The project consisted of incorporation of two manufacturing courses into Desire2Learn format, Instructional Management System that facilitates and accelerates communication between Professor and Students and significantly reduces a paperwork. Both courses were blended because they required physical presence of students during Lab activities that
involved writing a program in RSLLogix500 programming language and testing it in the presence of the instructor. Online part of the course helps students to self-assess their knowledge, guarantees better preparation for quizzes and
quick support from instructor and other students in case of learning challenges by means of participation in Discussion Forums or emailing or chatting with Professor within scheduled hours.
2. 1
SUMMARY
The project consisted of incorporation of two manufacturing courses MFG 135
and MFG 240 into Desire2Learn format, Instructional Management System
that facilitates and accelerates communication between Professor and
Students and significantly reduces a paperwork. Both courses are blended
because require physical presence of students during Lab activities that
involve writing a program in RSLLogix500 programming language and testing
it in the presence of the instructor. Online part of the course helps students to
self-assess their knowledge, guarantee better preparation for the quizzes and
quick support from instructor and other students in case of learning problems
by means of participation in Discussion Forums or emailing or chatting with
Professor in certain hours.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
D2L MFG 135 and 240 Course Websites contain general course
information, the Syllabus, Safety Policy, PowerPoint Presentations and Review
Questions for every chapter of the textbooks, Lab Assignments, Quizzes,
Surveys, Dropbox Folders, Attendance sheets and Grades. All communication
is planned to be conducted through email within D2L. It is strongly
recommended that the student check email as often as possible.
DELIVERABLES
#1: D2L MFG 240 website in a master shell
To keep developing process outside the view of students, the website was
developed first in a master shell, The basis of the website were Word
Documents, PowerPoint Presentations and videos on CD provided by David
Geller, the instructor of MFG 240. MFG240-050 Syllabus, review questions of
each chapter of book, lab descriptions and quizzes were Word documents in
MS Word 2003 format and had to be converted into MS Word 2013 format to
be visible by the Desire2Learn Inline Viewer and into .pdf format to be opened
in Photoshop for accessing the images. Images were extracted from Word
documents and optimized for web pages or newly designed.
All PowerPoint Presentations for each chapter of the textbook were converted
from MS Office 2003 format into MS Office 2013 and .pdf formats and
uploaded to D2L. Then there were linked to the relevant week of the course.
The video from Instructorâs CD was uploaded to YouTube, edited with adding a
sound track, and embedded into Program Home Page.
3. 2
New HTML pages were done for Course Homepage, Overview, Syllabus,
Safety Policy, and 10 Labs using D2L HTML Editor.
As far as Labs or some of the Lab review questions asked for submitting
drawings or written programs in RSL Logix500, Dropbox Folders were created
to upload zip or .pdf files using D2L Dropbox Tool. All the uploaded labs were
graded automatically on the basis of the grading scheme.
Figure 1. Dropboxes
4. 3
The Question Library for quizzes, surveys, and self-assessment was created
using D2L Quizzes/Exams Tool.
It contained review questions to each chapter of the textbook, survey and
quizzes questions. The questions were of multiple choice, true/false, fill-in-the-
blank, multi-select, long and short answers. There were created new images
for some questions, too.
Figure 2. Example of Review Questions for Chapter 3
5. 4
Figure 3. Example of Quiz Questions
As a part of the course, an attendance scheme was implemented using D2L
Attendance Tool.
Figure 4. Attendance
6. 5
The most challenging part was implementing a Grade Book that was tied to
Dropbox and Quizzes so that a grade entered in one of these tools was
automatically updated in the grade book. Questions items from the Quizzes
were set to grade the items automatically and then updated the grade book.
Figure 6. Managing Grades
Figure 7. Final Grade
7. 6
Finally, the Glossary was added to the site to provide students with terms and
acronyms frequently used in curriculum using D2L Glossary Tool and HTML
Editor. All the terms were linked then to Content Topic.
Figure 8. Glossary
The default page for contents when you go to the Program website is the
Overview page.
8. 7
Figure 9. Overview Page
#2: MFG 240 D2L website in a production shell
Before Fall 2013 Semester started, the Instructor requested a production shell
for MFG 240 using the online form:
http://www.oakton.edu/facstaff/entrenous/it/d2l/. Then Oakton Banner set it up and
populated it with students and teachers. After that, the existing course
materials in the master shell had been migrated to the production shell (the
course looks the same as in the master shell. To view it, it is necessary to use
Instructor's Login and password).
#3: Test of MFG 240 D2L website in a production shell
A sample student account was created to test how the website worked for
students from the point of view taking quizzes, uploading and downloading
course materials and grading.
10. 9
#4: PowerPoint Presentation How to Communicate with Students about
Using D2L
To introduce a D2L website to students, two-slide PowerPoint Presentation
was created.
#5: D2L MFG 135 in a master shell
To develop D2L MFG 135 Website was used the same approach as for MFG
240. Below you can see some of the screenshots.
Figure 12. MFG 135 Homepage