HST 201: ONLINE US History W20 (Escobar)

The textbook was excellent, but the MindTap system is too easy. The final test was legitimately challenging as it asked not only new questions you only had one attempt to answer, but it required a complete knowledge of the topic. All checking your knowledge questions were pointless, as three tries means every person should get 100%. Two tries would be forgiving, but not allow students to pass the quiz without putting in any time nor effort.  

There's was enough information that I learned throughout the term to get the full $80 worth.

 The textbook was packed full of very important information.  I really enjoyed the highlight feature, it made it very easy to go back and see the important information.  Most of the subjects were very well covered in the book, but I found that there were some questions  in the homework that I could not find the answer to in the book and just had to guess on them.  Overall I was very satisfied with the thoroughness of the book.

Too expensive.

 I found it hard to take notes on the textbook because the information was already so compact and condensed that you really couldn’t shorten it without cutting out important information.  I mostly used the highlight feature as my notes which I really liked.  There were times I felt that there were questions that were on the chapter quiz/ test that were not studied and I couldn’t even find the answer after going back and looking through the book. 

The readability was extremely easy, fluid, and transitioned from one topic to another very well. The overall quality of the textbook, in regards to what I actually learned, was good. The only critique I could offer was that in some sections the textbook was vague and over arching. That being said, this course is a survey course so in-depth detail will sometimes be sacrificed for the fluidity and progression of the course. I found the textbook program to be very easy to use and helpful in that it divided information in a manner that made sense to the progression of the timeline for the course. We all know textbook prices are high, but for an online course that only required one textbook and one payment of $80 for access to everything you will need for the course, this course is extremely cost effective. 

I was deeply dissatisfied with MindTap in general. The mobile version was very difficult to use and and of the question activities were not even supported. Frequently it crashed while trying to use it on a mobile device forcing me to exclusively use the website from a laptop or desktop computer. I very much disliked the use of MindTap specifically.

The book however was generally very good. The book felt a bit dry but that's pretty standard for a history text of this type. The book did make effort to incorporate more interesting human elements into the history through the context exercises. 

The textbook was great, however, I've gravitated towards interactive books that highlight especially important information. Almost all of my books followed this layout when I attended OSU. It's a lot of reading to sift through in order to find key information. 

It is nice that it is online and is something that you can always have with you, but the phone app does NOT link up any highlights you create to the regular computer accessed version when you go back to find highlighted notes for studying. I feel like it might have been more useful if you were to put the study guide for midterms and the finals onto MindTap through study hub. 

I found MindTap easy to use and navigate.  It was nice to be able to take my book and homework anywhere my laptop went.  My favorite part of MindTap was that your assignments were graded immediately.  

The textbook was fine. The price was fair. Everything was very easy to navigate.

I liked it. Mindtap worked great

I felt the textbooks were a little over priced at $80 for the term. Maybe $50 would be better? If not maybe a lower number than 80 

I liked the book 

The Cengage MindTap program was easy to understand and to work with. I thought it was detailed and time consuming, but got the information across in the same way a textbook would. While $80 is a lot of money, it doesn't seem like it was more expensive than a textbook that an in-person class would require. I was overall happy with the program.

Technology is not something I have had an issue with but I did order the textbook because I like to have a physical copy so I have something to annotate, mark, and easily access those annotations. The textbook had a clear language that was easy to follow if there were words I was unfamiliar with I made sure to research it (if it seemed important/ relevant). The thing I loved most about Cengage was how it justified its answers when they are correct, and provided information when the answers were wrong. This was a great way to reflect on the question and fully grasp what was being said. However, I feel like this also made an issue for the chapter test, I feel as if the Mindtap assignments and the test were not juxtaposed similarly. 

I was very satisfied. Everything was easy to understand and navigate.

I think that the price of the textbook was reasonable for the amount of material that it provided. Overall however, I did not learn well from the way that Mindtap is set up. I thought the amount of reading was fair but the chapter tests were incredibly difficult questions that I didn't feel correlated with the information in the chapters. Even if I had a good understanding of the chapter material, I would often still struggle with the tests. It seemed that a lot of the questions would include answers that were all correct to some degree but you had to choose the one that was "most fitting". This made it very hard to get a good grade on the test even if I understood the reading and checkpoint activities.

I had a easier time after I printed the book so I could highlight and review easier. I didn't like the chapter quizzes, I felt like the wording made it confusing to understand. 

I enjoyed how it was laid out specifically so the chapter was broke down into pieces and then reviews were right after so it was easy to test and remember what I just read by being tested on it right after. 

Good, but was how to take notes/highlight/etc wasn’t super clear.

Mindtap was very easy to learn how to use and very well organized. Obviously wish it could be a little cheaper (broke college student) but overall was a positive experiance.

I found MindTap to be very helpful.  Having the chapters broken down into smaller sections with "check your understanding" after each was helpful.  I liked also that you could stop and start your learning sessions without penalty.  

I usually prefer hardcopy books so I can highlight and bookmark important concepts to reflect on later.  Instead, I used a notebook to do this.  A couple of times I used the "read it out loud to me" but found I did better with remembering when I read it myself.  I found the search feature to be very helpful and used it often.  

The book and MindTap activities was worth the $80 price.

The extra credit were perfectly designed. These assignments should require higher effort for the reward, which is exactly what these provided. I personally wanted to complete at least one but did not have the time. As a result, I was not rewarded with a higher grade. In my personal opinion, the level of effort required of these assignments was perfect, and they were also clearly designed to incorporate different learning methods. I do want to be clear, there was plenty of time to complete the extra credit, but I procrastinate so I did not have time. Anyone that wanted to complete the assignment had weeks to do so and easily could have done the short, but still comprehensive, assignment. 

I did not get a chance to look at the extra credit opportunities. 

 I think for extra credit you should have offered an assignment that students would have easier access to the materials for. It is unfair to expect an entire class of students to fight over a copy of a movie at the public library, or for them to purchase it. All of the cost of this class should be included in the tuition and it is unfair to expect students to have to buy materials for extra credit opportunities. 

With weekly videos and MindTap, the extra credit opportunities afforded were as you stated "extra work", and that was mainly why some students may not have completed them in effort to stay afloat with other assignments and course work as well.

 I didn’t like that the extra credit was so hard to get access to. I had no way to order it therefore was not able to do the one that required the movie no extra cash laying around to purchase it. 

Unfortunately for me, I got sick before the deadline for both extra credit opportunities and did not complete either. As for the value of the extra credit assignments, specifically what they offered for students in terms of grade help, I believe both were well worth doing had I have had the time. As a history major, and having taken a multitude of 400 level history courses at another institution, I personally believe the extra credit opportunities are fine as they are. I don't believe they ask too much of students or are too hard to comprehend. I think the fact that not many students completed them shows how lazy people are when it comes to not wanting to do outside work even if it means boosting their grade. I also know from other college experiences that most students just hate writing papers so this may have affected the rate of completion as well. Going back to being a history major though, writing papers is something other history majors will have to get used to as it makes up a majority of the work load for higher level courses in my experience. As for other options to offer students, maybe offer an additional video quiz for extra credit but limit it to one attempt so students actually have to pay attention more and can't just fish their way to the right answer. Another option could be to attend a school sanctioned event that relates to information presented in the course and then write a reflection piece about what they experienced attending the event. I have written similar papers about attending events for other classes and those papers are sometimes easier for students to sit down and write because they are usually just opinion pieces or reflection pieces about what they enjoyed from the event. 

I thought the extra credit opportunities you offered were great. I decided not to use them as my grade was generally ok and I was busy with work and other classes. Had I a little more time I would have availed myself of the opportunity.

There is already a lot of information to digest and study during this course. While I would have liked to complete the extra credit opportunities, I simply did not have the time. In other classes, I've enjoyed doing activities with others for extra credit. One example is asking someone who isn't taking the class questions in order to gauge the general publics' knowledge about the subject. Then we wrote a short reflection on that interview. 

For those of us who are taking a full course load, to do the extra credit opportunities right before midterms is not ideal as we are too busy worrying and studying about other classes. It escapes the mind when its at a point like that.

I found trying to complete a paper on top of all my other school work to be quite a challenging task. Perhaps filling out a few questions based off the articles/videos would have been a better option.  Then instead of having just two big extra credit assignments, it could be broken down into multiple smaller assignments.  

I was fine with the extra credit provided, I just didn't have the time to complete it.

I probably would have done the extra credit if it weren't for my course load of 18 credits.

I would recommend an extra credit assignment similar to the "Last of the Mohicans" vs French/Indian War history compare and contrast. Except the extra credit assignment could compared the Revolutionary War and the movie "The Patriot" starring Mel Gibson. Students could right about what was accurate, what was not, and what was good about the film.

I thought that the extra credit work was too much for me as I was juggling basketball, 18 credits, and all the homework in each of these classes I found myself not having enough time on my hands to complete them when I really would have liked to in order to help my grade. 

I don't have much feedback here except for the fact that the extra credit assignments that were offered were too time consuming to justify doing when I had so much other coursework to complete. And that's not a slight to the assignments, they seemed interesting and engaging. With other classes, job(s), and life in general, I just didn't have the time to add on an essay to what I already have on my plate, even though I wanted to.

An interactive project could be an engaging extra credit opportunity such as a slide show, a student-directed film, and a film analysis like what was allowed are some options.
It would be nice if those extra credit opportunities were not offered at the same time as we students have midterms and finals, as those are the times we are most loaded with other class works and find little to no time to work on optional projects (no matter how much we want to do them for the benefit).

Possibly powerpoint type?

I appreciated having multiple extra credit opportunities. The only thing I would change about them is how timely they were. I did learn from completing them but the amount of time it took made it very difficult to complete the project on top of the weekly course work and all of my other class work. 

lot of my teacher would do a pre midterm exam that was worth low points so students would feel better taking the real exam. I couldn't believe there was 100 questions on the exam. since I saw that I knew I had no chance at passing. I had no idea what kind of exam was coming my way. 

I would think the only thing I could say was to make it a little bit easier. Since there is already so much work for the class it'd be nice to have the extra credit not feel like a whole extra chapter or weeks worth of work to go with it. 

I thought the extra credit opportunities were fair.

I think being able to retake a quiz/ re due a week of mindtap that you did not do so well on would help out tons.

I found the extra credit opportunities to be intimidating.  I already had a lot of work to complete for other classes as well.  There is quite a bit of reading and video viewing in this class, so finding the time to do another paper/viewing for extra credit was hard.  In other classes extra credit was offered in the form of film reviews, correcting answers missed on quizzes and tests, and of course writing papers on relevant course related topics.  Maybe extra credit could be in the form of discussion in a group forum about what is covered in each week's course?  This would help cement what we are learning and encourage not procrastinating.  

I personally procrastinate, and I was one of I assume many that did all the work in one day. I also learned essentially nothing from the work. That is my fault, not because the information was unaccessible. While it may be inconvenient for some, the purpose of college is to learn and leave a class with more knowledge than with which you arrived. Had it not been for my misunderstanding the amount of time it would take for the first video exam, I would have easily received a mid to high level A in the course without putting in more than an hour a week on the lessons. As is, I will receive a B, unless I do poorly on the final. Making the class more inconvenient may be unpleasant, but the point of college courses is to learn and unfortunately the way that this class was designed it allowed me to put in little to no effort and succeed. If I wanted to learn I absolutely had that chance. I actually enjoyed everything I did read or watch in class, but because it was set up to only have work one day that is all I did. 

The Sunday turn-in time worked best for me because of work.

 I strongly oppose this proposal because everyone has different schedules and to expect people to have time during the week is a little bit unfair. The reason most people are taking online classes is because they have tough schedules and cannot make it into campus. Therefore, allowing them to do the work on their own time is the only fair way to go about running an online class. 

My opposition to the proposal to add midweek deadlines to this course is due to work and other obligations. Having a full course load and working full time makes it more convenient to get all MindTap activities done in one day.

 I very strongly dislike this idea because people who have jobs then have to work their schedule around as I am doing online classes because I have a very busy job schedule because I am paying for college completely on my own. I think it shouldn’t matter as long as students are getting the work done and if they don’t get it done  by Sunday then that’s their problem. 

I personally would not want to see a mid-week deadline added to this course unless it was on a Thursday. For me, I had other in-class courses that I focused on, knowing that I had until Sunday to complete the homework for this course. I think the benefits of taking this course online would be null and void if early or mid-week deadlines are added. The large benefit of an online course is to work through it at your own pace and your own time schedule. I think if you want to make this a more traditional course in terms of due dates and enforcement of deadlines, this course should just be offered in person and removed from the online option. 

For those with flexible schedules this plan sounds great. I know it would help spread out my learning personally. However I do know students who are extremely busy and the more structured deadlines might penalize them. I know there was a week or two where I had to cram the information myself due to unforeseen scheduling conflicts. (would have been better if I could have used a mobile device to use MindTap)

I think if you implemented more deadlines you might have to change some of the other grading structures you have. Possibly accepting late work or offering more and different extra credit opportunities.

It might be beneficial to break up the deadlines so that students can mull over the information more. In my case, I have work almost every day of the week, so multiple deadlines can be harder to keep track of. 

What another professor did in my online biology class was to have all the reading and questions done by Friday, and then the quiz would be posted and due by the end of the day the following Monday. I found that helped a lot as it forced me to go back and study what I didn't remember before the quiz.

I personally do not agree with midweek deadlines.  This term I took a total of 5 classes (18 credits).  It was quite difficult for me to balance my on-campus class midweek deadlines with my other online midweek deadlines.  However, classes that gave me till Sunday to do my work helped reduce my stress.  Since my weekdays were busy, it was nice to have that time during the weekend to work on my other assignments. 

Midweek deadlines would only work if you allowed a couple passes for late work in the event of an extra shift at work, a sick child, etc. I work all week and couldn't get to the work until Saturday at the earliest, a midweek deadline would have been difficult, though not impossible, but I definitely would have missed a couple deadlines because of work.

I do think that would benefit the students but at the end of the day it is that students fault for procrastinating all week.

I can see why this proposal would be needed. I also see that work, family, or other things outside of class can interfere with class work. From experience, I have dealt with difficult and stressful situations that were surely unexpected during start of winter term. For me, I read the textbook sections first during the week before I did the "Check your knowledge" that Sunday they were due. In short, yes I did wished I paid more attention to my work. 

I support this decision because I was one who would procrastinate this classes work until the weekend because Sunday's are my only days off and I tend to do all of my homework that day. If something is due during the week though I will make sure it is completed. 

I completed all of my MindTap assignments in one day each week. Similar to the extra credit assignments, this wasn't due to interest (I understand spacing out studying is more helpful and productive), but to a lack of time. The best way for me to get my assignments done was to block out a day to complete these assignments, and leave the other days for working. I think midweek deadlines would have actually made the class much more difficult for me to balance my schedule.

Many students definitely don't have the luxury of enjoying off days in the week, while set deadlines is a good idea, it is difficult for students like me who are taking 12+ credits, working, and raising a family. I was one of those students who would begin history homework on Friday nights because its how I was able to schedule my week with everything I have going on. 

I think the current deadlines are fine

I think that the Sunday deadline for all work should be kept in place. A college student should be able to be responsible for their own decisions on how they choose to complete their work. Personally, there were some weeks that I didn't have time to complete all of my work until the weekend. If I had been required to meet midweek deadlines, that would have been extremely difficult and added a lot of extra stress on me.

I work full time, go to school full time and have a family to take care of. I never would have been able to other deadlines with all my other classes.

Well for me at least I usually have church things during some night of the week especially Wednesday and a mid week due date would be really hard to complete during the middle of the week. Also I have found personally that when a class has multiple do dates during the week it can get confusing to follow and keep track of espescially if they have other classes on line too. So I think it would be best to keep them all grouped into one day a week. 

Online classes give students more flexibility to make classes work with their schedules.  Midweek deadlines would make this more difficult. 

I think making deadlines more in the week would motivate me more to log in to mindtap besides just at the end of the week when everything is due. Although, Sundays are typically my day off from baseball so having a day to get my work done actually worked out well.

While I agree that weekly accessing the course content is more beneficial, some students have a lot going on that creates real challenges. I like that you allowed for this flexibility by setting the deadline Sunday and provided students with the opportunity to make this class fit into their schedules. 

None that I can think of 

Maybe Google slides for reviews?

Not that I can think of

No.

No I liked the google doc

I have previously studied and learned about historical information through Khan Academy videos uploaded to Youtube. I also know that many documentaries, like "The Biography of America" one you had us watch for the video quizzes, are uploaded on Youtube as well. Maybe there would be other documentaries around that you could implement for another perspective into the same material that we are learning about in the course? 

I unfortunately have not used anything other than Google Classroom that does what MindTap does. 

A class quizlet can be very helpful. 

The study hub option through MindTap. Post the study guides there, so that way it is all in one place.

Unfortunately, I have not used too many apps or tools in my other classes. 

Not really, you have pretty much covered your bases here.

I believe it worked well. I liked the structure that this class had.

It might be helpful if this class continued to use Moodle.

N/A

No

Google Classroom- works like Moodle but is 100 times more easy to understand

no

I am not aware of/have not used any other programs.

more bullet points and slideshow would help

No I think the google doc was great. 

this one worked well for me

Downloading the moodle app is really helpful. It send you reminders 24 hours before anything is due just in case you forget about it.

I don't have a good answer for this one.  I don't use a lot of apps or web-based services.  I thought the class was well developed already.

One of the easiest classes to use I have ever experienced. 

I felt very organized while using google docs and the calendar.

 I strongly liked the organization of the Moodle page, especially the collapsible week windows. It made it easier for me to see what I had completed and what I still needed to do. I have seen some teachers make it so there is a check box next to each assignment that you can check off when you have completed this assignment, and that also helped with seeing what needed to be done and what has already been done.  The Google doc use also helpEd because we were able to save the Google doc into our own account so that we could edit it and use it for future studying. 

Very well organized course that made it easy to follow, thank you.

I liked the organization.  Very easy to navigate and see what you have and haven’t done and View deadlines

I think the way you had things organized within Moodle to be incredibly helpful. The "by the week" approach was super helpful and the fact that you had any outside information linked within each week's module was also a big time saver and helpful to me as a student. As far as the calendar goes, I didn't use it. I have my own planner that I prefer to use which contains all my deadlines for school as well as personal reminders for doctors appointments and other things. 

I thought the auto-linking worked great. It was clear and I never ran into any problems myself.

The course was organized and easy to follow. 

I tried using calendaring in the past, and it just made me more stressed out so I just keep an eye on what I need to do.

I feel like the course was well-organized.  It was nice having that text reminding me when assignments were due along with links to other sources.  

I enjoyed the format. It was simple and easy to navigate, and wasn't too crowded. This was the best online class I've taken thus far.

Once again I liked it. I liked how organized it was which helped me complete my work in an orderly fashion.

The auto linking for the class videos were helpful and the study guides were very useful.

I thought the layout of this online class was very well organized and easy to follow. 

The way you organized the course was very well done and easy to understand. I was very impressed by the readability, explanations for assignments, and clarity you gave.

I think Google Doc's use was efficient and worked, I do not think this method needs improvement. 

I think everything worked well.

I like this method of organization on Moodle. I think it kept all the work clear and concise, and easily distinguishable from week to week.

it was user friendly

I really like how you laid the class out and the style and linking and the format that you have set up for this class. Best format I have had for an online class. 

I felt it was all easy to use and follow.

I believed it was organized very well and was easy to navigate.

I liked that everything I needed was listed under each week.  The links were very easy to use.  Other classes that I have taken have not been so nicely organized and easy to use.  

None

No questions were missed

 In order to improve this online course, I would suggest  reviewing the questions that you have selected for the online tests. There had been times when I was taking a test that I would select an answer that the textbook said to be true, but it marked me wrong on the test because there was another answer that was “more true“ than the one I chose.  Also some of the questions felt like the answers were more of an opinion. Such as, the questions where you could select more than one answer; some of them  used suggestive language that made it hard to answer. 

N/A.

 I think the chapter quiz/test had questions that weren’t studied and the primary source evaluation had multiple answers that were right some were just more right than others and sometimes it was very hard to figure out which one that was 

I think you covered everything that may be helpful for prospective students to know and asked the right questions that you need to know answers to to improve the course before the next time it is offered. Thank you for this course, it was very enjoyable for me and I learned some new things from it. In all seriousness and honesty, you are the most helpful, direct, straightforward, and well organized professor I have had during my time at Lane Community College. I hope you continue to offer this course to prospective history majors and history-interested students. 

None

I might add a question asking "What made this course challenging for you?" in order to gauge where students had the most difficulty. 

The last recommendation I can think of is in reference to the chapter tests. Those tests asked questions that hardly pertained to the actual material. I felt like I hadn't read the chapters when taking those tests because of how different the material was.   

I would do a video quiz every week on the videos that we watched for that week. I have a hard time taking notes while watching videos as I have ADHD and can never remember what was said as they keep talking and it's really hard.

I do not have any other questions or suggestions. 

Maybe have a group forum or discussion project, or just any sort of hands on project to engage learners a bit more? The reading was beneficial, but projects have always helped me learn material more concretely.

Good class! thank you

I would recommend asking if overall the class was interesting and fun.

N/A

It would have helped me to not have the "2 day waiting period" in between video quizzes. Again, I think I understand why you implemented that, it was just easiest for me to complete many of my assignments in a single time period, and finding time later in the work week to retake the quiz was difficult for me. However, I'm happy that you let us retake the quiz at all, so that was nice.

I think the language should not be changed in the test/ exams as it makes it hard to connect, and extra credit would be done by more students if it was given third or fourth week and eighth and ninth week (not midterm and exam week). 

n/a

My main recommendation would be to somehow limit the workload. I think the amount of time expected of students to put into this course exceeds what should be expected for a 4 credit course. The Mindtap requirements were fair but adding the extra several hours worth of video watching/note taking was a lot.

Less homework during the week before finals. I'll be lucky to finish it and study for the final. I don't have much hope for passing this class when you give us very little time to study for important exams. You need to remember we have other finals too. 

No extra questions or comments I have for you. 

More interaction online between students

I think you covered just about everything! Thank you for a good term

I really enjoyed a lot of the videos.  Having them in shorter clips was good.  Anywhere from 10-25 minutes was preferable as not to long to finish and easier to remember.