What your colleagues from U Carleton are doing.
The University of Carleton has a teaching and learning blog, with some postings on WebCT use.
This postings discusses the use of educational technology as a means of acheiving (or at least approaching) a paperless classroom. Instructors at the University of Carleton and at SFU post classroom materials online: syllabus, lecture outlines, links to readings and weblinks and assignment descriptions and guidelines online. This gives the student just one place to look for these materials (instead of coming through past emails, or stacks of paper). Online quizzes can also be a means of implementing regular assessment (graded or self-testing) and feedback into the course without contending with mountains of paperwork.
Another posting is more general, talking about creating learning opportunites using technology. This is an opportunity to look at three different courses who use the WebCT online environment to:
- create long term resources
- reducing trivial emailed students from students
- fostering an online learning community
- create a common look and feel for the course
- using images on the course content home to reinforce key ideas and concepts from the course
- importing other tools (Google Calendar or Picasa photo management) into WebCT, to combine those tools ease of use with a central online location for the course materials and community.
We are planning on having some SFU faculty demonstrate their use of WebCT in the new year. Keep an eye on the LIDC calendar of events for dates and times.