Course Website
Course Website – an extremely helpful resource!
Classesv2 is amazing Not the norm at most schools Blackboard is not as easy to use
Develop and maintain your own course website Not as hard as you think Options to Regularly back up website Complete control of the content
Course website
PBWorks – An online wiki-based resource to easily design and manage a course Widely used in a large number of high schools and
universities – Hosts 300,000 educational workspaces
Wiki-based design Ensures Backup and ‘audit’ trail Giving students write access can enrich the
overall experience as they may contribute Control the access level of your students for the
entire workspace – Reader, Writer, Editor, Administrator (TA’s can have rights that students don’t)
Wiki-based Course Website
Wiki-based course webpage allows students to comment on required reading
Example course at UC Berkeley: http://vis.berkeley.edu/courses/cs294-10-sp10/wiki/index.php/Discussion_of_Good_and_Bad_Visualizations
Course Website
Demo PBWorks.com – http://coep-cg09.pbworks.com
Plugins to add multimedia content such as images, videos, photo slideshows, and more!
Posting Slides online
Students can refer to slides after class Slideshare – http://slideshare.net
Students do not need to download the slides We don’t have to worry about others editing
your files PBWorks allows linking in Powerpoint
slideshows on Slideshare
Newsgroups for class
Channel for communication amongst students, TA’s and instructors – Very useful for big courses
Yahoo Groups Google Groups
Alternatives
Google Sites: http://sites.google.com/ Lacks robustness of PBworks for
educational purposes
Weebly: http://www.weebly.com Easy to setup Fine-tuned for personal/commercial website
development Lacks educational focus
Student Feedback
If you are anything like me, you want feedback from your students Ideally after every class Anonymous feedback allows students to
communicate what works/doesn’t work Feedback about which group activities were
found to be effective Instructor’s teaching
style/accent/preparation
Online Surveys
SurveyMonkey Set up an online survey within minutes Free version allows only 10 questions
Qualtrics An excellent online source to setup a
survey of any kind Free for Yale students/faculty Unlimited questions and configurable
answers
Scheduling Optional Sessions Scheduling optional sessions can be a
pain Large number of emails going back and
forth
Doodle – http://www.doodle.com When Is Good - www.whenisgood.net
Laptops in the Classroom
Electronic Devices can be a major distraction
Laptops can be used constructively Class Website can be updated before
class to include links to case studies, papers, processed data for analysis
Direct students in class to links and design group activities around it Data analysis Research and present results to the class
In-Class Activities
Discipline-Specific Sites Chemistry, History, Physics and so on
Data Analysis Tasks IBM Many Eyes – Upload data and analyze it http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/
manyeyes/ Demo Examples –
http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/obama-state-of-the-union-2010
http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/geographically-visualizing-the-aid
Collaborative Editing
For collaboratively editing documents Syllabus with a co-Instructor, Teaching
Assistants Creating Handouts, Quizzes or Exams Research Papers
Etherpad – http://www.etherpad.com Google Docs - http://docs.google.com
Blogs to Engage Students
Have students create their own blog Students post their weekly reading
response to their own blog Students in the Data Visualization class
designed their own blog and regularly post to their blog
Allows other students to keep up with the field and read each others point of view
Learn from each other and enrich material
Online Quiz/Tests
ClassMarker - http://www.classmarker.com/ Easy to use quiz maker that marks your
tests and quizzes for you. ProProfs – http://www.proprofs.com
Easy to setup Polls, Flash Cards, Forums etc.
Academic Social Network
Create your own customized social network for the class
Ning – http://www.ning.com Course blog Discussion board Events – Exams, Quiz, Invited Speaker talk Instant messaging (Chat) Post Photos/Videos
Demo of a sample social network for this class http://futuresciencefaculty.ning.com/ Classroom 2.0 - http://www.classroom20.com