The eLog » Resources

If You’re Not in the Cloud, You’re in the Fog

Scott — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 22:21:46 +0000

Our multimedia production and processing facility is now available to online and hybrid teaching faculty and we welcome you to tour your new eLearning Technologies Center, or the ETC, where we have full service lecture capture capabilities providing everything from recording to cloud.

Lecture capture is very popular with students, who report they can repeat certain sections for improved comprehension and understanding. It has also been shown to increase retention in the online course and we see it as an important aspect of Clark’s online and hybrid offerings.

Cloud delivery is the preferred method, allowing efficient streaming instead of downloads or DVDs, and bandwidth scalability when large numbers of students are viewing all at once. After your recording is processed, we provide you with an access link which you can place directly in your course. This helps to keep your course file size down for backup, copy, and import processes. Streaming is also more accessible for the online student and helps to keep their costs down.

The ETC has many options for a variety of lecture captures from iPods with cameras and mics for eLearning faculty checkout, to a lab with a private recording booth, to a studio with a fully equipped Smart Classroom style podium and wall mounted cameras. For more details, you can visit our ETC page and contact Scott for a tour, iPod checkout, or to discuss your multimedia needs.

A Tale of Two Moodles

Scott — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 01:10:48 +0000

We have two servers at our disposal with our hosting service, Moodlerooms. The Faculty Development Server is for faculty and staff access only and functions as an online workspace for training, course development, and course content storage as well as a testing site for administrative processes, new developments, and joule product enhancements. The Production Server is for teaching or participating in student organizations and activities and allows access for faculty, students, staff, and Quality Matters reviewers.

Each server has its own web address and must be logged into separately with separate accounts. Even though your usernames may be the same, any changes you make to your profile or password will remain with that server. Here are the addresses for the two servers…

Development Server: http://clarkdev.mrooms3.net/
Production Server: https://moodle.clark.edu/

To request shells on these servers, we have a page here on The eLog with two shell request forms, one for each server. The links to this page and the eLearning shell request policy will be found in the sidebar under eLearning and below…

Shell Request Policy
Shell Request Forms

Moving course content from one server to another requires a process called backup and restore where you create a backup of the shell on the Development server, which you download to your computer, and then restore that shell into a live (teaching) shell on the Production server before making it available to your enrolled students. The link to download the document with instructions for the backup and restore process can always be found in the sidebar to the left of this post, or you may prefer to watch the backup and restore video on our Moodle Joule Tutorials page. There are many other videos there as well, including one on importing (copying) a course on the same server.

March of the Penguins

Scott — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 07:08:30 +0000

Reminder: Blackboard is going away…

The time to migrate to Moodle is now!

We will no longer have access to Blackboard after June 30, 2011:

•   No access for grade disputes
•   No access for incompletes
•   No access to course content (including your gradebook or anything else)

When our contract with Blackboard expires, no one will have access to the Clark College Blackboard system for any reason. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you backup your gradebooks and look through your Blackboard course shells, preshells, and organizations to determine which have content to be migrated to Moodle. Once you’ve identified the shells to keep, either download an archive package of each shell and save the zipped files in a safe place or, if you’ve gone through the Moodle training and have an account established on our Moodle Development Server, visit our Course Migration Project page to learn about your options.

Lights, Camera, Action, ETC!

Scott — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 07:56:43 +0000

Almost everyone at Clark is aware of the LMS migration which is now underway, but few know of another ongoing project here in eLearning… the fulfillment of our grant, funded by the good folks at the Meyer Memorial Trust and other generous donors. Although it hasn’t received much mention lately, it has required a great deal of money, time, and effort to transform our out-of-commission TV studio and its adjoining rooms into a modern digital multimedia production facility. As the last of the new equipment and furnishings have arrived and we connect and test each of these new tools, we continue to expand our ability to produce quality online deliverables.

The MMT Grant specifically involves the creation of online course content for the Healthcare Core Curriculum, which we are now pursuing. It incorporates the technology required for quality lecture captures, audio and video production and editing, streaming and pod/vodcasting capability, as well as screen-casting, tablet productions, and other rich media generation. It also includes virtual meeting or “distance collaboration” capabilities to help increase access.

This grant is significant for our elearning faculty because multimedia has an important future in the modern online course. Multimedia content has been shown to improve student retention by supporting diverse learning styles, promoting student engagement, and allowing students the repetition of audio-visual content for a deeper understanding of more complex topics. Without a doubt, this grant will help us continue to improve the quality and variety of elearning courses offered by Clark, with the additional “green” benefit of online access that we can all appreciate.

We’re calling this soon to be available facility the eLearning Technologies Center, or ETC. Due to our limited scope during the LMS migration, priority access must be given to the Healthcare Core Curriculum faculty as we fulfill our obligations to the sponsors of the grant. However, use of the ETC and its equipment will later be extended to all faculty teaching online or hybrid courses as staffing, scheduling and construction allows (contact Scott). For more detailed information about the progress on the ETC and what we all have to look forward to, check out our new ETC page here on the eLog.

Recruitment for Project Manager: Open Education Project

Cindy — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:30:50 +0000

I wanted to pass along this job announcement as a follow up to early announcements about the Open Course Library Project of the Washington State Student Completion Initiative (a.k.a. the Gates Grant) . The project is underway and a project manager is needed. Clark College participants in the project are: Kathy Chatfield in her role of Instructional Designer, and Travis Kibota as course re-designer for Microbiology.

The Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) invites applications from qualified individuals for the position of Open Education Project Manager.

SBCTC is seeking a visionary “Open Education Project Manager” to join the SBCTC team. This critical, full-time position will provide active leadership and expertise in managing open education projects. This position is preferably based in Washington State (State Board has office locations in Bellevue, Olympia and Spokane), though qualified out-of-state candidates will be considered and are strongly encouraged to apply. This position is funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which will last two years with the possibility of funding extensions thereafter.

The annual compensation for this full-time position is $60,000. Washington State has a generous benefit package (health, dental and life insurance, retirement, and an optional deferred compensation program). This recruitment will be ongoing until the position is filled. First screening of applications will begin on Monday, September 20, 2010. To ensure consideration, return your completed materials by 5 p.m. Friday, September 17, 2010.

For more information about this position and the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, visit http://www.sbctc.ctc.edu, or contact SBCTC’s Human Resource Office at (360) 704-4301.

Please feel free to share this position announcement with anyone who might be interested in an exciting 2 to 3 year eLearning position in the Pacific Northwest.

Ticket, Please…

Scott — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:27:48 +0000

eLearning has a new resource available on Smart Penguin for students, faculty, and staff. Although Smart Penguin provides the solutions to, or the prevention of, most technical issues that Clark College Blackboard and Moodle Joule users may experience, things may still go awry. To help students and faculty get back to their online coursework more quickly, the tech support team in the eLearning Department now provides a system called Tech Ticket, which can be used to submit the details of a technical issue. In a series of short questions about their computing environment, online users can quickly convey some of the important keys needed for an accurate diagnosis. Tech Ticket then allows direct communication with eLearning tech support for improved collaboration and information exchange to aid a swift resolution. You and your students can find the link to file a Tech Ticket in the sidebar on the Smart Penguin main post page, among our links at the bottom of that page, or in the following post on Smart Penguin:

That’s the Ticket!