Building Quality in Your Courses

Office of Learning & TechnologyPurdue University North Central

Outline

You’re about to: Practice building complete learning

objectives Build a blueprint Identify barriers to implementing your

blueprint, including academic integrity issues Use the Quality Matters rubric as a planning

tool for your courses Review exemplary BlackBoard courses and

what makes them “stand above the rest”

What’s an Objective Again?

A = Audience – who completes the objective

B = Behavior – what do we want them to do?

C = Condition – under what conditions are they performing

D = Degree – how do we know they’re successful?

http://cstep.csumb.edu/Obj_tutorial/bloomwheel.html

Thinking skill

Action verbs

Student products

Come up with an objective

Let’s try coming up with some activities and assessments for the following objective: “At the end of the unit, students will be able

to create and revise a household budget using Microsoft Excel.”

How about this one? “And end of the course, students will be able

to explain the processes of meiosis and mitosis in the cells of animals and plants.”

Let’s Build a Blueprint

Review the sample and blank blueprint grids provided (also available in Module 2 of online course)

Identify what you want students to be able to know or do, and how you will go through the process of teaching each objective/task

Can this help you map out some or all of your course lessons?

Let’s take a few minutes to jot down some ideas following the grid and share

What are your barriers?

Was this a difficult exercise? Why or why not?

Can you foresee anything getting in your way with regard to creating or implementing a blueprint like this for your courses?

Academic Integrity

Concerns about cheating and plagiarism can be a big obstacle, and may limit our choices for assessment

Luckily, there are ways to use technology to help ensure that students are doing authentic work

SafeAssign (BlackBoard assessment to check student work for plagiarism)

Respondus LockDown Browser (for test-taking)

ProctorU and Respondus Monitor (to proctor exams)

Resources for Addressing Academic Integrity

OLT Website: http://www.pnc.edu/distance/cheating/

LockDown Browser information: http://www.pnc.edu/distance/lockdown-browser-instructions/

SafeAssign information: http://www.pnc.edu/distance/safeassign/

ProctorU information: http://www.pnc.edu/distance/proctoru/

Quality Matters in practice

The QM Rubric can also help significantly with the process of course development

This and your course blueprint can serve as “roadmaps,” making course design much, much easier

These tools will also help you identify areas in your course where you may be able to improve or alter your lessons and assessments

Exemplary Courses in BlackBoard

BlackBoard has its own rubric that it uses to identify and recognize exemplary courses

Rubric: http://www.blackboard.com/resources/catalyst-awards/BbExemplaryCourseRubric_March2014.pdf

Example courses: https://ecpgallery.coursesites.com

You can even volunteer to be a BlackBoard course reviewer or submit your course for the award!

More Helpful Sites

Exemplary Course Tours: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLontYaReEU1voZsmm5gDVNT6imGKnLWTp

Showcase courses in our PNC BlackBoard WebEx: http://purdue.webex.com Google Docs: http://drive.google.com Prezi: http://www.prezi.com Padlet: http://www.padlet.com MS Office Templates:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/ Jing and Camtasia: http://www.techsmith.com Wordpress: http://www.wordpress.com Tackk: http://www.tackk.com

Thanks!

Reach us at: pncolt@pnc.edu Twitter and Facebook: @PNCOLT http://www.pnc.edu/distance for all

workshop notes, links, and training needs