FAQs about How to Use
the Course to Match Your Ways of Learning and Your Goals
Click on
the question category (TEXTBOOK) or the question itself. If you have additional
questions, just ask and I will add them here.
Do
I really need the textbook???
How
can I find all the essay topics I have to answer for each Unit essay exam?
How
can I find every possible objective question I have to answer for each Unit
objective exam?
What
is the best way to prepare for the exams?
What
are the three versions of the quizzes for?
What
should Blackboard do after you take a Check Your Knowledge quiz?
Why
shouldn’t you study the results from a Check Your Knowledge quiz?
How
does the extra credit work with quizzes?
Why
the other versions of the quiz are only 10 minutes?
CONTENT
AND VIDEOS & ASSIGNMENTS
How do I use Blackboard’s Assignment tool for ANY
assignment?
How do I figure out how to do the video
assignment for this course?
What’s the purpose of looking at the videos and
the report I fill out?
Why
can’t I see the Unit Exams?
Why
can’t I see the Unit 1 Essay Exam? I know I did the Practice Essay (History
Changes Essay)?
I
click on a link but nothing happens?
I
click on a video but it asks for a password or nothing happens?
WHAT
ARE THE POSSIBLE EXTRA CREDITS?
What
are the possible extra credits for quizzes and the additional benefits beyond
the extra points?
The
answer to this is yes. You can buy older editions of this textbook or rent or
use it at your local library, but you need the textbook. You use it as your source of facts when you write; I use it
when I grade your evidence.
Edward Ayers, Lewis Gould, David
Oshinsky, and Jean Soderlund. American
Passages: A History of the United States. 4th edition. The ISBN
for the current 4th edition in paperback is ISBN: 9780547166469.
If you need tips on buying or
borrowing a cheap book, click here. You can use
many of the older books as long as they have 32 chapters.
Caution: You cannot use
the BRIEF, 4th edition
which has 2 fewer chapters than the
32 chapters in the other 4th editions and all prior editions of this
book.
Content
is in Learning Modules (on the left menu). You have:
·
Getting
Started
·
Unit
1
·
Unit
2
·
Unit
3
·
Final
Exam
Each
Unit is a major time
period that reveal shifts in our history. To make the work manageable, I have
divided each Unit into 3 smaller time periods, or Parts. For example, Unit 1 is
divided into Part A, Part B, and Part C, each with its own major theme and its
own quiz.
As with most things in this course, you can reach most
things in two ways so you choose the method that works best for you. With
essays, you can find the possible topics:
·
At
the top section of the webpage for each Unit (a link called Everything You Need
for This Unit)
·
Essay
Topics (from the left-hand menu)
In
the webpage for each Unit, you find printable versions of the "check your
knowledge" quizzes. This provides you a fast place to record stuff—like
the answers or what you missed or where you read so you got it straight. It
also provides
The
"check your knowledge" quizzes at Quizzes & Exams
·
Reveal EVERY fact you have to know for
the objective exam.
·
Tell you what you don't know and do
know. If you miss something, go read that content in our textbook AND no other
source.
For objective exams, use the Check Your Knowledge quizzes to test your current
knowledge. Read what you do not know. Memorization does not work. There are
also practice versions of the same quizzes if you find that helps you.
For essay exams, use the link at the top of each Unit webpage (at the top
of the unit). It lists all the possible questions so you know what to read. If
you can’t find information, you can email me and I will add to the list some
tips that everyone can see.
For
more information, click on the Essays
& Evidence FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions).
For general success, use these resources:
·
In
the course--the Unit webpage, including things to help you self-test in
history.
·
In the
discussion for the Units—ask for the help you need.
·
With
your prof—if you post asking for help and no student responds in a few days,
then I can offer content and make it visible to everyone.
There are three versions of each quiz:
1.
Check
Your Knowledge quizzes – Measures your current knowledge so you know what you
need to read (.01 point extra credit per question in the quiz)
Never prepare for these. You are testing your own CURRENT
knowledge so you know your strengths and weaknesses.
Requires the
password onetimeonly
2.
PRACTICE
ONLY quizzes – Lets you practice as much as you want (no
points, but unlimited retakes).
3. The real 10-point quiz
Prepare for these by reading carefully everything you missed
in the check your knowledge version. If needed, ask questions. Do NOT memorize
what you do not understand.
Requires the
password onetimeonly
When you start out, all you see is the Check Your Knowledge
quiz.
1.
You click the Check Your Knowledge
quiz.
Example: you take Quiz A_ec Check Your Knowledge.
2.
Blackboard automatically displays its
Practice quiz and its real one
Example: you see both
- Quiz A - PRACTICE ONLY (no points, but unlimited retakes)
- Quiz A (10 points, onetime only)
You do not want to copy the results of a Check your knowledge
quiz and study them because you see only the correct answer and the answer you
chose.
To
learn the content enough that you can answer an essay question (not just
memorize meaningless facts), you must see all parts of the question and—if you
missed a question or just had a lucky guess—then go read the content for any
question you missed.
To make it easy for you to see all parts of the question, to record what you
missed, and to help you find content in the textbook or resources, I provide a
copy of Quiz A with tips and a copy of Quiz A that is easy to print.
1.
Let’s say you take Quiz A_ec – Check Your Knowledge a few days before the due
date for the extra credit. Let’s pretend you got about ½ of them right.
2.
You started reading everything you missed and you record those page numbers on
your printable version of Quiz A that you got from the Unit 1 webpage. You
check the Unit 1 Ask and Answer discussion topic and post when you can’t find
the section of the book to use.
3.
You periodically take the PRACTICE ONLY version of Quiz A to check on how well
your brain is holding this new information.
4.
On the date in the Course Schedule for the extra credit, you think you are
ready. You take Quiz A—the one you can only take 1 time. You make 9 (Yes!).
5.
The next day, I go enter 2 points in the A_ec block at My Grades.
In
other words, I reward you guys for doing things that help you succeed.
For
the check your knowledge quizzes, you WANT to do quickly without looking up
anything. You want to know what your brain thinks is true before you
read. If I give a longer time, students will start looking up stuff or pondering
the answer to try to figure it out instead of measuring what is in their brains
right now.
I
have some students doing this step to measure themselves:
1.
There are links to all the questions in each quiz in the Unit 1 webpage at the
top of the Learning Module. You can print those out if you don’t want to read
online.
2.
Take a sheet of notebook paper and write a number for each question.
3.
Make a quick decision about what you think is the right answer and write
the letter for your answer by the number.
4.
Go type those decisions into the Check Your Knowledge Quiz.
5.
Hit submit and see the results. Then record the answer and what you missed and
then start reading what you did not know.
As
for the regular quizzes, there are only 10 questions at 1 minute a question.
When I first began working here, the departmental policy was 1 minute per
question. That has been more time than people needed for the objective exams
from what I have seen for years.
On
the menu on the left, there is a link to On Demand Tutorials or to Blackboard
Help. Blackboard provides videos that show you how you must use their tool.
First notice these things at top of
the Videos & Assignments (on the left menu)
·
How
to Do the Unit Videos –This is the same thing as the file you download from the
assignment tool, complete, and then upload..
Lets you see the instructions in the file you complete for the assignment.
Shows an example of what you record for Step 2.
·
Searchable
List of Dallas Telelearning Videos for US History 1302
Click on the link to decide which videos you want to use. Instructions and tips
for how to find the videos you want are at the top of the webpage.
·
If
You Have a Problem: How to Click to See a Video
If you have a problem in viewing these videos, tells you how to click on these
videos so you can display them.
Below that you see the file you
download and complete. You also see all of the videos for this time period.
The purpose of this assignment is to
help you see change over time period covered by the Unit. The purpose is
·
not
to summarize each video
·
not
to write a lot of words
To quote the syllabus:
|
You
choose three videos, one from each Part of the Unit, to see how history changes on an issue that matters to you.
Examples: what happened to African Americans, big business, factory workers,
farmers, immigrants, ranchers, technology, women, and so on. |
Before
you write your answers, you need to choose your probable videos. You do that by
thinking about what you want to see (such as what happened to workers) and then
using the Searchable List.
The
Searchable List shows you all of the videos that the Dallas Telelearning group
created (and the Virtual College of Texas lets us use). It also tells you how
to search and bring up a Find box if you do not already know.
Tip:
depending on the browser, the Find box may be at the top, bottom, or perhaps
other places.
Once
you find a video that you want to look at, be sure to copy and paste somewhere:
·
The
folder name – The bold title above a list (The videos are grouped by folders
with those names.)
·
The
video name – The name in the left column of the list
You must choose:
·
1
video from about the 1st of the time period
·
1
video from about in the middle
·
1
video from the end of the time period
Go
look at the 3 videos. You may find one of them is not what you need; then
choose another.
I'm
not going to zap people for matching the chapter numbers for each Part--because
the parts frequently cover more than one chapter. I just want you to SEE real
people at about the beginning, middle, and end of the time period covered by
the Unit. I let you chose the issue.
Why
would I do this? Students frequently think that their own lives reveal the
past.
·
Yes, in such basics as survival and
love of children, our lives do reveal the past.
·
But, our lives are not the same as
those in the past and you need to SEE them to catch on. One reason OUR lives
are different from THEIRS is because they fought for things to be different in
the nation for their sakes, their kids' sake, and—as it turned out—OURs.
This Blackboard does not display anything unless students can
take it right now. The Unit 1 exam (both essays and objective) are sitting
there, but you can't see them until the hour you can take them.
To help you know what exams will be at Quizzes & Exams, you
can see a block of information right above each Unit (and other things). The
block of information tells all possible quizzes and when the exam becomes
available.
This sounds like a Blackboard issue but it is not so I’ve
placed this question in several FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions).
The course includes a Practice Essay so that students find
out the typical requirements for a factual essay without getting their grade
average (or their futures) messed up:
1.
You prepare and do the Practice Essay.
2.
Your instructor gives you feedback on
that essay and tells you the essay grade for the Practice Essay AND for any
future essays if you do the work in same way.
3.
You follow the instructions in that
feedback and what happens next depends on what you did:
·
If you found the problems the
instructor pointed out, she replies back saying she will enter the points for
the essay itself AND the extra credit.
The points for the extra credit cause Blackboard to display the Unit 1 essays
to you.
·
If you did not, she may do several
possible things such as:
- Write a response and require you to read it and reply that you read it
- Ask for a phone conference as the fastest way to deal with a complex issue (I
am also willing to meet with you face to face.)
LINKS TO CONTENT
Some
links open a webpage in a new window, so first be sure that all of your pop up
blockers are off. Sometimes one may be working in the background, so you may
want to try holding down the ctrl key when clicking on the lesson link.
Sometimes
there is a lag time between clicking on the link and the page loading
(depending on your connection speed).
In
spring this year, the management group for the videos (Dallas TeleLearning)
sent out an email saying they had changed the interface. When I tried it this
morning, I initially had a prompt that required a password--which I cannot give
you. I began trying other browsers and, in general, this method has worked:
1.
Place your cursor over the video link
2.
Click the right mouse button
3.
On the menu displayed, click Open in New Window so the video is in a separate
window.
4.
Follow the prompts from there. (Example: click the > arrow to start it.)
This
tip may not work on an older machine or Internet browser. (If you have
problems, then please tell me so I can try to research an answer.)
Here is what the syllabus says about
extra points for quizzes.
|
By taking the Check Your Knowledge
quiz in Blackboard, you earn a few points. (At .01 per question and
with a maximum of 40 questions that is less than .4 for each quiz.) |
The additional benefits from how
you are working are that you also see:
|
|
By taking the Check Your Knowledge
quiz by the date in the Course Schedule and by making 9 points or
higher on the quiz, you earn 2 extra credit points. |
The additional benefits are that
you also:
|
|
By completing the
instructions for the 10-point Practice Essay, you can earn 10 points extra
credit. |
The additional
benefits are that:
|
|
By participating in the Ask and Answer topics in the
Discussion Board, for each Unit, you earn up to 6 points for each Unit. |
The additional benefits are that you also:
|
|
With
thanks to WCJC’s Director of Distance Education, Professor Michele
Betancourt, for her permission to use her Getting Started documents
(including her exact words) in the Getting Started sections of our WCJC
courses. |
|
Copyright C. J.
Bibus, Ed.D. 2003-2013 |
|
WCJC Department: |
History – Dr. Bibus |
|
Contact Information: |
281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu
|
|
Last Updated: |
2013 |
|
WCJC Home: |