Five Winners of the Best Online Teaching Website Announced!
All winners are listed in alphabetic order. Please also note the Five Additional Sites Honored for Excellence as they embody qualities that support excellence in online instruction. Courses are listed with login and contact information for each site.
Where websites are still current, login and password as needed has been supplied.
Joyce Liou
Elementary Chinese 1A
City College of San Francisco
Phone: 415-338-3119
Email: jliou@ccsf.edu.
City College of San Francisco
Judges Comments
- “The animations showing the order of stokes for writing Chinese characters were intriguing,” one judge wrote about this course. “This would be useful whenever we are teaching visual learners a sequential process.”
- Another judge said that the course’s interactivity is “in multiple layers: students are highly active interacting with the course materials (listening to the cassettes, viewing the character animations, reading the content, etc.); they also interact with each other in pairs via telephone and at a class level in the discussion area of the classroom.”
- A third judge was “impressed with the variety of tools used to expand students’ opportunities to learn.”
Susan Dean and Barbara Illowsky
Elementary Statistics, Math 10
De Anza College
Phone: Susan Dean: 408 / 864-8865; Barbara Illowsky: 408 / 864-8211
Email: Susan Dean: DeanSusan@fhda.edu; Barbara Illowsky: IllowskyBarbara@fhda.edu
This course was developed with the assistance of De Anza / Foothill District Learning Technologies team: Robert Griffiths, Ana Gamaza, and Drake Lewis.
Judges Comments
- One of our judges commented that this course website displays an exemplary approach to designing lessons. “There is a clear, systematic approach to the presentation of content.”
- Another judge said that “one of the most innovative features of this classroom is actually a very simple concept: it includes an excellent explanation of the navigation bar on the first page of the course. This is an added feature that other WebCT classrooms I visited did not have and it clearly explains the navigation and classroom layout and what students can expect to find in each area of the classroom which will help students quickly find their way around and understand where they need to go for each element of the course.”
- And a third judge believes that the “online videos were very effective in making the material relevant and interesting to the students through the use of many excellent examples of how statistics is utilized in every day life.”
Stephen Gilbert
Java Programming, CIS170
Orange Coast College
Email: sgilbert@occ.cccd.edu
Phone: 714 432-0202, x21173
Orange Coast College
Judges Comments
- “Clearly this faculty member spent an extraordinary amount of time organizing the course so that the expectations and the means for success were crystal clear to the students,” one judge wrote.
- “Course expectations are clearly outlined and further emphasized throughout the course in the use of deadlines, layout of schedule, and presentation of assignments” another said.
- “The instructor encourages students to share their work publicly and is actively involved in discussions.” The last point was stressed by a judge who noted that interactivity is a strength of this course site. “Discussion is an integral part of the course — students are expected to check the discussion area daily and participate in Q and A with their classmates as well as weekly discussions.”
- And one judge applauded the “excellent use of graphics, java, animations and other multimedia elements to illustrate concepts and ideas.”
David Megill and Don Megill
Musicianship I
Mira Costa College
David Megill: dwmegill@mcc.miracosta.cc.ca.us
Don Megill: ddmegill@mcc.miracosta.cc.ca.us
Phone 760-758-3668
Website: The easy link is http://67.117.214.225/cgi-bin/etudes.acgi
Click on MUS103.
LOGIN: student
PASSWORD: student
Note: Be sure to check out the “Practice Room” in the Virtual Classroom.
Judges Comments
- “The cutting-edge technology used in this course moves the interaction between student < --> teacher and student < --> material to amazing levels,” one judge said.
- “I was very intrigued by the musical notepad used in the assignments. I’ve never seen anything like it. Students can use it to craft and send their answers to the instructor. I would like to see it demonstrated on the instructor’s side–what the assignment looks like when it is received and how corrections are returned. Equivalent tools would be great for teaching English and math online.”
- And another judge commented that “course content is very extensive and complete; includes pop up definitions, graphs, images, sound and java applets to help illustrate concepts and ideas. Assignments ask students to share their opinions and experiences.”
Ellis Waller
Working with the Frail Elderly
Coastline College
This course was designed with the assistance of Coastline College support team: Kabir Mohmand, Robin Boyle, Jerry Hein and Nils Houghton
elliswaller@earthlink.net
Phone: 714-846-7820
Website: http://www.cvc3.org/modelcvc3courses/elliswaller/default.htm
LOGIN: None required
PASSWORD: None required
NOTE: WebBoard Login and password are both: cvc3demo
Judges Comments
- “This is an excellent example of how online courses can be developed without the use of a Course Management System — the classroom uses nicely organized, simple web pages and WebBoard for communications, and the online quizzes are in a separate program,” one judge wrote of this Gerontology class site.
- “A critical feature of this course is that there is a clear description of the online classroom layout and course design so students know where to go and what to do. In addition the schedule page has the weekly schedule clearly laid out and each element is well defined.”
- Another judge concluded that “the visual design is excellent and the links provide good connect to information in the community.”
Five Additional Sites Honored for Excellence!
Five additional sites will also be honored at CVC 2002 for embodying qualities that support excellence in online instruction. Congratulations to their creators, as well.
Children’s Literature
Rosemary Arca
Foothill College
This course was developed with the assistance of De Anza / Foothill District Learning Technologies team: Robert Griffiths, Ana Gamaza, and Drake Lewis.
Email: ArcaRosemary@fhda.edu
Phone: 650 / 949-7543
website: http://fh.etudes.fhda.edu/etudes.cgi?request,logframe!cs_id,1566369633!
LOGIN: guest
PASSWORD: guest
Michael Roesch
Folklore
College of the Siskiyous
Email: roesch@siskiyous.edu
Phone: 530 / 938-5514
Website: http://www.siskiyous.edu/class/engl12/
LOGIN: not needed
PASSWORD: not needed
NOTE: Only the discussion boards are password protected. While I think it is appropriate for everyone to look around the site, I would want to limit access to student discussion to other instructors or those with a sincere interest in online instruction. Anyone calling or e-mailing with a reasonable request would be welcome to observe or participate in the board discussions.
David Diaz
Health Education
Cuesta College
Email: ddiaz@cuesta.edu
Phone: 805-546-3100, ext. 2702
Website: http://academic.cuesta.edu/wholehealth
WARNING: This web site features many large and complex multimedia files and thus requires a high-bandwidth solution. This site is meant to be viewed using the Whole Health CD/Web Hybrid and played from the relatively fast CD/ROM drive of your personal computer. If you have a very high-speed connection (e.g., DSL or cable modem) you might be able to play the multimedia files acceptably. If you would like to purchase a copy of the Whole Health CD, please contact the author.
Don Nickel
Orientation to College
De Anza College
Email: dtn5125@mercury.fhda.edu
Phone: 408 / 864-5423
Jennifer Royal
Reading & Composition
Santa Rosa Junior College
Email: jroyal@santarosa.edu
Phone: 707-527-4676