaluator:

Scott Neuscheler

URL of page being evaluated: http://studyonthebeach.com/csusb/classes/winter2010/etec_674_win_2010/media/eLearningADATestPage.html

Procedure: Went to the web page and read it from top to bottom. Couldn’t get past the initial shock of seeing the putrid purple font on the gray background. After using all of my visine, I then went the video and audio files. I had a pre built ADA checklist that I used as I was reading through the page.

Problems Found:

1. No captioning with the video

2. Horrible purple font.

3. No text version for audio file,

4. No keyboard navigation available

5. Used color to convey meaning

6. Font is not changeable

How to Correct Problems:

1. Pay someone to caption the video for you!

2. Change font color to a non- Red,Blue,Green. Simple Black on white background would have been appropriate.

3. Create a text version or powerpoint presentation to accompany audio file.

4. Create embedded table to use keyboard navigation of interactions and links.

5. Change matrix interaction colors to bold or italics, or change the size of the font.

6. Create in an embedded word document so font is able to be changed by the user.

Assignment 2: Planning for ADA compliance

ADA Checklist

Visual: Color Blindness

· High contrast

· Red-Green-Blue combinations

· Don’t use color to convey meaning

· Make use of a user changeable font

· Text version

Visual: Low Vision – No Vision

· High Contrast

· Make use of a user changeable font

· Navigation requirements

· Configurability – Screen Reader Compatibility

· Text Version

Seizure

· Avoid flickering images

· Avoid Animations

· Avoid optical illusions

Auditory

· Text Version

· Captioning Videos and Slide Shows with Audio

Motor – Navigability Issues, Provide:

· Keyboard Control instead of mouse

· Internal Navigation to skip through long sections

· User Configurability

Instructor Created Presentation 1: Powerpoint

In order to ensure that a Powerpoint presentation was ADA compliant, I would simply design it with my self created checklist in mind. All videos and audio sections would have to contain a text version. Font and titles would be kept basic with no flash or dash. Colors would be a simple black and white.

Instructor Presentation 2: iMovie

In order to ensure that IMovie presentation was ADA compliant, I would also follow the checklist with the main focus being on a text version. Also, the movie would need to contain captioning.