EDETJ755: LMS Evaluations

Group 2: Daniel Brown, Jonathan Lawler, Will McGinty, Jennifer Spann

EVALUATION 1 Site: Open Yale Courses Course: HIST 210: The Early Middle Ages, 284-1000 Evaluation by: Will McGinty/Jennifer Spann SUMMARY

The Open Yale Courses is very easy to navigate as long as you know what it is that you are wanting to learn or the course of study that you want to take. There is a wide variety of courses offered by this institution. The syllabus describes that class adequately though it leaves off technical requirements and prerequisites. It includes a list of books that is used in the course, includes a list of what should come with the class packet, and includes a breakdown of assessments. It does not give contact information for the instructor should there be a need to contact the professor. Though the instructor discusses the fact that the class is being recorded for use in this manner, he also instructs the student not to bring their computers to class due to the temptation of out-of-class distractions. LEARNING OBJECTIVES Positives Negatives Learning objectives are not listed in the syllabus. Learning objectives are not stated at the beginning of each lecture. Topics of discussion are listed for each lecture.

This course is made up of 22 lessons, referred to as sessions. Each session has a brief overview of what the learner gain from the lecture.

ASSESSMENT AND MEASUREMENT Positives

The assessments are found in the syllabus, however, no rubrics or guidelines are provided to assist the students in completing the assignments. In the larger scheme of things, this course could use a few more assessments to alleviate bias.

 Negatives LAYOUT

Short paper 20% Mid-term Exam 30% Research Paper 40%

According to the syllabus 10% of the students grade is unaccounted for. The class does not provide informal assessments. A grading rubric is not provided for the short paper or research paper. Alternative forms of assessments are not offered to support various learning styles.

This course is very well laid out and easy to navigate. There is a horizontal menu that includes the Syllabus, Sessions, a Survey, and a link that allows the students to buy books. There are 22 sessions that includes videos broken down into chapters for easy viewing. Positives Horizontal menu bar makes for easy navigation Page is well laid out No ads or content that will distract users from the educational information Colors are consistent and mild, easy to look at for extended periods Reading assignments are listed apart from the rest of the content making them easy to spot The layout is the same from session to session

Negatives This site would benefit from an area where students can share ideas, thoughts, or questions such a discussion board or bulletin board

LEARNER INTERACTION & ENGAGEMENT Positives

The videos used for this course were created while the professor led face-to-face classes. The profession would restate the questions for the benefit of the video and then respond to it. However, there is little other interaction between the students and teacher.

Videos are easy to navigate and is broken into chapters that allows the learner to walkaway and come back to later

Negatives The only interaction in the class seems to be learner-content Does not appear to be a way to teacher-student interaction

MATERIAL

The course has quite a list of books for extended reading and the videos provided are of good digital quality. All videos can be downloaded for viewing in locations where Internet may not be accessible. Positives Negatives The professor did not provide external links to for additional readings via the web. The use of e-books was not encouraged. In class learners were encouraged not to bring their laptops to class. The professor provided a list of books for course readings. A selection of books were provided for the research paper due at the end of the course. The lectures were provided via video. A transcript of the lecture was able for hearing impaired learners.

LEARNER SUPPORT Positives Negatives

This course is designed for independent learners. Though there are supports in place to help the students, these supports are not offered through peer collaboration or from additional contact with the instructor.

The course offers five central text for the students to read in order to gain a deeper understanding of the content. In addition, seven course packets are recommended for the students to complete. The description of the course provides students a glimpse into the content which will be discussed throughout the course. Closed Caption is offered on each to support hearing impaired learners. Each lecture session provides an overview of the content for online learners.

The professor did not vary instructional techniques to accommodate different learning styles. The professor did not provide reference maps of the region to provide additional scaffolding for visual learners. The course did not use multi media graphics or visuals to enhance learning.

ACCESSIBILITY Positives

This course is well constructed for accessibility purposes. Students needing accommodations should not have any more problems than any other students.

The course content is easily accessible and uploads quickly. The transcript of the content can be download as a HTML file.

 Negatives

An audio of the lectures can be downloaded as an MP3 file. Two bandwidth are provided to ensure quality viewing. The video does allow students the ability to skip ahead to the next topic of discussion should the need arise. Videos include the ability to turn on and off closed captioning

Lectures are not provided in Spanish or with Spanish subtitles.

EVALUATION 2 Site: Open Yale Courses Course: MCDB 150: Global Problems of Population Growth Evaluation by: Daniel Brown/Jonathan Lawler SUMMARY

The Open Yale Course is an easy to navigate website that contains multiple courses in a variety of subjects for students. The materials are not difficult to find with all of the classes being separated by content matter. It does seem like they must have a standard course design that all professors must follow when designing a new course. The syllabus was easy to find though it contained very little information. There is a list of books and articles in the syllabus, but no contact information for the professor. Since the classes were recorded in 2009 there is the possibility that the professor might not even be at the university anymore. The videos are quite well done, with clear audio as well as very clear video. There are 24 videos each approximately an hour in length, but a student can easily come and go while watching the lessons using the stop or pause function. Therefore, students are capable of finishing a lesson at their own pace instead of being confined by the rules and social norms of a traditional classroom. LEARNING OBJECTIVES Positives Negatives There are no stated learning objectives for any of the specific lessons. There are no set learning objectives for the course as a whole. The lessons contain notes in the form of PDFs which provides quite a lot of the material covered in the lesson. A survey is used by the professor as an informal assessment to check for understanding.

There are 24 lessons that make up the course, each lasting about an hour. Each lesson seems to be a new day of instruction for the course and provides an outline or an initial summary of the lesson to come.

ASSESSMENT AND MEASUREMENT

The assessments are laid out in the syllabus with two midterms each worth 25% of the grade and the final exam worth 50% of the grade. The final exam is comprised of two parts: the first half is similar to the midterm exams while the second half is either a comprehensive exam or a comprehensive paper. Positives Options for the final based on what the student feels most comfortable taking. All grades and percentages spelled out at the beginning of the class.

Negatives LAYOUT There is no explanation of what is expected in the paper. All assessments are formal assessments such as tests and papers. Students are required to have minimal interaction with the content. The course does not allow for collaboration among colleagues.

The layout for this page is very simple and easy to use. It seems to share a common design with many other of the Yale Open Courses suggesting there is a template that professors follows when creating a course. The course does require the use of either speakers or headphones as well as Adobe Reader to access all of the material. Positives Negatives The course design lacks social interaction/ contact between the professor or other students. Default pages are set and can slow the independent learner as they progress through the content. Site is easy to use and follows an intuitive lesson by lesson progression. No extra materials are provided on the content delivery pages to distract the students. The course design follows many UDL principles in terms of contrast of colors for ease of reading. The Buy Books tab enables students to easily purchase materials for the course.

LEARNER INTERACTION & ENGAGEMENT

The videos were recorded in a large lecture hall while the professor led a traditional face-toface class. The instructor used a PowerPoint presentation to deliver the course content. While the professor was very personable there was very little interaction between the instructor and the students. Positives The course and the videos were easy to navigate and each video is broken into different lecture chapters. The lecture notes provided made it easier to follow along with the instructor.

Negatives There is no interaction between the students and the instructor. Online students have no form of interaction such as discussion boards, chat rooms, or open forums.

MATERIAL

The videos are long but full of useful content. Lecture notes are provided so learners are able to follow along with the lectures.

Positives Negatives The instructors only means of communication was via a large lecture room, and therefore did not reach a wide variety of learning styles The instructor is very knowledgeable and engaging in the subject matter. The videos are very high quality with multiple formats to work with various computers and internet speeds. Instructor uses a PowerPoint presentation to highlight certain parts of each lecture. A text overview was provided before each video lesson to inform the user a little about the lecture. A list of reading assignments are provided with each lecture.

LEARNER SUPPORT Positives Negatives

The course was designed for non-academic credit and no personal learner support was available in the form of peer collaboration, or contact information.

An overview of each lesson is shown before each lecture video. A list of reading assignments is displayed during the lesson to provide additional resources on the topic. The instructor used visuals in his presentation to enhance learning.

The instructor did not provide any peer collaboration for online students or contact information for follow-up questions.

ACCESSIBILITY Positives

The course was very well organized and is very accessible even for disabled students. There are major considerations taken when creating the course.

The course is divided into chapters with the same general layout on each page. All videos are available in multiple formats for viewing offline or for used with slower internet connections. The videos provide close captioning for hearing impaired learners that is easily enabled or disabled. In addition, a downloadable transcript for each lesson is available. There is an audio version of the lectures for auditory learners. Links are provided on each page to enable the learners to skip various parts of the video. Lecture notes are provided to make it easier for the learner to follow the lecture instead of utilizing traditional note taking methods.

Negatives The lectures are only provided in one language and closed captioning in multiple languages is not available Reading assignments must be purchased separately and are not available for immediate online viewing.

Reflection The Open Yale Course provides an excellent resource for independent learners seeking to enhance their knowledge in a given subject. However, the courses are not designed to foster a healthy exchange of ideas among online learners that often forces the learner to ascend to higher levels of Blooms Taxonomy. Therefore, the courses do not present a good working model for online learning in the 21st century. These courses reflect the ideas discussed in chapter 10 of Anderson and Elloumi book Theory and Practice of Online Learning in which the authors noted the need to shift from heavy text based learning to a more interactive student engaged form of online learning. While the Open Yale Course provide an excellent means of delivering the content through its easy navigation and design, the course lacks the ability to cultivate a dynamic online learning community. The lack of community existing between student to student interaction, student to teacher interaction, and student to content interaction stands in complete contrast to the Theory of Online Learning put forth in chapter 2 of Theory and Practice of Online Learning. As a result, we believe the Open Yale Course provide an excellent resource for individuals seeking to explore or broaden their knowledge base on a given topic; however, we do not believe these courses provide as dynamic online learning community which deepen and enriches the online learner.