I watched a WCET Webcast yesterday that presented research by Drs. Diane Goldsmith and Mary Bucy related to online course design and pedagogy. So I’ve been comparing everything I read to their findings (which are not yet published). One problem I hadn’t thought much about was test-taking in online courses. Both Ko and Rossen’s book, Teaching online: A practical guide (2004), and Goldsmith and Bucy’s presentation addressed the difficulty of verifying honesty in online tests; and both advised that online tests and quizzes may be most useful as learning tools. Ko and Rossen noted that in hybrid courses testing problems can be solved by proctoring them on site (p. 251). Goldsmith and Bucy suggested quizzes be given less weight in grading to reduce the incentive to cheat.
One area where the WCET presentation provided a different perspective was in using the Web as a presentation medium (Ko & Rossen, p. 256). In Goldsmith’s survey, One specific format students disliked was PowerPoint presentations – for two reasons: they took too long to download, and they generally had no depth. If PowerPoints were converted to movie format (.mov), they could be streamed in the browser, so they could begin playing during the download. However, converting PowerPoint presentations takes special software and doesn’t tackle the other problem – that most PowerPoint presentations are overviews without new or in-depth material.
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