Software for Online Activities

Discussion in 'Online & DL Teaching' started by mattbrent, Jan 27, 2013.

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  1. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    Hello, folks!

    I was wondering if anyone had any experience actually creating online activities for their online courses using various software. In the history courses we teach, we use the publisher's online activities. For McGraw-Hill we use Connect, and for Cengage we use Aplia. Each publisher provides interactive activities that students can complete for grades.

    Connect is actually very nice. Aplia is so so. Both of them come bundled with the course textbook, and unfortunately increase the price on the student's end, especially once the bookstore jacks up the price. The good thing about these activities is that they save us from having to create the activities ourselves, and they match up to the books. (For the most part... Aplia is a little out there.)

    My question for the fabulous folks here is in regards to the software that could be used to make these interactive activities. I don't know if they use flash or what, but there's all kinds of matching, map labeling, etc. The Virginia Community College System has a license for something called SoftChalk (well, version 4 is the last one the VCCS has licensed because apparently no one uses it...) and I was wondering if anyone had experience with that? If so, what are your thoughts?

    For everyone else, if you know of any software out there to create such activities, would you please share any information you have on it and what your experiences have been with it? While it would take a bit of time to create our own activities, it would help us to eventually keep the cost of attendance down. In the long run, it'd be nice to move towards open source textbooks, but many of them do not include anything that compares to the resources that come from big name publishers, and thus we'd have to make our own.

    Thanks!
    Matt
     
  2. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    Sorry folks! I suppose I should add that we use Blackboard Learn as our LMS. I don't know if that would make a difference or not.

    Thanks,
    Matt
     
  3. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    Seriously? No one has suggestions? :frown:

    I don't know if I need to create a scorm file or what. I'm just looking to see if there are ways to create assignments that can be automatically graded other than multiple choice type quizzes. I'm imagining something like a chart where each box of the chart has a drop down list and the student has to choose a correct answer from the list to complete the chart. Something like that...

    Any thoughts?

    -Matt
     

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