Nutrition & Wellness – Biology 50

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Tips for Taking an Online Course

This online orientation is for those students enrolled or considering enrolling in online courses at Columbia College. It is divided into two sections.

The first section “Are you ready to take an Online Course?” allows you to complete a technical skills and student readiness surveys.

The second section includes tips on “How to be a Successful Online Student” for those who ready to get started and want to see which courses are available, what to expect and a series of FAQ’s.

Are you ready for an Online Course?

Online instruction is a very different way of learning. For some students it is a welcome alternative, allowing them to manage busy schedules and keep on working.

For other students online education is too different, it doesn’t work with their learning styles and not a good ‘fit.’ It is helpful to decide if distance or online learning works with your learning preferences, study and computer skills.

Cerro Coso Community College offers a great introduction to determining if you are ready to take an online course. I would encourage all new online students to take these quizzes to determine if you are ready for an online course.

The first quiz asks you questions about your skill as a student.

• Technical Skills Survey
  This brief computer use survey will help to determine if you have the necessary technical skills to be successful in an online course.

The second quiz asks you about your technical skills.

• Student Readiness Survey
  This brief self-assessment, readiness survey helps determine your general readiness to take an online course.

The purpose of these quizzes is to better acquaint you with the requirements of the online environment; they are not designed to make decisions for you. Your decision to take or not take an online class is best made in consultation with your counselor.

Note: These links are used with permission from Cerro Coso Community College.

If you find yourself feeling unprepared or uneasy after completing these two surveys I highly recommend that you enroll in “How to Succeed as an Online Student” CMPSC101 offered as a late start course at Columbia College.

See more information on this class below.

Suggestions for Being a Successful Online Student

1. Online Instructors and Courses Offered

A list of all of the Online Courses and the Instructors at Columbia College.

2. Blackboard Student Tutorials

The Blackboard Student Tutorial section offers Student Tutorials and help for accessing Blackboard. These interactive tutorials introduce students to four key areas of Blackboard CD 6: Navigating, Discussions, Assessments and Assignments.

To view the Blackboard demos, you must have a current version of Macromedia Flash Player.

3. Blackboard Student Help

The Blackboard Online Learning Help and Help Desk offers

4. Ready for Multimedia?

Check you computer to see if it is ready. Start by Testing Your Browsers Compatibility.

You can also run a Browser Check from the Blackboard login page.

Other Online Self Assessments

There are other online self assessments available to determine if you are ready for an online course, or to help you discover areas and skills that may need need to be improved while taking an online course.

From the Penn State Learning Design Community Hub
These questions are designed to allow you to take some time to think about yourself as a learner and see whether your characteristics would help you be a good online learner. The questions explore five different areas Self-direction, Learning preferences, Study habits, Technology skills and Computer equipment capability.

• Teaching and Learning with Technology
• Student self-assessment for online learning readiness – this includes a discussion about how the questions were determined.

From Shippensburg University
This pages takes you through a 5 step process to determine if Distance Learning is right for you.

• Before You Register for an Online Course

From WashingtonOnline
A short quiz to find out if you are ready to take online classes.

• Is Online Learning For Me?

These online assessment are good self-assessment tools to help you determine if you will be a good online learner.

“How to Succeed as an Online Student” or CMPSC101 is offered both Fall and Spring semesters and is designed as an orientation to online learning and our current online course management system, Blackboard Learning System.

The students in the course meet face to face and cover basic components of how a Web-based classroom works as well as the technology skills needed for students to feel more confident in achieving a successful experience.

You may also want to look at the Blackboard Page in this blog for more information.

Some of the important skills that most online instructors require of their students is knowing how to save documents in different formats.

The new version of Microsoft creates documents as a .docx format, which is only readable if the person has the latest version of Microsoft (or has the program to convert files). Another issue with Microsoft documents even just .docs it that they are more likely to transmit viruses.

This is the main reason that many instructors require that documents submitted as attachments (which will be opened by the instructor) are submitted as .rtf, .txt or .pdf files.

These two video clips offer some helpful tips in how to change your documents to different formats.

The first “Saving a Document As a PDF, RTF, DOC, or TXT File” is more basic information.

The second, “How to Save a Document into Various Formats” explains a bit more about working in the new version of Microsoft as well as in Mac.

Note: For this class the only formats that are accepted are .rtf or .pdf files. .doc is not an acceptable format for turning in assignments.

Another skill that instructor’s expect their students to have is how to copy information from an assignment and paste that information somewhere, like in the assignment box.

This video on “How to Copy and Paste” shows the steps in copying information and pasting it into another document. You can use the same steps to copy information from the assignment documents you are working on and pasting that information into the assignment box.

This Video Clip shows how to upload a document in Blackboard. Note that the colors of the Blackboard for the Nutrition course are different than the ones use in this course.

Steve Woods. Surfing 2. Royalty Free Use.
Gözde Otman. Sleepy. Royalty Free Use.
Renxx Garmider. Guy with Laptop. Royalty Free Use.

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