The presentation you are watching right now is a flash movie. You will have the option of watching your presentations throughout this class in this format or you can download them as PDF’s. In either case let begin by going over how to use the flash software you are viewing now.

Here are the key menu and navigation aids that will help you manage your way through this course. If you need to adjust the volume you can do so here. This bar shows your progress through the course content and enables you to advance to a specific portion of the current page or screen view simply by clicking anywhere within the progress bar itself. Then just like a video player you have a play/pause button as well as a forward and backward button. You also have access to some helpful navigation tabs which provide additional assistance and information as well as a search facility. You might like to click on these tabs in a moment to see what each offers Finally there is the screen toggle button which offers you three differenteach offers. Finally there is the screen toggle button which offers you three different screen layouts to choose from. Before you go to the next page why not spend a moment to review these various features. To do so click the play pause button, when you are through reviewing these features click the play/pause button again to continue.

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The presentation you are watching right now is a flash movie. You will have the option of watching your presentations throughout this class in this format or you can download them as PDF’s. In either case let begin by going over how to use the flash software you are viewing now.

Here are the key menu and navigation aids that will help you manage your way through this course. If you need to adjust the volume you can do so here. This bar shows your progress through the course content and enables you to advance to a specific portion of the current page or screen view simply by clicking anywhere within the progress bar itself. Then just like a video player you have a play/pause button as well as a forward and backward button. You also have access to some helpful navigation tabs which provide additional assistance and information as well as a search facility. You might like to click on these tabs in a moment to see what each offers Finally there is the screen toggle button which offers you three differenteach offers. Finally there is the screen toggle button which offers you three different screen layouts to choose from. Before you go to the next page why not spend a moment to review these various features. To do so click the play pause button, when you are through reviewing these features click the play/pause button again to continue.

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now lets go over the course homepage. To reach the course homepage open your internet and type www.cnr.uidaho.edu/for435 into your browser window. We will see the course navigation along the left hand side. The course navigation will be viewable on all the course webpage's. The navigation allows you to quickly link to the course syllabus, schedule the visitors section, contacts and the help section. We will review several of these sections in a few minutes. In addition to the course navigation the home page also has the start here button which will walk you through a technical check to insure that your computer has all the necessary capabilities fora technical check to insure that your computer has all the necessary capabilities for this course.

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The course syllabus is a one stop shop for information about this course. Within the course syllabus you will find information about your instructors, the objectives of this course, the learning outcomes, grading criteria and the assignments.

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Your instructors for this class will be Alistair Smith, Roger Ottmar and myself. If you have question about this course please contact me either by phone or email.The course objectives state that we will explore the limitations and purposes of current and past approaches used to conduct fuels inventory and mapping projects. We will review the field and lab techniques that are commonly used, discuss the ecological roles of fuel in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and use several of these techniques to collect analyze and interpret data.

By the end of this course you should understand the conceptual framework behind fuels classification and mapping, explain the links between course woody debris and other ecological processes, be able to describe the common approaches used to inventory and map wildland fuels, understand the assumptions and limitations to surface and canopy fuel estimates and understand and explain the practical

li ti f th f l h t i ti l ifi ti tapplications of the fuels characteristic classification system .

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This course will consist of 4 assignments each worth 150 points. Within the course syllabus each assignment will be listed separately. In the listing you will be able to click on the assignment and view the details and any data needed to complete the assignment. In addition to the 4 assignments you will also be graded on your discussion during the workshop and the online classroom. The last assignment is a reflective essay assignment titled Aha! moments. In addition you will also find specific criteria for the Aha moments and the online discussion.

For more information about each assignment please take some time to review the course syllabus.

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The course schedule provides a list of the topics we will cover during this course. In the course schedule page you will notice that the course is divided into 7 lessons. Within each lesson there will be between 1 and 6 subtopics we will cover. In addition you will see the dates that we will work on each subtopic.

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If you clicked on any of the individual topics you will find a brief overview of the lesson, a set of learning objectives for the topic and the learning materials. The learning materials will include the assigned readings due for the topic, the lecture material, any assignments that you are to begin or that are due, and information about the online discussions. In some cases the assigned readings will have a link to a PDF, in these cases the readings will have blue text instead of the traditional black text. For the cases where the PDf is not available you will need to

t th UI li lib d d l d th PDFgo to the UI online library and download the PDF.

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During this course you will use blackboard to take part in discussions, turn in assignments and check your grades. To login to blackboard go to www.blackboard.uidaho.edu. You will notice that along the left hand side you will see a navigation bar which includes a link back to the student help section. In addition to using this navigation you will also notice that there is browser check along the right hand side, you should click this button to make sure your browser is upto data and can support the sue of blackboard.

In the middle of the screen you will see a link which will allow you to log intoblackboard. To log in you will need to enter your username and your password.

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Once you have logged into blackboard and have clicked on the course you would like to enter. You will see a screen which look like this. The four tabs you see will link you to either the aha moments, class discussions, the introduction topic and the how’s my driving topic.

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Along the left side of your browser you will see the navigation in blackboard. In the navigation menu you can access the course announcements, the assignments, the class calendar, a link to all the discussions, the class roster, and a section to chat with other students online. In addition to these you will also find some tools to help you keep track of your grades.

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If you open the discussion area you will see the following. For this class I have used several topic area, starting with the aha moments, the class discussions and than two uncategorized topics. You can access each topic area from the main course home page or view all of these from the discussion link on the navigation tree.

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To post a discussion click on one of the topics. Then click on the create message tab. Once you click on this tab you can write your message, add any attachments and then click post. To read the messages in a discussion topic, you simply have to click on a topic and then click on one of the posts.

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In addition to completing our discussion topics in blackboard you will also submit your. To submit a assignment click on the assignments tab in the course navigation. During this course we will have 4 assignments due. If you click on one of the assignments a description of the assignment details will come up.

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Another feature we will use is the course calendar. The course calendar will list the lessons you are to work on during the week and the start and due dates for the assignments. You can view the complete list of posts for a specific date by clicking on a day.

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I have also provided a class roster area where you can add a picture and post information about you for the class to see. In addition we have also included a who’s online section which will allow you to see who else is online and let you open a chat window with them to communicate.

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