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Author: Janice Florent

Technology Coordinator in the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development at Xavier University of Louisiana

About Janice Florent

Technology Coordinator in the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development at Xavier University of Louisiana

Published on Leave a comment on Create a User-Friendly eLearning Course

by Janice Florent

maze with arrow showing path from entrance to the exit that is on the outside of the maze

Course designs that are not user-friendly can make it very difficult for students to be successful in a course.

Undoubtedly you spent a great deal of time crafting your course content and perfecting your layout, which is why it's crucial to focus on usability. Students have a lot going on in their lives and don’t want to go through a maze-like course; click on dead-end links; have to use too many mouse clicks to get to the content; or scroll through long pages of information.

If you want students to be successful in your online/hybrid course, the course should be intuitive, well organized, and easy to navigate.

In a recent eLearning Industry blog post, Christopher Pappas shared eight tips that can help you create a user-friendly eLearning course for your students. Christopher’s tips are:

  • Provide detailed instructions
  • Keep text short and succinct
  • Opt for brief bursts of information
  • Create an effective course menu
  • Test out your course navigation
  • Integrate supplemental links
  • Include optional tips and tricks that can help students to complete the course

If this has piqued your interest, you can read more in Christopher’s 8 Tips Towards Α User-Friendly eLearning Course blog post for more information.

Image credit: “user friendly” by jflorent is licensed under CC BY 4.0 and is a deravitive of "maze" by naveed.butt licensed under CC BY 2.0

Published on Leave a comment on Ensuring Student Success in Online Courses

by Janice Florent

students putting together puzzle pieces leading toward success as a goal

Many students enroll in online classes because of the convenience and flexibility. Some students mistakenly believe taking an online course is going to be easier than a face-to-face class. It is important that students understand online courses require greater responsibility/ownership for their own learning.

In a recent Faculty Focus article, Poonam Kumar, EdD and Marilyn Skrocki, listed a few simple strategies and techniques instructors can do at the course level to support students’ success in online classes. Those strategies and techniques are:

  • Clearly communicate expectations
  • Prepare students
  • Course organization and layout
  • Chunk the content and scaffold instruction
  • Humanize the course

Following these strategies and techniques can help students to succeed in online courses. If this has piqued your interest, you can read more in the Ensuring Student Success in Online Courses article.

Published on Leave a comment on Bb Tip #158: Changes to Turnitin are Coming

Turnitin has released a major product upgrade that will soon be available with our Blackboard integration. The new version of the service, called Turnitin Feedback Studio, offers all the functionalities of Turnitin, but with a simplified, more intuitive interface.

Turnitin Feedback Studio logo

Turnitin Feedback Studio’s simplified, more intuitive user experience brings together the grading, feedback, and similarity checking services in one view. Additionally, the contextual marking approach of the iPad app allows educators to click anywhere on the paper and leave a comment, QuickMark Comment, or text comment at any time.

Turnitin Feedback Studio will make it faster and easier than ever to promote academic integrity, provide actionable feedback, and evaluate student learning.

Our version of Turnitin is scheduled to be upgraded to Turnitin Feedback Studio in between the summer and fall semesters. Once upgraded, you can expect to see a new interface when you open up a student’s paper in Turnitin. Your students will also experience this new and improved interface when viewing Similarity Reports and receiving feedback.

Want more information?

Try out an interactive demo
Review the Feedback Studio Instructor Guide
Review the Feedback Studio Student Guide
Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
Check out help for instructors at help.blackboard.com.
Try these Blackboard How-To documents.
Visit the Blackboard FAQs for additional blackboard information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

Published on Leave a comment on Bb Tip #157: VoiceThread

VoiceThread is powerful learning tool that extends the classroom by allowing users to have conversations or discussions around audio and visual media without scheduling a specific time to meet. VoiceThread humanizes interactions in an online environment. VoiceThread can be used to enhance student engagement and online presence.

VoiceThread conversations in the cloud

VoiceThread adds a more personal element to the online experience when utilizing the features of commenting via voice. By hearing and seeing the instructor and classmates during a VoiceThread, a familiarity develops that feeds deeper participation. Utilizing VoiceThreads can give you and your students a "voice."

With VoiceThread, instructors and students can create, share, and comment on media (e.g., images, Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, videos, audio files, documents, PDFs) using a microphone, webcam, text, phone, and audio-file upload.

Additionally, VoiceThread is integrated into our Blackboard system which gives us Single Sign-On authentication and Grade Center integration.

Voicethread is currently available at no cost to Xavier faculty and students.

Want more information?

Explore VoiceThread at XU
Sample VoiceThreads:
• Photographs That Changed the World
• Visual Thinking
• VoiceThread Digital Library
How to Humanize Your Online Class with VoiceThread (free ebook)
Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
Check out help for instructors at help.blackboard.com.
Try these Blackboard How-To documents.
Visit the Blackboard FAQs for additional blackboard information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

Published on Leave a comment on Engaging Students in eLearning

by Janice Florent

engaging students in eLearning infographic

Engaging students in eLearning can be more challenging than in a face-to-face class. Follow the 5 do's presented in the Engaging Students in eLearning Infographic to create an engaging online course for your students.

5 Tips To Engage Your Students in eLearning

  1. Stay Relevant - All content, heading, and subheading should be relevant to the course.
  2. Stay Organized - Keep the screen neat and clutter-free. You never want to distract the student from your content.
  3. Keep it Interesting - Both your content and your design should be interesting to the student.
  4. Remain Up-To-Date - Update your course often to ensure your content is always accurate.
  5. Add Interactions - Only add interactions that are necessary, such as links, videos, or file downloads.

Published on Leave a comment on Going from Face-to-face to Online Teaching

by Janice Florent

woman sitting at a table looking at mobile device with a laptop computer nearby

Successfully moving courses online involves more than simply transferring what you are currently doing in your face-to-face class to the online class. If your aim is to create a meaningful online learning experience with long-lasting effects, you will have to rethink the way you teach.

In a recent Faculty Focus article, Rob Kelly quoted Professor Paul Caron who said,

If you simply take your face-to-face class and put it online and teach it electronically, you will fail miserably.

Rob goes on to list some challenges with moving your course online and ways you can overcome them. They are,

Communicate frequently. The online learning environment lacks the visual and auditory cues that instructors and students often take for granted in the face-to-face classroom. This lack of visual and auditory cues can hinder the ability to develop rapport, motivate, and engage students.

Use multimedia. Multimedia can stimulate more than one sense at a time, and in doing so, may be more attention-getting and attention-holding than just using text alone. You can build a community with audio and increase your presence with video.

Monitor “attendance.” Online courses require students to be self-directed learners. If students are not accessing the course regularly and keeping up with their course work they are less likely to be successful in the course.

Make the subject relevant. One of the challenges of teaching a core course is that students aren’t automatically interested in the subject. When students see how the course is relevant to them, they stay interested. Invite guest speakers to provide career specific examples or include “real world” examples to illustrate course content. Design assignments to be flexible and allow students to pursue interests.

Rather than trying to replicate the face-to-face classroom, online, you want to design an experience that engages students in learning in a way that fosters their interest and curiosity, and ultimately facilitates deep-level learning that comes to them by way of technology. (Parker, 2013).

If this blog post has piqued your interest, you can read more in the Faculty Focus article, From F2F to Online: Getting It Right as well as the following blog posts:

Image Credit: African American Browsing by rawpixel from Pixabay

Published on Leave a comment on Bb Tip #156: End of Semester Tasks

As we approach the end of the semester there are a few things you can do in Blackboard to wrap up for the semester.

Download your gradebook

Student access to courses is removed two weeks after the end of a semester. During this process all grade book records are deleted. You should download your gradebook to your local computer after you submit your final grades.

Create a master copy of your course

Courses remain on the Blackboard system for three semesters before they are removed. You can request a Master Course Shell that you can use to develop and maintain your course materials. Master Course Shells will not be removed from the Blackboard system.

Hide old courses from view

When you login to Blackboard you will see your courses for previous semesters listed along with the courses you are currently teaching on the Xavier University and Courses tabs. If you do not want to see older courses in the list, you can hide them from view.

Follow these steps to do it.

Instructions are available in previous Bb tips for downloading your grade book, requesting master course shells, and hiding old courses from view.

Want more information?

Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
Check out help for instructors at help.blackboard.com.
Try these Blackboard How-To documents.
Visit the Blackboard FAQs for additional blackboard information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

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Published on 1 Comment on What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Teach Online

by Janice Florent

Being prepared is a must for teaching online. In addition to using better practices for online course design you should be thinking about how to deliver your online course for maximum success.

globe with a computer mouse and teaching online text

In an IDDblog blog post, Alex Joppie listed a few tips for keeping your online course running smoothly. I’ve combined his tips with a few of my own to provide you with suggestions to help your online course run smoothly. Those suggestions are as follows:

Before the semester starts—touch base with your students

Send an email to your students before the first day of class. In your email,

  • Make sure students know they’re enrolled in an online class. Some students take online classes because they think it will be easy. When in fact, some students struggle in online courses because they do not have the skills to be self-directed learners. You should let the students know that online classes take time and self-discipline.
  • Inform them of technology requirements, textbooks, and other required materials. This will help them hit the ground running.
  • Let the students know when your Blackboard course will be available.
  • Let the students know you’re there. This email can also serve to ensure to students that even though the entire course is going to facilitated by computers and networks, that there is a human being involved who cares about their success.
  • Make sure they got the email (and read it). Ask students to respond to the email. You may need to pursue other means of communication if a student doesn’t seem to be getting your email.

The first week—setting the tone

Follow these steps to set a healthy culture for the course and make sure everyone gets off to a good start.

  • Make sure students log in to your course. Use the Performance Dashboard to check to make sure everyone has logged in sometime within the first few days of class.
  • Create a welcome video for your course. Using a short video clip of yourself helps the students to have a picture of you in their mind. This video will help you to become a “real” person to your students.
  • Add a profile avatar to humanize your course. Humanized learning increases the relevance of course content and improves students’ motivation to log-in to your course week-after-week. Your profile avatar will create an inviting space for your students.
  • Create a more personalized learning environment in your course by using template variables. Template variables allow you to create personalized messages for your students. A personalized welcome message, for example, will make your course feel more inviting to your students.
  • Be active in introductory discussions. Your introductory discussions will set the tone for the entire course. Make sure there’s a positive culture in your discussions by being engaging in the first one.
  • Encourage students to utilize the Global Navigation Menu, Course Calendar, and notifications to keep up with critical and timely course related information and assignments.
  • Utilize Blackboard tools to help students stay on track. Students are more likely to be successful in an online course when they check-in regularly and keep up with their coursework. If a student falls behind early, they may never catch up.

Mid-course—checking in

  • Give your students an anonymous survey to get feedback from them on how the course is going. Do this sometime after you feel your students should have gotten a sense of the rhythm of the course but you still have time to make meaningful course corrections based on the feedback. This is especially important the first time you teach a new course.

Every week—the routine

Provide students with weekly communications that recap the previous week’s activities and prime students for the following week:

  • Highlight insightful discussion posts – Draw students’ attention to important points made by their classmates. It’s positive reinforcement for students and shows that you’re engaged.
  • Respond to gaps in student learning – Did everyone miss a question on the quiz, or skip over an important point in a discussion? If so, address it.
  • Contextualize the week’s main topics – Tie the week’s activities back to the learning goals of the course. Why is what we did this week important?
  • Prime the students for the next week’s main topic – Give some context about why they should care about what’s coming up next.

Here are a few more ideas to keep your online course interesting.

End-of-semester evaluation—develop your teaching persona

  • An end-of-semester evaluation is a good opportunity to get feedback from your students to help you develop your teaching persona. Getting a “learner-sighted” view of the course-experience can add to your understanding of the learning environment, including aspects of your teaching persona that have framed it.

Studies show that students withdraw from online courses at a higher rate than in face-to-face courses. There are many reasons for students withdrawing from an online course. Some reasons are beyond the instructor’s control. Educators do not like to see students withdraw from courses for the wrong reasons. The suggestions in this blog post will help you to improve retention and reduce attrition by making sure that your students are prepared, that they get off to a good start, and that they’re engaged.

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Published on 1 Comment on Keyboard Shortcuts

by Janice Florent

keyboard

If you are using keyboard shortcuts, you already know keyboard shortcuts can give your productivity a boost.

Most people know the keyboard shortcuts to select all (Ctrl + A), copy (Ctrl + C), and paste (Ctrl + V). There are other helpful keyboard shortcuts you can use in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Being able to use the same keyboard shortcuts in all three programs can make them easier to remember. Here is a list of keyboard shortcuts that you can use in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to save time and effort.*

If you want to Windows Mac OS
Select All Ctrl + A Command + A
Copy Ctrl + C Command + C
Paste Ctrl + V Command + V
Cut Ctrl + X Command + X
Bold Ctrl + B Command + B
Underline Ctrl + U Command + U
Italic Ctrl + I Command + I
Find Ctrl + F Command + F
Replace Ctrl + H Shift + Command + H
Undo Ctrl + Z Command + Z
Redo Ctrl + Y Command + Y
Hyperlink Ctrl + K Command + K
Save Ctrl + S Command + S
Print Ctrl + P Command + P

Hopefully using these shortcuts will help you to increase your productivity.

For additional shortcuts, check out these Microsoft Office shortcut cheat sheets. Also, ICYMI, check out Bart’s PowerPoint Power blog post for additional PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts.


Image credit: Image by Pixies from Pixabay
*Some shortcuts may be specific to certain software versions.

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Published on 1 Comment on Digital Copyrights

by Janice Florent

Finding quality images, audio, video, etc. to use in your Blackboard course is one of the most important and potentially daunting aspects of developing your course. There are certain legal rights for digital content. You cannot, for example, just pull an image off of a Google image search and use it. There are some important things you should understand about digital copyrights before you use an image or other digital content that you did not create on your own.

copyright vs copyleft vs creative commons

Copyright is all about balancing the rights of authors with the rights of the public to use the work without seeking permission or paying royalties. Under copyright, authors have the right to control the use of their work subject to exceptions permitted under the law. If the use exceeds such exceptions, then infringing on someone's copyright can result in the infringer paying money damages (civil liability) and/or going to prison (criminal liability).

Copyleft (a play on the word copyright) is the practice of offering people the right to freely distribute copies and modified versions of a work with the stipulation that the same rights be preserved in derivative works down the line.

Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work.

Works in the public domain are those whose intellectual property rights have expired, have been forfeited, or are inapplicable.

A Creative Commons (CC) license is a public copyright license that enables the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work.

The image below describes how Creative Commons licenses relates to traditional copyright and the public domain.

copyright spectrum

Here are a few links to resources to help you better understand Creative Commons licenses and copyrights:

Image credits:
copyright, copyleft, and creative commons icons found in public domain
"the spectrum of rights" by Michelle Pacansky-Brock is licensed under CC-BY 2.0