WebCT at CSU Chico:
0 to 60 mph in 15 months
In May 1998, Kathy Fernandes assigned a team of staff & students in TLP and IMC to investigate the features and functionality of WebCT version 1.2. Two months later, we began offering training to faculty using our own WebCT Server on campus. Within 14 months, CSU Chico, has achieved the following:
We have two training programs: 1) WebCT 2000 - a 30 to 40 hour intensive training program offered during intersession and summer breaks, and 2) a set of 5 WebCT workshops that last 2 to 3 hours each, offered monthly throughout the fall and spring semesters. These sessions assist faculty in instructional design, train them on "how to use the technology tools in WebCT," and show examples, models and templates that they can use when creating their own WebCT course.
We have trained over 135 Chico faculty to use WebCT tools in their curriculum. We have also trained over 35 community college faculty at Shasta, Yuba, and Butte. Shasta has already asked us for more training sessions during Fall ’99 and we have other community colleges who have expressed interest in contracting with us for training their faculty. Here is a list of customized training agendas customized for community colleges and the CSU Jewish Studies Program:
There are 240 WebCT courses on our server as of August 12, 1999. These courses are all in various states. Many are under development, many are being used to supplement on-campus courses, some are used for training and some are being developed into fully-online courses.
Three fully-online courses were offered in Spring 1999 using WebCT:
CSU Chico UnderGraduate Programs
We collaborated and trained CSU Sacramento faculty and CSU Chico
BSS faculty in using WebCT last summer to assist them in creating
courses for a BA in Liberal Studies.
GRANT SUPPORTED
We trained 6 faculty to use WebCT to build courses for the
CSU Jewish
Studies program this summer.
GRANT SUPPORTED
As of August 16, 1999, Nursing was awarded a grant "Rural
California RN to BSN Distance Education Project." TLP has
worked with several Nursing faculty individually in using WebCT for
their courses. These courses give RNs in rural locations a chance to
get their BS in Nursing. We look forward to working with them
to implement their grant.
GRANT SUPPORTED
Thanks to the LPP project by Lin-Yi Maslin, we now have several
faculty in education and in natural sciences using WebCT to offer
their students who are teachers throughout Northern Calif. an
MS in
Interdisciplinary Studies in Science Teaching.
STATE SUPPORTED
We have begun the development of 3 courses for the MA
in Psychology for Human Resource Personnel. Dave Bauer
initiated this project with his LPP.
SELF-SUPPORTED
CSUSAT Courses & Integration of Videostreaming
In addition to the academic programs listed above, TLP has begun working closely with faculty teaching CSUSAT courses to integrate WebCT into their curriculum. This includes the addition of having links to the faculty’s lectures via videostreaming technology.
Here is the progression of courses being supplemented by WebCT for CSUSAT courses:
In July 1998, we offered the first videoconference for CATS (CSU Academic Technology Staff) and we presented WebCT and its capabilities. We will be hosting another CATS video-conference on WebCT in September 1999.
We have received a TIGERS grant from the CSU CDL to work with 3 other campuses to create a WebCT training course for CSU academic technology staff to use while training the faculty and staff on their own campus. This will include the "how to use WebCT" and "how to do instructional design with WebCT." This project will be presented at the next CATS Conference and will be placed in MERLOT for anyone on the Internet to gain access.
In addition to training, TLP has supported all these projects by answering questions over the phone and consulting faculty in our lab, offering TILT sessions, and creating a WebCT web site and newsgroup for discussion. TLP has collaborated with STCP to offer WebCT workshops for students both in-class if faculty request it and out of class. Recently TLP also enlisted the help of IMC to create appealing banners for our WebCT courses.
The following list represents the WebCT presentations we have done so far (not including those already mentioned above):
Overall, TLP staff have been very productive and very successful in implementing WebCT campus-wide in a short period of time. We are confident that we have not hit the peak yet based on the trends and opportunities we see coming. We remain poised to leverage what we have learned and know so far, and are prepared to support the next wave coming which we know will include more multimedia (audio, video, animation, and live "conferencing" over the Internet).