Our brand new Office 2007 courseware has started to roll off the presses and into your hands.  A lot of work has gone into these highly anticipated texts. They have been put through our rigorous quality assurance testing multiple times and reviewed by dozens of instructors like you to ensure that they meet your needs. Their fabulous new content, features, designs and wealth of instructor resources plus distance learning content make it easy for you to prepare for and teach your courses. 

Stay tuned this week as we reveal those new features of our Shelly Cashman Series, New Perspectives Series, and Illustrated Series texts, plus a special SAM 2007 update on Friday.

CourseCasts. Always available…Always relevant.


Imagining your students lost in the tunes of their iPods isn’t hard to do.  Now, with the introduction of CourseCasts, your students may still be engrossed in their iPods, but they will be using them to prepare for your lecture. With CourseCasts, Course Technology’s latest online resource, we’re building a library of podcasts designed to keep your students up-to-date with the latest in computing and technology news. 

Early this year, we asked instructors how happy you were with current media elements available for the classroom.  You told us you needed to get students excited, overcome time and budget costs associated with creating your own media, and keep products timely.  We heard you, and we share your desire to bring excitement to the computing course and the technology industry!  We asked instructors to evaluate our CourseCasts as a resource for their courses.  Over 75% said they would incorporate CourseCasts into their class on a weekly basis, noting that the CourseCasts were “interesting, relevant, and current” and an “ideal means to stimulate student interest in the career field overall.”

Ken Baldauf, host of CourseCasts and Florida State University faculty member, starts each day sifting through dozens of online news sources.  The result?  A CourseCast, that brings the latest and most relevant technology stories along with explanations of what they mean and why they matter – from hardware and software to security and computing ethics to digital media.  CourseCasts will provide regularly updated 5-10 minute podcasts on the latest in technology news and are a great way to get your students excited about technology!  Throughout the spring and summer, we’ll bring you a new CourseCast segment every month.  Then, beginning in August, you’ll have a new CourseCast every week.  Use it to spark in-class discussion.  Open or close a lecture about CourseCasts’ topics.  Assign an online discussion question or have students research more about a particular topic.  We want to get students excited to learn more about technology!

Visit http://coursecasts.course.com to download the most recent CourseCast directly onto your computer or mp3 player, or sign up for our RSS feed to get the latest CourseCasts automatically downloaded to your machine.  And, as always, we appreciate your feedback, so e-mail us and let us know what you think.

In Nicole Pinard’s post, “Remembering the Past and Preparing for the Future,” she described how in her early days as an Editorial Assistant at Course Technology, she was told about our unique Manuscript Quality Assurance (MQA) process. In this post, we share more about how this process works.

The MQA team works to produce technically accurate and functionally impeccable products. We are responsible for ensuring a seamless interaction between the published text of our books and the software that each book teaches or demonstrates. We are also responsible for the technical review of ancillary materials: Data files, Solution files, Instructor Resource Kits, some aspects of Instructor’s Manuals, etc.

Now that you know what we do, here is how we do it: An MQA tester wears two hats, that of a knowledgeable technician with regard to certain software and computer concepts, and that of a student.

Primarily, the MQA tester verifies all steps or instructions, book figures, references, and related files by key-stroking each book as if an end-user. The instructional steps in a text should be written in such a way that following them produces the described or pictured end-result. The three-step process includes: validating the accuracy of steps, validating the accuracy of references, and validating the accuracy of files.

The MQA tester also takes on a “student” role when testing each book. This role takes on varying importance according to the level at which a certain book is written (for beginning, intermediate, or advanced audiences with regard to computer literacy). Especially in texts geared to beginning computer concepts and applications, the MQA tester repeatedly asks if the text is keeping to its intended audience. Are there any terms that stick out as too advanced? Does a series of steps seem tricky because of vagueness of word choice or direction?

The MQA team plays a key role in the development of our products. While the MQA process adds extra time to the production of our texts, we think these efforts are essential to producing courseware of the highest quality that makes the learning process easier for both students and instructors.

Christian Kunciw, MQA Supervisor