Teacher+Orientation

Introduction
This course is geared towards high school or advanced middle school students who want to learn about physics and motion. See concept map for an overview of the course and related concepts. The initial course administration can take up to six hours and students should be prepared to spend between ten and twenty hours weekly.

Assumptions

 * 1) The student taking this course is assumed to not have any visual disabilities. The course does not have accommodations for students who cannot see.
 * 2) The student taking the course is assumed to have at least one year experience using a range of web2.0 tools.
 * 3) The student taking this course is assumed to have successfully completed an Algebra 1 mathematics course.
 * 4) Students taking this course should be self-motivated, responsible and able to follow directions (including detailed directions)
 * 5) This course is intended to be taught to a class of less than 50 students. Teaching the course to a larger number of students would require rethinking the teacher grading load and bottlenecks associated with peer auditing. For example, in a larger class, the teacher may rely more on multiple choice questions. This introduces the possible need for an automated question generator. Peer editing could bog down if several students are required to provide input and a significant portion of the class fell behind.

Student Orientation
Students spend significant time setting up their course resources. During this time, it would be an excellent idea to proactively check-in with each student. Consider having an icebreaker activity for socialization. It may also be worthwhile to invite students into some online gaming environment or send them a coupon for an online movie to celebrate completing the orientation. This is to ensure that student start feel welcome and start off the course feeling good.

Monitoring Student Progress
Keeping track of progress in an online course can be challenging because of the multitude of different websites and student pacing. We use a Google Docs spreadsheet to monitor student progress in our online course (see image below). Using feedback in this spreadsheet (completed assignments, time requirements), the Moodle discussion forums, and the informal Edmodo logs, you should understand if the pacing of the course for a particular class is appropriate.

The spreadsheet allows students to check off tasks as they successfully complete them by entering the approximate number of minutes it took to complete the activity or assignment. We visually represent this in the spreadsheet with a change in cell color from **red** to **green**. This allows you to easily scan where all of your students are in the session and see how long they are taking to complete activities in comparison to pre-course estimates. If the completion times are grossly out-of-line with what was expected, corrective measures can be taken to address the disparity in the future. **__E__**__**stimation times submitted by students are only meant for informational purposes and should not be used to affect student grades**__.



Weekly Discussion Monitor
Each week a different student will monitor the discussion in Moodle and Edmodo (class code: 2gncsa). They will be the first line of assistance for other students. Their responsibilities include: (i) making sure questions get enough attention to be answered, (ii) making sure students are providing meaningful contributions (other than "I agree"), (iii) potentially reorganizing common threads of related topics, (iv) asking probing questions when the conversations goes off track or is getting stale. After the course roster is finalized, create a schedule for students to take on this role. If you have more students than weeks in the course, you may wish to ask for volunteers.

**Customization**
We recommend that teachers contribute at least one activity per session to better ground and situate the content in useful and relevant ways to their students. Only teachers with real-time knowledge of their students' abilities, interests, and motivations can mold classes to best suit them.

Teachers can enter their custom activities here // ***technical note** : we are not saving content in a database for this mock up, so don't spend too much time writing something here since the next person to write will simply overwrite your entry. //

Setup each student in the online grading system (Engrade) along with category weights. Students will be graded on five academic criteria:
At the end of each unit, student are given a 100 point graded assessment that covers all unit content. This test will be comprised of 50% teacher-generated questions, 25% student-generated questions, and 25% short answer questions. Students are required to complete a professor-approved individual project within the domain of physics and kinematics that speaks to their personal interests, goals, and talents. Students are required to maintain a log of responses to thought question presented through out the course. These questions ensure that students keep up with the reading and the opinions of their classmates. In addition to thought questions, students are required to contribute to weekly group discussions. Each session, students are required to submit three questions based on the content of the session. Unique questions that show mastery of the subject matter are seen in a better light.
 * 40% - Graded Unit Challenges
 * 25% - Individual Project
 * 20% - Personal Learning Logs
 * 10% - Participation in Group Discussion
 * 5% - Question Submission

Getting Help
Students can get help several ways. The various help systems are meant to provide timely assistance without making the teacher the centerpeice of all assistance. The first level of help is for students to post questions in the Moodle forum where the question arises. The second level is for the student to ask a question in the Twitter-like conversation channel (Edmodo - class code: 2gncsa). Students can also e-mail or call the teacher and participate in synchronous office hours.

Office Hours
You should hold synchronous office hours every night for between fifteen and thirty minutes. This would allow students to ask questions or at least watch questions from other students. You may require students to attend office hours if necessary.

DimDim is the primary tool used for synchronous communications with students. In the event of a service failure or other availability issue with the service, we use Elluminate as a back up. Please familiarize yourself with both synchronous tools.

Resources
This course uses web2.0 resources from a wide range of websites.
 * Student Progress Monitor enables you to conveniently track the progress of each student. It can also be used by students to find other students who are working on the same assignment.
 * Student Personal Learning log (PLL). The PLL is an online journal for students to answer questions for each unit. The questions are designed to ensure that students are actively reading the content. In addition, some of the unit notes are done in a skeletal fashion. This means that not every piece of necessary information is provided. This will force strudents to do some minor research or collaborate with other students.
 * __Student Gradebook__ is an online resource for storing and disseminating grades for rapid feedback. We chose a web2.0 gradebook product called Engrade because it has weighted assignment categories and user-level security.
 * __Personalized Student Data__ is used to provide each student with unique data and problem sets so students can collaborate without outright copying. We chose a web2.0 database (Zoho) because each student can have their own query to a common table of problems and data.

Discussions
You ask questions in on online discussion to foster thinking. For a review of online discussion best practices, see this document [|Framework for Online Questions.pdf]. See this link to a document that discusses Consider these types of questions that are organized according to Blooms Taxonomy:
 * Extract factual //knowledge//
 * Query a student's //comprehension//
 * Ask a learner to //apply// his/her knowledge and comprehension
 * Ask the learner to //analyze// information
 * Challenge the student to //synthesize// information
 * Have the learner //evaluate// and make judgements