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news
Classes to be
offered online
By Nathalie Brun
Summer On-line Forty-Niner
Students enrolled
at Cal State Long Beach this fall may find that more and more
of their classes are now enhanced by BeachBoard, an electronic
learning environment which may allow them to obtain course
information, participate in discussions and even take quizzes
from the comfort of home.
According to Crista
Copp, faculty training and support coordinator for Academic
Computing Services, most of the courses currently offered
are not strictly online. Although BlackBoard is a tool
that could support an online degree program, it is currently
being used at CSULB "to augment and supplement what is
already being taught by the instructor every day," said
Dan Olsen, technology help desk manager at ACS.
"As a part
of academic services, we have a fantastic tool here with BeachBoard,
that without question could support an online degree program
without ever having to 'face to face' with a student.
We are absolutely prepared to execute the plan of CSULB if
the university begins to offer online degrees. We are
there to support it, and the tool is already in place,"
Olsen said.
In the mean time,
the idea of building and managing a virtual classroom to supplement
a class is gaining popularity with faculty and students alike.
From 20 courses during its first semester in the fall of 1999,
jumping to 265 courses in the fall of 2000, BeachBoard "has
grown exponentially ever since," Copp said. "ACS
is anticipating 600 to 800 online classes for the fall 2001
semester."
E-learning is growing
rapidly in popularity at other universities and learning institutions.
According to Copp, it is being offered on about nine campuses
in the CSU system to date. BeachBoard is powered by BlackBoard,
a Washington D.C. based company founded in 1997, which bills
itself on its website as "the leading provider of Internet
infrastructure software for E-education."
BlackBoard was
picked among other competitors as the easiest-to-use courseware
management tool, according to CSULB faculty surveys, and is
constantly being reassessed by ACS in order to insure it meets
the universities needs. BlackBoard is used by major learning
institutions nationally and internationally, such as Harvard
Law School, Princeton, Arizona State, and Singapore Polytechnic.
According to Copp,
BeachBoard allows faculty to get their courses online in an
easy and timely manner without having to be "tech gurus."
Any faculty member interested in getting a class online may
fill out an online request form at www.helpdesk.csulb.edu.
They will then
be provided with a template enabling them to post course materials,
discussion boards, virtual chat, online assessments, testing
and a gradebook. Support can be obtained any time to
faculty and students at the help desk by phone: 5 4959 or
e-mail: helpdesk@csulb.edu.
Any faculty desiring
to use BeachBoard must participate in BeachBoard workshops
to receive training. These are taught throughout the year
at the Inspired Insight Faculty Learning Center, in LA 346,
by Copp who is the BeachBoard system administrator. So far,
400 faculty members have participated in the workshops, Copp
said.
To further faculty
awareness of BeachBoard, ACS is hosting "BeachBash,"
an event taking place August 20-24 at the North Campus Conference
Center, that will provide faculty with information on any
technology offered by ACS. ACS will also introduce XanEdu
at this event, a newly available program that provides online
course content.
Copp said BeachBoard
is becoming a "one-stop shop" for students, where
they can log and find the sites to their different courses
in one convenient location. She said that many faculty members
become interested in using BeachBoard after students express
interest to them in having their classes set up online.
Paul Tran, a CSULB
senior and business major, used BeachBoard for the first time
in a spring semester finance class. "I found [BeachBoard]
useful because of the PowerPoint slides we were able to download
and print out. Even before the lecture began, we could
go over the slides and know what [the instructor] was going
to talk about. Sometimes in classes that you take, the
instructors have PowerPoint slides but they go by too quickly
and you are not able to jot down notes fast enough."
Tran also liked
the flexibility of taking quizzes on his own time without
having to come to the classroom. He hopes the classes he is
enrolled in this fall will also use BeachBoard.
Starting the fall
2001 semester, the CSULB psychology department will use BeachBoard
to make its newly mandatory Psychology 301 course available
to a larger number of students.
"It's a course
required of all majors, which is why we've gone to this format,
because we have over 1,200 majors and there is no way we could
make the course available around the clock for them,"
said Virginia Binder, CSULB professor of psychology and undergraduate
advisor.
According to Binder,
95 percent of the course will be done through the Internet.
At the start of the class, students will be offered orientation
sessions to familiarize themselves with this new format.
Bobbi Mitzenmacher,
lecturer for the CSULB department of Health Sciences, says
her students love to be able to check their grades online
anytime they wish. She likes using BeachBoard's discussion
group feature for her human sexuality course.
"In a class
discussion of 45 students, a few people usually get heard.
By having discussion groups [through] BeachBoard, which is
easy for anyone to operate, you can hear what everyone in
the class is thinking. Even unpopular ideas that might not
get expressed can be posted anonymously."
However most students
are comfortable enough not to choose the latter, Mitzenmacher
said, especially since they get points for participating.
CSULB professor of biology Charles Garth was at first skeptical
of BeachBoard. "I felt that I could custom design web
content for my own classes better than one centralized system
could do. But I decided to give it a try and it was a resounding
success with my students," Garth said.
According to Garth,
using BeachBoard has increased a sense of connection with
his students.
"For example,
I'd use an overhead in class that wasn't in the book and I
would say, 'maybe I should put this on the Web,' and they'd
say, 'yes, yes,' and pretty soon I didn't have to ask, Garth
said. "I'd look up and almost make a joke and say, 'Web?'
and they'd say, 'yes,' so I started putting overheads, things
that weren't in the book, a little bit of lecture notes, illustrations,
keys, answers to quizzes I gave in class."
Garth said his
students greatly appreciate his efforts in making the materials
available to them. Another thing they appreciate, he said,
is his "virtual office hour" on Sunday evenings,
where they can, for example, ask questions for an oncoming
exam. And off course he says they love to check their grades
online.
Garth uses BeachBoard
frequently to post announcements and to conduct surveys in
order to obtain ongoing student feedback. Another feature
he likes is the drop box, where students can submit papers,
assignments and documents online.
According to Garth,
student response to BeachBoard has been strong, although there
are a few new features and "bugs" to be worked out.
Like a number of faculty members, he is not comfortable with
the idea of giving quizzes online, because of the temptation
for some students to cheat.
With this in mind,
the psychology department has open-book quizzes for its Psychology
301 course; the final is taken in the computer lab. To help
faculty members use BeachBoard's online testing features effectively,
and address the risk of student cheating, ACS offers a specific
workshop, "BeachBoard Exams."
Another problem
raised by online education is the possibility of intellectual
property theft.
"I haven't
frankly worried too much about that," Garth said. "If
there is something I don't want the world to see and have
and take as their own, then I won't put it on [the Web] at
all, or I won't put in a public site."
Since instructors
have the power to restrict access to their courses, Copp said,
BeachBoard "is a completely secure system, which makes
it different [from] a standard Web page. Only students
who are enrolled in the course will get to see it."
Overall, the most
important thing to both faculty and students seems to be the
freedom to choose how and when to supplement their courses
on the Web.
"We are simply
here to support the faculty," Copp said. "As their
needs change, and as the students needs change with online
[education], ACS is there simply to support them."
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