Instructional Technology Conference 2008

Title: Five Ways to Enhance Your Course Management System's "Curb Appeal"

Name: Kimberly Morton, MA, BBA & Crystal Hunnicutt, MEd, BS

Audience Level: Intermediate - Participants should have a working knowledge of PowerPoint and general knowledge of other technology

Audience: This presentation would be of interest to faculty, instructional technology specialists, and lab directors.

Length: One hour

Abstract:
Holding a distance education student's attention span is a challenge for all on-line instructors. While conveying content and concepts are the primary directives of a course management system, adding "curb appeal" via interactive games, audio and video will increase the student's participation level and motivation to log on to the instructor's course at more frequent intervals.

Presenters will demonstrate inexpensive and easy-to-use software programs that will help faculty and technology personnel learn new ways to add content driven visual and auditory enhancements to standard on-line courses. These tools will help to engage the student into an active learning role through the use of interactive games, audio, video, and pictures. A step-by-step instructional handout for each tool along with purchasing information will be available.

Description:
Several simple and cost-efficient multimedia software tools will be demonstrated as ways to enhance web-based courses for the purpose of engaging on-line students: SoftChalk, StudyMate, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Impatica for PowerPoint and Impatica OnCue are among the tools to be demonstrated. The objective of the presentation is for faculty and technology personnel to learn new ways to add interest and interactivity to standard WebCT courses.

SoftChalk creates professional interactive web pages that include pop-up text annotations, self-assessment quizzes, and interactive learning games. The presenter will demonstrate this tool and how easy it is to create and upload into a WebCT course.

Adobe Photoshop Elements is an inexpensive and easy to use graphics program. This program can be used to edit pictures that have been captured from scanners, digital cameras, and the web. The program can also allow the creation of colorful banners or backgrounds for online courses.

The presenter will demonstrate how to pull in photographs and art from different venues, simple editing techniques, creation of banners and backgrounds that can be used to personalize a web course, and saving pictures for optimal use on the web.

StudyMate is a software tool that allows the creation of multimedia Flash-based learning games that get the learner actively involved with the material being taught. The software is focused around topic areas and requires no programming knowledge on the part of the user.

The presenter will demonstrate how to create 10 different types of StudyMate games. Following the creation of the files the presenter will show how to add a StudyMate game to a WebCT page.

Impatica for PowerPoint is a software program that compresses Microsoft PowerPoint for streaming over the Internet. The compression can be up to 95% smaller than a typical PowerPoint web file, allowing for video and audio to run quickly over even slower modem connections. The student only needs to have a java-enabled browser to run Impatica. Java-enabled browsers are a requirement of most course management systems such as WebCT, so usually the student can operate Impatica without an additional download. Impatica retains most features of PowerPoint such as graphics, slide transitions, animation effects, text, and sound narration.

Impatica OnCue is a software package that allows video files to be integrated into Microsoft PowerPoint and delivered over the Internet without the need for plug-ins.

The presenter will demonstrate the creation of both an Impatica for PointPoint and Impatica OnCue file, adding the Impatica files to an HTML page, uploading to WebCT, and then viewing the Impaticized PointPoint from within the WebCT course.

At the conclusion of the demonstration for each tool the participants will be able to ask questions.

Session Type: Lecture/Presentation - presenter will share information about the session topic with participants.

Contact information/affiliation:
Kimberly Morton, MA, BBA
Director Academic Administration and Informatics
College of Nursing
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
4301 W. Markham, Slot 529
Little Rock, AR 72205
Email: mortonkimberlyj@uams.edu
Phone: 501-526-6498

Crystal Hunnicutt, MEd, BS
Education Manager
Research Support Center
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
4301 W. Markham, Slot 813
Little Rock, AR 72205
Email: hunnicuttcrystaln@uams.edu
Phone: 501-526-6879

Equipment: Projector and internet connection

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