Small But Important Change to the Audio Chat Tool

The Audio Chat tool is kind of an underutilized wonder in online courses. For quite a few years now, all online courses have had this little tool which enables small groups of people to talk with one another from within the course Web site. You don't need anything other than your current Web browser and a microphone to talk to classmates from around the world. It's really quite handy, especially if you are working in a small group on a homework problem or wiki assignment.

One limitation of the Audio Chat tool has always been that each room (where you actually talk to one another) could only accommodate 5 people at any time. This was originally done so that students on dial-up/modem/low speed connections could participate alongside students on high-speed connections. Each additional person you put in an Audio Chat room causes more data to be sent to each participant in the room. If you're on a high speed connection, this isn't a problem. For students on dial-up/low speed connections, though, this was definitely a problem.

Now that less than 10% of all students who take online courses from JHSPH use dial-up/low speed connections (thank you, Google Analytics, for that information!), we're able to bump up the capacity in Audio Chat rooms. Each Audio Chat room can now accommodate ten simultaneous participants. This change is already in place, so you can try it out today!

0 comments - Posted by Brian Klaas at 3:45 PM - Categories: Online Courses | Course Tools

October 2009 Update to the Online Library

The Online Library in online courses has received a significant update with the start of the second academic term.

We've heard from many of you that the performance of the Online Library in online courses is a concern. We know that the application was not nearly as fast as it could be, and the developers here in the Center have worked hard to improve the loading and response time of the Online Library across the board. This update is 2-6 times faster than the current version of the Online Library, depending on the current task being executed. For example, loading the library in a course with about a hundred library items took 35 seconds in the old version of the library. In this version, it takes six seconds.

The Online Library still does not load instantaneously, and in libraries of a hundred items or more, that's simply not a reasonable goal. The performance of the Online Library is, like many pieces of software, also dependent on your computer. Newer computers with faster processors and more RAM are going to load and perform much better than a machine that is three, four, or five years old.

The other major change in this update to the Online Library is the introduction of the Audio Notes tool. This is a very cool addition to the library, and one that promises major impact when this version of the Online Library comes to CoursePlus.

Faculty, TAs, and students can currently use a tool like Audacity (or GarageBand, or any number of desktop applications) to create audio files for posting in their online courses or CoursePlus sites. This approach is actually a key part of the School's pandemic flu preparedness strategy. We, however, have created a simpler tool for recording audio and distributing it to students. It's no replacement for a desktop audio recording and editing solution, but it's drop-dead simple, and sometimes that's what matters most.

The Audio Notes is a very simple online audio recorder, almost identical to the one found in the Gradebook. Just as faculty (or TAs) would add a file or Web link to the Online Library, now they can also record audio, and have the MP3 version of that audio appear in the Online Library. They can edit information about that file, control the open/close date, and do everything else that they can do with any other file in the Online Library. Students can download the MP3 files just as they would any other file in the Online Library.

Here are some sample use cases for the Audio Notes tool:

• There is a real-world event that faculty want to comment on, but don't have time to get in to the studio to record a new lecture.
• Faculty want to give an overview of the results for the midterm or final, without having to type everything out.
• Faculty want to make a correction to their lecture or provide an update to their lecture, but the issue of time and the production process prevents this from happening to the actual online course lecture.  
• Faculty cannot come in to the School to give an in-person lecture for an onsite class, but students still need the content for that lecture.

There are some limitations to the Audio Notes tool that should be noted:

• The audio recorder is extremely simple. There are no editing tools. If mistakes are made, the person making the recording leaves them in or starts over from the beginning. 
• There are no limits on the length of a recording, although after approximately one hour of continuous recording, the connection to the server may become unreliable.
• Recordings are available to all students unless otherwise specified via the "Block Students" tool for that file in the Online Library.

If you want to try out the Audio Notes tool, please be sure that your computer is set up properly, per the tutorial for recording audio for posting in online courses.

There are even more changes in this update to the Online Library in online courses. These include:

• Opening of file/link edit boxes relative to your current position on the screen. No more scrolling to the top of the library to edit!
• If a file is uploaded to the Online Library that is a FLV, MP4 or MOV file, instead of downloading the file to the end user's computer, the file will be played in a new window which contains a simple video player. Students could rarely open FLV or MP4 files on their own because of the playback requirements of those formats. The Online Library takes care of this for them now.
• A few UI changes have been made to clarify the links to pages in an online course and to make it easier to select multiple students to block/unblock from seeing a file in the library.
• A handful of bug fixes including issues with open/close dates assigned to folders.

We want to thank everyone for their feedback in the past few months about the Online Library. We're listening and want to make it as good a tool as it can be. If you have any questions about these updates, or suggestions for further areas of improvement, we'd love to hear them!

0 comments - Posted by Brian Klaas at 9:02 AM - Categories: Online Courses | Course Tools

Another PDF Annotation Tool Available for Full and Part-Time Students

Last Spring, JHSPH Information Systems announced that they had acquired a site license for PDF Annotator, a tool that lets you annotate (write, draw, highlight, and otherwise mark up) PDF files. This is a really useful tool if you're trying to take class notes digitally or otherwise doing collaborative work using PDF files. Unfortunately, PDF Annotator is only available for the Windows operating system. Those of us using a Mac could use Preview, an application built in to the Mac OS, to do basic PDF annotation, but Preview lacks many of the features of PDF Annotator.

Recently, JHSPH Information Systems announced that they have acquired a site license for PDF Pen Pro, an equivalent to PDF Annotator for the Mac. This makes this tool available for free to all full- and part-time students, faculty, and staff here at the School. If you aren't enrolled in a degree program at the School, or aren't School faculty or staff, you can't take advantage of this site license.

For more information on acquiring either PDF Pen Pro or PDF Annotator, please see this page in the my.jhsph.edu portal. Remember: you have to log in to to the my.jhsph.edu portal using your JHSPH email account credentials to view this information.

Posted by Brian Klaas at 4:17 PM - Categories: General | Online Courses | Course Tools | CoursePlus

How to Record Audio from Your Desktop Tutorial Posted

The Center's team of Web documentation and audio production specialists have been hard at work developing a new tutorial which shows you, in simple and clear steps, how to record audio from your desktop. If you're a student who needs to record audio for a class assignment, or a faculty member who needs to record a lecture in your office or at home for posting in to CoursePlus, this tutorial is for you.

The tutorial covers the whole process, from downloading the right software, to making sure your microphone settings are correct, to editing mistakes out of your audio, and generating an MP3 file for posting in to an online course or CourePlus Web site. There's even a handy microphone tester with troubleshooting information along side, which can be used not only for recording audio from your desktop, but also for testing out a microphone for LiveTalk.

The tutorial is composed of text, images, and video demonstrations. There's also a handy PDF reference guide available for those who want to print the complete set of step-by-step instructions for all phases of the recording process.

If you have any feedback about the tutorial, we'd love to hear it!

0 comments - Posted by Brian Klaas at 6:06 PM - Categories: Online Courses | CoursePlus

Reminder About Data Storage Policies for JHSPH eLearning Sites

At the start of each academic year, there are usually questions about the length of time which files in the Online Library or student submissions to the Drop Box and other eLearning tools are kept. The CTLT's data storage policy is as follows:

• Files in the Online Library are kept for three academic years. Therefore, a file in an Online Library for a course which was offered in March, 2006, is deleted from CoursePlus on June 1, 2009, at the start of the new academic year. A file in an Online Library for a course which was offered in September, 2008, will not be deleted from CoursePlus until June 1, 2011.
• Files submitted to a Drop Box are kept for two academic years. Therefore, student submissions to a Drop Box for a course which was offered in March, 2006, will be deleted from CoursePlus on June 1, 2008, at the start of the new academic year. Student submissions to a Drop Box for a course which was offered in September, 2008, will not be deleted from CoursePlus until June 1, 2010.
• LiveTalk archives are kept until the next offering of the course.
• Data collected and stored in a database, which covers all non-file-based data in CoursePlus and online courses, is kept for five years, after which time it may be permanently archived.

0 comments - Posted by Brian Klaas at 10:10 PM - Categories: Online Courses | Course Tools | CoursePlus

A Small But Nice Bonus: Download All Lecture Materials at Once

We've added a small, but very handy feature to lecture pages in online courses. While we can't offer the ability to download an entire synchronized lecture presentation, you can now download all PDFs and MP3 files (if available) for a given lecture at one time. Every lecture in an online course now has a link at the bottom of the "Lecture Materials" box which states:

Download all PDFs and MP3s

Clicking on this link will cause a single ZIP file of all the PDFs and MP3s (if available) for that lecture to be downloaded to your computer. Instead of downloading each individual PDF or MP3 file for each lecture, you can now download all the PDFs and MP3s (if available) at once.

We hope you find this useful!

6 comments - Posted by Brian Klaas at 4:28 PM - Categories: Online Courses

End of Access to Online Courses Using Internet Explorer 6

As of June 1, 2009, all access to online course Web sites at JHSPH has been blocked if you attempt to log in using Internet Explorer 6.

Support for Internet Explorer 6 in online courses ended in January, 2008. This information was displayed on the online courses home page at the time, and the Computing Requirements for Online Courses page was updated to reflect this change. This information is also distributed during Introduction to Online Learning.

Attempting to use Internet Explorer 6 in online courses can cause problems taking online quizzes or exams, filling out lecture and LiveTalk evaluations, submitting files to the Drop Box, utilizing wikis, and more. We certainly don't want students, faculty, or staff who access online courses to have similar problems. As such, we are requiring that everyone use a supported Web browser (Internet Explorer 7 or 8, or Firefox 3) on their Windows computer if they want to continue to access online courses from JHSPH.

We understand that asking individuals to upgrade or change their Web browser may be disruptive. However, it's important that everyone use a Web browser that is modern, security and standards-compliant, and works within the online course system from JHSPH. Internet Explorer 6 was released on August 27, 2001, and lacks the support needed for some of the tools currently in use in online courses and for some of the tools to be made available in the coming year.

If you are worried about updating Internet Explorer and what that might do to your operating system, you can download and use Firefox 3 instead as that will not update your operating system in the same way that Internet Explorer 7 or 8 does.

You can download Internet Explorer 7 or 8 from

http://www.microsoft.com/ie/

You can download Firefox 3 from

http://www.firefox.com/

If you have questions, please feel free to contact DEHelp.

1 comments - Posted by Brian Klaas at 12:01 PM - Categories: Online Courses