I just dropped by Scott’s (our fabulous designer) office and he is almost done with a new room inside of the house.  He is developing a study and embedding links to all kinds of interesting places.  You’ll be able to access each of our off-campus program pages as well as get to the university libraries through “the study.”

 As always, he has a few more surprises in store for you as well.  Elena or I will let you know when it is up and running and you can check it out.

 Reminder–let us know what you would like to see in the house or read about in one of our blogs.  We need to hear from you!!

Talk to you later,

Amanda

I am so excited to announce that NIU is hosting chat sessions for our adults and prospective students who don’t have time to get attend an open house at one of our Outreach Centers. 

Chat sessions will work just like the open houses–only during chats, you’ll have the opportunity to speak with current students as well. 

Registration begins in early September, but I wanted to let you all know that we have chosen the dates:

Open house at NIU Rockford: October 4, 5:30-8:00

Nursing for RNs: October 10, 12:00 noon

Computer Science: October 17, 12:00 noon

Industrial Technology and Management: October 23, 12:00 noon

Elementary Education: October 24, 12:00 noon

 

Transfer Center Coordinator (general information about transferring to NIU): October 25, 12:00 noonI hope to see (or hear) you all at one of these events, AC

Play Podcast 3 in Popup while you read

:10

AMANDA

Hello and welcome to NIU View. I am Amanda.

:15

ELENA

And I am Elena.

:15

AMANDA

And we are here to give you advice about being an off campus student.

:19

ELENA

We are here to lead you through.

:25

ELENA

Today we are going to talk about online courses at NIU. The reason we are talking about that, is in part, is that I am taking one and it’s a good topic since a lot of you will be taking online classes.

:36

AMANDA

This is the first one you’ve taken, right?

:37

ELENA

It is the first one I’ve taken. I have to say that it took me a week to figure out, to get my bearings. But, my teacher helped me a lot and there’s really good instructions on blackboard. So, I figured it out pretty quickly.

:53

AMANDA

I’m hearing that too. I’ve never taken an online course. Ironically, I was just interviewing a student of ours who is 47 and actually participating in our Homeland Security Certificates. She was saying she is a little apprehensive to get involved in an online class because, what kind of carries her through a course, is the interaction with the teacher. And she said within the first week that kind of melted away because she would call her teacher, have her response within 24 hours and was really pleasantly surprised by that. She didn’t have a choice. This course is only offered online and that kind of thrust her into the experience. She said now she wouldn’t hesitate at all to take one. I hope to be able to take one before too long. In English, there’s not as many available, I’m sure. Sure, we will move in that direction, though.

1:43

ELENA

Yeah, I think NIU, just like a lot of other universities, is moving in the direction of online classes and putting courses that exist now online.

1:53

AMANDA

I actually stumbled across some pretty interesting information when we were just preparing to come in here to talk today. There’s a website called elearners.com.

2:03

ELENA

I was just there.

2:04

AMANDA

Really, all right. I didn’t know that. I didn’t see you there. No. Joke.

No, but we deal a lot with this somewhat older audience. We like to think of our audience as being over 25. So, I found this really cool statistic. It’s that of the 3.2 million people that took online courses last year, 80% of them were over the age of 25.

2:29

ELENA

Well see, I wouldn’t have thought that.

2:31

AMANDA

I know, because you hear I’m not good online, or my computer is too slow, or I don’t know how to do that, or I need the interaction. The laundry list of things, I think most people feel, but look at the numbers.

2:44

ELENA

Yeah, and the other thing, more people at that age are taking online courses just because they are convenient and people are working. They have got kids, they’re at home. And, the other thing is there is a lot of professional development courses that can help supplement your career or get you started in a degree program.

3:01

AMANDA

That’s true. It’s not all just credit.

3:03

ELENA

Yeah, definitely. True.

3:05

AMANDA

Well, today we have brought in Christiane. You want to tell our listeners a little bit about Christiane.

3:12

ELENA

This is Christiane Ong. She is an instructional systems developer. Hi Christiane.

3:17

CHRISTIANE

Hi Elena. Hi Amanda.

3:19

ELENA

Hello. Thank you for coming today. We’re talking as if we never see her. In fact, we see her everyday.

3:27

CHRISTIANE

When I get out of my cube.

3:30

AMANDA

Yeah, I was going to say everyday. She’s here everyday, but we don’t see her.

3:33

ELENA

I see her. She actually meets with faculty to help develop online courses. Then she watches over classes that she helped develop while they’re in Blackboard and helps support them and support the students in the courses.

3:50

CHRISTIANE

That’s right.

3:51

ELENA

Yeah, so she’s the girl behind the curtain. So, Amanda, you’ve never taken an online class.

4:02

AMANDA

No, I haven’t. So, I’m kind of curious how you know if this kind of learning is for you and if your computer’s ready. You know, all of those questions.

4:12

CHRISTIANE

Right. Well, some of the things that help you decide on whether or not you are ready to take an online class is first of all, your technical experience. Are you comfortable using a computer, the basic computer skills, internet skills? Are you comfortable learning independently and learning on your own? Are you comfortable communicating online? Are you comfortable typing on the computer?

4:36

AMANDA

So, there’s some class discussions, it’s just that you’re typing your discussion instead of speaking it.

4:43

CHRISTIANE

Yes. A lot of the interaction is basically typing in discussion board forms or you’ll have online chats, and such. There is actually a readiness survey that you can take and is available at the NIU online website. And, it covers four different areas that assesses your readiness for taking online classes.

5:05

AMANDA

Okay. And we’ll talk about that in our blog and point people there so that they can get right to that information because that’s probably helpful.

5:11

ELENA

And that’s our NIUView Viewpoint’s blog and we will put the link to the NIU Online Readiness Survey right there.

5:19

CHRISTIANE

It’s a good survey because at the end of it, aside from seeing your results, you’ll also see a list of resources to help you prepare for those four areas in the survey.

5:32

ELENA

Okay. So how do you tell from a personal standpoint whether you are ready? You’ve talked about the technological. But, aren’t here other factors?

5:40

CHRISTIANE

Well, first of all you have to be a very good – you have to be self motivated. You have to know how to manage your time well. Time management is as crucial in online courses as it is in face-to-face courses. You need to be independent and check your classes, log into Blackboard every now and then. Check for announcements and changes in the syllabus that your professor will post in Blackboard. So, those kinds of things…Did you have a question?

6:11

AMANDA

Yeah. Blackboard. What is Blackboard?

6:19

CHRISTIANE

Blackboard is a web based course management system that NIU uses to deliver most of its online courses. Basically, what you do is if you are an NIU student, you log into Blackboard with your Z-ID and your password. Then you get in and then you will see in your homepage a list of courses for which you are enrolled. So you just click on the course that you want to access at that time. It is very well structured. You will know where the syllabus is and where your course documents are.

6:52

ELENA

Well, actually, I’m taking a course in Blackboard right now and I’m finding it pretty easy to figure out all the categories as Christiane has said. The syllabus is where the syllabus says it is. The message board is clearly labeled. All of that information is there. Your professor puts all the materials up on the web. They put lecture notes on there. Some of them are putting podcasts up. Basically, it’s all there and you can call your professor. You can e-mail her and you can network with your fellow students if you have extra information that you are just missing. And the other thing is, there is ITS helpdesk.

7:33

CHRISTIANE

Yep. If you’re having any technical problems, you can’t access some of the materials online, then you can call the NIU help desk. Their number is 815-753-8100. They will usually be able to respond to you in 24 hours.

7:51

AMANDA

Okay. We’ll put that information up on our NIU View website, too. So that they can get to that easily.

7:57

ELENA

Okay, I have heard of both of these terms: blended courses and hybrid courses. What does that mean?

8:05

CHRISTIANE

Essentially, blended courses are those that combine online delivery as well as face-to-face interaction. NIU online courses are actually blended courses where 80% of the materials are delivered online and then you will have maybe 2-3 face-to-face meetings. The way these are structured is that usually the face-to-face meetings, the first one happens on the very first day of class so you get your orientation to the course. You get to meet your professor and your classmates. You get to go over the syllabus and maybe your professor will also use that to orient you to Blackboard and where to find materials in the Blackboard course.

8:50

ELENA

My online class met the first time in the first week of classes and then our second meeting is for the midterm. We are actually taking the midterm in person so my teacher can help us move through the exam if we have any questions.

9:06

CHRISTIANE

Yeah, that’s right. For the courses that have midterm and final exams, I think usually the second and the third face-to-face meetings are used for those. Some exams are delivered online, but generally since midterms and finals are big exams, professors are more comfortable delivering them face-to-face, rather than online.

9:29

ELENA

I can’t make this promise to everybody, but my online class has quizzes every week and I can take those quizzes as many times as I want to get the perfect score. Crazy.

9:44

CHRISTIANE

That depends on how your professor will structure their course. Some professors will structure the quizzes in such a way that you can only take it once and others will say okay multiple attempts are allowed. Some will time it, you know like you have 30 minutes to complete this 15 point multiple choice quiz and others will not time it. So it really depends on how the professor structures it.

10:09

ELENA

See, I knew I couldn’t promise it.

10:12

AMANDA

Too good to be true. Can you give us a sense of how many or what programs teach online courses?

10:19

CHRISTIANE

There are a few programs now that have online courses. One is the Bachelor of General Studies in Liberal Arts and Sciences.

10:29

AMANDA

We have that off-campus.

10:31

CHRISTIANE

Yes. There’s also Bachelor of General Studies in Health and Human Sciences, Bachelor of Science for Registered Nurses and then the certificate program for Geographic Information Systems for undergraduate and graduate levels. So those are the main programs that have online courses.

10:53

AMANDA

OK, great.

10:53

ELENA

That’s a pretty fair variety.

10:55

AMANDA

Yeah. There’s a lot. I mean there are a lot of options there. I just happen to know that the BGS in the LA&S degree, Bachelor of General Studies in Liberal Arts and Sciences, you can actually complete the entire degree online. It doesn’t mean that every course is available, but there are enough courses, that if that was your only option, that is a degree that you could get entirely online.

11:19

ELENA

That’s a program where you can explore a lot of different subjects.

11:23

AMANDA

Yeah, it’s for people who even though are talented and skilled in many different areas and don’t want to commit themselves to any one discipline. We see a lot of people in those areas, a lot of non-traditional older students who return to get that degree.

11:43

ELENA

People want to make a career change.

11:45

AMANDA

Yeah, that’s perfect. Well thank you very much for coming here. You’re going to be an available guest blogger for us. Is that correct?

11:53

CHRISTIANE

That’s right. I will be answering questions at the blog for whoever has more questions. We just gave you, basically, an overview. So, if you want more details, feel free.

12:05

AMANDA

So check out www.niuview.niu.edu and we’ll make it very obvious how to find Christiane and how to type in a question and have a little discussion about online learning.

12:20

AMANDA

Thank you very much.

12:21

ELENA

Thanks Christiane.

12:23

CHRISTIANE

You’re welcome.

12:23

ELENA

Okay. So Chistiane gave us a good overview of online courses and she mentioned that one of the biggest challenges to take an online course is really time management and that’s what I want to cover, just briefly right now.

12:37

AMANDA

I think you have to be careful. I mean, certainly a big selling point of an online class is the flexibility. It doesn’t mean that it’s an easy way out. It’s a big commitment.

12:47

ELENA

What a lot of people say about online courses is they think that going in; they’re going to have an easy time of it. And, on the one hand, the convenience and the flexibility of an online course does make it easier on your time, but that doesn’t mean that you are not committing just as much time to the class, to learning, to studying and to actually completing assignments on time. So I’m going to give you a few time management tips for online courses. First of all, you want to avoid distractions when you are studying. That goes for any class, but the truth is, since your are studying on your own time and you are going to be in front of a computer, the likelihood that you are going to want to search something, go play on another website.

13:32

AMANDA

Now, that’s just you. You can’t be online without Googling something within 10 seconds.

13:40

ELENA

Well, you’re right. I have a very short attention span. But, for those people that have very short attention spans, avoiding distractions is extremely important. So, what you want to do is look at your syllabus at the beginning of class and identify the types of tasks that you’ve got and kind of put a time allotment on it. So, for example, easy example, if you’ve got to write a paper, obviously that’s going to take a little more time than something like completing a short quiz.

14:06

AMANDA

So, you wouldn’t want to do that at say 8:00 on a Thursday night when Gray’s Anatomy is on.

14:11

ELENA

Exactly, for those Gray’s Anatomy fans.

14:16

AMANDA

Cause that’s what I would be doing while taking my online class and I wouldn’t be getting a good grade in that online class.

14:25

ELENA

The other thing that you might not want to do is, for example, if you are trying to write a paper, try to outline the paper between a class that you’ve got to go to and work. So, basically you want to give yourself enough time to complete the kinds of tasks that you have got in each one of these classes. So, that’s why I say look through the syllabus, identify how much time each one of these tasks are going to take, and then think about when you are going to be able to allot the time for those assignments. And, since it is an online class, you might have the option to complete different assignments at different times and at your own pace. So, pace yourself. The other thing to do is break up tasks into chunks and identify what your time priorities are. Again, with the paper, we’re both English majors and our life is writing papers, when it’s not at work. So we just need to give ourselves the time to kinda chunk it apart and do the outline one day and start the draft the next day and then again, complete the assignment on time, but space it out.

15:29

AMANDA

Okay

15:30

ELENA

The other big thing to keep in mind for online courses is the discussion. The discussion, the message board, this is going to be very important to you feeling like you’re actually in the class. If your professor is hosting discussions, that is really an ideal situation. If they are not, then you really want to get in touch with your colleagues.

AMANDA

These are great suggestions, do you actually follow them?

ELENA

Well.

AMANDA

You should. The reasons you have these suggestions is because you are in the class. There isn’t anyone out there who hasn’t waited until the last minute and are scrambling and that’s the truth of our lives when we are adults taking classes. But definitely, planning ahead and knowing these things for the start—that is certainly helpful.

ELENA

And what I did not do, was take the Readiness Survey. The reason I didn’t take it was because my online course was not developed by the eLearning team. So I didn’t even think about it. But I would recommend taking the Readiness Survey even if you’re not taking a course that was developed by NIU Online or if you’re an online student anywhere. The survey is really useful and if I, for example, had taken it before this class I would have been more prepared for this kind of time management. Now I learned as I went along, as you tend to do, but I am trying to share some wisdom I picked up a couple weeks in.

AMANDA
We are going to elaborate about these issues, as always, on our NIU Viewpoints blog, located at www.niuview.niu.edu. Feel free to email us, email Christiane, she is a great resource at your disposal for a week. Enjoy.

Elena

Happy online learning

Bye

Bye

Keep in mind first of all, that in order to access these you’ll need to sign into your library account. What follows are descriptions of some of the top databases we have access to through the NIU Libraries.

MLA: Covers recent listings, some full text, of articles in journals covering topics of Literature, Language, Linguistics, and Folklore. Not useful for science or business topics.

JSTOR: Covers articles in journals under topics of Arts and Sciences, Business, Language and Literature, Health and General Sciences, Ecology and Botany, Mathematics and Statistics, and Music and does it fairly broadly. The benefit to JSTOR is that the articles can all be found in full text. However, JSTOR is an archive, which means that the articles are generally 1-5 years out of date. It’s still a great way to find major articles in your research area with very little hassle.

LexisNexis Academic Universe: Covers all recent articles and publications in Business, Legal, and Medical fields. Very thorough listings, though rarely full text.

Computer Science Index: Covers all recent articles, especially at higher levels, including artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and computer systems and architecture.

CINAHL: Covers citations of recent publications for health and human sciences, nursing, and other topics, and includes a substantial listing of full-text articles.

Engineering Village: Listings of engineering and technology articles and publications, including some full text.

For a full listing of databases available through the NIU Libraries, view them listed by subject.

In our podcast about online learning (podcast 3), Christiane and Elena suggested that students who are new to online courses should definitely take the NIU Online Readiness Survey. This survey assesses your readiness (and your computers) for taking an online class.

If you score badly, you’ll know which ducks to get in a row before you begin your exciting online course. Or, maybe you’ll discover you’ve always been ready and able to tackle learning in a new way.

Take the quiz at http://www.niuonline.niu.edu/survey/detection.swf.

Happy online learning!

Amanda