Objectives

Introduce yourself to classmates and instructor. Learn how to use Moodle's basic features. Complete the pre-course assignments.

Readings and Lecture Support

No readings for the "Introduction."

Lecture PowerPoints

For my "Who is Rick Jerz?" video.

PowerPoints, 3 per page
PowerPoints, 6 per page
PowerPoints, 1 per page

Pre-Course Assignment

This pre-course assignment is designed to get you prepared to have success in the course by making sure all of your necessary resources are working for you. You should do the following tasks before the first week of class (consider printing this webpage and then "check off" the assignments that you have completed.

1) Review the syllabus.

2) Verify that you can log into ICON, and into Moodle. For Moodle, click on the appropriate "Data Management and Visual Analytics" course link for this course. If this is your first time accessing Moodle, create an account following the 7 steps, when you get an email from Moodle, click on its link and enter the "enrollment" key that I emailed to you in my "Welcome" email. Let me know if you encounter any problems. Here is a short video showing you how to set up your Moodle account.

3) View the following support videos:

Play video "Who is Dr. Jerz""Who is Dr. Jerz"

Play video titled "Videos, Podcasts, and iTunes""Videos, Podcasts, and iTunes"

Play video "Overview of Moodle""Overview of Moodle"

4) In Moodle, click on the "Introduce Yourself" forum and provide your classmates some interesting information about yourself.

5) In Moodle, click on the "Upload Photo" assignment link. Upload a photo (or document). This gives you a chance to make sure that you know how to upload files into Moodle.

6) In Moodle, click on the Student Information Survey, complete it making sure to "submit" it.

7) If you have an smartphone or other multimedia player, you might want to see if you can get the course podcast videos into iTunes (Apple or PC) or Podcast Republic (Android.) Usually, I prefer playing the videos from behind my computer. In my "Videos, Podcasts, iTunes" video, I show you how to get these various video feeds into iTunes (copy this feed URL, go to iTunes, click on Files | Subscribe to Podcast, and paste the feed URL into the textbox.) In other "feed aggregators" like Podcast Republic (Android) the process is very similar. Refer to my webpage on Videos, Podcasts, and iTunes (shown in Moodle.)

8) Browse the textbooks in order to get a sense of what we will be covering.

About a week before the course starts, I will let you know (via an email) that the first week's materials are now available. You will be able to begin this first week's assignments before the course officially starts.

9) Let me know if you have any questions or encounter any problems.