The New Age of Cheating

Gone are those old excuses of hungry dogs, dead relatives, and being deathly ill....
Now The Chronicle comes out with a new excuse, "My paper was stolen by an essay mill!"

I was working with a professor earlier this week, and she asked me if I felt plagiarism was a problem. I said 'most definitely'. Every professor should be, at least, running a sample of student papers through 'Turnitin' on every assignment. I personally prefer to have students do it themselves, as I see it as a 'teachable moment'. This professor was shocked when I said I had found the complete assignment for another professor and course on the web, for free. (I didn't mention that there were half a dozen other assignments for about $20 through the various cheat houses like Echeat, Fratfiles, and CheatHouse)

Professors need to be aware of these easy options to students and combat it by taking time to build more unique and personalized assignments. Curt Bonk's books have a number of great resources on this idea. MBA students should have personal experiences to draw on for papers, and be required to include those specialized bits of information not covered in a general, off-the-shelf essay.

Tegrity Recording

Thunderbird's distance learning programs use Tegrity recordings extensively in all our courses. We generally recommend short (less than 20 minute clips) for each week of classes. Classes generally have 1-4 Tegrity session per week. Most are pre-recorded, and include an overview of the week's assignments, topics, and lecture content. We also have 'technical' sessions for some classes to show the steps for working through a problem, or developing a spreadsheet.

Finally, many professors do a 'spontaneous' Tegrity session to wrap up the week's events, and provide feedback to the students on their case discussions. These recordings are done from wherever the professor is located, and sometimes include airport terminals, or vacation spots with family. I think they add a lot to the personal connection between faculty and students.

Recently, we've also added the feature to allow students to record online presentations for their classes.

Tegrity is holding a number of webinars on incorporating the technology into distance courses. You can sign up here.

Educause Conference

Whenever I am starting to feel burned out, I find that attending a conference (virtual or live) inspires me to keep working toward our goals of having a great distance learning program. Last week, I attended a virtual conference with Educause. One of the great things about virtual conferences, is you can see most of the presentations again, or if you have a conflict, you can watch them later.

I watched this presentation live on Getting our Values Around Copyright Right, and I thought it was fantastic for a number of reasons. One, it really did help me understand how educators could use materials and question some of the ridiculous rules around 'fair use'. Secondly, it was one of the best lectures with PowerPoint that I have ever seen. Too often we dismiss PowerPoint as the death of a classroom, with little interaction or interest. Here you can see how it should be used, as an emphasis to what the presenter is showing, not a distraction or a bore. Enjoy!

InSync Training

InSync offers free online trainings through WebEx sessions. Take a look at the link and see if there is something that you find interesting. They have several sessions on adult learning, effective assessments, and e-learning. Also, if you cannot attend the live session, there are links to recordings of some of them.

YUDU Publishing

YUDU.com is an ePublishing library & marketplace that helps you create, enhance, share, promote and sell digital publications with the world.

Share your interests and expertise with the world.

Find interesting digital documents, magazines and ebooks - many for free and others that you can buy - and save them to your own free library. Add photos and music and bookmark your favorite websites. Start an Interest Group to share your passions and expertise or create a private group online for your club or class. Invite friends and other users to join your group and allow them to add relevant content of interest.

Be your own Publisher.

Upload your Word, Powerpoint and PDF files and convert them automatically into page-turning digital editions, ebooks, ezines and e catalogues which are hosted by YUDU for free. Add YouTube videos and other multimedia with a Plus account. Keep your publications private or share them with the world - YUDU publications are searchable by Google, Yahoo and others. Self-publishing with YUDU is quick and easy!

In addition, upload podcasts, MP3 and photos and bookmark your favourite websites with thumbnail screenshots, so you can remember them easily and encourage others to view them. Organize your published items within albums in your library and promote your digital content on your own site via embedded libraries or embedded single digital publications.

Carbon Neutral Publishing

It's not difficult to imagine the environmental benefits of publishing online with YUDU. Their system was designed with energy efficiency in mind. Each page has the lowest electronic footprint possible, whilst maintaining the highest quality viewing experience - YUDU publications use very little energy.

Use Jing for a variety of things!

I've been playing with a product called Jing. It allows you to make videos that capture your desktop with audio. It's free, easy to use, and allows you to create 5 minute videos. You can then send students links to the videos, or embed them into your coursepages or webpages.

Typically, a professor would use this product for recording content. It's good for showing step-by-step processes. Here's some other ideas that you might not have thought about...

• Have students record a short presentations on the key insights of an article they are reading this week. They can easily share the links in their discussion boards and forums.
• If students don't understand how to work a problem in Excel, have them send you a video, showing them working through it, and you'll be able to see exactly what they are doing wrong. (or right!)
• Rather than having students send an excel file with their answers to a test, have them actually record a video solving a single problem on the test.
• Give students audio feedback on assignments, rather than typing in everything you want to say.

Here's a sample video, so you can see how it looks: http://www.screencast.com/t/6N8TzVsas4

NPR and PBS Lectures online

Today's Chronicle has an article about the new lecture videos made available from PBS and NPR. These videos highlight a number of different topics, and can easily be linked into course pages to add additional content.

Click here to browse the Forum Network Business Lectures.