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by Karen Nichols

In the September 8, 2014 issue of Faculty Focus, Amy Erickson and Catz Neset offer in their article "Building Community and Creating Relevance in the Online Classroom," several best practices for creating video announcements to post in Blackboard (or whatever Learning Management System you may be using).

In addition to your students having more exposure to you as a "real" person speaking to them, video announcements can also be a presentation of material or virtual tour of the week's lesson, narrated by you.

Here is the authors' formula for success:

  • Provide an introduction each week and share your availability
  • Give feedback and answer questions from the previous week
  • Showcase exceptional student work from the previous week
  • Highlight the objectives of the coming week and any special preparation or required resources
  • Connect your coursework to relevant current events
  • **I would add to this list:  Keep in mind that students may be using mobile devices to access Blackboard so you'll want to create your video announcement to be easily viewed on a smartphone or ipad

Video announcements are not limited to strictly online courses. Posting a video announcement in a traditional face to face class can be a timesaver in that you can answer questions from last week and set up the coming week's agenda before the students arrive in class.

Here's a video announcement from Xavier's own Mark Gstohl.  He introduces himself, gives his contact information and tells the students about an upcoming assignment.  He also adds a bit of humor which goes a long way to building a rapport with the students.

Please feel free to share a link to one of your video announcements!

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by Tiera S. Coston

Better Mistakes

For most of us, the words "mistake" and "failure" conjure up feelings of insecurity, humiliation and anxiety. And if the the words have such a negative effect, then think of how we feel when we actually make a mistake or fail at something. Further complicate the situation by imagining that the person who made the mistake or failed at something is a young college student who is already feeling overwhelmed and under-prepared. I propose a shift in the way we view mistakes and failure. We, as educators, must model to our students a mindset in which mistakes and failure are a natural part of mastering subject matter. We must teach them how to use their mistakes as valuable information that can illuminate their road to mastery. Mistakes are one of the most important things that can happen in the classroom because they have the power to direct students where to focus their efforts. Ultimately, academic success comes from how students feel about and use their mistakes. Helping your students to understand that failure is not only an option, but a necessity, is one of the most important things you will ever teach them. I certainly do not suggest that facilitating this shift in mindset in your classroom will be easy; it will require a great deal of work for both you and the students. However, consistent effort and a willingness to try (and fail at) different approaches will yield students who are in a better position to learn and succeed (master subject matter). Failure is an Option: Helping Your Students Make Their Mistakes Work for Them may help to give you a starting point if you would like to facilitate this type of paradigm shift in your classroom. Also, here is the form if you are interested in using the RAM Strategy.

One feature missing from Blackboard is the ability to get a word count for discussion board threads, blogs, wikis, and journals. Currently, most professors get a word count by copying text from Blackboard, pasting it into Microsoft Word and then getting a word count inside MS Word. The "Word Count" Add-on for the Firefox web browser skips this whole process and gives you the ability to get a word count for discussion board threads, blogs, wikis, and journals while on the respective page in Blackboard.

image showing word count

Follow these steps to do it.

First download and install the Add-on:
Liberty University Word Count Add-on for Firefox
To get a word count in Blackboard:

When on the Blackboard page (i.e., discussion boards, blogs, wikis, or journals), you will see a button labeled ‘Word Count’ at the top and bottom of the page. Highlight the text you would like to count and click the Word Count button. A count of the number of highlighted words will be displayed in the box next to the Word Count button.

Want more information?

Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
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.

Inline Assignment Grading enhances the grading experience for instructors. You can view, comment, and grade student-submitted assignment files without leaving the Grade Assignment page.

When you view a document submitted in an assignment, that document is converted to a format that is viewable inside the web browser. The converted document is displayed in a viewer on the Grade Assignment page. Formatting and embedded images of the original document are preserved in the conversion. Annotation tools enable instructors to provide feedback -- comments, highlights, and even drawing -- directly on the inline view of the document. Inline grading allows for full screen editing, and brings the sidebar to all gradable items like blogs, wikis, discussions and journals.

Note: Supported document types that can be used with inline grading are Word (doc, docx), PowerPoint (ppt, pptx), Excel (xls, xlsx), and PDF (pdf).

Want more information?

Using Inline Grading for Assignments
Using Inline Grading for Assignments Video [00:05:35]
Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
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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The newly designed Content Editor vastly improves your experience for adding text and other forms of digital content to your course.

The Content Editor provides instructors and students with content processing tools that help users create text, tables, hyperlinks, embedded multimedia, and file attachments. The Content Editor can be accessed throughout Blackboard to create lesson content, announcements, discussion posts, assignments, test items, and more!

The new Content Editor improves your ability to enter text, paste from Microsoft Word and add content to all areas of your courses and organizations. Gone are the prior formatting problems of cutting and pasting text from Word. The Content Editor retains the formatting of the pasted text.

Video Everywhere is a new feature in the Content Editor that allows instructors and students to record short YouTube videos on the fly using a webcam and seamlessly embed the video into course materials, interactions, and feedback.

Want more information?
Using the Content Editor
Using Video Everywhere
Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
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.

There's a harrowing scene in chapter 1 of this year's common read, The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, in which young, shaloq-weilding Taliban "enforcers" beat a woman in the street for appearing in public without a proper chadri, the full-length garment that covers the head and face. This and other descriptions of the Taliban in the early parts of the book bring to mind images of an oppressive totalitarian regime more similar to 1984 or Farenheit 451 than to the free society in which most of our freshmen have grown up. That is, these images should remind students of the vast gulf between life in the U.S. and that in a strange, far-away place halfway around the globe. Unfortunately, these images instead bring to mind other images that happen to be saturating the news at the start of the semester: those of heavily armed and armored police confronting protestors in Ferguson, Missouri. Timing here proves to be everything, as a poll of my Freshman Seminar students on what they feel are our most pressing social problems reveals police brutality, racial profiling, and racial bias in our law enforcement and criminal justice systems at the top of the list. And with numbers like 1 in 12 black males age 18-64 spending time in prison, compared to 1 in 87 whites, blacks overall incarcerated at a rate of 6 times that of whites, and blacks comprising 40% of the total prison population, while making up 12% of the U.S. population, it's easy to see why our students are concerned.

In order to work toward social justice, we must first identify where social injustice exists. And with disparities based on race, gender, class, ethnicity existing across the spectrum of our social systems, from education to health care to employment to criminal justice, identifying injustice is as easy now as at any point in our history, and, unfortunately, as easy as idetifying it under systems like the Taliban. But while these gaps are easy to see, to those who simply wish to open their eyes, they also remain equally difficult to address, to reconcile, to alleviate, to end. For every pious organization out on the streets fighting to alleviate suffering, to mend communities, to help people, there are powerful historical realities, political forces, and financial interests at work to keep the status quo in place, to keep reality fixed and unchangeable.

A discussion of life under the Taliban is a perfectly suitable way to begin a dialogue with students about the society in which we are preparing them to inhabit roles of leadership, our own society. And as we move toward our service learning projects in the sping, it's worth remebering the underlying imbalances at the heart of any attempt to help improve our community. Ultimately, if our service is effective, then we will have eliminated the very need for our services. Those being "served" will inhabit their rightful place as equals in our society, wanting for nothing that others have only because of the conditions of their birth. This type of transformation, both of our society and within the mindset our students, can never come solely from doing, but through thinking as well. Hence, the learning in service learning. Learning comes through teaching, and fortunately for them, that is what we are here to do.

J. Tuman

by Karen Nichols
Hi Everyone and welcome back for the fall 2014 semester! Here is a timely reminder of the various ways CAT can support your online/hybrid courses (and even technology-infused face to face courses).

  • One to one sessions on using technology such as Blackboard, plus one to one sessions on the pedagogy of online teaching--please contact Janice Florent, jflorent@xula.edu, for Blackboard help and Karen Nichols, knichola@xula.edu, for pedagogical assistance with your courses
  • Workshops, presentations and panel discussions about online teaching including accessibility, student conduct and providing quality feedback--please see our CAT events
  • CAT's Online Faculty Resource Center, an organization in Blackboard to which you can subscribe by emailing Janice Florent, jflorent@xula.aedu, or Karen Nichols, knichola@xula.edu  (If you use the Bb Mobile app on your mobile device, you'll be notified each time new content is added)
  • ETC (Educational Technology Community), Xavier's special interest group that meets virtually throughout the academic year and which you can join by emailing Karen Nichols, knichola@xula.edu
  • Camtasia Studio--please contact Bart Everson, bpeverso@xula.edu, for more information
  • Books on best practices of teaching online that can be checked out--please ask Ms. Olivia Crum, ocrum@xula.edu, to check them out
  • Resources on this blog page dedicated to Blackboard and other technology used

If you're interested in learning more about any of these items, please contact us:  cat@xula.edu; 504-520-7512  We'll be delighted to assist you--wishing everyone a great fall semester!

CAT's Online Faculty Resource Center

CAT's Online Faculty Resource Center

CAT is pleased to announce our new podcast host, Dr. Megan Osterbur. Look forward to her first episode of Teaching, Learning & Everything Else in this space next month.

Dr. Megan Osterbur Dr. Megan Osterbur is a Political Science faculty member in the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences. In addition to Political Science courses, Dr. Osterbur teaches courses in the Women’s Studies program as well as Black Politics, a part of the African American and Diaspora Studies at Xavier. Her research on teaching pedagogy includes “Does Mechanism Matter? Student Recall of Electronic versus Handwritten Feedback,” which she co-authored with Dr. Elizabeth Yost Hammer and Dr. Elliott Hammer. In the summer of 2014 she also participated in the National Women’s Studies Association Curriculum Institute.

Course delivery is vulnerable to unplanned events. Potential interruptions to class activities include but are not limited to natural disasters, widespread illness, acts of violence, planned or unexpected construction-related closures, severe weather conditions, and medical emergencies.

Here are a few things you can do in Blackboard to help you prepare should the need arise.

  • Understanding and Building Your Course
    • Getting Started with Course Environment (Video) (PDF)
    • Getting Started with Course Content (PDF)
  • Utilize Blackboard’s Communication Tools
  • Collecting Student Work
    • Getting Started with Assignments (PDF)
  • Utilize Blackboard’s Collaboration Tools
    • Blogs, Wikis, Journals, & Discussion Boards Explained (PDF)
  • Posting Grades
    • Getting Started with the Grade Center (PDF)

Additionally, you should consider developing an instructional continuity plan to help you to be ready to continue teaching with minimal interruption. More information about instructional continuity plans can be found on our Instructional Continuity web page. There you will find planning guides, resources, and a link to our April 2014 Instructional Continuity workshop presentation.

Want more information?
Get more information about instructional continuity plans.
Sign up for Blackboard workshops or request one-on-one help.
Try these Blackboard How-To documents.
Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
Visit our Blackboard FAQs for additional blackboard information
or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.

A new Blackboard Collaborate Launcher utility is available for Windows users. A Collaborate Launcher utility was released last summer for Mac users and now the utility is available for Windows users.

Calendar

The Blackboard Collaborate Launcher simplifies the process for joining Blackboard Collaborate web conferencing sessions and recordings. When you click 'Join Room' on the Room Details page or a recording link in the Recordings table, Blackboard Collaborate checks to see if you have the launcher installed. If you do not, Blackboard Collaborate prompts you to download it.

Using the Blackboard Collaborate Launcher:

- When a participant clicks on a session or recording link, Blackboard Collaborate checks to see if you have the launcher installed and, if you don't, prompts you to download it.
- When the launcher is installed, clicking a session or recording link triggers the download of a .collab file. This .collab file will be used to launch your session or recording.
- The launcher download can be done in advance or just prior to attending the Collaborate session.

Want more information?
Bb Collaborate Launcher
Visit the Collaborate On Demand Learning Center
Explore Blackboard’s On Demand Learning Center.
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.