Fall Online Enrollments Up Ten Percent

With 4,676 enrollments in 184 online courses, the fall semester has brought another record of online enrollments to the University. This increase is consistent with the pattern of recent years, as well as the general trend of growth in UM-Flint enrollments. The increase is due, not only to the influx of students, but also a greater number of online course sections being offered.

Primarily a screencasting tool, Jing is great for welcoming students to your online course. Don't just tell your students how to access content areas and submit assignments, show them! Jing allows you to record everything happening on your screen; point, click, scroll, navigate and Jing will follow your every action. Use Jing weekly for audio-visual explanations of rubrics and assignments, or keep it handy as a quick and easy tool for creating brief narrated presentations. Click here to learn more about the software, or register for the upcoming Jing workshop.

Upcoming Workshops

Course Name	Date	Day	Start Time	End Time	Room	Instructor
Weighting Grades in Blackboard	10/15/2010	Friday	10:00 A.M.	11:00 A.M.	459 FH	Deb White	Register
Synchronous Class Meetings via Elluminate	10/15/2010	Friday	11:00 A.M.	12:00 P.M.	Online	Andrea Becker	Register
Adding Audio to Your Online Course	10/21/2010	Thursday	3:00 P.M.	4:00 P.M.	459 FH	Deb White	Register
Introduction to Podcasting	10/22/2010	Friday	10:00 A.M.	11:00 A.M.	459 FH	Nick Gaspar	Register
Jing Basics	10/22/2010	Friday	10:00 A.M.	11:30 A.M.	1103 WSW	Andrea Becker	Register
Engaging Online Course Materials & Strategies	11/3/2010	Wednesday	12:00 P.M.	1:00 P.M.	Michigan Room D	UM-Flint Faculty	Register
Detecting Plagiarism Using SafeAssign	11/3/2010	Wednesday	12:15 P.M.	1:00 P.M.	459 FH	T.B.A.	Register
Making the Most of RSS Feeds	11/12/2010	Friday	10:00 A.M.	11:00 A.M.	501 MSB	Nick Gaspar	Register
E-Portfolios in Blackboard	11/12/2010	Friday	10:00 A.M.	11:00 A.M.	459 FH	Deb White	Register

Want to have plenty of time to build your combined-section course? Put in your request as early as possible and have more time to build your course. As a rule of thumb, you should aim to request your course-combine six weeks prior to the start of a new semester. Remember, once the semester has begun, courses cannot be combined.

Joyce Piert awarded Online Instructor Certificate

Joyce Piert, mathematics lecturer, has completed the online instructor program, which is comprised of six courses offered by the Office of Extended Learning. Joyce is one of only seven UM-Flint educators to earn the Online Instructor Certificate.

Tips from Blackboard Administrator, Nick Gaspar

Ever copy a course from a previous semester and end up with past students in your grade center? You'd be surprised by the number of faculty who accidentally copy enrollments when executing a course copy, thereby importing previous users into a new course. Avoid this problem by leaving the "include enrollments in the copy" checkbox unmarked.

Conversely, you should always check the "grade center columns and settings" box if you plan to use the same grade center structure.

Did you know that when you have OEL remove a student from your Blackboard course, they will simply reappear one hour later? When administratively dropping a student, you must go through the Office of the Registrar. Students must be dropped from the course roster, not just the Blackboard shell, in order to be permanently removed.

Faculty to Faculty Corner: Online Teaching Strategies from Your Peers

Professor Jan Worth-Nelson

Jan Worth-Nelson, professor of English and interim director of the Thompson Center for Learning and Teaching, highly recommends the use of Blackboard journals.

Jan has always used journaling in her courses, requiring students to write 300 words a day, an exercise her students refer to as "THWADs." This is an important exercise for a creative writer because of the structure it enforces. "Writers write," Jan says, "if you're not writing, you're not a writer."

Jan began using Blackboard journals when she taught her creative writing course, English 296, online for the first time. With Blackboard journals, Jan saw a marked improvement in student compliance with the three hundred word a day rule; and there were other advantages too:

Students can't lose their journal entries.
Feature is easy to set up.
Privacy between student and instructor.
Date and time stamp make it easy to see if students are lumping "daily" entries all into one day.

Want to contribute an idea to that document or this newsletter?
Contact Zoe Lazar-Hale, zlazarha@umflint.edu (810)-237-6566.

Zoe Lazar-Hale
Marketing Assistant
Communications Editor
Office of Extended Learning
The University of Michigan-Flint
810-237-6566