ELI Courses  By Giulio Porta, NVCC, Liberal Arts Division.

NVCC offers 7 different type of courses, in order to avoid confusion read more about these courses here . I only teach 2 types of course: The traditional classroom types, and ELI

Dear students please read this material carefully and in order to avoid misunderstanding read it in its ENTIRETY several times, and refer to it over the span of a semester.

 Blackboard

Because most student will go to Blackboard first, in Blackboard you'll find links to all this material as hosted by the NVCC web site. I made this material available to students in its entirety years ago before Blackboard became popular. There are special things that Blackboard can do, therefore please see what is available to you there. Keep in mind that I may not use Blackboard's feature exactly as another instructor. For instance all the assignment are available to you as soon as I activate a course, they are not parceled out.

Telling it like it is

Keep in mind that no matter how much online material I'll provide for you as a student, you still are on your own when it comes to grab that pencil, brush, or roll that mouse, and get to work. You will not receive emails from me telling you that NOW is time to get started, education is not a horse race.  No matter how strong your desire for learning maybe, that desire must be followed by a strong determination, and by the realization that "learning" may not happen at the snap of your fingers, or through my insightful comments, or just because you are enrolled in a course. I'm not about to question the reason why you may have taken this course, you can perform that type of  self evaluation yourself. But think of this, if you are indecisive, tentative, slow in getting started, insecure, overtly self critical, and work at a snail pace, learning art at the college level, in a web based course, may not be for you, at least not for the time being, not until you revaluate your abilities, and build up your confidence. You may want instead to pursue drawing and graphics at a personal level until you think you are better equipped to receive an award for your learning, that award being college credit.

Keep in mind that there is something totally artificial in the structure of a 16, 12, or 6 weeks course. As far as  my understanding of how learning takes place, there is no relation whatsoever between the number of weeks in a course, and a learning process, sometimes learning cannot be placed on a schedule. The number of weeks in a course, is more related to our astronomical calendar than to an individual "learning calendar", if there is such a thing. But that's the way its is, we cannot change academic calendars. Therefore expecting that something drastic will happen within those weeks, only because you are taking a course, may not be a realistic expectation. Learning, when it comes to activities such as brain hand coordination, may need an incubation period, as well as a great deal of practice. Therefore just doing a course's required work once, may not be enough to improve your skills all that much, it may just get you by.

Regardless of the relative role education may have in your life, I still expect students to perform within a course's calendar. I have no choice.

The reason why all my course material and syllabus are available 24 x 7 x 52, here on line from the Internet, is not because I believe that education should be free, rather because I believe that learning should begin before classes start, and continue after.

About my ELI courses.

Even though ELI, and traditional classroom courses share the same pool of assignments and a large portion of the syllabi, the two are not identical when it comes to the type of communication which we must establish with each other. The requirements concerning how your work must be submitted to me is also very different. Don't jump to conclusions just because you may have taken another hybrid course from another instructor, rest assured that my course is different. You'll need to read this page carefully.

Regardless if you are taking the traditional or ELI version of any of my courses you'll be awarded the same credit. There will be no indication on your transcript that you have taken a particular course as an ELI online course. But beware: ELI courses are much more difficult for students requiring a very specialized/customized type of instruction. If you are one of those students should be in my traditional course instead.

To compensate for our lack of proximity, when necessary I will make corrections on top of a digital copy of your drawing, or CG image, in that manner I can be specific in demonstrating and illustrating exactly what kind of improvements I would bring to your images. I can email the image back to you and wait for your response. You must be a good communicator by acknowledging that you did receive my feedback. But I will not do that routinely.

In an ELI course so much depends on your reading skills, motivation, confidence, independence, time allocation, and traditional communications skills that transcend modern communication devices.

Creating an environment similar to that of a classroom

The strength of my online courses is that of providing all the information about the courses I teach in writing, which includes syllabi, tutorials, illustrations, and any viable support material.

Students also have the option of coming to any of my regularly scheduled classes, or to meet with me during my office hours, please look them up here under Calendar

To understand how to make the web environment an effective experience, please read the "Communicating With The Instructor" paragraph, digital files can be sent back and forth, I can even draw on them pointing to improvements, without touching the original work.

Sooner or later you'll come to realization that writing is still the best way to communicate. Writing gives communication a structure, stability, permanency, and continuity that no other form of communication can offer. You won't find too many institutions of higher education interested in teaching classes via cell phone, video, or by text messaging. You can go to class to listen to a lecture and be distracted or have a "bad day" and get very little out of it.

I'm not at all against the idea of lecturing. Lecturing enjoys great popularity in academic institutions, it's still the method of choice for "projecting knowledge". Even though lecturing comes closer to the oral tradition, oral culture, and oral lore, as a way for a society to transmit history, literature, law and other knowledges across generations without a writing system. What's better than a lecture is the transcription of one. And that's what you'll find in my web site.

I don't pretend to be a great writer, my lectures are legible and always in the process of being re-edited, if for whatever reason you don't understand what I am saying it's you obligation to let me know. Don't wait until the end of the semester, at that point in time it may be too late, and I can't accept excuses.

 First thing first: your e-mail account.

NVCC expects you, as a student, to use your college e-mail to communicate with me.

Set up your account as soon as you register for a course, write to the instructor (me) and introduce yourself. You can also set up your personal e-mail account to receive you NVCC e-mail. For information concerning creating a student e-mail account go to the NVCC main page and look for the IT HELP DESK link.

If you are having problems with your account, or the SIS (Student Information System), please contact the IT HELP DESK. I cannot resolve those issues for you.

Don't share your account with friends or family.

Communicating with the instructor.

You will need to contact me first  and introduce yourself, at that point in time I'll know that you are on track. You must replay to each and all of my emails with a note pointing to the fact that you understood my email content.

"Turning your work in" is not enough, you need to read and understand my feedback, I may ask you to make improvements to you images, this doesn't have to be done right-a-way in a haste, you can move on to something else and later return to unresolved issues and address them. Digital files can be sent back and forth, copied and pasted to no end, translated into different version possessing radical or subtle variations from the original. You should never come forward with the preposition of "that's the way I like it" if you say that obviously you don't understand the potential that computer have, you can still keep your solution for yourself and cater to many others via modified copies or clones of the original.

If, for whatever reason, you don't hear from me: TRY AGAIN. Do not use that eventuality as an excuse.  Call me if necessary, at 703-3232135, if the problem persist. On the average I may receive over a 100 email per week, I don't deny that on occasions, but rarely, I have made mistakes and deleted emails inadvertently. All those mistakes were corrected. Email me again, be persistent, just in case you don't hear from me. And above all keep working, don't wait for anything, move on to other assignment, you don't have to wait for me to tell you to do so.

This is true primarily in the CG field. For a traditional drawing course things are different, making changes to an image is more difficult, but still possible and easy done from my on a clone of your work.

The online material.

All the online syllabi contain my lectures and tutorials spelling out the concept and solutions of each assignment. These tutorials  will walk you through each assignment so you can complete it in a reasonable amount of time. My assignments cannot be substituted with anything else.  Please do not even think about turning in work  that you have done in high school, in other classes, or  work that has been plagiarized.

If a DL course requires the use of software, acquire the software several months before registering for that course. None of my CG course are set up to just "learn" the software by "playing " or "experimenting" with. You should not enroll in any of my CG courses unless you already know about computers and graphic software, in particular about the ones used in my courses.

If the course you are going to take, does not require the use of graphic software, like in the case of a drawing course, the online syllabi for Art 121 and 122 will tell you what kind of tools, materials, and what kind of assignments you'll be working with during the semester. This will help you getting started. DL course are not for procrastinators.

MEETING WITH THE INSTRUCTOR

The VCCS requires all students enrolled in hybrid/web based courses to meet with the instructor (me) once during the semester. The date and time of that meeting will be communicated to students via campus email. You must activate your campus email to receive that particular email from me, which will be sent to all the students in my hybrid course. You can also come to my regularly scheduled classes, their schedule is available on line. If you want to talk to me in person look up my office schedule on this site index page, call me at 703-3232135 or e-mail me at nvportg@nvcc.edu . Let me know ahead of time when you are coming! If my office door is closed, please knock.

On the other hand if you find it IMPOSSIBLE to meet with me because or you schedule, you will not be penalized.

 Withdrawing from a course.

From a semester's starting date you'll have approximately 10 days to make up your mind if you intend to stick with the course or not, hoping that you'll have read the course's syllabus, way before then. After 10 days you will not be able to get a tuition refund. Please check the NVCC main site for calendar dates and exact deadlines for getting you money back, that is your responsibility not mine. 

It's your responsibility to withdraw from a web course, if you decide to do so, it must be done prior to the established deadline, consult the NVCC calendar of events. If you withdraw after that deadline you'll be assigned automatically a letter grade "F". Again please look at the  NVCC web site under Academic Calendar.

Instruction evaluation.

ELI will provide you with the instrument design to evaluate my courses.

Grading

Grading Rationale can be found here: see how I grade If, during a semester, you want to know how well you are doing in your course, send me an e-mail with that specific request, and I will e-mail you back with your grade. Obviously grades maybe subject to change during a semester, therefore you can keep asking. I will grade each project individually as I receive them, but your overall grade will be based on other considerations as well, again see how I grade. Those considerations will include, how well you will discuss and present your work in the brief email statements that will accompany each attachment, how you will respond to my comments, questions and criticism, my perception of how well you have read the material I have prepared for you, all this is outlined in the grade rationale page, please read it. You need to replay to my comments with a note stating that you understood what my comments or criticism were about. You don't have to implement them instantly, give yourself some time, when you are ready, only then you can do whatever it may take to improve your work. Never do things in haste without a plan a how and why.

You must communicate with me regularly, good communication is equivalent to good course attendance.

THE SIZE OF YOU WORK

The size of you work may not be an issue with regard to the production of CG images, but it is an issue for drawings on paper, where you can work life size, or much smaller. You need to decide what a comfortable size is. You will develop higher brain-hand coordination and you'll have more room for details if you work large. On the other hand large drawings will require more effort and they can be difficult to manage for the beginner. Fortunately digital photography will not discriminate between large or small, and I'm not going to judge your work on its size. Quality will be discernable regardless size.

This drawing of mine is displayed here 1/3 larger of its actual size, which is 2 and 1/4" x 4", this obviously points to the inconsistency that exist in this environment regarding the size of the same image as it may be viewed on a number of different screens. On your PC screen its size may appear yet different because you may have the monitor set to a different resolution from the one I'm using.

Assignments due dates or deadlines

Assignments must be emailed to me every two weeks, and the balance of the work is due at the end of the semester, that "end of the semester" date will be communicated via email to all of you enrolled in my classes. No work will be accepted after the final due date.

You may notice that there are no explicit due dates for the the submission of individual assignments in my hybrid courses. That's right, there isn't, but every two weeks sound like a serious deadline to me. Get a calendar and mark on it two weeks intervals and turn your work in every two weeks, that's it. If you want to turn your work in every week that will be even better. The issue here is not the one or two weeks time frame. I simply don't want you to turn your work in all at once. Please don't complain that you would prefer exact due dates. Based on my experience most student are unable to meet them, and they would eventually resort asking for extensions, or incurring in a grade penalty. If I do not hear from you, at the latest every two weeks, your silence will effect your grade negatively. You'll need to communicate with me and let me know what is keeping you from doing the course's work. 

By midterm, which is usually the 3rd week in October for the Fall Semester, or the week before Spring Break for the Spring Semester, you must have turned in 5 projects out of the 11 required in each of my hybrid courses.

Don't wait until the night before the due date to turn in all, or most of your work, that's unacceptable. Let me explain to you why. If most of you will do that, that surge of email and large attachments will flood my mail box, and disable it. That means I won't be able to receive or send anymore mail. It will force me to delete some email, and ask students to resubmit their work. This has happen to me before, and it is not a pleasant experience, because it makes it difficult to manage your work. Keep in mind that I save each image that you send me into a dedicated folder bearing your name.

All art regardless if digital or traditional can be subjected to progressive refinement, in other words it can be reworked several time as you strive to improve it. Obviously if you think of your submission as a no return package I'll be disappointed. Learning, improvements, refinements, can only take place effectively if the work is sent back and forth, and if my comments or input will reach you in a timely fashion. This will not happen if you wait until the last minute in making your submissions. You can work on several drawings at the same time, by placing them side by side and use the same shade value on all of them as the first pass. Later specific things can be done to individual drawings.

More about deadlines

You'll be reminded several weeks before the end of the semester about your final work due date. The date I will give you will be set as close as possible to my deadline for posting the grades. Please don't wait until few hours before the due date to turn in your work. This is not like turning in hard copies of your work, the graphic files attached to your email can flood my mailbox, in other words fill it, and by doing so make it inoperable. At that point I would have to delete some of the email to free some space. If you fill my mailbox, that will also prevent further mail to be received by my mail box. That can created a very messy situation. To avoid these problems send me your work every two weeks, and don't wait until the end of the semester to submit your work. Keep in mind that if you do so I may become suspicious about the origin of your work, and why you waited until the very last minute to sent it to me. Provided that I get to see it at all, if my mailbox is full you may be out of luck, and I may not see it at all, therefore you will not be credited for that work. The deadline set for the receipt of your work will allow me to manage your work (copy and paste it into your folder) and respond to it before posting your grades. Don't expect me to review your work after I have posted your grades, not because I lack of courtesy, but because I will not be at the college or not even in this area, and where I may be, I may not have access to a computer and email. I don't text message, and I don't have have my cell phone set up to receive email, I may not have my cell phone with me at all. Try to understand the meaning of the word deadline. You can try to contact me again, but it may be a week or two or a month before I come back to the same routine, in particular if it's the end of the spring semester, I guess some people call it "vacation". Don't bother to call the LA Division there's nothing they can do for you, nor they can read your email for me. I will try to read your email and answer your concerns when possible.

Managing your work

All your work, graphic images, photos of your drawings, scans, must be kept in a separate dedicated folder/directory in your computer at home. If you are sharing your computer with family members please be advised to exercise extra care in managing your work, make sure you make backup copies of it on a USB drive. If you loose your work, you'll have to redo it, no excuses. It may happen to me on my end, hard drives can crash, keep a back up of your work so you can resubmit it. You must to be prepared for all eventualities.

Don't store your work under My Documents, in particular if you are sharing a computer.

Graphic formats

There are a large number of graphic formats, and quite a bit of information about them from sites such as this one http://www.dansdata.com/graphics.htm and many more similar sites. When the time comes to save your work, don't save it in just "any format", please, or don't ask about formats to someone who has a marginal knowledge of graphic formats. Formats are not all the same; each one is designed to perform differently. Therefore, if you don't have a clue about which format to use, use the .JPG, (JPEG), and if you have time, try to do some reading about formats. If I'm looking at your work away from the college the JPG format will invariably open in any browser.

If you own Adobe Photoshop v 7 or higher, use it to open the file you want to send me and use the command Save > Save for the web, in the save for the web panel, on the right hand side look for the JPG format, don't use the GIF. The JPG format was designed to save images possessing photographical like qualities, as well as images viable for web design. The .JPG is a very versatile format, it can save millions of colors, or just 256, without noticeable deterioration in the image quality. This process is called Optimization, all the images you see in modern web page design have been optimized, these images are a few Kilobytes (1,000s of bytes of data) instead of Megabytes (1,000,000 of bytes). Optimization will save disk space, and in particular, mailbox space. Optimized files, being smaller, will download faster. Unfortunately most, if not all, files I receive from students are not optimized, often these large files, if they are emailed to me at the same time, lets say 12 noon on day XX, at the end of the semester, they will fill my NVCC mailbox. At that point my full mail box will become inoperable, in order to replay to my email I will have to delete some files to make my mail operable again, and ask students to resubmit their work. Honestly I don't want to have to go through that, it will delay grading, and the posting of the grading. Because what I am describing to you here has really happen to me, I will communicate to you the date of when your work is due via email way ahead of time, but I need to receive your work two days before the due date, to avoid procrastinators flooding my mail box. If you are planning to submit all your work at the same time at the due date, you are asking for trouble. Your work is due every 2 weeks, keep that in mind.

The bottom line is: don't wait until the very end of a semester to submit your work, it creates unpleasant situations for me. And if you can't optimized your work, so be it, but don't sent it to me all at once, it will effect your grade, see how I grade.

Submitting your work by email as an email attachment

• On your PC's C: drive, at home, create a folder bearing the name of the hybrid course you are taking, keep all your course's work there, as a back up.

• Each e-mail you'll send me must be named and numbered according to the project it contains as an attachment, the attached file must be also named accordingly with the name and number of the project it represents.

• Each e-mail I'll receive from you should be accompanied by a short note regarding how  you have resolved that particular assignment, also your full name must appear in the email. No nick names. 

• If you have email problems you must contact the IT HELP DESK  and resolve your problems quickly. I cannot resolve them for you. The IT HELP DESK phone # can be found at the NVCC web site.

• Each project must be sent to me in a separately from the other, so I can replay to that particular work, no mass email attachments.

• I should receive your work every two weeks.

• SIGN EACH EMAIL  with your full name, no nick names.

Doing extra work could involve posting your work and thoughts in a blog. You can create one for free using Goggle's eblog, you must open a Goggle account first. After each new post you must notify me that you have done so. Keep in mind that that is not my preferred way of viewing your work. Please beware of unreliable web space providers, anything that may get in your way of showing your work to me should be avoided. The email attachment is my preferred way of receiving your work.

I hope that it is understood that you must cater to me, contact me often, ask questions, I'm not going to come looking for you to see what you are up to, why you are not turning your work in, or if you have a blog or a website that I may not know about.

During any given semester, invariably, some of your fellow students may expressed interested in viewing/sharing yours and theirs art work. You are not obligated to do so; I understand that some of you are just trying to meet a 4 year college art/humanities requirement. But if you are interested in sharing your work I suggest opening an account with a web provider that will allow showcasing your work in a Web Album or Blog environment.

Keep in mind that I don’t provide support for managing these sites, and if you decide to use them they cannot substitute the direct submission of your work to me done with email attachments.

Once you have created an account and posted your work, send me the link and I will share it with the class. You web album/blog can include you email or whatever mean you choose to communicate with other students in your class.

https://www.blogger.com/star

http://picasa.google.com/

http://www.homestead.com/~site/hslo/LandingPages/landing.ffhtml

http://www.deviantart.com/

and more……

There are some serious drawbacks concerning submitting your work via USPS, the most prominent being the fact that once your work is in my hands it will not be returned to you. That will prevent you from making changes to your drawings. No matter how small those changes could be, they are important. If you choose to overlook that particular aspect of your production and learning, it's fine with me, and I will not express judgment in that regard, other then saying maybe you should wait to take a web based drawing course until you acquire a digital camera, so you can keep the original drawings and I can make suggestion about improvements on digital copies of your work. But I will not do that routinely, only on your request.

You can also come to some of my regularly scheduled classes, as often as your schedule permits it. If you cannot come to my traditional classes you won't be penalized, what matters is that your work is turned in every two weeks, and that you establish a good level of communication with me via email.

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