[Norwich University]

Trying to think a little about how the titles of echos will be used in the future. I am the one admin person who schedules classes. For sort-ability I am thinking that "Year_Season_Course#_CourseName(Contact person)". For example if I have a recurring class Tues-Thur from 9-10:30 taught by Bob Smith, I would end up with "2009_Fall_PH350A_Medical_Ethics(Bob Smith)" This means that people just need to know when the class was taught. Our Course# is a unique number for each session of a class (PH350A, PH350B, etc.)

We also have one time recordings "2009_Presentations_Board_of_Fellows_09_30_09_1500(Bob Smith)" where Presentations indicates one time (rather than recurring), and the date and military time is included.

Do others have best practices for naming their echos?

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Jon Scherbatskoy - Instructional Developer SGS
Academic Computing
Norwich University
Northfield, VT 05662

[Mike Hicks]

We are experiencing similar issues at Purdue University. When I was first introduced to Echo360, I was unfamiliar with the setup of Course, Term and Schedule names, and how to manipulate the parameters. I was entering information in fields where it did not need to be, and ended up with redundant information in Echo names. Here is an example:

"Fall 2009 - COM43500 - Lorraine Kisselburgh (COM435 - Kisselburgh-001) Fall 2009"

This worked for a while, until a staff member alerted me that when he searched for the lectures on a hand-held device, the title was so lengthy and full of mostly useless information (especially at the beginning of the title), that it was almost impossible to find with iTunesU. We are currently discussing naming conventions and how to best title each individual Course and Schedule to make the lectures searchable in iTunesU, since the majority of our content is accessed from that application. We are currently something like this:

BIOL211 - S. Jones (2011-05-18)

The date (in parentheses) is tacked on by iTunesU via metadata or something similar, so to include it in the title would be redundant. There is no longer a need for the Term (i.e., Summer 2011) to be included - the date tells us when it was created. The elongated class name and full name of the instructor are also not necessary, and all the pertinent info should show up in the limited text field of a hand-held device. This is a work in progress, but in the end, it is the users who dictate what the naming convention will be, based on their needs.

Mike Hicks
BoilerCast Operator
Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN