Latest Contributions by AdenaSchutzberg1

Educators from all over the world have assigned high school, college and graduate students to complete all or part of an Esri MOOC as part of their coursework. We at Esri are pleased to have these students join our massive open online courses!   If you are an instructor exploring using a MOOC as part of assigned coursework, please review these best practices to ensure your students are successful.   1. Complete the MOOC before assigning it to your students.   I strongly encourage you to complete any MOOC you plan to use in a course before assigning it to your students. That way, you can confirm you know how the course works and that it covers relevant material. If that is not possible, I encourage you to take the course along with the students so you can tackle the content together.   2. Communicate to students that they are responsible for meeting course deadlines.   MOOCs are run on schedules and each course has a list of Dates to Remember. You and your students need to understand and stay ahead of registration and course deadlines. 3. Ensure students register before registration closes.   Students register for each MOOC by logging in to the Esri training site with their (Esri enabled) ArcGIS credentials. Registration typically closes two weeks after a course opens. We are unable to add students to a current offering after the registration cutoff date.   When a student successfully registers, the course will appear on the student's My Schedule page. If a student registers within the first two weeks of the course, the student may start the course immediately, but there may be a delay of up to two business days for course ArcGIS (organizational) accounts to be set up.   We send an e-mail on the course start date to registered students but we encourage students to put course start and end dates and the My Schedule URL on their personal calendars.  4. Emphasize the need to differentiate between, and document, the two sets of course credentials.   Students will use both an (Esri-enabled) ArcGIS account (which they may already have) to register for the course and sign in to the course and an ArcGIS Online organizational account (either a course ArcGIS account which we provide for all students or if the MOOC allows, they can use an existing one ) to access software. You as instructor should be familiar with these types of credentials.   5. Encourage students to help one another and their fellow online students.   Make sure you and students know where to go for help.   For help with course exercises, students should: Visit the course Help tab   For help with general MOOC or account questions, students should: Visit this Help page (accessible when not logged in to the course) Visit the course Help tab 6. Know requirements for a student to receive a Certificate of Completion.   Students can earn a certificate by “touching” all the course content. A student can do that without learning anything or completing a single hands-on exercise.   New content each week. Thus students must wait for the final content to be available to complete the content required to earn the certificate.   To confirm students complete specific exercises or learning objectives, you may want students to send a link to a finished map or provide a screenshot of an analysis. You may also assign your own exercise/assessment that students will complete using the provided software during the course. 7. Plan for student ArcGIS Online accounts, their content, and associated software licenses to “disappear” when the course is over.   The temporary course ArcGIS accounts and any content saved in them are deleted after the course closes (the exact time and date is noted in the Dates to Remember pane on the Dashboard tab). Software licenses associated with the course accounts (ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App, etc.) will be revoked after that time.   If you or your students want to keep the maps, apps and other products in their course ArcGIS Online accounts, this post from MOOC instructor John Shramek discusses options for doing so. 8. Use your school’s own ArcGIS Online accounts to complete the exercises if possible. Students in some MOOCs may use existing ArcGIS Pro licenses and ArcGIS Online organizational accounts to complete the course content; details are provided in the exercises about accessing those software products. If your institution has access to such licenses and accounts, I encourage you to use these school accounts if possible. When students use these school-based licenses and accounts, any content students build will be available after the course ends. 9. Point Students to the "How to Be Successful" Document I wrote How to Succeed in an Esri MOOC for students (all students, not just those who were assigned a MOOC by an instructor) to help them be successful. 10. Contact me.   If you need help related to using a MOOC in a course, please contact me directly at aschutzberg@esri.com. ... View more

Join Earth Imagery at Work instructors Kevin Butler‌ and Emily Windahl, live here on the GeoNet Community for an AMA (Ask Me Anything). The AMA will take place in this discussion thread on Friday October 20, 2017 from 10:30am-11:30am PT, and we invite you to ask Kevin and Emily questions about the course, about earth imagery data, Esri software, GIS or anything else that comes to mind.  During the AMA, if you are logged in, you can post your questions in the comments below and Kevin and Emily will reply to your questions in comments. You're welcome to post questions ahead of the AMA but we won't begin answering them until the AMA begins on October 20 at 10:30am PT.  AMA Tips and GeoNet Community Guidelines When asking questions and comments during the AMA, remember to follow the GeoNet Community Guiding Principles. This discussion page will not auto-refresh, so please remember to refresh this page to see new questions, comments and replies.  You'll know the AMA is live when you see the picture below with Kevin and Emily.  Thanks for joining us and we'll see you then! 10:30am - And we're live! Go ahead and ask your questions!  11:03am - We're halfway through. Great questions! Keep 'em coming!  11:25am - Five minutes to go! Got any fun questions for Kevin and Emily? 11:30am - Overtime! We'll take your questions too during this bonus 10 minutes!  11:40am  - And that's a wrap! The live AMA has ended but Kevin and Emily will continue to answer questions as schedules allow. Thanks for joining us and asking great questions!  ... View more

Some enhancements to ArcGIS Online are big and others are very small. My favorite one from the September update is very, very small. It’s a tiny checkbox that only ArcGIS Online administrators would ever see. Here it is in all its glory:   If you’ve not run into it yet, have a look at your Manage Licenses tab. Select a member to review his or her licenses and click Configure. You’ll find that, by default, the little checkbox near ASSIGN or in the case below UPDATE, is checked on. That means that when you assign or revoke a license, the user will be informed by e-mail.   Sometimes, of course, we ArcGIS Online administrators want to be stealthy. We want to assign licenses without the member knowing. That’s what we like to do in the Esri MOOC program, but until now, it was not possible. That meant thousands of e-mails went out to students before the course began. Those thousands of students scratched their heads and then sent e-mail asking what that odd e-mail meant. My colleagues and I sent thousands of e-mails in response. It makes me tired just thinking about it.   As of Sept 2017, all ArcGIS Online administrators can silently and stealthily assign or revoke licenses by unchecking that box. I am looking forward to assigning Business Analyst Web App licenses for the Location Advantage MOOC students for the fall offering starting Nov 1. ... View more

A user, running current version of IE 11, asks:  Please check the Open Data website below: https://hub.arcgis.com/pages/open-data   It does NOT load well.  It loads in a quasi-text-only mode.  This makes navigation difficult.  However, the map on this page continues to GROW vertically little by little.  Any content below the map continues to move and it is nearly impossible to click on anything.  Very frustrating. Can anyone confirm? Offer solution? Adena ... View more

Esri offers five different Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). My recent experiences suggest our MOOCs are still a bit mysterious to students, educators and professionals.   In this post, I want to highlight how our MOOCs are different from Esri’s other free e-Learning offerings (Web Courses, Training Seminars, Videos and Tutorials). 1. While some free e-Learning resources are accessible to everyone, others require you or your organization to own qualifying products under maintenance.   MOOCs are free to almost anyone, anywhere who wants to learn. All required accounts and software are provided for the duration of the course, without cost. 2. E-learning resources are video- or text- based; there is no interaction with the instructor or other learners.   While there is no “real time” instruction in an Esri MOOC, each course is led by an experienced instructor. MOOC instructors guide students and encourage students  to help one another. Many students note that learning from one another is the best part of the MOOC experience. 3. E-learning resources are available on demand. Students can take them when they need to learn or review a topic or technique or whenever they feel the itch to learn.   MOOCs are more like college courses. Students must register and exercises and other assignments must be completed by the end of the course. 4. E-learning resources run minutes or up to a few hours.   MOOCs run over a few weeks. The course material is most commonly introduced week by week. 5. E-learning resources typically cover specific skills on specific software products. A typical course is "Customizing the ArcGIS API for JavaScript Widgets.”   MOOCs focus on broader topics such as spatial analysis, location analytics, building apps without coding, applications of imagery, and cartography. While students use Esri software, MOOCs are not designed to train students to use specific features or software packages. 6. E-Learning Web Courses include quizzes and exercises; other learning formats depend on videos and text.   Here again, MOOCs are more like college classes. They include video lectures, step-by-step exercises, class discussions and quizzes. ... View more