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Published on 1 Comment on Video Assignments

by Janice Florent

Traditional writing assignments are appropriate for many types of assessments, but there is no law that says traditional writing assignments are required for all.

In a Faculty Focus article, Dr. John Orlando explains how student videos can be used to demonstrate learning. He writes,

A good video assignment is to put students into small groups with instructions to make a video that teaches a key concept related to class. If done well, the video not only demonstrates students’ understanding of the concept, but also serves as a resource that can be used by others.

Recent technologies have made video creation remarkably easy and video assignments can be shared in Blackboard. However, you should opt to have the students upload their video files to a video sharing site like YouTube and just provide a link to the video inside Blackboard. The reason for this is your Blackboard courses have a 1.25 GB course size limit. This course size limit includes all content the instructor uploads as well as all content uploaded by the students. Most video files are large and you will find that if students attempted to upload their videos into your course you will reach your course size limit rather quickly.

If you are interested in video assignments, you can read more in Dr. Orlando’s “Ask Your Students to Create Videos to Demonstrate Learning” article.

Additionally, I prepared some instructions for recording, uploading, and sharing video on YouTube that you should provide to your students to help them post a link to their video in Blackboard.

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Published on 1 Comment on Ideas to Keep Your Online Course Interesting

by Janice Florent

The underlying theme for last year’s Sloan Consortium International Symposium on Emerging Technologies for Online Learning (ET4Online) was on how instructors can refresh their online course to keep it interesting for students.

In an Online Colleges blog post about the symposium, Dr. Melissa Venable writes,

The primary goal of keeping an online course current or fresh is improving the experience and environment for all involved. This effort can include content and assignments, as well as social interaction and technology upgrades, and it doesn’t have to mean a large-scale initiative. Small changes and modifications can make a positive difference for both students and instructors.

Dr. Venable posted a few ideas from the symposium to help instructors refresh their online course. Those ideas are:

Threaded Discussions

  • Include student generated discussion questions.
  • Vary your comments and replies.
  • Use the Content Editor to format a text-based response (e.g., bold and italics, bullets) and add embedded links, images, and multimedia.

Multimedia Options

  • Build a community with audio.
  • Increase your presence with video.
  • Use the Content Editor…MORE! Audio and video options are integrated into the Content Editor, allowing you and your students to record from within the course.

Assignments and Activities

  • Consider assignments that foster student interaction with each other.
  • Give students choices for assignment completion (i.e., choosing between writing a paper and creating a video.)
  • Integrate “active learning" breaks.

If you are interested in getting more information about refreshing your online course, read Dr. Venable's “9 Ideas to Keep Your Online Course Interesting” blog post.

Photo Credit: "bulbs-light bulbs-idea" by geralt from Pixabay

Published on Leave a comment on Create a Sense of Community for Online Learners

by Janice Florent

Online instructors must find new ways to engage their students and create a sense of community in a virtual world. Simple participation in an online course is not enough to create and sustain an online learning community.

How do you engage your students and inspire them to engage one another? In a THE Journal article, Chris Riedel, shared tips he got from the FETC conference to help educators create a sense of community online. Those tips are:

Create a compelling first impression - use tools like a smart phone, a webcam, or iMovie to build a memorable introduction to the course and course material. This is a great way to break the ice.
Encourage students to create their own spaces for learning - these include blogs, wikis, social media and other outlets.
Connect to students in multiple ways - find digital spaces students are comfortable with and let them take control.
Create support groups - create "support groups" of students who can be there for one another and provide an additional mechanism for learning.
Video trumps text - use video to communicate with students and encourage students to use video to connect with each other.
Audio trumps text - there is value in using voice; audio can add real value to your interactions with students and their interactions with each other.
Be a connector first, a content expert second - find guest speakers to add context and value to what is being learned in the class setting.
Play together - give students the freedom to explore new things and play with new ideas and technologies.
Define the expectations of the community - every class should have to answer two questions:

  • What did you learn from others?
  • What did you contribute to the learning of others?

While the focus of THE Journal website is on informing and educating K-12 teachers and administrators, Chris' tips for creating a sense of community for online learners are relevant for any online instructor. For more information read his “9 Tips for Creating a Sense of Community for Distance Learners” article.

Published on Leave a comment on 2015 NCF Honorees

CAT salutes this year’s recipients of the Norman C. Francis Faculty Excellence Awards. The university has produced a short video tribute to each faculty member.
...continue reading "2015 NCF Honorees"

Published on Leave a comment on Tips for Mouth-watering eLearning

by Janice Florent

In a recent 360training.com blog post Shazia Wajid writes,

Have you cooked up a delectable feast of content for your elearning course? It’s time to take a taste and analyze it. How is the pace of your course? Is it “well-spiced” with things that engage and delight—but not overloaded with elements fighting for attention? Does it leave your learners feeling satisfied after they consume it?

There are many ways to improve your eLearning content. Take a step back and consider Shazia’s five tips to fine-tune your eLearning content before serving it up to learners.

Visual appeal: Images can play an important role in learning, either as a garnish to set the mood or as the primary element served up on a given page. An image can break up the monotony of “text only” pages.
Bite-size: Split content in small pieces or “chunks.” When content is divided into small chunks (also referred to as microlectures), learners find it easier to understand.
Flavor and nourishment: Keep learners focused by asking questions, either rhetorical or integrated into activities. Involve learners with compelling stories. Grab their attention by using real-life examples and use expressive words with which the learner can relate.
Is there a fly in the soup? While writing and reviewing content, always double-check for spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes.
Is everything else as it should be? Copy and paste is convenient but it can be the source of unexpected formatting errors. Always preview your content after you copy and paste. If you’ve copied content from another course that has links to external websites, verify those external links are still working.

If you take these tips into consideration when designing your eLearning course, you will be well on your way towards developing a course learners will find tempting and mouth-watering!

For more information on Shazia’s tips read her “Top 5 Tips for Mouth-watering eLearning” blog post.

Published on Leave a comment on Building or Updating Your (Online) Course? Here’s a Resource!

by Karen Nichols

Summer is a great time to build a course for the upcoming school year or to make updates to an already existing one. As you're choosing to add new content or perhaps provide some links to Open Educational Resources, check out the educational resource site for the Illinois Online Network (ION).  The site is easy to use and is chock full of a variety of information.  Click on the Online Teaching Activity Index to find dozens of mini-lessons on such topics as brainstorming and scavenger hunts.

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The Pointers and Clickers, Podcasts and Case Studies tabs are restricted to ION members only.  However, there is a section of posted blogs on current education topics. Perhaps most useful is the section on Articles and Tutorials.  This area is further subdivided into such categories as Assessment/Evaluation, Instructional Design and Intellectual Property.  The latter is a great resource if you're not sure whether or not you can use a photo or video clip that you'd like to include in a lesson.  It also outlines your rights to your course content should others wish to use it.  So check out the ION site and give us some feedback on what you've found.  Please also share any other resources you have found useful when creating your course content.  Wishing everyone a happy and productive summer!

Published on Leave a comment on Using Slides

by Bart Everson

I just got back from Meaningful Living and Learning in a Digital World, and I'll be sharing a number of ideas from that conference over the course of the summer.

Always on the lookout for alternatives to Microsoft (shudder) PowerPoint, I was quite intrigued to see the keynote presenter (Tonya V. Thomas) using Slides.

WP_20140319_005

If you haven't heard of it, Slides is a web tool for creating and sharing presentations. Because it uses HTML 5, all you need is a web browser. There's nothing to download or install. It doesn't use Flash. Everything is stored in the cloud, so as long as you have internet access, you'll have access to all your presentations.

Other features of note:

  • Works well with tablets and phones
  • Can be embedded in web pages
  • Exports to PDF
  • Supports mathTeX (for displaying complex equations)

Most interesting to me, you can add slides in both horizontal and vertical directions. Traditional slideshow presentations are one-dimensional (linear) but Slides can be two-dimensional, which opens up some intriguing possibilities.

The free version is pretty good. You can try Slides yourself at Slides.com. In my own tinkering, I've found it very easy to get started. If you'd like CAT to offer a workshop on this topic, leave a comment.

Photo credit: Khedara ආරියරත්න 蒋龙.
For other PowerPoint alternatives, see The Whiteboard Blog.

Published on Leave a comment on Bb Tip #137: Turnitin – Voice Comments

The ability for an instructor to leave a personal voice comment is a powerful tool for providing feedback to students.

image showing Turnitin voice comments

Turnitin GradeMark has a feature that lets instructors add a voice comment to a student’s paper. With just a few clicks, instructors can quickly record a detailed message of up to 3 minutes in length and attach it to the student’s paper. Instructors can use the orally recorded feedback as a supplement to written comments.

Want more information?

Step-by-step instructions for voice comments are available [Video]
How to use Turnitin GradeMark (PDF) (Interactive Tutorial)
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 2 Comments on Bb Tip #136: Merging Courses

Blackboard has a Section Merge Tool that allows faculty to combine two or more courses into a single course. Faculty do not have to make a request to the Information Technology Center to merge their courses.

Using the Section Merge Tool to combine courses can be useful when you are teaching multiple sections of the same course or when you are teaching a course that is cross-listed. Merging courses allows you to have all the students in a single Blackboard course which can be useful for collaborative work. Merging courses reduces the number of courses an instructor has to manage within Blackboard, especially when each section has identical content.

Once you’ve merged courses you can upload your course content and assignments into the merged course; communicate with the students in the merged course; setup collaborative course work; and have one gradebook for the merged course. You can create groups within your merged course that correspond to the original course sections. This way you can target a particular course section (group) of students for specific things (e.g. send email to a specific group, make content available to specific group, enter/view gradebook entries for a specific group, etc.)

NOTE: Merging of courses is typically done at the start of the semester before content is added and before students submit course work. You should wait to merge courses if there is a possibility that there will be last minute changes to instructor course section assignments. You can request a Master Course Shell to build your course and then transfer the content into your merged course.

You should carefully consider whether merging courses is right for you. Some disadvantages to merging courses are:

  • Course enrollments for the merged courses will be combined which can make grading student work a challenge. You can use Smart Views to make grading easier.
  • If you decide you want to unmerge courses after students have submitted course work, student work and grades will be lost. Only student enrollments are retained when you unmerge courses.

Follow these steps to do it.

In order to merge courses you must be listed as the instructor for each of the courses.

  1. Login to Blackboard and click on the [Section Merge] tab.
  2. Click on [Click Here to Create and Manage Merged Courses] on the Section Merge Tool page.
  3. Click on [Setup New Merged Course] on the Manage Merged Courses page.
  4. Carefully select ALL courses you want to be merged (combined) from the list and click [Submit].
  5. On the Select Existing Course page, select the course you want to be the merged (combined) course (i.e. the course where you want all enrolled students to be and where you want to upload course contents). Click [Submit].
  6. You should see a green confirmation bar indicating the merge was successful. Only the merged course name will appear in the list of courses for both the instructor and enrolled students. 

Want more information?

Step-by-step instructions are available [PDF].
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 Google Cultural Institute

by Karen Nichols

In a past blog, Enhance your (online) classes with virtual tours, I provided an overview of ways to take your students on virtual tours along with some sample sites.  Well, in order to help you find just what you're looking for, Google offers the Cultural Institute and the site has already been curated for you--Art Projects, Historic Moments, World Wonders.  You can also search for works by artist, artwork, collections and gallery.  Or just do a general search on a topic to see what you can find!  At present, the home page is chock full of Asian art exhibits of various media and from a variety of countries and regions.  A personal favorite from China is on Traditional Dress from the North.  But there is also an exhibit from Ford's Theater in D.C. and one on The History of the Italian Resistance in WWII.

But what is particularly useful, is that you can create your own gallery and then send your students to it.  You can tailor which parts of various museums they see as well as annotate the pieces.  For example, the user Obraza has put together a collection of Greek sculpture from several different museums and provided information on each work.  This collection has been made public for others to use as well.  So, when searching for certain topics, you'll find not only collections from the museums themselves, but from individuals as well.

In order to assist galleries, museums and archives to put their content online, Google also has created Google Open Gallery.  Here is a video showing how a comic strip gallery in Belgium used the tool:

I find this resource quite exciting and am already searching for exhibits for my French students this summer.  Please share with us ways you are using Google Cultural Institute.