Screencasting

I'm cheating a bit. The screencast below is an old one I did for our Purchasing Office. I'm still waiting to get Jing reinstalled on my work computer following a "refresh." When you get "refreshed," you get a new computer and they move everything from your old computer to your new computer....except your programs. So, I'm cheating and using a screencast that I already did and not creating a new one for my course with Jing.

This was done using Screenr, which I like a lot. Unfortunately it stopped working for me at work. Of course the state doesn't support applications like Screenr, so they won't help me figure out why it stopped working. Enough of the mini-rant...onto my screencast:

The Syllabus

Recommendations Most Likely to Implement (Ko and Rossen)

Even though I won't be teaching a college course, I still plan to include the following recommendations for the training I am planning for new Human Resource Analysts at my agency. It began as an orientation but has since morphed into something a bit larger and more comprehensive.

Expectations for Class Participation (Quality and Quantity) and Explanations of Successful Completion Criteria
Each course in our learning management system must be verified either with an assessment or manually by a course provider. Because each of my courses will have multiple requirements and I don't want people to complete an assessment without completing the activities, I'll be manually verifying completion based on criteria explained in a rubric. Class participation will be included in specific terms.

Information to Manage Student Expectations and Set the Stage
I think that I will include this information both on the main course website and in an introductory video.

Schedule by Weeks, Including Specific Dates
I'm glad the authors recommended including specific dates. I'm not sure I would have thought of that on my own. It will be particularly helpful since it's likely that people may run across the web page where I'll post the course information and think they can join...after the course has ended. I also like the recommendation to give students 2-3 days to complete assignments. I'll probably give them a little more time.

Course Title, Instructor, Contact Information, Office Hours, Course Description and Objectives
This is a given.

Date Last Revised
This is a good idea as well and thankfully it's built into our intranet template so I won't have to do it manually.

Tech Support Contact
Although the instructors will be our subject matter experts, I'll be the tech support...

Recommendations Least Likely to Implement
I really like the way the interactive syllabus also explains the geography through its design. This means that I won't need to explain this in paragraph form. I'll probably still include a video showing and explaining where everything is located on the webpage, how to navigate and how they'll know where to do each activity.

Different Between the Text Approach and the Interactive Syllabus

These are the primary differences that I noticed between the two approaches:

1. The interactive syllabus is a web page not a static document. Resources, videos, discussion forums and test are all linked directly in the page.
2. You don't need to explain geography because the design makes this intuitive.
3. Class information (expectations, contact information, objectives, course description) are located in a different section of the website. The focus of the interactive syllabus are the assignments, listed by week.