GRANT RECIPIENTS:

Ana Ciereszko – Chemistry – Kendall Campus
acieresz@mdc.edu
Judy Lever-Duffy – CIS – Homestead Campus
jlever@mdc.edu

 WebCT is a powerful tool for enriching a face-to-face course, but learning to implement WebCT effectively requires training. While abundant technical WebCT training is available, little is available on how to implement it academically. This project will create a program that will train, support, and mentor faculty who want to enhance their course curriculum with WebCT. The project will also create a sharable student handbook and practice course to orient students to using WebCT enhanced courses.
This project helps students gain general computer skills and skills in using WebCT, a common online training format, which improves their employability. Student performance and retention will be positively impacted by the innovative and flexible WebCT enriched courses available to students and by the improved faculty-student interaction and course organization WebCT provides.

This innovative project has helped motivate faculty to adapt strategies and methodology to use with their face-to-face classes.

To determine the current use of WebCT in enhancing face-to-face courses a very extensive survey was prepared using Flashlight, an online survey software. We invited approximately 450 WebCT users to participate in the survey via an email.  We received 214 responses (over 47% return rate!)

We were able to determine:

• 142 respondents (66.7%) Strongly Agreed or Agreed that they have used WebCT to enhance classroom instruction within the past two years
• 149 respondents (70.0%) felt they were sufficiently skilled to use WebCT
• 149 respondents (70.0%) felt they were sufficiently skilled to use WebCT
• 200 respondents (94.8%) Strongly Agreed or Agreed that they see benefits from using WebCT to enhance classroom instruction

The top 10 WebCT tools used by all of our respondents were

• Manage Files
• Web Links
• E-Mail
• Quiz/Exam
• Wizard
• Course Announcements
• Calendar
• Content Modules
• Discussions
• Tracking Students

This survey also helped us to identify faculty who are very involved in the development of curriculum and invited them to become mentors within our project.  The mentors are:

• Business – Maria Mari, Kendall
• Computer Science – Ralph De Arazoza, Kendall
• English – Judy Welch, Hialeah
• ESL - Elizabeth Ramsay, Wolfson
• Math – Luis Beltran, Kendall
• Social Science – Millie Roqueta, Kendall

To ensure that a variety of disciplines was represented, the project directors also acted as mentors:

• Education – Judy Lever-Duffy, Homestead
• Science – Ana Ciereszko, Kendall

The survey also allowed us to determine innovative uses of these tools or assignments, training and technical support issues, as well as student issues.

The mentors assisted us by brainstorming ideas for the Faculty Mentoring Center and the Student Orientation, by contributing components to both courses, and by providing feedback as we progressed.  We held informal discussions as well as several formal meetings.  We used a variety of technologies to conduct these meetings, partly to avoid wasteful traveling between campuses and partly to explore new technologies that might later be used with students.  We used email discussions, a phone conference via the College’s phone bridge and Horizon Live, a tool that allows for conferencing via the computer with live sound.
With regular feedback from the mentors and from Rhonda Berger from CTD, we created the WebCT Faculty Mentoring Center.  This online mentoring center includes a variety of resources for faculty, including:

• Pedagogy Pointers
• Enhancing Your WebCT Course
• Ideas for Interactivity
• Quizzes, Exams and Other Assignments
• Cool Software
• Helping Students
• Faculty Forums
• WebCT Tools
• Software
• Discipline Discussion
• Resources
• Assessment Samples
• Useful Links
• Online WebCT Training

We decided that online training was the preferred mode for many faculty, so two self-paced workshops were developed.  The objectives for the first workshop (approximately 10 hours) are to:

• Review and evaluate existing e-packs and/or available peer courses in their discipline area
• Request and modify a WebCT shell for their own face to face courses
• Identify the tools within their shell appropriate to their discipline and add/delete as needed
• Develop a sample activity for two selected tools appropriate to their discipline
• Identify at least 3 discipline-related online resources that they could link to their course
• Share one or more model activities or strategies via the Mentoring Center

The second workshop focuses on the software that is available to enhance online learning.  The objectives for this 6 to 9 hour workshop are to:

• Review and evaluate several different software packages available to improve the quality and ease of WebCT enhancements for face-2-face classrooms.
• Develop a sample activity for two selected tools appropriate to their discipline
• Share one or more model activities or strategies via the Mentoring Center

With the assistance of the mentors we also developed an online Student Orientation to WebCT. This WebCT course will be available this Fall to all students who have a WebCT login. Since the course is modularized, faculty may assign specific components within the course for students to complete. In addition, students may choose to add the course on their own.  The course objectives are to be able to:Navigate through a WebCT course and find resources placed there by the instructor.

• Use several WebCT tools, such as chat, email and message boards, to communicate with the instructor and other students.
• Use the Assignment Dropbox to turn in paper assignments in a “paperless” way.
• Complete an exam or quiz within WebCT, review the exam afterwards, and check the grade earned on the exam.

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We have already made two presentations.  In October 2005 we presented at the League for Innovation Conference in Dallas, Texas.  We only gave preliminary results of our survey and demonstrated the beginnings of the WebCT Faculty Mentoring Center.  We were planning on presenting again at the League and were accepted for the October 2006 conference, but since the College will be changing its LMS, we have decided to wait until the new LMS is in place and we have converted our materials.

We made a presentation on Conference Day in March 2006.  We received several requests after our presentation for inclusion of new individuals into our WebCT Mentoring Center.