ART H 111: Ancient to Medieval Art

Ask Angela:The instructor is Heather McCune-Bruhn (hcm1).Do you mean ART H 111 “Ancient to Medieval Art”? YesThe schedule mentions 60+6 seats open, is the course really that large? No. The “60” refers to a resident instruction course. This course is…

Ask Angela:

  • The instructor is Heather McCune-Bruhn (hcm1).
  • Do you mean ART H 111 “Ancient to Medieval Art”? Yes
  • The schedule mentions 60+6 seats open, is the course really that large? No. The “60” refers to a resident instruction course. This course is open to a max of 24 students: 12 from CE@UP and 12 from Lewistown. Angela has “6” listed because she doesn’t want the UP-side to fill up entirely.
  • Has she taught for CE@UP before? Is she an adjunct or a faculty at one of our Academic Partners? Heather has not taught for CE@UP before, but has teaching experience with teaching courses at Arts & Architecture. She has an MA and PhD in Art History.
  • Could you get us a copy of Heather’s syllabus and/or detailed course outline? As of 3/3 the instructor was still working on her syllabus.
  • Is she all set with her materials and content? What is the development state of the course? I’m asking because the situation that she has a course designed for F2F delivery ready-to-go, is a different situation than if she’s still designing the syllabus or activities. She may have good contacts and resources from her connections to A&A, but I will verify. Hopefully she doesn’t have to re-create the wheel.
  • Would she need assistance digitizing content for use in her course?
  • You mentioned “2nd six week session,” does that mean this course is a blended learning, accelerated, videoconference delivered course? The course runs TR 6-9:30 PM, 7/1-8/10 in 119 OB. The instructor is concerned about 3.5 hour long lectures.
  • I’ll be a little facetious… is she a “game show host?” What I mean by that is, is she comfortable in front of a camera, is she able to work well “live,” and is she able to engage a remote audience? Angela says she’s comfortable in-front of a camera. Angela will be training her in the new 119 when the remodel is finished in May. Alice has been notified and will apparently assist with the orientation. There is also John here at UP and others at Lewistown that provide operational support evenings and on the weekend 🙂
  • Will Heather be expected to run the equipment on her own? See above… no she won’t.
  • If the course is blended, does that mean her course is using ANGEL as well?
  • What is her familiarity with ANGEL (if she is using it)?
  • Would she be relying on any other technology to deliver her course? Angela doesn’t know, she doesn’t think so.
  • Do you know if she’s worked with an instructional designer before?

Updated 3/11/10

  • Heather is already using welcome letters to orient students to the course and set expectations
  • the textbook has 12 chapters that will be covered in 12 class meetings; she averages 6 lectures/chapter
  • Student-generated presentations of museums and other venues -> based on online resources
  • she uses essay exams and papers w/ bonus points available
  • Google Earth to map locations of art pieces
  • “unknown slide” activity – apply skills on new content in an open forum, builds confidence and exercises higher order skills

ANGEL 7.4 Assessments losing images

When converting a 7.3 quiz to a 7.4 assessment, you will lose any images that were added to any of your questions – except if you save those resources to your own, personal ANGEL space (limited to 10 MB).7.4 assessments…

When converting a 7.3 quiz to a 7.4 assessment, you will lose any images that were added to any of your questions – except if you save those resources to your own, personal ANGEL space (limited to 10 MB).

7.4 assessments create virtual directories serialize specifically for each question for associated resources, like images. You cannot access those virtual directories by any traditional means from within ANGEL as a course editor.

In order to move a picture from a 7.3 quiz to a 7.4 assessment you must:

  1. download all of your images from your quiz
  2. save all of the metadata (image properties, alt tags, links, etc.)
  3. browse to the specific assessment question and re-upload each image and restore it’s properties one-by-one

Kate and I think this might be because of how 7.4 assessments handle the question bank. Questions are now “free to move” between assessments and therefore need individual, serialized, virtual directories to maintain question integrity no matter where the question might appear.

ANGEL Content: Links

Link content items are commonly used in ANGEL courses. Links are easy to share and can be use to display external content in or from ANGEL.I have been trying to create a “clean” link from ANGEL into a new window,…

Link content items are commonly used in ANGEL courses. Links are easy to share and can be use to display external content in or from ANGEL.

I have been trying to create a “clean” link from ANGEL into a new window, but I’ve noticed that even without a banner, the new content is still displayed internally in ANGEL looking at the URL. So, how can I create a link from the Lesson’s tab that opens a page that is “free” from the ANGEL CMS?

What are the best practices for displaying the content externally to ANGEL or keeping an integrated look by displaying that content in ANGEL?

ANGEL Assessment Tool

Does it do everything the Quiz tool does? I would say so.Drop-down list has been dropped but I won’t miss it. It’s basically a differently-formatted multiple choice question.There’s an algorithmic option that might be the same as the Calculated Question…

  1. Does it do everything the Quiz tool does? I would say so.
    1. Drop-down list has been dropped but I won’t miss it. It’s basically a differently-formatted multiple choice question.
    2. There’s an algorithmic option that might be the same as the Calculated Question type under Wizards and Templates.
    3. How can I import questions into an assessment? The option is now called Copy and Paste Questions.
  2. What does it do better than the Quiz tool? What does the Quiz tool do better?
  3. What do we need to know about it? One good resource is the ANGEL Shorts edition dedicated to this topic.
    5 Things About Assessment Tool.pdf
  4. Where can we go with questions?
  5. What do faculty members need to know about the tool?
  6. How does the migration tool work?
  7. Have there been any problems with the tool?
    1. Issue discovered with changing answers in the assessment tool (Tue 9 Feb)

      Information Technology Services (ITS) has identified a problem with the assessment tool in ANGEL.  If a student changes an answer to a question before submitting it, the new answer may not be properly recorded. This problem occurs in two situations:

      1.  When IP address filtering is enabled. This will happen with either Firefox or Internet Explorer, regardless of any other assessment settings.

      2.  Loss of Internet connectivity or application timing out.

      As a result of these situations,  any student who changes his or her mind about the answer to a particular question will find that only the original selection was saved, not the new selection, in the submitted version of the quiz.

      ITS is working is working with ANGEL/Blackboard on a solution to this problem.

      If you have any questions, please contact us at ANGELSupport@psu.edu.

  8. Will the tool be implemented? I just spoke with Ravi, Natalie, and Kate and they gave strong indications that there a some serious issues with the Assessments tool. Ravi said that the tool shouldn’t be implemented because 7.4 does not support quizzes and we would lose them as reference when checking the newly migrated assessments. We all agreed that the new tool is nice (after the major bugs, see 7, have been fixed) when starting from scratch, but it the migration aspect that’s killing the process.

CE@UP Art 020 & 050 Syllabus Design

An instructor, John Mangan, just called me to request assistance with his syllabus for what appears to be his Art 020 and 050 classes. He’s teaching four-times a week right now. At least one of his classes goes past 10…

An instructor, John Mangan, just called me to request assistance with his syllabus for what appears to be his Art 020 and 050 classes. He’s teaching four-times a week right now. At least one of his classes goes past 10 PM (based on the availability and restraints of suitable instruction areas)!

I begin with a phone call to set up a 1-hour meeting, either in-person or by-phone, to discuss the scope of his request. I have plenty of resources related to syllabus development, so we should be all set there. I’ll have to determine what he is looking to accomplish, what kinds of instructional problems he might have, and any other possible resources he’s interested in.

I contacted Angela to discuss whether or not Becky needs to be notified and she didn’t see a pressing need to do so. From my perspective, as long as someone like Angela knows about the work, that’s good with me.

ART 020 (GA) Introduction to Drawing (3) Introductory experience in making of art through drawing media; designed for non-majors seeking general overview of studio practice.

ART 020 Introduction to Drawing (3)
(GA)

(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements.

ART 020 is intended as a general survey of the art of drawing for non-majors. As a studio offering, emphasis is placed on hands-on studio activities, which promote visual literacy and on the various conventions used in drawing. Students will be given the opportunity to briefly explore many of the traditional materials of drawing, including pencil, charcoal, conte, ink and ink wash, pastel, as well as experimental tools. As well, slide presentations, studio visits and museum critiques will augment studio exercises to facilitate a greater awareness of the cultural context in which drawing functions. As a general appreciation offering, emphasis is placed on active learning processes that involve students in basic studio materials and techniques. Since the School of Visual Arts now requires a portfolio review for Visual Arts majors to enroll in studio courses, ART 020 provides an opportunity for non-art majors to do studio work in conjunction with an exploration of art concepts.

General Education: GA
Diversity: None
Bachelor of Arts: Arts
Effective: Spring 2004

Note : Class size, frequency of offering, and evaluation methods will vary by location and instructor. For these details check the specific course syllabus.

ART 050 (GA) Introduction to Painting (3) Introductory experience in making of art through painting media; designed for non-majors seeking a general overview of studio practice.

ART 050 Introduction to Painting (3)
(GA)

(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements.

ART 050 is intended as a general survey of the art of painting for non-majors. As a studio offering, emphasis is placed on hands-on studio activities, which promote visual literacy and sensitivity to the various conventions used in the discipline of painting. Students are given the opportunity to briefly explore the various approaches to creating visual images by applying various painting materials, techniques, and concepts. As well, slide presentations, studio visits and museum critiques will augment studio exercises to facilitate a greater awareness of the cultural context in which the art of painting functions.

Students enrolled in this course will be required to participate in the following active learning components:

1. Studio Painting Assignments:
a) Visual concept development: students will be introduced to the various ways that artists create meanings through painting. b) Materials development: through a process of exploration and experimentation, students will learn how to apply various painterly media and tools in creating visual images.
c) Technique development: through a process of exploration, experimentation, and skill development students will learn how to render and model painterly images that range between abstract and realistic representations.

2. Creating a social and historical context for painting through slide presentations, studio visits and museum critiques:
a) Slide presentations: students will be asked to consider the concepts of their creative projects in relationship to paintings by historical and contemporary artists in order to understand the ways in which the two-dimensional aspects and various processes of painting convey meaning.
b) Studio visits: Students will visit the personal studios of local painters to learn how professional artists develop best practices as related to the basic approaches to painting outlined above. Additionally, they will explore and discuss with these artists the concepts expressed in their painted images.
c) Museum critiques: Museum visits will enable students to learn how to engage and respond to actual paintings as compared with those that they experience as slide and book/journal reproductions. The role of museums and galleries in exhibiting paintings will also be discussed.

Grading and evaluation:
Students’ painting projects will be evaluated according to the following criteria: 1) the uniqueness of the visual concepts developed in their studio assignments; 2) the strength of their visual compositions-their ability to communicate concepts clearly; 3) the quality of their craftsmanship-an effective use of materials and procedures and commitment to the studio assignments-the effort expended on each project; 4) Their willingness to participate in critique sessions-a thoughtful and informed interpretation of visual ideas in paintings produced by them in class as well as those discussed during slide presentations, studio visits, and museum critiques.

General Education: GA
Diversity: None
Bachelor of Arts: Arts
Effective: Fall 2004

Note : Class size, frequency of offering, and evaluation methods will vary by location and instructor. For these details check the specific course syllabus.

ABA Virtual Practicum Video Encoding

I came in this morning and spoke with Linas about the ABA Practicum. We found that one student uploaded a 220+ MB file, only a few MB’s lower than the 250 MB limit. We were a little surprised to find…

I came in this morning and spoke with Linas about the ABA Practicum. We found that one student uploaded a 220+ MB file, only a few MB’s lower than the 250 MB limit. We were a little surprised to find out that the video was only 0:01:20 long because it was encoded at over 23 Mbps! Commercial DVD’s are encoded at around 9 Mbps and Bluray comes in at around 40 Mbps. This student was definitely going to have to re-encode their videos.

I ran a Handbrake test and found that encoding the video at 900 kbps yielded a video file that was just over 10 MB and played back at a little over 1 Mbps.

  • Regular Profile
  • MP4 file, H.264 codec (x264)
  • Average bitrate (kbps) 900
  • no other changes

Whew. Handbrake is an easy-to-use, cross-platform solution that is looking like our first choice to get these file sizes down.

Linas is going to do a survey to find out what the students are using and from there we can assist them on the phone and with screencasts.

Using Handbrake to re-encode large videos

As a sidenote, I had some difficulty with ScreenFlow capturing the Handbrake process. ScreenFlow was stopping the recording process on its own. Once I was able to capture the sequence I needed, the file was definitely corrupted during one section and that is definitely a problem. I think it has a hard time when the processors are cranking away on encoding video. I’ll still have to do some testing. ScreenFlow is new to me and I could have been doing something to mess it up.

Creating protected blogs using MT4 (narrated)

After receiving a comment in my previous post and after talking it over with the instructor, I decided it would be best to re-post this video with an audio narration of the process I outlined earlier. It makes a lot…

After receiving a comment in my previous post and after talking it over with the instructor, I decided it would be best to re-post this video with an audio narration of the process I outlined earlier. It makes a lot more sense to add the audio whenever I can to clarify what’s happening in the screencast.

Be sure to read the information on protected blogs before creating your blog.
MT4 Protected Option Warning.jpg

MT4 on the iPhone

This is a screencast that demonstrates what the PSU Blog tool (Movable Type 4) looks like when you use your iPhone to make entries on-the-go.You might want to click on the full-screen viewing option below for better viewing….

This is a screencast that demonstrates what the PSU Blog tool (Movable Type 4) looks like when you use your iPhone to make entries on-the-go.

You might want to click on the full-screen viewing option below for better viewing.