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What's
new at Classes
Classes.yale.edu continues to grow in popularity.
Last year, 703 courses utilized Classes and this fall 470 courses
are already online. Visit http://www.yale.edu/instruct/web
for Classes documentation. Workshops are available for instructors
who want to create and maintain course Web pages. In these short
sessions, participants will create a Web page for a class, and learn
how to add additional text, tables, graphics and links to other
sites. Various Classes features and how to use them in teaching
are also explained. For more information regarding workshops, go
to http://www.yale.edu/instruct/classinfo.html.
Helpful Hints
Syllabus
Students access syllabi more than any other documents on Classes.
Modern syllabi are course information documents that attempt to
create a "common script" to aid instructors and students'
efforts toward achieving desired outcomes. Content can include class
day(s), time, and location; instructor and TA(s) names, locations,
and day(s) and times of office hours; required and optional texts
and readings; course goals, policies, schedule and evaluation procedures;
and campus resources for students. Instructors may submit Fall 2001
to https://classes.yale.edu/teach. To get started, go to http://www.yale.edu/instruct/web
and select Syllabus from the menu. Online syllabi are accessed easily
by students and can be edited quickly in real-time to reflect changes.
Questions and comments can be emailed to syllabi@yale.edu.
Access Feature
The classes.yale.edu access feature gives instructors the ability
to grant or restrict access to course sites in a variety of ways.
Instructors may allow non-Yale visitors to view Web pages or may
limit access to those at Yale. Further access restrictions can be
applied to specific individuals. Giving access permissions for specific
folders allows an instructor to set a password of his or her choosing
before students can access the folder's contents. The feature also
allows the instructor of record to grant another instructor or TA
access to update pages as needed. Using the access feature, the
instructor can view a list of students who have signed up for a
particular course. Go to http://www.yale.edu/instruct/web
for more information and instructions.
Student Feedback Feature
At any time during the semester, students can submit feedback about
any course they are officially registered in. Instructors can view
students' comments through http://classes.yale.edu/teach. E-mail
any questions to online.eval@yale.edu.
Upcoming Features
Online Quiz Generator
The design team at Classes is currently working on an online quiz
and survey generator for faculty. The interface allows an instructor
to generate a question, specify an answer, compile question banks,
create new quizzes easily for makeup exams or alternates, search
on keywords, track learner progress and provide feedback to help
increase students' comprehension. Testing, whether graded or non-graded,
helps students and faculty monitor progress throughout the course.
Many instructors create unique surveys to obtain feedback from students
to improve the quality of teaching and learning here at Yale. The
new quiz/survey generator will provide faculty with a customizable
tool for survey creation and data retrieval.
Web Forums
A "news" or discussion group provides an electronic forum
for people to post items of interest, conduct discussions or voice
their opinions. Newsgroups can be read using most Web browsers or
newsreader software. Currently, instructors can use Yale newsgroups
for their classes to encourage communication outside the classroom.
Web forums are planned to replace Classes newsgroups in Spring 2002.
Like newsgroups, Web forums permit online threaded discussions,
but will give instructors more options for managing the forums.
Possible additional features include restricting access to officially
registered students, deleting postings, permitting anonymous postings
or pseudonyms, controlling who can start threaded discussions, allowing
attachments and creating multiple newsgroups for a class. A major
advantage of Web forums is that they do not require any special
software and will work equally well with Netscape and Internet Explorer.
For more information about Classes or instructional
technology issues, contact Gloria
Hardman, Pam Patterson or Ed Kairiss. Learn more at
http://classes.yale.edu. We welcome questions or suggestions
at classes@yale.edu
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