Compass Pilot: What's Changed?
Darin Eastburn, Robert Baird & Joseph Hinchliffe
Darin Eastburn, Robert Baird and Joseph Hinchliffe talked about the migration from WebCT Vista 3 to Vista 4. They highlighted the major differences and key areas of changes and other improvements designed to make managing your course easier than ever.
Darin Eastburn was one of the few professors who had volunteered to transfer his course over to Compass Pilot before it could be deployed campus wide for the Fall 2007 semester. He walked us through his Compass website for Plant Pathology 200. Darin has made extremely good use of all the features and functionality that Vista 4 has to offer. During his talk, he specifically pointed out major differences that may potentially throw professors off track. He has used Compass to make sure that anything covered in lecture or handed out to the students on the first day of class is easily accessible to them at a later point in time. He has also made extensive use of the Compass Learning Modules by posting detailed weekly summaries of what he has covered in class and information contained in handouts, PDFs, and other online class material. By going through these sections one by one, he clearly demonstrated the simplicity of the new Illinois Compass.
Robert Baird is also teaching a course in Cinema Studies and is extremely pleased with the functionality that Vista 4 has to offer. He shared his thoughts about the new system and how he has used Vista 4 to manage the course and make it a fun learning experience for students. He specifically focused on the "Who's Online" feature which is really helpful for the students who want to collaborate on homework and assignments. Baird makes extensive use of the Compass discussion tool, whose new features include a a blog and a journal style. As students do their weekly online writing assignments, they review the built-in grading rubric, customized by Baird, and another feature of the new Illinois Compass.
Joe Hinchliffe used the new Illinois Compass for his undergraduate Political Science students, taking advantage of online documents, discussions, and assessments. In his class, Joe Hinchliffe uses frequent Compass quizzes to assess how well students have understood readings and lectures.
Through the discussion board and announcement tool, Hinchliffe also uses Compass as a vital communication link to his students. In
addition to the communicative and assessment activities, he also uses Compass to distribute readings, notes, and web links.
From their experiences, it's pretty clear that Vista 4 is a step in the right direction for Illinois Compass!
|
