--- Forwarded Message from "Kathleen March" <[log in to unmask]> ---
>Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 22:10:55 -0500
>Subject: Re: #6397.13 Course Management Technology(!)
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Cc: [log in to unmask]
>From: "Kathleen March" <[log in to unmask]>
>References: <[log in to unmask]> <[log in to unmask]>
>In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
------------------
[log in to unmask] writes:
>Dear Professor March,
>
>I participated in a web- / FirstClass-based presentation of "etc." by Kannon
>Communcations (http://www.kannoncom.com) which is a course tools add-on to
>Centrinity's FirstClass. We too are using FirstClass, but in a very limited
>fashion
This may be one difference in our situations. At UMaine, FC is our major means of electronic communication, perhaps for 90% of the campus community, if not more. We are thus in a position to expand with few if any growing pains.
> and are currently evaluating many of the course management systems on
>the market for use in our 2400 strong beg. and intermediate language programs in
>ASL, ESL, Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Italian,
>Portuguese and Latin.
We also have a critical languages or less commonly taught languages program (which I direct) but it is not heavily reliant on internet communication other than the drill instructors with their students and some urls I post. It would be desirable to
expand, but not yet possible.
> (We are looking at WebCT 3.6 SE and CE, BlackBoard 5,
>Angel -- all participants in the IMS framework http://www.imsproject.org and we
>also hope to look at some other players like Prometheus, Daedelus, etc.) Next
>academic year we are facing a new scheduling "paradigm" that maximizes classroom
>usage and in which courses will meet twice a week for 75-minutes irrespective of
>the discipline. We hope that whatever course management system we select will
>effectively increase the students' frequency of contact in L2 beyond what is
>afforded by our new efficient, block scheduling maxtrices.
Our students seem sometimes reluctant to take 75 minute classes, yet they opt for evening 2 1/2 hours. It is a conundrum and one we are currently discussing. If we find the evening to be increasingly popular, then we have to integrate technology
more to keep the work up during the entire week. I have students at night in SPA 205 (Conversation & Comp) who never send anything to Blackboard and who are quick to correspond via FC. I do tell them Blackboard is important, but it has strong
competition. What can I say?
>
>
>I agree that FC's communication system is stronger than the other players
>including recording audio directly in the FirstClass client, but I'm not so
>sure about FirstClass' strengths in the area of course management (student
>grading, quiz modules, etc.). Can you elaborate on the course managment
>features that you see as "better" than the other systems you have used?
I have only seen the demonstration, but given the track record of FC, I don't need a lot of arm-twisting. On the other hand, I do not like the clunkiness of WebCT and have this semester found Blackboard - which I previously preferred over WebCT -
to be less appealing to students. If FC can do much of the same, and it can even without Etc., then why add another layer on top? I also think we need to take into account the methods we all use in teaching. I have no quizzes and no exams, but do
have writing intensive experiences, with journals, projects, self-evaluations, and written assignments. All that can be done well in FC. In Blackboard, students don't really know if a text has been sent and they don't know if I've read it, we have
some miscommunication. eg, Just tonight I sent an e mail to a student letting her know she had a lot of missing assignments, according to the digital drop-box. She wrote back soon after to say that she had sent the items (there were several).
Here we have a case of a student who could have been thinking her professor was lax and a professor who could have been thinking the same of the student. I simply find FC to be more intuitive and humanistic and find the advantages of Blackboard to
lie mostly in the electronic gradebook. With Etc., those advantages are erased, as far as I can tell.
> More
>specifically, have you seen something in the forthcoming version 6.2 of
>FirstClass that most of us aren't privy to?
I can't say I've checked out this version, but have a local guru to ask.
> As a side note, one advantage to
>FirstClass as a communications / learning management system includes its
>prescence in the k-12 arena and the possible higher educaiton / k-12 language
>articulations and exchanges that might not be possible with other systems.
>
Agreed!
Kathleen March
Professor of Spanish & Director, Critical Languages Program
Dept. of Modern Languages & Classics
University of Maine
207-581-2088 (office); ext. 2072 (dept.)
207-581-1832 (fax)
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