2/12/2016
OER Fellowship
First assignment
Looking at the site: Ancient Medicine: The Classical Roots of the Medical Humanities
General Impressions
The first thing I notice are the beautiful visuals. Clearly there are advantages over Blackboard for customizing the site. The āGalleryā menu has more great pics, and not all from the āClassicalā Greco-Roman period but Medieval, Renaissance, Egyptian, Indian, Eastern, etc. Images are sourced and link to their original site.
- Nice folders with podcasts, videos and other multimedia.
- āAttributionsā tab seems to have carefully sourced/cited materials
- āStudent Projectsā tab is empty, maybe because they are at the beginning of the semester.
- āContact and discussā has nice profiles and a link to Blackboard discussion board.
- Under āTopics and Readingsā one of the links under āUnitsā link to Google Books (in Public Domain?). Another linked to firewalled Library portals where Iām prompted to enter CUNY password.
Where can I find…? Course readings? Homework assignments? Due dates? Class requirements?
I couldnāt find this stuff, and if it was my course I would have made it front and center. Especially a link to the syllabus with the above, as well as instructions on āHow to use this site.ā Perhaps there is also a Blackboard site with this information?
Using OER Evaluation Criteria
Content: Very rich content, especially the photos and multimedia
Comprehensiveness: Since I couldnāt find the syllabus itās hard to do a cross-comparison
Attribution: Seems well sourced and cited, but I didnāt check each link
Organization: The navigation tabs are well done, but not knowing the structure of the class itās hard to say how the content supports the assignments, etc.
Accessibility: Some links took me to firewalls (the College library)
Navigation: There was a dead link on one video, but all of the photos looked to be of high quality, good resolution, formatting, etc.
Modularity: Because the Topics and Readings were divided into āUnitsā it makes for easy compartmentalization and re-combination of the subtopics
Cultural Relevance: I like how the course wasnāt exclusively āclassicalā in the Greco-Roman sense, but acknowledge the rich traditions in Medicine from India, China, etc. Nice course!
1. Content & Comprehensiveness: an extensive amount of contents in a variety of forms seem to be covered on the website.
2. Attribution: course contents are well cited except a few items. I was just wondering it is suggested to cite sources in APA format.
3. Organization: I struggled a bit at first when navigating the website. It was not easy for me to figure out what was what at the beginning because the way contents were organized, the size of menus, the font type/size, and the background color. I tried to find the course syllabus first when I was directed to the site but couldn’t locate it easily. After navigating on the site for a while, Iāve found that the syllabus was located in a submenu called Course Document. It would enhance usability of the site if the link to the syllabus was placed on the front page.
5. Accessibility: I access the site with computers as well as mobile devices. Interestingly, Iāve personally found that the website was easier to understand when using mobile devices. Contents don’t seem to be clustered in an organized manner when I access the site via computer.
6. Navigation: some video and podcast links are dead.
7. Modularity: fairly satisfied. Contents are well organized under sub-categories.
Room for enhancement: Iāve learned that usability of the site should be more highlighted ā not only the visual attractiveness of the website but also ease of use. For instance, using the discussion board would be considered somewhat challenging to students ā it would be great if the site could integrate the feature so website visitors could view and participate discussion. And the width and the depth of contents may need to be adjusted depending on the goal of the site.
Ellen, thanks for pointing out where the syllabus is.
Speaking of accessibility, I find that this discussion board is strangely located on the site. Not sure I started the thread in the right place. -DL
I have had positive results with the Bb discussion board. Students actually use it in my classes. The only thing that may not be too obvious is that you need to hit the “subscribe” button in order to get email notifications of new posts in the forum.