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Published on Leave a comment on It’s Carnival Time–So Let’s Talk Avatars

by Karen Nichols

Did you experiment with avatars when they were the latest craze some years ago? Maybe you created one (or more) to enjoy gaming experiences such as Second Life. Mardi Gras is a great time to re-visit the use of avatars in education because, like masking for carnival, avatars can provide you and your students with opportunities for role-playing as well as creating conversations and presentations as well as providing information. Anecdotally, my students used to tell me that if I send them a message in the form of an avatar, they'll actually open it and listen to it because they're fun and different and not boring like words on a page. As a French instructor, I would ask the students to create an avatar that speaks French or have them use the avatar to explain a cultural event we were learning.

Voki is the most popular free site for education, although there is a paid version of it too. It belongs to the company that offers a premium range of services for monthly fees called Site Pal.

If you would like to use simple avatars to dress up an email or announcement to your students or have the students create an avatar for a particular assignment, then you can start with the free site, Voki. Voki will allow you to create one-time avatars and messages without signing up for an account. Here are the directions:

1. Once on Voki.com, click on the Create tab, top left of the page.

2. Choose Customize your Character and then play around a bit to check out the facial features, clothing, etc.  When finished, click the small green Done tab at the bottom right corner.

3. Next choose Give it a Voice.  You'll see a variety of options from calling in or recording your text so that the voki will have your voice, to typing a message and choosing one of the voices already programmed.  Note that if you type the text and choose a voice, there will be no emotion and some of the words may not be pronounced as you wish.  This is the choice I made for the little voki below so that you could hear what I'm explaining.  I also had to spell phonetically, Happy Mardi Grah, so that the US voice would not pronounce the "s".  Remember to click the green Done tab at the bottom right corner.

4. Choose a background next.

5.  Choose a player, the frame for the voki with the buttons the receivers will click on.

6.  Happy with your voki?  Click publish and name it.  When you click "publish" you receive the option to email a friend, link to it via the website, or copy the code to embed the voki as I did below.

http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=11002983&height=267&width=200

Site Pal, the premium site intended for the corporate world, is much more robust and not only offers simple avatars like Voki, but other ways to use them. My colleague who teaches Spanish and I have experimented with Artificial Intelligence in the form of a Graduate Assistant avatar. You may have seen something similar if you shop online catalogs. Our Grad Assistant was available with a click on any page in the language course. She popped up and asked how she could help. The student would type in a question, and if we had programmed in an answer for it, she would explain it to them. We used the idea of a Graduate Assistant, but you could design an avatar that's YOU answering their questions, and thus be available for your students 24/7! Instead of masking as someone or something different for Mardi Gras, here you would be creating a "virtual you" who can keep working as you try to sleep or grade or research. Sound intriguing? If so, contact me and let's talk avatars!

Published on Leave a comment on Add Voice Narration to PowerPoint Slides

by Janice Florent

Did you know that you can add voiceovers (recorded narrations) to PowerPoint presentations? Adding recorded narrations to PowerPoint presentations is a useful feature. Benefits of adding recorded narrations to PowerPoint presentations include:

  • Presentations with voiceovers can be played back by students at their convenience.
  • Students can review the presentation over and over again until they grasp the content.

It’s not difficult to add voiceovers to PowerPoint presentations. Your computer must be equipped with a sound card, microphone, and speakers for you to record and hear the voiceovers.

Kelly Walsh, of EmergingEdTech.com, created this 3-minute Teaching with Tech Tip: Voice Over PowerPoint 2010 video that explains how to do it.

The eLearning Department at Champlain College posted some tips for recording narration into PowerPoint that you may find helpful. Additionally, you can find further explanation on setting and using slide timings at Microsoft's website.

Caution: Adding voiceovers can significantly increase the size of your PowerPoint presentation. If you have a long presentation with a lot of recorded narration, it may take a little while for students to download the file.

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Published on 1 Comment on Bb Tip #128: Drip-Feeding

"Drip-feeding" is a term you will likely hear in association with online and hybrid learning. While the term "drip-feeding" is new to many people, most are familiar with the concept.

faucet with water dripping slowing

Drip-feeding is "scheduled lesson delivery." Essentially, professors can determine when they want certain content in their courses to become available. Professors can configure their course content and then set-up the sequential delivery of that content. Once set-up, the Learning Management System (LMS) will auto-drip the content to students without any more work by the professor.

The “Date and Time Restrictions” in Blackboard control when items are available to students. Utilizing date/time restrictions allow faculty to create content at a time that is convenient to them and make it visible to students at the appropriate time. This can be very handy because faculty can set-up their course content well in advance of when they want it to be available to their students. For example, create all the course content at the beginning of the semester, set the date/time restrictions, and then let Blackboard auto-drip the content.

Some professors may be hesitant to set date/time restrictions for the entire semester because assignment dates/times may need to be adjusted as the semester progresses. This means, the professor would have to go into the content items to adjust the dates/times when necessary. The Date Management tool can simplify this process. The Date Management tool allows professors to easily change due dates, availability dates, and adaptive release dates at one time (all on one page). The Date Management tool will save professors some time as they will not have to edit each individual item to adjust the dates/times. My Bb Tip #125: Date Management blog post explains how to use this tool.

Drip-feeding course content will not work for every situation. However, if you think it can work for you, give it a try.

Follow these steps to do it.

To set Date and Time Restrictions, you should:

  1. Log in to Blackboard and access the relevant area of your course.
  2. Add new content or edit existing content.
  3. In the Options section, you will find the option to Select Date and Time Restrictions. Select the availability options you require: Display After, Display Until or both.

    4. navigation

  4. Use the date picker to select the date you want the content to be available.
    5. navigation
  5. Use the time picker to select the time you want the content to be available.
    6. navigation
  6. Click [Submit] to save the changes.

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.

Photo credit: work found at ndbutter / CC BY NC-ND 2.0

Published on Leave a comment on Avoid Death by PowerPoint

by Janice Florent

Nowadays more classrooms (virtual and face-to-face) have the ability to project and share a variety of computer-based materials. One of the most common methods of sharing information with students is to use PowerPoint presentations. Although PowerPoint can be a powerful teaching tool, it has been soundly criticized for producing boring presentations, full of endless content that fails to show context and relationships between ideas. This tendency of PowerPoint obviously works against what professors should strive for: stimulating students to connect ideas and engage in critical thinking.

I came across these tips in an Atomic Learning blog post that may help to resuscitate PowerPoint presentations:

  • Mix up your media – don’t rely solely on text or clipart, consider other media types (e.g. photos, video clips, music)
  • Use eye-catching graphics/software - an impactful visual experience can be created when you use eye-catching software and graphics
  • Send content ahead of time - consider "flipping" your presentation
  • Intersperse content with discussion, group exercises, and reflection time

If these tips have piqued your interest, you can read more in the article, 6 Ways to Avoid Death by PowerPoint.

Published on Leave a comment on CAT News: January 2015

CAT XX 1994-2014 Sustainability

Celebrating Twenty Years

This spring, the Center for the Advancement of Teaching (CAT) continues to mark its 20th anniversary year. Since its inception in 1994, CAT has existed to fulfill its mission “to advance the art and science of teaching and learning” and has enjoyed broad faculty participation in its services and activities. In celebration of its 20th anniversary, CAT staff have planned a series of special events, including a gala on February 3rd, at which we will recognize faculty who have served over the years, and announce our new plans and initiatives for the future.

CAT has been able to sustain its initiatives and offerings over two decades by evolving with the times to meet faculty needs. In celebration of this success, CAT staff have organized their offerings around the theme of Sustainability — exploring issues related to sustainability in the curriculum as well as sustaining the whole faculty member across all areas of responsibility.

Over the past several months, CAT has explored ways to expand its services (and ultimately its mission) in supporting the faculty member in all areas of responsibility – Teaching, Scholarship, and Service – utilizing a teacher-scholar model based on comprehensive faculty development. To this end, CAT put together a team with a representative from each Division to explore an expansion of its mission/values/programs that takes a holistic approach to developing the faculty member. The report from this group proposes some bold changes for CAT and is currently under consideration by the Vice President for Academic Affairs.

Programming

In the fall we organized our Eighth Annual Fall Faculty Book Club. In keeping with our Sustainability theme, members discussed Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect by David W. Orr.

CAT has a full calendar of activities scheduled for the spring semester that can be viewed on our website. We are offering a slate of workshops this semester on topics including mentoring, teaching with technology, developing a personal vision and many others.

As part of our continuing series, "Contemplation & Conversation," CAT is sponsoring a series of meetings in the Meditation Room of the St. Katharine Drexel Chapel. These sessions are intended to support faculty well-being and open up a dialog about contemplative pedagogy.

Programs for New Faculty

In the fall, we welcomed twelve new faculty members to Xavier University. Throughout the academic year, we host monthly brown bags for this group, discussing topics such as teaching at an HBCU, getting grants, and creating effective assignments. The New Faculty mentoring program is also underway. Dr. Stassi DiMaggio (Chemistry) continues to serve as faculty in residence, working closely with new faculty in their transition to Xavier's culture of excellence in teaching, scholarship, service and collegiality.

Grants

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching is honored to receive a $500,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation. The grant, entitled CAT Turns XX: Sustainability for Teachers-Scholars, will provide continued support for our Faculty Communities of Teaching Scholars initiative as well as establish a Contemplative Pedagogy Working Group. The grant will also support new scholarship-related initiatives offered through CAT.

In early January, CAT submitted a proposal for a $944,000 Cyberlearning and Future Technologies grant to the National Science Foundation.

Staff News

Mr. Bart Everson (Media Artist, CAT) attended the annual conference of the International Digital Media and Arts Association at Utah Valley University in November.

Ms. Janice Florent (Technology Coordinator, CAT) attended the Bb World, UB Tech, and InfoComm conferences this past summer.

Dr. Elizabeth Yost Hammer (Director, CAT) led a workshop on Active Learning and participated in a panel on Trends in Higher Education at the University of the Andes in Bogota, Columbia.

Dr. Karen Nichols (Distance Education Coordinator) attended for the first time the annual POD (Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education) conference in Dallas in October.

Published on Leave a comment on Bb Tip #127: Course-to-Course Navigation

It is not necessary to go to the Home page or Courses tab to access your other Blackboard courses. The course-to-course navigation feature allows you to quickly move from one course to another.

Follow these steps to do it.

Click on the course-to-course navigation arrow and select the course you want to go to.

navigation

Note: When selecting a course using course-to-course navigation, you will land in the same content area or course tool when you enter the selected course. For example, if you are in the Grade Center of a course and use course-to-course navigation to enter another course you will land in the Grade Center of the selected course. If you switch to a course that does not contain the same tool or task, the page set as the course entry point will appear.

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.

Published on Leave a comment on Maximize In-Class Time by Moving Student Presentations Online

by Janice Florent

Virtual student presentations allow students to research scholarly literature related to course content, present their findings, and receive peer feedback; all outside of class time.

Virtual presentations are an option that allows for quality student presentations and does not take up too much valuable in-class time. Of course, virtual presentations may not work for all situations, but it is an option you should consider if you have student presentations and want to find a way to maximize in-class time.

Stephanie Smith Budhai, PhD, assistant professor of education at Neumann University, explains the benefits of virtual presentations and lists four steps to implementing virtual presentations in your classes. You can read more in her article Maximize In-Class Time by Moving Student Presentations Online.

Published on Leave a comment on Plickers

by Janice Florent

Are you looking for a simple solution to be able to do in-class polling of your students? Try Plickers.

image - plickers logo

Plickers is a powerfully simple tool that lets educators collect real-time formative assessment data for free, without the need for student clicker devices. Just give each student a “paper clicker” and use your smartphone (or iPad) to scan the cards (paper clickers) to do instant checks-for-understanding and impromptu polls. Students respond to your poll questions by rotating their cards to indicate their A, B, C, or D answer. You scan the room with your mobile device to capture the student responses. The results are displayed on your mobile device and can optionally be displayed on your computer in a “Live View” through your Plickers account.

Does this sound interesting to you? If so, you can get more information at plickers.com.

Also, check out my How To Use Student Response System (Clickers) Effectively blog post to get information on how best to use clickers for student engagement.

Published on Leave a comment on OpenCulture.com

by Karen Nichols

When Sue Frantz was here last week, she mentioned during one of her presentations that MOOCs are being used by people who already have degrees but who are interested in lifelong learning opportunities. Well have I got a website for those of us who seek self-improvement! Do you know about OpenCulture.com?

This site is edited by Dan Colman, director of Open Culture at Stanford, and not only has links to MOOCs on myriad topics, he also searches for lectures, audio books, digital books, movies and any other educational media that he believes may be of interest to lifelong learners.

The curation of the multi-media items is well organized, so whether you're looking for a lecture lasting a few minutes or an online course on a literary movement, you can easily find what suits your needs.  If you have young children, there's even a K-12 resource site.  It's good to have a safe area to send the children to for their multi-media needs as well.

In addition, there's an area for learning another language or two. Since languages are my area of specialization, I'm anxious to try some of these sites. Having recently begun tracing my genealogy, I've become interested in Gaelic. Sure enough, there's a site in the list for learning the basics.

I also think this site may be of use to your students. Take a look at your subject area to see what may be available. If you see a film or lecture or even an introductory course for students who may need a refresher on the basics, you can post the links inside your Blackboard course for your students. There's also a section on free textbooks that are available. With the rising costs of textbooks, wouldn't it be useful if there's one that students can use for free?

I'm quite interested in the lectures available.  There's an entire series in French of Roland Barthes, one of the sources from my dissertation that I'm looking forward to listening to.  Here's one from Leonard Bernstein, part of his 1973 lectures on music at Harvard:

lb

Check out the site and let us know what you find interesting and useful.

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Published on 1 Comment on How To Use Student Response System (Clickers) Effectively

by Janice Florent

Do you want to know more about just how to use clickers to best help your students learn? This short video shares best practices in clicker use, including tips on writing clicker questions and getting students to talk about them, the finer points of running a class discussion about a question, and how long to allow for this process.

Additionally, the Science Education Initiative at the University of Colorado has a number of clicker resources you may find helpful.