Did you use your computer, tablet, or smartphone to electronically subscribe to the Google calendar that was made specifically for this class, which included important class dates, such as MindTap deadlines, LCC deadlines, video quiz and exam deadlines?

NOTE: I am talking about officially subscribing to the Google calendar, which provides you with automatic updates and reminders.  This is not the same as just clicking the calendar link in Moodle, which you have to actively and repetitively do on your own initiative.

Over what kind of internet access did you regularly interact with this Moodle class?

When you accessed Moodle/MindTap for this class, from where did you do it most often?

Did you regularly and reliably get email to your @my.lanecc.edu email address from Moodle when the instructor made announcements?

Did you use Moodle messaging to contact the instructor during the term?

Because you were required to watch some online videos, if you were to advise future students taking this class, how important would you say it is to have HIGH SPEED internet access where they live and study?

On average how many times a week did you login to your course?

Including this 4 credit course, how many total course credits did you take at LCC this term?

Rate the following:

Rate the following:

Consider the relevance of this class to your degree program and/or life in general, overall quality of product and delivery, value for your tuition dollar, etc. NOTE: Use N/A if you have not taken any other courses at LCC or elsewhere.

Rate the "worth or value" that each of the following parts of this course was for you.

Students were required to use the Cengage MindTap platform.  It allowed students to work at their own pace during the week.  Being an online class, most required materials were included in MindTap, including the textbook.  MindTap had its own gradebook, which we did not use, but it certainly provided students with immediate feedback.  All together, the MindTap activities counted for a very substantial portion (40%) of your overall grade in the class.

Please rate the following:

Answer this question according to the readability and value of the WRITTEN chapters in the textbook.  How do you respond to this statement?

The assigned textbook readings were a very important requirement for success in this class.

I am fully aware of the high cost of textbooks.  On the other hand, a good quality product is worth paying for.

I plan to require my future online students to purchase and use MindTap.  Please use this space to provide me with any relevant feedback on your MindTap experience, including positives and negatives, general or specific.  I'd appreciate your honesty.

How satisfied were you with the quality/readability of the textbook?  How satisfied were you with the included information? (too much detail, not enough coverage, etc.?)

Other areas of feedback could include ease of use (online), value for the ~$95 price you paid, whether you liked reading a fully online textbook, how you were able to highlight the text and/or take notes, readability, whether or not you used the "read it out loud to me" option, or any other included features?

Do you have anything else to say about the textbook? (its positives, negatives, biases, organization, layout, length, etc?)

Each week I provided numerous video clips of varying lengths for students to watch.  I personally edited each clip from a longer, full-length documentary that I watched in preparation for this class.  I did this with the expressed purpose of helping students understand and focus on the most important historical events being presented in each chapter of the textbook.  Overall, what role did these clips play in your understanding of the course materials?

Do you have any other feedback for me concerning the use and requirement of these video clips?

• Did you need me to provide more textual or descriptive background for each clip?
• Was it helpful that you were able to pause and/or rewatch these online clips?
• Were you able to take notes, see how the clip related to the textbook, and easily determine the main purpose or message presented in each clip?
• After watching each clip, did you come away clearly understanding the reason why it was assigned?

I am interested in your input on the use of Zoom, the online video conferencing tool, which was NOT required for this class.  As I see it, there is a wide range of uses for this tool, from no use, to minimal, to occasional, to frequent, AND from optional to required.

LOW USE - I currently use Zoom as a way for my online students to meet online for virtual office hours, instead of having to come to my office on campus.  I continued offering that option this term and enjoyed the conversations with students who utilized the opportunity.

MEDIUM USE - I have spoken to some of my social science department colleagues at Lane who have used Zoom more frequently, at least once a week, for optional gatherings of students to meet and discuss the subject matter.

HIGH USE - On the far end of the Zoom spectrum, I have also spoken with some of my former students who are now at the University of Oregon and Oregon State University.  They had mandatory Zoom meetings, two to three times each week, on specific (but regular) days and times throughout the entire term.  

Which of the following scenarios would you most likely prefer?

You can use this space to explain your answer in a bit more detail than the choices listed above.  If you did have a class where an instructor used Zoom in a way other than I did, feel free to share how that either worked or did not work for you.  In short, provide any Zoom-related information here that might help me to determine how to better use it to serve future students.

Each week I witnessed a number of students who would login to Moodle/MindTap on the weekend only and complete all of the exercises and the chapter test in a single day.  In my professional opinion, this is a poor way to study history chapters, which should be accessed throughout the week.  One idea I can implement to enforce this preferred policy would be to include several due dates (for the Check Your Understanding activities) throughout the week.  I could require Tuesday, Thursday deadlines, or maybe just Wednesday deadlines, saving the Sunday deadlines for the Chapter Tests.

For some students, more deadlines would force them to participate more during the week and procrastinate less.  For others, due to family, work, or other obligations, midweek deadlines might impose true obstacles.  Please use this space to explain your support or opposition to the proposal to add midweek deadlines to this course.

The layout of the Moodle course home page was clear and the organization of the tasks helped me to complete the course requirements by the assigned deadlines.

Moodle Website Organization

In Moodle, I used a "folder view" style of class which treated each week as its own collapsible and expandable folder.  Within each week, your tasks were organized into two categories: #1 reading/viewing and, #2 assignments to "turn in".  In this course, you were provided with links that took you "OUT" of Moodle to class materials located in Google Docs and to the Achieve website (with its own login).  These external links also took you to videos located on the LCC Library streaming server and required a separate login.  Finally, I provided students with a course deadline calendar that was both subscribable and available as a pop-up webpage (with specific dates and times), to go along with the more generic weekly "calendars" that only included "due Sunday".

In short, I'd like to know how well (or not) this course organization, and linking to resources "outside" of Moodle worked for you.  Have you taken another course where the instructor has done something different that you preferred?  Was this course organized better/clearer than others you may have taken?  Do you have any comments, complaints, or recommendations for improvements?

The layout of the MindTap course website was clear and easy to navigate, enabling me to find and complete the assignments without technical difficulties or confusion.

Do you have or regularly use any of the following?

Is there any other type of  smartphone app or web-based tool or service that you know of or have used in another class (OTHER than the shared Google Doc we used for the midterm and final study guides) that:

LCC has been encouraging instructors to adopt Open Educational Resources (OER) as a way to help students by reducing or eventually eliminating the need for costly textbooks. Basically, "free" materials found on the web would be used as a replacement.

This would involve many changes in the way instructors and students interact with class materials, and like every decision, this would include both positives and negatives:

• Would web links, to online-only materials, be a sufficient replacement for your textbooks?
• Do students read their assigned textbooks anyway?
• Materials could come from any number of websites and sources, reputable and academically rigorous, or not.
• The instructor would have to be incredibly organized, keeping reading links in order, which specific pages of that multipage website are required reading, and hoping that the links don't become "dead" links.
• Also, just because an instructor could add a new link at any time, some students may not "get the message" about the new required materials in a timely fashion. In short, think of a textbook with potentially "disappearing" pages and magically reappearing "new" pages.  
• Student would have to do ALL of their reading online, whether on computer screen, or Kindle/iPad, or even a smart phone.
• Some students may want to print out the materials, so access to a printer would be important.  (Do you own a printer?)
• How you would take notes (written/typed/highlighted) on digital webpages?

These are a few of my instructor-based thoughts, but the question to you is simple. What can you tell me about your own readiness or willingness to buy or not to buy textbooks and save money (or not), surf many different websites (or not), read online (or not), print webpages (or not) for a history class such as this one?  Have you ever taken a class that used only free, online materials?  How did that work?  How might it work for this specific class on United States History?

Would you recommend this online course, as you experienced it this term, to other students?

What question or questions did I forget to ask you in this survey?

and/or

What recommendations (other than the "mechanical" Moodle/Google Docs things I asked above) would you suggest in order to improve this online course?