INTRODUCTION To CTC PDA Courses

Welcome, and congratulations for choosing to take a course through Central Texas College! I am your virtual video tour guide and I am here to show you our campus, as well as to demonstrate how our offline courses are set up.

Even if you don't physically come to our campus, you are still an important part of the CTC student body. In fact, most of our students are just like you. They are taking courses online, offline, on campuses in Killeen, Korea, Okinawa, Bethesda, Japan, Naples, Guam and many other places. We are just about everywhere, and I haven't even mentioned all the ships, submarines, air bases, or army bases where we offer classes. We are everywhere you are -- talk about education for the individual! If you can't come to us, we'll come to you.

Let me show you around the course. Your course homepage looks something like this. That's the bell tower over there. When you see the tower it should ring a bell, because you know that you are in a CTC course.

To get started in your course, just select "start course". Let's look at the large building behind me which is the CTC Planetarium. Majestic isn't it, and you are the star of the class! Pictures aside, this is where you get to the substantial core of the course: the syllabus, lessons, assignments and exams. Depending on your course these links might be a little different, but these essential items are always on this page.

Down here you'll find links to information to help you be a better student:

• Preliminary tasks get you ready to take a course.
• The distant learner handbook provides you with contacts, addresses, your student rights and other information.
• The help link, just as the name implies, answers your most frequently asked questions.
• The Central Texas College link -- well, I'm not blushing am I? We do like to brag a bit. Find out a bit more about CTC by selecting here.

Ok, let's take a look at how to take a course. No place to start like the beginning.

Think of the syllabus as a contract between you and your instructor. It tells you what to do, when, and in what order. Let's take a quick look at the syllabus. Successful students use learning outcomes to guide their learning. Of course, the lessons, assignments, and exams links are important too. You'll need to read through all these pages, but as you read through the pages and follow the instructions, keep those learning outcomes in mind.

Before we go much further, I want to show you a little trick for moving around your course. Check out the top and bottom left hand corners of the screen. There's a link there called home. Every time you select it, you go back to this page. Home again!

We saw links to the main lessons page on the syllabus. Notice there is also one here. The lessons page shows you how many lessons are in the course. Most courses have eight, but it's not a fast rule. An important thing to remember about the lessons is to follow them in order. Your instructor put a lot of thought into the order of each of these lessons.

Let's take a quick look at a lessons page. Objectives, learning activities, and assignments: you'll find each of these in each lesson.

• Objectives tell you what you're going to learn in this lesson.
• Learning activities tell you how to learn.
• And assignments demonstrate what you've learned.

It's that simple.

I know it's easy just to start on the assignments and forget about doing all those learning activities. After all, that's what you are being graded on, but don't do it. You'll regret it later, especially when you get your grades back.

I want to take just one more second of your time before signing off. Most, but not all, lessons contain assignments and you probably have a link on the homepage called assignments. I want to show you something you might find on that page. In some courses, your assignments page looks something like this: there's a research paper assignment and an alternate research paper assignment.

If you are taking a course under the supervision of an ESO or learning coordinator, you may perform the alternate research project. Since you are in a particularly remote location, under the ocean or in a war zone, your book bundle contains some extra materials. These are to aid you in completing the research project. You're still doing research; don't think you have a watered down assignment. You've just been provided with some research materials.

Those of you working with instructors -- don't think your classmates are getting off easy. All students are held to the same academic standards.

Gosh, I've gone on long enough. I'm sure you're ready to get started with your coursework. Study hard and I'll see you at graduation.