Upcoming CIT Faculty Workshops
and Sloan-C Online Workshops
News About Sloan-C Online Workshops
CIT Faculty Workshops in August
CIT Faculty Workshops in September
Tues., Aug. 24: 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm pm in the CIT (Wallace 222)
Faculty Introduction to WebCT CE 4.1: A Non-Geek's Guide to WebCT (2.5 hours)
This workshop should be taken before you take any of the five hands-on workshops that follow. It provides an overview of Web Course Tools (WebCT) College Edition 4.1, the Blackboard software program WVSU has used for many years as its program for creating and maintaining class web sites specialized for teaching.
The workshop is subtitled "The Non-Geeks' Guide To WebCT As A Teaching Tool" because the focus is on pedagogy not geekagogy. The aim is to provide you a non-technical explanation of ways WebCT can support your classroom teaching.
We begin by considering some pedagogical reasons you might want to use the six WebCT components most popular with instructors:
- an online syllabus
- a course handouts page
- course-specific email
- a course discussion area
- the tool for making online quizzes and surveys
- and the online gradebook.
No previous experience with WebCT is required for this workshop. If you want to attend, please send an email to Dr. Daryl Grider at griderda@wvstateu.edu or call me at 766-5702 and I'll reserve a place for you.
Wed., August 25 1:00 pm - 2:15 pm in the CIT (Wallace 222)
WebCT CE 4.1 Syllabus Workshop (1.25 hours
In this workshop you will learn how to set up the WebCT Syllabus page and import an already existing syllabus as an Adobe pdf file that can be read with the free Acrobat reader. Students will then be able to go online and check the course syllabus at any time and with any computer (on campus or off) from which they can access the Internet. Students will also be able to save the file to their own computers or print it exactly as you have formatted it.
You will also learn how easy it is to make corrections and additions to your syllabus once you have learned how to place it on your course site. You will simply contiune to edit it as a normal document in MS Word. Then when you have made changes, you save the revised syllabus again as a pdf file. Then you load the new syllabus pdf file to your course site and save it over the previous file, a process that takes less than two minutes!
By using a "live" syllabus on WebCT, you can avoid having to wait for "contact time" with students in order to communicate crucial changes, additions or deletions to course business. The Course site lets you go to them without leaving your office.
The suggested prerequisite for this workshop is completion of the WebCT Introductory Workshop or some previous experience with a version of WebCT. Although we gladly accept walk-ins, if you know you are going to attend attend, please send an email to Dr. Daryl Grider at griderda@wvstateu.edu or call me at 766-5702 and I'll reserve a place for you.
Wed., August 25: 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm in the CIT (Wallace 222)
Creating a Student Resources Download Area on WebCT CE 4.1 (1.5 hours)
In this workshop you will learn how to create an area where you can place files containing Powerpoint slides, project instructions, lecture notes, worksheets, and other course resources. Your students will then be able to download this files to their own computers at any time. Consequently, your students will be able to get any resource you can put in a such a file outside of class meeting time, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, without needing to call on you.
Constructing the Course Resources Download area will require that you learn how to use a WebCT tool called the Content Module. To make the effort easier, you will also learn how to drag and drop files to your course site by making use of WebDAV.
If you need (or think you may need at some point) to load large numbers of files to one or more of your course sites, justing learning to use WebDAV may repay you many times over for the time you spend in this workshop. WebDAV (web-based distributed authoring and versioning) is small, specialized program for loading files and folders from the computer desktop to a website directory. Once it is linked to your WebCT course site, it is possible to overcome the WebCT restriction that only allows one file to be uploaded at a time. In this workshop, you will learn how to do the one-time-only setup for WebDAV necesaary for each course site, a 'workaround' that will allow you to drag-and-drop multiple files and even whole folders from your desktop to the directory of each of your WebCT class sites.
The suggested prerequisite for this workshop is completion of the WebCT Introductory Workshop or some previous experience with a version of WebCT. Although we gladly accept walk-ins, if you know you are going to attend attend, please send an email to Dr. Daryl Grider at griderda@wvstateu.edu or call me at 766-5702 and I'll reserve a place for you.
Thur., August 26: 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm in the CIT (Wallace 222)
WebCT Discussions Area Workshop (2.5 hours)
The Discussions Area is one of the most popular and widely used of all WebCT Tools. It is flexible enough to be used for everything from whole class discussions to small group projects to individual private journals (the contents of which are visible only to you and the journal writer). In this workshop, you will get practice in setting up a variety of public and private areas (called Topics) and will learn the strengths and limitations of each as tools for teaching and learning.
You will also get hands-on practice creating and posting Messages to Topic areas, experience in reading and managing Messages, and practice organizing Messages and Topics. And you will learn to use the time saving features of the WebCT Discussion area: the Search, Compile, and Download functions.
The Discussions are can be expecially useful when you want to create parallel, independent, small group discussions. When you break the class into smaller groups, the discussions in those groups are private: each group will only see the postings by its group members. So, for instance, the same discussion topic is far less likely to be exhausted before members on one group have contributed something.
You may be wondering about the purpose and utility of the Search, Compile, and Download business. In essence, these are time-saving ways for you to sort out individual student contributions to discussions when you: (1) need to see if they are keeping up or (2) need to assign a grade for discussion participation.
The suggested prerequisite for this workshop is completion of the WebCT Introductory Workshop or some previous experience with a version of WebCT. Although we gladly accept walk-ins, if you know you are going to attend attend, please send an email to Dr. Daryl Grider at griderda@wvstateu.edu or call me at 766-5702 and I'll reserve a place for you.
Tues., August 31: 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm in the CIT (Wallace 222)
WebCT Quiz Workshop (2.5 hours)
This workshop will teach you how to create a WebCT quiz from scratch and how to create one using already existing questions from a publisher's test bank. You will be using Respondus, a third party software program. Respondus saves you time by allowing you to create WebCT quizzes and surveys on your own computer, without being logged into WebCT. The finished quiz is then uploaded to WebCT, tested, and set for release to students.
You will also get practice in creating question sets. Questions sets randomized the order in which questions are presented to students. They also can be used to only select a subset of questions from a larger batch of available questions. That subset is also randomly different for each student.
We have a sitewide license for Respondus which allows you to use it both on your office and home computers. You will be shown how to download and install the latest version of Respondus and of its companion program StudyMate, a program for making self-study games (Jeopardy, Flashcards, etc.) from your quiz questions.
The suggested prerequisite for this workshop is completion of the WebCT Introductory Workshop or some previous experience with a version of WebCT. Although we gladly accept walk-ins, if you know you are going to attend attend, please send an email to Dr. Daryl Grider at griderda@wvstateu.edu or call me at 766-5702 and I'll reserve a place for you.
- September 2010 -
Thur., September 2: 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm in the CIT (Wallace 222)
WebCT Gradebook Workshop (2.5 hour)
In this workshop you will learn how to set up the WebCT online gradebook. Once you have the gradebook set up, you will learn how to download the WebCT gradebook to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet so that you can maintain your WebCT gradebook offline in Excel.
You then periodically load the grades back up to the WebCT gradebook so that students can view them in their individual My Grades areas. Students see only their individual grades and only if and when you choose to release those grades to them in the “My Grades” area unique to each student. Nobody but you sees all the student grades.
Keeping the grades in Excel is easier, more efficient, and safer than keeping them online. Even if you have no previous experience with spreadsheets, picking up only those spreadsheet basics needed to maintain a gradebook is fairly straightforward (hey, if an English type like me can muddle through it, how hard can it be!).
Unlike the WebCT gradebook, in Excel we can freeze columns (freeze panes) so that student names are always on the same screen as the grades we are working with. And we can more easily use powerful grading formulas such as the Small Function that lets you drop two or more of the lowest quiz or daily grade scores from an average.
The Gradebook is hands down the most popular tool with students. And once faculty learn to maintain the gradebook in Excel, it becomes one of their favorites too.
The suggested prerequisite for this workshop is completion of the WebCT Introductory Workshop or some previous experience with a version of WebCT. Although we gladly accept walk-ins, if you know you are going to attend attend, please send an email to Dr. Daryl Grider at griderda@wvstateu.edu or call me at 766-5702 and I'll reserve a place for you.
Tues., September 7: 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm pm in the CIT (Wallace 222)
Faculty Introduction to WebCT CE 4.1: A Non-Geek's Guide to WebCT (2.5 hours)
This workshop should be taken before you take any of the five hands-on workshops that follow. It provides an overview of Web Course Tools (WebCT) College Edition 4.1, the Blackboard software program WVSU has used for many years as its program for creating and maintaining class web sites specialized for teaching.
The workshop is subtitled "The Non-Geeks' Guide To WebCT As A Teaching Tool" because the focus is on pedagogy not geekagogy. The aim is to provide you a non-technical explanation of ways WebCT can support your classroom teaching.
We begin by considering some pedagogical reasons you might want to use the six WebCT components most popular with instructors:
- an online syllabus
- a course handouts page
- course-specific email
- a course discussion area
- the tool for making online quizzes and surveys
- and the online gradebook.
No previous experience with WebCT is required for this workshop. If you want to attend, please send an email to Dr. Daryl Grider at griderda@wvstateu.edu or call me at 766-5702 and I'll reserve a place for you.
Wed., September 8: 1:00 pm - 2:15 pm in the CIT (Wallace 222)
WebCT CE 4.1 Syllabus Workshop (1.25 hours)
In this workshop you will learn how to set up the WebCT Syllabus page and import an already existing syllabus as an Adobe pdf file that can be read with the free Acrobat reader. Students will then be able to go online and check the course syllabus at any time and with any computer (on campus or off) from which they can access the Internet. Students will also be able to save the file to their own computers or print it exactly as you have formatted it.
You will also learn how easy it is to make corrections and additions to your syllabus once you have learned how to place it on your course site. You will simply contiune to edit it as a normal document in MS Word. Then when you have made changes, you save the revised syllabus again as a pdf file. Then you load the new syllabus pdf file to your course site and save it over the previous file, a process that takes less than two minutes!
By using a "live" syllabus on WebCT, you can avoid having to wait for "contact time" with students in order to communicate crucial changes, additions or deletions to course business. The Course site lets you go to them without leaving your office.
The suggested prerequisite for this workshop is completion of the WebCT Introductory Workshop or some previous experience with a version of WebCT. Although we gladly accept walk-ins, if you know you are going to attend attend, please send an email to Dr. Daryl Grider at griderda@wvstateu.edu or call me at 766-5702 and I'll reserve a place for you.
Wed., September 8: 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm in the CIT (Wallace 222)
Creating a Student Resources Download Area on WebCT CE 4.1 (1.5 hours)
In this workshop you will learn how to create an area where you can place files containing Powerpoint slides, project instructions, lecture notes, worksheets, and other course resources. Your students will then be able to download this files to their own computers at any time. Consequently, your students will be able to get any resource you can put in a such a file outside of class meeting time, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, without needing to call on you.
Constructing the Course Resources Download area will require that you learn how to use a WebCT tool called the Content Module. To make the effort easier, you will also learn how to drag and drop files to your course site by making use of WebDAV.
If you need (or think you may need at some point) to load large numbers of files to one or more of your course sites, justing learning to use WebDAV may repay you many times over for the time you spend in this workshop. WebDAV (web-based distributed authoring and versioning) is small, specialized program for loading files and folders from the computer desktop to a website directory. Once it is linked to your WebCT course site, it is possible to overcome the WebCT restriction that only allows one file to be uploaded at a time. In this workshop, you will learn how to do the one-time-only setup for WebDAV necesaary for each course site, a 'workaround' that will allow you to drag-and-drop multiple files and even whole folders from your desktop to the directory of each of your WebCT class sites.
The suggested prerequisite for this workshop is completion of the WebCT Introductory Workshop or some previous experience with a version of WebCT. Although we gladly accept walk-ins, if you know you are going to attend attend, please send an email to Dr. Daryl Grider at griderda@wvstateu.edu or call me at 766-5702 and I'll reserve a place for you.
Thur., September 9: 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm in the CIT (Wallace 222)
WebCT Discussions Area Workshop (2.5 hours)
The Discussions Area is one of the most popular and widely used of all WebCT Tools. It is flexible enough to be used for everything from whole class discussions to small group projects to individual private journals (the contents of which are visible only to you and the journal writer). In this workshop, you will get practice in setting up a variety of public and private areas (called Topics) and will learn the strengths and limitations of each as tools for teaching and learning.
You will also get hands-on practice creating and posting Messages to Topic areas, experience in reading and managing Messages, and practice organizing Messages and Topics. And you will learn to use the time saving features of the WebCT Discussion area: the Search, Compile, and Download functions.
The Discussions are can be expecially useful when you want to create parallel, independent, small group discussions. When you break the class into smaller groups, the discussions in those groups are private: each group will only see the postings by its group members. So, for instance, the same discussion topic is far less likely to be exhausted before members on one group have contributed something.
You may be wondering about the purpose and utility of the Search, Compile, and Download business. In essence, these are time-saving ways for you to sort out individual student contributions to discussions when you: (1) need to see if they are keeping up or (2) need to assign a grade for discussion participation.
The suggested prerequisite for this workshop is completion of the WebCT Introductory Workshop or some previous experience with a version of WebCT. Although we gladly accept walk-ins, if you know you are going to attend attend, please send an email to Dr. Daryl Grider at griderda@wvstateu.edu or call me at 766-5702 and I'll reserve a place for you.
Tues., September 14: 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm in the CIT (Wallace 222)
WebCT Quiz Workshop (2.5 hours)
This workshop will teach you how to create a WebCT quiz from scratch and how to create one using already existing questions from a publisher's test bank. You will be using Respondus, a third party software program. Respondus saves you time by allowing you to create WebCT quizzes and surveys on your own computer, without being logged into WebCT. The finished quiz is then uploaded to WebCT, tested, and set for release to students.
You will also get practice in creating question sets. Questions sets randomized the order in which questions are presented to students. They also can be used to only select a subset of questions from a larger batch of available questions. That subset is also randomly different for each student.
We have a sitewide license for Respondus which allows you to use it both on your office and home computers. You will be shown how to download and install the latest version of Respondus and of its companion program StudyMate, a program for making self-study games (Jeopardy, Flashcards, etc.) from your quiz questions.
The suggested prerequisite for this workshop is completion of the WebCT Introductory Workshop or some previous experience with a version of WebCT. Although we gladly accept walk-ins, if you know you are going to attend attend, please send an email to Dr. Daryl Grider at griderda@wvstateu.edu or call me at 766-5702 and I'll reserve a place for you.
Thur., September 15:: 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm in the CIT (Wallace 222)
WebCT Gradebook Workshop (2.5 hours)
In this workshop you will learn how to set up the WebCT online gradebook. Once you have the gradebook set up, you will learn how to download the WebCT gradebook to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet so that you can maintain your WebCT gradebook offline in Excel.
You then periodically load the grades back up to the WebCT gradebook so that students can view them in their individual My Grades areas. Students see only their individual grades and only if and when you choose to release those grades to them in the “My Grades” area unique to each student. Nobody but you sees all the student grades.
Keeping the grades in Excel is easier, more efficient, and safer than keeping them online. Even if you have no previous experience with spreadsheets, picking up only those spreadsheet basics needed to maintain a gradebook is fairly straightforward (hey, if an English type like me can muddle through it, how hard can it be!).
Unlike the WebCT gradebook, in Excel we can freeze columns (freeze panes) so that student names are always on the same screen as the grades we are working with. And we can more easily use powerful grading formulas such as the Small Function that lets you drop two or more of the lowest quiz or daily grade scores from an average.
The Gradebook is hands down the most popular tool with students. And once faculty learn to maintain the gradebook in Excel, it becomes one of their favorites too.
The suggested prerequisite for this workshop is completion of the WebCT Introductory Workshop or some previous experience with a version of WebCT. Although we gladly accept walk-ins, if you know you are going to attend attend, please send an email to Dr. Daryl Grider at griderda@wvstateu.edu or call me at 766-5702 and I'll reserve a place for you.
Return to top- Sloan-C Online Workshops -
Return to topWhat Are They?
Sloan Consortium Online Workshops are a series of professional development workshops for faculty who want to learn more about teaching in fully online or mixed online/classroom (aka blended) situations. They are offered free to WVSU faculty through WVSU's subscription to the Sloan-C College Pass program.
The workshops are all taught completely online using a course management system (like our WebCT) called Moodle. The workshops run from one to three weeks. They are almost all asynchronous (you do not have to be in the workshop at set class meeting times). The exceptions are several sessions in each workshop that are held on a voice conferencing system called Elluminate. Every workshop includes early sessions on how to use both Moodle and Elluminate.
The workshops are advertised as requiring a time commitment of from 5-10 hours for each week, if you are to get the most out of them. That estimate allows time to review the course resources, usually a combination of narrated slide presentations and downloadable printed resources. And the estimate factors in time to participate in online discussions or to complete a brief project to help you begin to practically apply what you have learned.
How to Sign Up for a Workshop
When you learn about a workshop that interests you, contact Dr. Daryl Grider, the CIT Director and he will see that you are registered for the workshop. You will receive an email from Sloan confirming that registration. Then when the workshop is open for admission, you will receive another email from Sloan with an Enrollment Key for the workshop and with instructions on (1) how to create an account at Sloan's Moodle site and (2) how to enter your 'key' to get into the workshop. If you run into a glitch anywar along the line, contact Daryl at griderda@wvstateu.edu or 5702 and he will help you get in.
Here are the workshops that will be starting in the June:
- Google Wave in Education (June 2 - June 11)
- Getting Started: First Step Toward Online Teaching (June 2 - June 18)
- Supporting and Engaging Students through Social Media Selection, Incorporation, and Assessment of New and Emerging Technologies for Online Courses (June 9 - June 18)
- Blended Learning: HyFlex Course Design (June 16 - June 25)
For descriptions of these workshops and for the full list of the 2010 Sloan-C Workshop offerings follow this link: