About this Course

Intended Audience

This course is designed for students at any University of Hawai‘i campus who want to become more proficient in using a computer for academic work. If successful, you will have a solid foundation in computer management, research and writing, group projects, media creation, presenting digital content, and more.

Course Syllabus

For general course information and the course calendar indicating deadlines see the course syllabus.

Content

This course links out to many external internet resources that are outside the instructors’ control. If you notice dead links or errors, please notify an instructor as soon as possible so we can fix things quickly.

Structure

Students come to this class with varying degrees of computer skills, so we’ve constructed the course to allow you flexibility in pace (how fast you complete the course) and choice in you want to learn more about.

Themes > Topics > Levels > Assessments

This class is organized into 4 themes, each includes 4-5 topics. Each topic is further divided into core, elective 1 and elective 2 levels. All themes have deadlines. Themes 2-4 have culminating projects, which require you to use the skills you demonstrated in the core levels. See the syllabus calendar or your dashboard for theme deadlines. Each level has an associated quiz or assignment (assessment). Only after you complete the Start Here: Getting Ready section will you be able to move forward in the course.

Core and Elective Levels

Each topic consists of one core and two elective levels.  In order to “unlock” the assessments for electives, you must submit the core assessment. In order to “unlock” the culminating project assessments, you must submit all of the core assessments from that theme. (You can read the culminating project requirements at any time, but you must unlock its assessment). Most topics have 2 assessments in the core level and both must be passed for core credit. To earn an A, you need to pass 30 assessments and all of the culminating projects. There are 51 possible assessments, so you have choices about which electives to complete.

Culminating Projects

Themes 2, 3 and 4 conclude with a culminating project where students demonstrate their proficiency in the topics covered. Culminating projects are designed for you to apply the skills you learned in the core levels. You must submit the assessment in each core level of a theme before you can submit the culminating project for each theme. Theme 1 is an exception and does not have a culminating project.

Advice from an Instructor

Grading (How to Earn an A)

Grades are assigned based on successful completion of projects and assessments as follows:

• A = Pass all 3 Culminating Projects & 30 or more assessments (usually 17 core and 13 electives but can be any combination)
• B = Pass at least 2 Culminating Projects & 25 or more assessments
• C = Pass at least 2 Culminating Projects & 15 or more assessments
• D = Pass at least 1 Culminating Projects & 5 or more assessments
• F = Failure to successfully pass a Culminating Project

However, your grade may be reduced if your work does not show sufficient quality of effort.  Students are encouraged to carefully review assignment criteria and submit their best efforts. Instructors and TA’s are available to clarify content, provide additional examples or answer questions. You should seek guidance PRIOR to submitting your work. Projects and assignments that require submission of a “product” may be returned with “fixit” status.  “Fixit” means that not all criteria were met, and allows students to revise and resubmit the assessment.

Only full letter grades will be given in this course, however if you receive 10 or more fixits over the semester, your course grade will be lowered by a half letter. For example, if you passed the 30 assessments and 3 culminating projects for an A, but received 10 fixits over the semester, your final course grade would be an A-.

Ethical and Legal Conduct

Students are expected to follow the University of Hawai`i at Manoa Student Conduct Code, which spells out professional behavior for students at the institution. Click here to download a pdf copy of the student conduct code.

• All ideas used in papers and presentations are expected to be original. If you use material that is not your own, you are required to give credit to the creator. Plagiarism (the use of someone else’s ideas, answers or work as your own) will result in disciplinary action by the University and failure in this course.
• Be aware that the disciplinary action taken by the University for plagiarism can include permanent dismissal of the student from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

LTEC 112 has a zero tolerance policy on plagiarism and academic dishonesty. Cases of academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, will be referred to the University’s Office of Judicial Affairs for disciplinary action.

Receiving Points

All assessments and culminating projects are pass/fail. If you have submitted an assessment and it is incorrect you may be given an opportunity to ‘fix-it.’  All submissions must be given a “best effort” in order to be considered for grading. Fix-its will NOT be given to submissions that you did not make a best effort attempt. If you re-submit and the assessment is still incorrect you will fail the assessment. Core assessments and culminating projects have firm deadlines, they must be submitted before the due date for their theme. On your dashboard, next to each theme, you’ll see that theme’s due date. You will not receive any points for core assessments or culminating projects submitted after the theme due date. All core level assessments need to be submitted by the theme deadline in order to receive points for them. Elective 1 and elective 2 assessments can be submitted any time before the last day indicated in the syllabus.

There are 2 types of assessments in the course:

Quizzes – each can be taken a total of three (3) times.

Assignments – these have submission items (for example you might be asked to submit a link to a document). It is critical to follow the assignment instructions carefully. If you are missing elements of the assignment, it will be marked with the ‘fix-it’ icon depicted by a triangle with an exclamation point. For all assignments requiring correction, including culminating projects, feedback will be provided on what was missing or done wrong. If you wish to resubmit an assignment for grading, click on the fix-it icon and open the assessment for re-submission. All assignments and culminating projects are limited to one re-submission. It is recommended that fix-its be resubmitted within one week.
If you receive 10 or more fixits over the course of the semester your overall course grade will be lowered.

Pacing

You’ll have a limited number of weeks to complete each theme.  Within each theme, you have flexibility as to when you do your work – however, don’t procrastinate! You should add course deadlines to your personal calendar and keep pace with the overall class structure. Pay close attention to the course calendar, and do not fall behind.

Theme Deadlines

As noted earlier, each theme has a deadline, by which all the core levels and culminating project need to be submitted. Theme 1 does not have a culminating project. On your dashboard next to each theme you’ll see the due date for that theme. All deadlines are at 11:55 pm HST.

Rating Topics and Themes

At the conclusion of any level, you’ll be able to rate the lesson on a five-star scale and provide open-ended comments. We appreciate your feedback, especially specific suggestions or concerns. These ratings are used solely for the improvement of this and future courses and have no impact on your grades. In addition, you may be prompted to provide feedback about an overall theme after completing the culminating project. All feedback is intended to improve the course and will not impact your grade.

Navigating this Course

Welcome Page

The Welcome Page gives a quick overview of our course. The Preview button at the bottom of the page allows anyone, including the public, to explore parts of the course without logging in.

Login: To access the course site, click on the “Sign in With Your UH ID” button. Next, enter your UH Username and UH password on the UH Web Login Service page.

Themes Page

The Themes Page, which is found under the Resources tab, shows an overview of all themes.  You can navigate to any topic from here, or from your course dashboard.

Dashboard

Access course content and/or track your progress here.

• Helper Text – Click on the  icon to reveal helper text to orient yourself to the dashboard. Toggle this feature on/off by clicking the [?] next to “Theme Progress”, at the top of the  page.
• Themes – All themes, including Start Here: Getting Ready are listed in order here. Each theme contains all levels (Core and electives) for each Topic (ex: Email, Laulima, etc.). Click on a bubble to access content. Point totals show your points for each topic while the Theme total shows all points for each theme. The Theme Overview button allows you to view the content of each theme in more detail.
• Timer – Immediately to the left of each theme title, the timer will show you how much time you have left to complete a theme before its due date.
• Course Point Summary – View how many assessments and projects you have passed in the course grade summary.

Navigation Bar

These tools are accessible at the very top of the page

• Dashboard – A shortcut to access the Dashboard
• Profiles – View classmate’s profiles
• Resources – Access the Welcome page, the Themes Overview page, and the Acknowledgement page here.
• Avatar – Along with showing your avatar and current points, you can hover over your avatar to edit your profile and to logout.

Content Page

• Objectives – Tells what this level is about and what you will do.
• Introduction – More detail about what you’ll be learning and doing.
• Lesson  This is the main content. Along with text, images, videos, and practice exercises, you’ll see this icon  which indicates links to resources that are required viewing. Most video will be embedded directly on the page as well.
• Sections – Located at the top-right corner of the page. Navigate to different parts of the lesson.
• Assessment – Begin an assessment by clicking this button at the bottom of each content page. When you’re ready, click “Begin Assessment”. If you need to stop in the middle of an assessment, the system will automatically save the information you’ve already entered. When you come back, click on “Resume Assessment” – your previously entered information will still be there. After you’ve submitted your answers, you can revisit (not resubmit) an assessment by clicking on “Review Assessment”.

Tips for Success

We strongly suggest that your take notes when reading or watching in this course. Note-taking has been shown to help students be more successful in remembering information. Ironically, taking notes by hand (not typing them) leads to better retention. See these slides for more information about the effectiveness of note-taking.

In addition, how you think about your abilities (your mindset) actually influences your performance! Having a “growth” mindset can help you be more persistent and achieve more. Here’s a visual representation of growth vs fixed mindsets, and an optional article if you’re interested in learning more about mindsets. You might also want to take the mindset quiz to see what type of mindset you have.

Prerequisite Skills

You are expected to know a few things before class. Don’t panic if these skills aren’t familiar, just follow the links and get familiar with them now. You can skip any of the below sections that you’re already familiar with.

Definitions

The following are terms that will be used in the course that you are expected to know.

• Local. Means directly connected to your computer; as in a local copy of a file (on your own hard drive, ie your “local drive”). A file in Google Drive is NOT local.
• Left click vs Right click. Refers to which button, on the left or right of a mouse, should be clicked.
  • Mac users right-clicks = Control-click if you only have one mouse button.

Operating Systems

Know what operating system (OS) your computer uses, including the specific version:

• OSX
• Microsoft Windows
• Ubuntu Linux

Using Your Operating System’s File Browser

Every computer uses a file browser to select, open, or delete files. OSX’s is called Finder. Windows’ is called File Explorer, and Ubuntu uses GNOME Files by default.  You need to be able to

1. 1. Identify their operating System’s file browser and how to open it use their file browser to navigate to specific files.
      1. OSX Finder
      2. Windows 10 File Explorer
      3. Ubuntu Linux (GNOME) Files

Screenshots

Also known as screen captures or screen grabs, screenshots are static images of your computer or device screen. Many of the LTEC 112 assessments (including one in Start Here: Getting Ready) will require you to provide screenshots.  For LTEC 112 assignments, submit only that portion of the screen required, not your entire screen.

• Windows Computers:
  • Specific area: Snip & Sketch is a preinstalled application that allows you to capture specific areas. Press Windows key + Shift + S for screenshot mode, then choose rectangular, freeform, window or entire desktop.
  • OR, for the entire screen: press the Prnt Scrn key (Also spelled PRTSC, PRTSCN) or Prnt Scrn (Print Screen) + Fn (Function), and it will save to your clipboard
    • After copying to clipboard, be sure to paste (control, ctrl, + v) into document.
• Mac (OSX):
  • Specific area: Command + Shift + 4, then drag and release cursor (The file will appear on your desktop).
  • Entire screen: Command + Shift + 3 (The file will appear on your desktop).
  • Open the screenshot and copy it (Edit > Copy when viewing in Preview)
  • Command+v to paste into a document.
• Ubuntu Linux:
  • Entire screen: Print Screen.
  • Screenshot applications like Flameshot or Shutter are useful for cropping and marking on screenshot images.
  • Active window: Alt + Print Screen.
  • Paste (control, ctrl, + v) into document.

When submitting screenshots as part of your assignments, capture or crop-to only that portion of the screen required.

Managing Multiple Windows

You’ll be using various software in the course and may find yourself with multiple tabs or windows open at any given time. This can be hard to manage if you’re only using one monitor, for example on a laptop. If you’d like to tile your windows side by side to see two windows at the same time see the following videos for Mac and Windows.

Managing Windows on a PC (2:42)

Managing Windows on a Mac (1:09)

Submitting LTEC 112 Assignments using Google Drive

We’ll be covering Google Drive in other sections of the course, but in order to submit the assignments for Start Here: Getting Ready (as well as other assessments before we learn about Google Drive) you’ll need to upload files to Google Drive, or create Google docs then share them with ltec112-grp@hawaii.edu – then copy and paste the link to that file/Google doc into the submission box. The following instructions describe how to upload a file into Google Drive for submitting LTEC 112 assignments.  If sharing a Google document to submit an assignment, start from the “Rename File” step of the instructions below.

Open Google Drive

To access Google Drive, open your @hawaii.edu mail by going to gmail.hawaii.edu, logging in with your UH username and password, then clicking on the apps icon in the top right corner and choosing Drive.

2. Upload file

Once you’ve opened Drive, click on the New button on the left side of your screen, and choose File upload.

Browse for your file on your computer and select it. Once your file is uploaded into Drive, you should see it in your Google Drive list of files. It’s name will be the same as it was named on your computer. Please note that when asked to name your file “Last_First” that this refers to your personal last and first name.  If your name was Jane Doe for example, your file would be named Doe_Jane.

3. Rename File

To rename your file, right-click on the file name and choose Rename…

4. Share with ltec112-grp@hawaii.edu

Next, right-click on the name of the file and choose Share…

then enter ltec112-grp@hawaii.edu email address in the box below People then click Send.

5. Get link

Right click on the file name again, and choose Share, then click on Advanced. This window will appear, in which the link to the file is highlighted. Copy the link.

The link to your file is now on your clipboard.  Paste it into an LTEC 112 assessment submission box.

Steps To Complete Getting Ready

Although you are not being graded on this section, you will need to complete the following tasks to get access to the rest of the course assessments

1. Complete the Online Learning Readiness Questionnaire

Being successful in an online course requires students to be self motivated and skilled in time management. Review this page on the qualities of successful online students and consider how they match up with your own skills and attitudes.

Next, take the Online Learning Readiness Questionnaire (Quiz). It will help you to think about the unique challenges you’ll face while taking this course. Screenshot your results or keep them open in your browser. You’ll be asked to provide information about those results on the next page.

2. Upload Your Avatar

Add to your profile by putting up an avatar. Create a new account using your hawaii.edu on Gravatar to upload an image of yourself and it will automatically show up on the course site. Please be sure to complete the following:

• Use a headshot image of you and only you; in which we can recognize you (no sunglasses).
• Be sure to use the same email that you used for your course registration (@hawaii.edu) in your new Gravatar account.
• Be aware that your image will be publicly viewable and you will need a “G” rating for your Gravatar to be seen in the course.
• After creating your account in Gravatar, the image should automatically show up in your course profile (it may take up to 10 minutes to appear). If you have privacy and/or safety concerns regarding your avatar, please email your instructor or the TA.

3. Create Your Introduction Video

Introduce yourself to your fellow students and instructors by creating a short YouTube video introduction. You can use your computer or video enabled smartphone/tablet to record. The following instructions are for recording on your computer. You are free to use the device of your choice, but the video just needs to be uploaded to YouTube.

Record your video:

The following links include instructions for recording your video on your computer:

• Mac
• Windows
• Ubuntu – Install Cheese, or another video recorder from the software center.

Video Criteria

• Example – instructor intro video (Dr. Ari Eichelberger)
• Length: 1 minute or less
• Style: Feel free to be creative, but do not use filters or clothing that obfuscate your face… we want to recognize you.
• Dress appropriately! Please consider this a formal presentation of yourself to the class and instructors and as such clothing is required and expected to be professional.
• Video content:
  • Your name
  • Where you live (city/town and island)
  • Major or intended major (or academic area of interest)
  • Any hobbies
  • After reviewing the course objectives (see next section), what you hope to learn from this class that will help you in your future

Course Objectives
By the end of the course, students will:

Demonstrate core competencies with email, UH’s learning management system, web conferencing, troubleshooting, computer and file management.

Demonstrate core competencies with online research tools, word processing, source citations, and group projects.

Demonstrate an understanding of copyright in digital media and professional use of social media.

Demonstrate core competencies with image editing and web authoring.

Demonstrate core competencies in slide design, presentation delivery, and video creation.

Demonstrate advanced competencies in selected course topics based on personal interest.

Upload your video to YouTube

Use this page for instructions on uploading to YouTube from either your computer or tablet/phone. These instructions assume you already have a YouTube account. Be sure to make your video “unlisted” so it won’t show up in a search.

If you don’t have a YouTube account yet

Go to YouTube.com and click on Sign in.  If you already have a @gmail.com email address you can use it to sign in to YouTube. If you want to use your @hawaii.edu account for YouTube, you’ll need to opt into the Google@UH consumer apps.

Once you have a Google account, use it to sign in to YouTube.

Once signed in, go to your channel (click in top right corner on letter of your name), find your video, copy link and paste into your profile.

4. Edit Profile

In the LTEC 112 course site in the top right corner of the page, you’ll see a space for your avatar. When you mouse over the avatar a drop down will appear, choose “Your Profile”.

You’ll be brought to Your Profile page, click on “Edit Profile” (red button in the upper right-hand corner).

• In the first section, the “Name” section, enter your first and last name as you’d like them to appear in the course. Then, select the option showing your first and last name in the drop down menu, “Display name publicly as.”
• Scroll down to the “About Yourself” section and on the “Intro video” line paste your YouTube video URL.
• After you have pasted your intro video URL, go to the next box and add information you’re willing to share about yourself under “Biographical Info.” You should write at least 3 complete sentences.
• You must also confirm that you have done these steps in question 3 on the Getting Ready submission page.

5. Opt in or out of class research (on your Profile page)

LTEC 112’s course website and delivery structure are new and the instructors are conducting research to look at what works, what needs improvement and how others can apply what we learn to future courses. Feedback from you is a critical part of this process, and we’ll be asking you to provide information and opinions at various times throughout the course. The course site also records a variety of data about your progress and interaction with course material. However, we can’t share our progress with others without your permission. Please keep in mind ALL DATA used will be anonymous, no student names or identifiers will ever be attached to any data shared. Read the official consent form then decide if you’re willing to participate. Your choice will NOT impact your course grade and again, any information we collect will be kept confidential (you will never be identified). We appreciate your consideration and encourage you to opt in.

6. Complete the Procrastination Profile Survey

Please complete the survey regardless of your choice to participate in class research. Your responses will help us improve the class in the future. Your responses to the survey can help us customize the LTEC 112 experience for future students based on your responses.

Procrastination Profile Survey

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