Out of the Office Policy

John e-mailed out a memo to the DE Directors this afternoon indicating that all absences should be

1. approved by your supervisor
2. reported to those who work under you

This is not much different from the existing IDS Leave Policy, but John does reiterate that team members should notify their staff of any unscheduled absence out of common courtesy.

Even if you don't have staff who report directly to you, the IDS Leave Policy asks that you inform "all team members who may be affected by your absence" if you're not going to be in as scheduled.

For my own part, I want to remind all IDS & DC team members that my weekly schedule, which does include frequent meetings and events both on- and off-campus, is nearly always up-to-date and shared with all of you in the Groupwise calendar. While it is not feasible for me to notify everyone each time I leave the office, you can discover my whereabouts by looking at my Groupwise appointments if you need me. If my Groupwise calendar is not accessible to you, or you don't know how to view my schedule in Groupwise, please let me know.

Additionally, you can count on me letting Travis and Janel know if I ever close up for the day unexpectedly.

Jared and Marc Submit Conference Proposal on Cheatability

As a complement to John Krutsch's How to Cheat Online presentation, Marc and I have planned out a cheatability rubric, which attempts to measure the cheatability of an online course based on it's assessments and other factors. Here's the proposal:

Nobody wants students cheating in their online class, yet an estimated 75% of students have admitted to cheating during their college career, and according to some studies online assessment makes cheating easier. What is your course's "cheatability factor"? Presenters will discuss their rubric for determining cheatability in an online course with special attention to Blackboard Vista 4. Their rubric considers technical, philosophical, and environmental factors that may increase or decrease the cheatability of online courses from design to delivery. Participants will weigh in on the relative value of "direct assault" vs. "hearts and minds" pedagogical approaches to prevent cheating.

Presentation Objectives

1. Inform participants of the extent to which cheating-related problems exist in online education
2. Present a rubric used to measure the "cheatability" of online course
3. Discuss practices and strategies to avoid or minimize the impact of cheating

We've just submitted this to the Southwest Vista User's Group, which is coming this Spring right here in Utah, and I've thought of sending this on to Distance Teaching & Learning in Madison, Wisconsin before the Jan 15th deadline.

XO Laptops Are In

We received a few XO Laptops today as part of the Give One, Get One initiative through the One Laptop Per Child organization. Marc, Ken, and I popped them open and began fiddling around with the capabilities. Our first impression was that these are clearly made to limit adult usage (tiny keyboard, tiny screen), and to inhibit market value. But the UI is very straight-forward, and after twenty minutes I think we were all literate in the basic menus and functionalities.

I'm sure I'll add more later, but wanted to make a quick, enthusiastic, thumbs-up and provide a handful of photos of the XOs on flickr.