Article: The Impact of Online Learning on Students' Course Outcomes

The Impact of Online Learning on Students' Course Outcomes: Evidence From a Large Community and Technical College System
By: Di Xu & Shanna Smith Jaggars—Economics of Education Review, December 2013
Using an instrumental variable technique, the authors estimate the impact of online versus face-to-face course delivery on student course performance, as indicated by course persistence and final course grade. Click here for the link to the working paper.

Free Webinars from EdTechTeacher

EdTechTeacher offers free, live webinars throughout the school year aimed at helping educators integrate technology effectively in the classroom. This is a great opportunity learn something new as well as to network with other teachers from across the country and around the world.
Click on the link, EDTEchTeachers October Webinars, to register for one of the many professional development opportunities this month. The web page also provides links to archived sessions. Although many of the sessions are centered on K-12, the technology used in the classroom can certainly be applied to community colleges.

Blackboard's Inline Grading Tool for Assignments

What is Inline Assignment Grading?

Instead of requiring instructors to download student-submitted ‘assignment’ files to view or edit those submissions, instructors are now be able to view student-submitted files “inline,” i.e. in the web browser, without requiring any plugins, applets, or client-side applications. Annotation tools are included with the inline viewer, enabling you to provide feedback including comments, highlights, and even drawings/annotations directly on the inline view of the document. Supported document types that can be converted are Word (DOC, DOCX), PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX), Excel (XLS, XLSX), and PDF (PDF).

Known Issues: 1) Students cannot annotate documents, 2) This does not work with SafeAssign, and 3) Annotation sessions expires after an hour, so if an instructor takes longer than an hour to annotate a document, annotations made after that session expiration may not be saved.

 

For more information:

• Video: Inline Assignment Grading
• PDF: Inline Grading for Assignments

When Students Can't Compute

Interesting article by Dian Schaffhauser, and published by Campus Technology, about the technical barriers many community college students face that prevent them from being successful in online education. The article discusses access issues, availability of computer labs, broadband issues, and students who are digital non-natives.

"Online education promises learning opportunities for all, but too many community college students lack the tech skills--and the access-to take advantage of those resources."

Read the full article: When Students Can't Compute

SoftChalk Short Courses in October

Do you want to learn more about specific features of SoftChalk Create? Then these Short Courses are perfect for you! These live, one-hour webinars include a presentation and examples, as well as an opportunity for you to ask questions and receive assistance from the instructor.

Interactive Learning Activities - The Presentation Group: Monday, October 14, 1:30 - 2:30 PM EDT
Learn how to create and modify presentation learning activities in SoftChalk Create. Both text and graphics-based activities will be shown. Activities that will be covered include the Charts activity, Did You Know activity, Timeline activity and many more. You will also learn a method to place a PowerPoint slide deck as a slideshow activity within SoftChalk Create and how to “Import” a PowerPoint slide deck into a SoftChalk Create slideshow. Click here to register.

Interactive, Scorable Learning Activities: Monday, October 21, 1:30 - 2:30 PM EDT           

Learn how to create and modify the scoring learning activities in SoftChalk. Crosswords, Drag-N-Drop are only a few of what will be covered. Click here to register.

Creating, Importing and Modifying Tables: Tuesday, October 22, 1:30 - 2:30 PM EDT      
Learn how to create and modify tables in SoftChalk Create including how to import and modify a table from Excel or Word. Click here to register.

The StyleBuilder and eCourseBuilder: Thursday, October 24, 1:30 - 2:30 PM EDT              

Learn how to use the SoftChalk Create StyleBuilder tool to create your own personal “Style” including how to import and export your style and apply it to your lesson. You will also learn how to create an e-Course using the SoftChalk Create eCourseBuilder tool. Click here to register.

More Short Courses will be scheduled soon so keep checking their full Short Course schedule.