SEARCH ENGINE COLLEGE

Hi there Search Engine College members

I've had a couple of students contact me over the past few weeks asking if there were audio versions of our lessons available, either because they're visually impaired, prefer to learn using headphones, hate *reading* web pages or because they have trouble concentrating on printed pages.

In an attempt to address such accessibility issues, we are in the process of converting all of our PDF lessons over using Adobe Professional so they will open with Adobe Reader 6.0 and later versions. Why? Because the newest versions of Adobe Reader have built in functionality called the Read Out Loud feature.

The Read Out Loud feature can take the place of a full-featured screen reader by converting text-to-voice using a speech synthesizer. Simply open the PDF document with Adobe Reader 6.0 or later, choose *View*, *Read Out Loud* and your preferred options then turn the volume up. The document will be read out loud by "Microsoft Sam".

More information on getting the most out of Read Out Loud, including keyboard shortcuts and personalized options is in this article by WebAIM. You can even change the voice preference, which is highly recommended.

We'll be rolling out the revised PDFs for all courses over the next few weeks, starting with SEO101. Keep an eye on our Twitter account as that's where we announce all lesson updates.

Not sure if your lessons work with Read Out Loud? Firstly, make sure you have the latest version of Adobe Reader installed. Then open one of your PDF lessons. If your PDF lesson has a 2010 date, it means we've converted it already and you'll be able to use Read Out Loud right away. If it doesn't, you'll need to wait until we upload the revised version.

As always, if you have any questions, please post in the student forums.

Happy listening!

Hi Students

I've had a quite a few students contact me, confused about the grade book display in their course area or not sure how to view/print out a report of their grades for a particular course. I'd like to clarify this.

If you click on the Assignments link under the *Activities* heading within a course, a grade won't show for any completed assignments because the assignments don't have a numerical grade, only a Competent (Pass) / Not Yet Competent. To view your assignment feedback and grades, you need to do the following:

1) Enter the course area you are enrolled in.

2) Click on the *Grade* link underneath the Administration heading within the course area (bottom left). This will open your grading profile.

3) Click on *Overview Report* for a total percentage grade for each course you've completed (or a tally to date if a course is incomplete).

4) Click on *User Report* for a more detailed view. This will open a list of all your assessment items for the course, your grades for those items and the most recent tutor feedback provided on any completed assignments.

Graduates often print out this Report to take along to job interviews or to show supervisors of their course progress.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact your tutor/s.

And for those of you who observe Xmas, Search Engine College staff would like to wish you a wonderful festive season!

Kalena

SEO and Web Site Usability students may like to see my slides from Chicago SES 2009. The session was called "Successful Site Architecture". My role was to explain the value of IA to marketing and user experience design.

Information Architecture, SEO and Usability

Hi Search Engine College students

I just want to clarify a couple of things about assignment grading. We've had one or two certification students contact tutors recently claiming that they've uploaded assignments that still haven't been graded after several weeks.

Firstly, before you contact tutors chasing assignment feedback, can I please ask you to login and double check the assignment page to make sure your assignment hasn't been graded first? Feedback from your tutor will appear on the assignment upload page after it is graded. Usually the system automatically generates an email to students when tutors upload assignment feedback, but occasionally, those auto-generated emails aren't received, are intercepted by over-zealous email filters or get filed in a student's junk mail folder. We don't have control over how your mail is filtered or received so you might like to make sure the searchenginecollege.com domain is whitelisted in your email program.

Secondly, you should never have to wait more than a week for any assignment to be graded. We did have a situation earlier this year where some tutors were on vacation and a backlog developed, but we will always try to avoid such a situation and post in the news forum if there are unavoidable delays.

If you've double checked your grades area and you find that one of your assignments hasn't been graded after a week, please contact your tutor directly to follow up and/or post in the student forum. It's possible that the auto-generated email alerting your tutor of your assignment upload has gone astray.

Thanks for your patience