The sixth annual UT System IOL Conference seeks proposals for interactive   and engaging presentations related to changes and innovations in online education. Proposals that address the unique challenges and opportunities with the delivery, support, evaluation, and management of online teaching and learning are encouraged. The deadline for proposal submissions will be Friday, January 29, 2010. In addition to proposals by UT System faculty, staff, and students, individuals outside the UT System are invited to submit proposals using the online submission tool. For more information go to http://www.iolconference.org/callForProposals.aspx.

Proposals for preconference workshops are still being accepted, the deadline for that remains November 23, 2009. Please contact IOLconference@utsystem.edu with any questions you may have.

We’re pleased to announce that UTTC has released a fully customizable podcast organizer and player designed specifically with educators in mind. The application has been released as open source and the files can be downloaded from Source Forge:

http://mp3playr.sourceforge.net/

The easily customizable podcast playlist makes organizing and sharing course lectures and supplemental audio presentations a snap. The fully customizable interface allows course developers and instructors to configure the mp3Player to reflect their school and department branding, and course graphic themes. The player organizes and presents the playlist in 3 customizable columns of information. By default, columns define podcasts by Group, Title, and Author. You can easily configure column headings to fit your content requirements such as multiple subjects, chapters, authors, historical contexts, etc. Students can then sort each column in ascending/ descending alphabetical order, as well as, arrange the order of the columns to organize the playlist to best meet their listening and study needs.

For the developer, the UTTC mp3Player is a Flex and Actionscript 3.0 application that has been released as a Source Forge open source community contribution targeted to course developers and anyone interested in a fully customizable Flex media player application.

Project Manager — Michael Anderson, UT System TeleCampus: manderson@utsystem.edu
Flex Application Developer — Brad Shaevel, UT System TeleCampus: bshaevel@utsystem.edu

Each campus of the University of Texas System is now subscribed to the Copyright Clearance Center’s Annual Academic License (CCC Annual) for the academic year 2090-2010. The CCC Annual enhances each campus’ existing rights to make and distribute copies of materials to students. Each campus currently relies on a combination of library licensed materials, materials whose owners make them available freely over the Internet, and fair use. The CCC Annual adds to that body of materials and rights to use them the ability to copy and distribute materials owned by the Annual’s publisher participants, through online course management systems such as Blackboard, through electronic reserve systems in campus libraries, and through electronic and paper coursepacks, created both on and off campus.

Information about license benefits and obligations will be of interest to those who operate the services through which each campus provides digital and analog course materials to students. For example, if a campus delivers course materials using all three methods (course management system, electronic reserves and coursepacks), participants who represent each of these services should attend. Additionally, each campus will need to consider whether it wishes to extend the CCC Annual privileges to its area copy shops. The license permits this, but does not require it. So those on each campus who may be involved in making this decision will also wish to attend.

Two System-wide videoconferences about the Copyright Clearance Center’s Annual Academic License have been held. For those unable to attend, and because we now have a System CCC License Website, UT System has posted the presentation Powerpoint as well as other information of interest to those who will be involved in the management of the license on each campus. The website will be fully accessible on Friday from the OGC website at http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc. At that time, and afterwards, if you have any questions or comments about the license, feel free to contact Georgia Harper (gharper@austin.utexas.edu) or Steve Rosen (srosen@utsystem.edu. We will be happy to discuss your concerns with you.

The UTTC Blackboard installation is scheduled for maintenance to install a minor service pack, which requires a 15 hour system outage. The UTTC Blackboard installation will be unavailable beginning at 11:00 p.m. Central time on Sunday, August 16 through 2:00 p.m. Central time on Monday, August 17.

This update introduces Firefox 3 as a certified browser and IE 8 a compatible browser.

For more information, visit the Blackboard Upgrade Information page.

When the title of a discussion board forum contains html tags such as <font></font> or other formatting tags, the display order drop-down menus used to reorder the display order of your discussion forums will not work.  If you ever experience, while trying to reorder the display list of your discussion board forums, that Blackboard is ignoring changes you make using the Display Order drop-down menus, then check the title of your discussion forums for any html tags.  Remove the html tags from the discussion board forum titles you want to reorder and the drop-down menus will work as expected.  Once reordered you can add the html tags back into the titles for formatting, but remember that if you ever need to reorder the discussion forum list again, you will need to again remove any html tags contained in the titles.

We’re pleased to announce that UTTC has released the online Course Analysis, Review, and Alignment (CARAT) tool as open source at Source Forge:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/carat/

The instructional design of each new UT TeleCampus-funded course is evaluated by UTTC Course Development staff early in the development process using the CARAT tool, which is based on a UTTC-designed rubric. This tool was formerly known as “cQual.”

CARAT employs a course evaluation rubric that is a composite of evaluation metrics from the SACS Principles of Good Practice, from California State University Chico’s seminal work, and from years of UTTC course development experience. The rubric is not dissimilar to that used by Quality Matters; in fact, the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications featured a Quality Assurance panel at its 2007 conference and featured Quality Matters and the TeleCampus as the two evaluation rubrics. UTTC uses this rubric in the evaluation of online courses to make sure that they are of the best possible quality for students.

The CARAT application has been redesigned from its original Flash AS2 movie clip based architecture to a Flex 3 / AS3 component based application. The primary reason for the redesign was targeted 508 accessibility compliance. The application graphics and branding style are fully customizable, as they are driven by easily edited external xml and css files. CARAT is ready to use out of the box using the standard UTTC rubric for course evaluation, but end users interested in employing a custom evaluation rubric will find that the rubric is xml driven and can be readily updated to customize the evaluation for user-defined implementations; further, css allows you to easily change the colors and logo to reflect your organization and make CARAT your own.

Credits

The original cQual application was done by Ross Henderson and Jeremy Gordon. The redesign of the application to a fully customizable, object oriented component based Flex /AS3 application was done by Brad Shaevel.

UTTC’s CDT group has released a new Course Content Template that is available for download and free use now!

Why use this template when building your course content? Well, there are a few reasons that set this template apart from other templates or WYSIWYG page-builder options.

1. It’s web-standards based and an ACCESSIBLE solution.
2. You only need to EDIT ONE FILE, and you can do it in Dreamweaver’s Design View if you like.
3. The Template includes a DYNAMIC NAVIGATION bar that is generated on-the-fly; you won’t need to worry about keeping track of which page links to what or edit any JavaScript whatsoever.
4. If you want to, you can customize the look and feel, and IT’S EASY to do.
5. You (and faculty and students) can PRINT THE WHOLE MODULE AT ONCE.
6. It’s open-source, a.k.a. FREE!

Check out the presentation and download a package file to get started.

Overview Presentation:

http://georgeirwin.com/UTTC/cct/

Template Package Files:

https://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.php?group_id=263990

Quick Note: For course developers and tech reviewers please note that references to “Live Classroom” or “Horizon Wimba” will need to be updated in course syllabi and wherever found in course content beginning FA09 to the current name:  Wimba Classroom.

We’re pleased to announce that UTTC has released the generic case simulation engine as open source at Source Forge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/casesimulation/.

Background

In 2004, the University of Texas System TeleCampus developed a Flash-based simulation in Emergency Room Psychiatry which was used to successfully teach interns and medical personnel across Texas about recent ER intervention and diagnostic techniques. The project received the Computer World Heroes Laureate in 2005. On the basis of this project, the TeleCampus was approached by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas to develop a series of courses for training Dermatology Physician Assistants. In-depth discussions with the program director uncovered the need for dozens of courses for P.A’s across a variety of medical specialties. Design discussions revealed the need for a multimedia-rich presentation layer, not only to engage learners but also because the subject matter was visual-centric. The demand and magnitude of the project implied the dedication of multimedia programmers for several years, a scope beyond the available resources of the university. As a result, the project was conceived as an XML-driven Flash template which technically-competent faculty could modify to create new content.

Characteristics

The resulting case study application consists of two separate Flash application layers: (1) an XML-driven meta-template that defines the user interface and pedagogy used at the discipline level, and (2) an XML-driven course content template. The second template is accessed by faculty to build specific courses within a discipline, while the first template is used by Flash (Actionscript 2.0) programmers to create the discipline-specific application interface and tools used by faculty. In the discipline-specific template, a medical course may be contextualized with a patient complaint followed by lab tests resulting in a diagnosis that produces a treatment plan; a course in social problems would require a different structure: a crisis analyzed through data sets leading to an hypothesis that produces a policy proposal. In discipline-specific tools, a course for lab assistants may require an image magnifier; a course for counselors may require a video player; a course for business law students may require a secure communication link to the Lexis library; and a course for physical anthropologists may require a carbon-dating simulation.

Credits

The original Flash Action Script was done by Ross Henderson with UI design by George Irwin and database programming by Mike Nowlin. The extension of the application to an OO design and rewrite of the Flash Action Script was done by Brad Shaevel. If you are interested in using this application, we can also make available to you a series if screen-capture movies that provide a detailed walk through the code; email manderson@utsystem.edu.

You still have time to submit a proposal to present at the 2009 Innovations in Online Learning (IOL) conference. The deadline has been extended until February 13.  Submit your proposal today!