The main purpose of this chapter is to help registered Penn State students understand how their online class works.
GEOG 482: Nature of Geographic Information (2 cr.) A required first course in Certificate Program in GIS [1] and Master of GIS [2] degree program, offered through the World Campus [3].
This Orientation should also be useful to prospective students who are considering enrolling in one of these courses. If you are not interested in enrolling for a formal Penn State course, proceed directly to Chapter 1 .
Registered students who successfully complete this Orientation should be able to:
The next page in this chapter outlines the steps you need to perform to successfully complete the Orientation.
The second page of each chapter in the text will present a checklist of tasks to complete in that chapter. Here is an outline of steps for the Orientation. You may find it useful to print this page so that you can check off steps as you complete them.
Step | Activity | Access/Directions |
---|---|---|
1 | Navigate successfully between Canvas and this text. | See instructions on the following page. |
2 | Configure your Canvas account. | See instructions on the "Course Management System" page later in this chapter. |
3 | Understand the distinction between Canvas course mail and your Penn State e-mail address, and how to manage your Penn State e-mail address. | See instructions on the "Course Management System" page and "Communication" page later in this chapter. |
4 | Read the course syllabus. | This content is found in the Syllabus menu. |
5 | Complete the Initial Course Survey to help us learn more about your expectations for this course. | Go to Canvas > [your course section] > Modules > Course Orientation section > Initial Course Survey. Canvas is Penn State's course management system. |
6 | Introduce yourself to the instructor and your fellow classmates by posting a personal introduction to the Lounge discussion forum. Be sure to read other students postings as well. | Canvas > [your course section] > Course Orientation section > Lounge. |
7 | Review the Academic Integrity Guide, and Help page. | Links to these pages appear in the Resources menu. |
8 | Proceed to Chapter 1. | Links to these pages appear in the Chapters menu. |
Registered students in the online Penn State courses that use this text need to navigate between several environments online. These include:
In Canvas, registered students will find a link back to the course text under each chapter's Module.
Navigate from this page to Canvas [4]and back again.
Penn State uses an online course management system called Canvas to deliver most of its online courses to registered students. (For more information about Canvas, visit the Getting Started with Canvas [6] page). Canvas organizes content using different sections in its site. Here is how we use it for the Penn State courses that use this course text. (Registered students might want to open Canvas in a second tab or browser window while studying this page.)
Main Menu in the left pane:
Menu of links once inside a course:
For a more complete introduction to Canvas please see the Getting Started with Canvas [6] page.
To get the most out of Canvas, registered students should configure their Canvas profiles as follows:
When in Canvas, at the bottom-left corner of the screen you will see a round icon with a question mark. Click this question mark icon for a list of options, including "Search the Canvas Guides", which provides lots of information about how to operate in the Canvas site.
This text, Nature of Geographic Information, is presented in an open source content management system called Drupal [8]. One advantage to presenting the text in Drupal is that we can publish the text openly, for the benefit of anyone who has access to the Internet, regardless of their ability to pay tuition or buy an expensive printed textbook.
As a registered student, your role is to read chapters, complete activities and quizzes, produce and submit original project reports, respond to surveys, and complete a final exam on schedule. The schedule of assignment due dates is published to the Calendar in Canvas. In addition, you should read and participate in discussions that take place in Canvas discussion forums. Students who contribute to discussions and help other students out are the ones who gain the most from the class experience. The amount of time you invest in your course will vary depending on the number of academic credits you will earn. At Penn State, one academic credit is equivalent to approximately 40 hours of student activity. Thus, a student in a 3-credit, 15-week class should plan to invest about eight hours of study each week. In this program, courses are run in compressed 10-week semesters, so you can expect to invest more time in a given week for each credit earned. Time needed to cover assigned reading material and to complete assigned exercises will also vary depending upon the background and experience you bring to the course. Although there are weekly assignment deadlines, you are typically free to study at places and times that are most convenient to you.
Instructors may include a lead instructor and one or more grading assistants. Lead instructors follow all course communications, including course mail and discussion forums in Canvas. Lead instructors reply to most communications within 24 hours. (Some questions are purposefully left for responses by fellow students. Also, instructor responses may be delayed during announced absences.) They correct and revise courseware as needed. They assess student attitudes at the beginning and midway through the course, and share interpretations of those assessments with students. Finally, lead instructors oversee grading/teaching assistants' evaluation of student work, check and upload project scores to the Canvas gradebook, calculate final course grades, and submit grades to the University registrar.
Grading Assistants evaluate student project reports. They prepare detailed critiques and itemized scores in response to every individual report. Grading assistants may also propose revisions to the scoring rubrics which guide evaluation of each project assignment.
Registered students earn academic credit at Penn State by completing the following assignments. Assignment instructions are published in the corresponding modules in the Canvas course management system.
Registered students have access to more than 40 online quizzes in Canvas. Quizzes are open-book, multiple choice format, and provide feedback immediately after submission. The purpose of these quizzes is to help you self-assess your understanding of the course text. Many quiz questions also challenge students' ability to think beyond what they've read.
In addition to ungraded "practice" quizzes, starting with Chapter 2, each chapter includes one cumulative graded quiz. Like the practice quizzes, the graded quizzes are open-book format, but graded quizzes can only be submitted once. You are welcome to open, view, and even print quizzes, and to consult them while reading the text. Students who are diligent about reading the text are likely to perform well on the graded quizzes. Your performance on graded quizzes will account for one quarter of your final course grade. Due dates for graded quizzes appear on the Canvas Calendar.
A single, cumulative online exam will be appear in Canvas during the final week of class. The exam is identical to the graded quizzes in format and style. Most students will find the exam to be fairly challenging. It consists of 32 multiple choice and matching questions. By passing the final exam you will have demonstrated that you are sufficiently acquainted with the fundamentals to proceed to Geography 483, in which you will begin to learn how concepts are implemented in GIS software (GEOG 482 students only).
In conjunction with weekly chapters, registered students are assigned three graded projects. Projects require you to conduct research (primarily via the Internet), perform tasks, and prepare reports that demonstrate your ability to apply concepts discussed in the course text. Reports are prepared as word processing documents (e.g., Microsoft Word) and uploaded to instructors via Canvas. Grading assistants provide detailed individual critiques and itemized scores in response to every student report.
Depending on your previous experience and comfort level with computing, you'll find projects to be moderately to highly challenging. The key to success is to pace yourself, pay close attention to the grading criteria, and take time to write at a professional level. Three to four weeks are provided to complete each project. Due dates appear on the Canvas Calendar.
We expect your project reports to be original. You may build upon ideas, words and illustrations produced by others, but you must paraphrase, cite, and reference such sources. Reports that contain unacknowledged contributions by others are considered to be plagiarized. We use the plagiarism detection service Turnitin.com [9] to evaluate the originality of students' work. Detailed guidelines about how to prepare an original report are included in the "Academic Integrity Guide" that appears in the Resources section of the course text .
Meaningful interactions among students and instructors are the hallmark of a successful online class. Canvas supports several kinds of communication, as described below.
In addition, registered students have a Penn State e-mail account (<Access Account ID>@psu.edu) that they need to monitor for any official communications that come from the University or from the Penn State World Campus.
The Canvas course management system supports several modes of communication, including discussion forums and course mail.
Whenever you post a message in a forum or send course mail, please title every message with a descriptive subject line. Subject lines that include the gist of a question or comment increase the chances that students and instructors can retrieve the messages we're looking for. Poor subject lines, such as "Question" or "Chapter 1," are not very useful as search keywords. When replying to a prior message, consider whether or not the subject line should be altered to indicate the content of your reply!
Occasionally the University or the World Campus needs to communicate with students. To do so they use the @psu.edu e-mail address that each registered student has, not Canvas course e-mail.
In addition a letter, in PDF format, that reports your final course grade will be automatically generated and sent to your @psu.edu e-mail address.
So, it is important that you regularly monitor your @psu.edu e-mail account.
How do you define and achieve success in an online course like the ones that use this text? It depends on your goals and perspective. A 19-year-old undergraduate student who registers for an online course in the hope of earning an easy “A” is unlikely to be successful, no matter how adept he or she may be with information technology. However, Palloff and Pratt observe that “in general, distance education has been applied to and seen as most successful in the arena of adult and continuing education” (Palloff and Pratt 2001, p. 109).
“Much of the research done on successful students in distance education programs suggests that students who are attracted to this form of education share certain characteristics, including that they are voluntarily seeking further education, are motivated, have higher expectations, and are more self-disciplined. They tend to be older than the average student and to have a more serious attitude toward their courses, education, and learning. They are what most would consider to be nontraditional students.” (Palloff and Pratt 2001, p. 109)
This is not to say that younger students can’t succeed in online classes. Indeed, “most [undergraduate] students today are older, are working, and need more flexible schedules” (Palloff and Pratt 2001, p. 109). The question is, assuming that a student is motivated to get the most out of an online class, and that the class is well-designed and led by attentive instructors, whose attitudes and behaviors increase the student’s chance of having a satisfactory experience.
Swan and colleagues (2000) surveyed approximately 3,800 students enrolled in 264 online courses through the SUNY Learning Network. Of the 1,406 responses received, the researchers analyzed data associated with 73 courses for which there was a 40 percent response rate or greater. Among their findings were statistically significant correlations between student satisfaction and (a) perceived learning gains (b) interaction with instructors and (c) interaction with fellow students. Additionally, respondents who rated their own level of activity in online classes as high also tended to report higher levels of satisfaction.
Research results like these, along with lessons learned in our more than ten years of experience in distance learning, leads us recommend the following three study habits that will maximize your chances for success in your online class:
Bransford, J. D. et. al. (Eds.) (2000) How People Learn: Brain, Mind, and Experience. Washington, DC: National Research Council.
Chickering, A. W., and Gamson, Z. F. (1987) Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. AAHE Bulletin, 39(7) 3-7.
Gibbs, G. (1999) Planning Your Students’ Learning Activities. In McKeachie, W.J. (Ed.) McKeachie’s Teaching Tips, 10th Ed. pp. 20-33. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Palloff, R. M. and Pratt, K. (2001) Lessons from the Cyberspace Classroom: The Realities of Online Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Swan, K. et al (2000) Course Design Factors Influencing the Success of Online Learning. Proceedings, WebNet 2000 World Conference on the WWW and Internet. San Antonio TX, October 30-November 4.
This preliminary chapter is meant to prepare registered Penn State students for success in one of the online classes in which this text, Nature of Geographic Information, is assigned. It should also be informative for prospective students considering future enrollment at Penn State (or in online programs offered by other institutions, for that matter).
The Learning Environments section described the two learning environments we use to deliver our online courses--the content management system called "Drupal" in which we present this text, and the password-protected course management system called "Canvas" in which registered students submit their assignments and receive feedback from instructors.
Sections of this Orientation chapter also outlined roles and responsibilities of students, instructors, and other groups involved in providing this outreach service, and described the assignments that registered students complete to earn academic credit. The chapter described the various modes of communication among registered students and instructors, and recommended three study habits that will maximize students' chances of having a satisfying educational experience.
Registered students should now review the Orientation checklist to make sure that they have completed all assigned tasks.
Click the Chapter 1 link in the Contents menu to the right.
Links
[1] http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/degrees-and-certificates/geographic-information-systems-gis-certificate/overview
[2] http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/degrees-and-certificates/geographic-information-systems-gis-masters/overview
[3] http://worldcampus.psu.edu
[4] https://psu.instructure.com/
[5] http://gis.e-education.psu.edu
[6] https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-2036
[7] https://www.work.psu.edu/
[8] http://drupal.org/
[9] http://Turnitin.com
[10] http://www.psu.edu/dept/itscss/internet/email.html