Are you looking for new ways to engage more of your students? Do you want to provide more authentic learning opportunities for your students? Searching for some way to help students write concisely, critically examine arguments, or take notes? One strategy you might consider using is a “backchannel”
Dr. Michelle Rodems, program manager at the School of Interdisciplinary and Graduate Studies (SIGS) and at the Delphi Center for Teaching and Learning suggests using a “backchannel” to give your students a secondary way to communicate with you or each other.
Google Chrome offers a variety of extensions for taking notes on the web page you're browsing. After my own experiences (I still teach as an adjunct and taught online over 20 years before becoming the Distance Education Coordinator) and hearing stories from other educators, I am wondering if these online note taking services could help combat plagiarism.
Copying and pasting from online sources is so easy for students. Even if they go back and try to change a few words here and there, their work is usually flagged in such apps as Turnitin. If we make it easier for them to take notes on the materials, they would then have to write more of their own content for their papers and other assignments.
Here are 5 Chrome extensions, all with various features, that we can recommend to our students. They are Simple Notepad, Note anywhere, Mini Notepad, Note Board, and Chrome Notepad. Viveka Nagar reviewed these 5 features this past fall for I love free software.
Since it's not unusual for me to have sticky notes surrounding my computer screen and liberally posted across my desk and on walls, I tend to prefer the Note Anywhere add-on. Here's a snapshot from their app store of what it may look like:
Note anywhere screen shot
I invite you to experiment with some or all of these possibilities and let us know if you and your students find them useful. Karen Nichols
Two new tabs were created inside Blackboard in an attempt to simplify access to faculty and student resources and to provide consistency for Blackboard users. You should see the new tabs when you login to Blackboard.
Send email to Karen Nichols with any comments or suggestions about the new tabs.
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. Whatever the event, an instructional continuity plan will help you to be ready to continue teaching with minimal interruption.
For those who missed last week's presentation and for those who want to learn more about instructional continuity you will find a link to the PowerPoint presentation above. Also, please visit our Instructional Continuity web page, where you will find planning guides, resources, and a recording of the workshop presentation.
Quite typically institutions almost of any kind try to enforce conformity, obedience and passivity. They don't try to encourage the kind of critical thought and action which will threaten the structure of power and domination...
A conversation with Noam Chomsky (MIT) on teaching, learning and critical thinking.
I had the privilege of attending several virtual sessions of the Sloan Consortium conference on Emerging Technologies recently. Several of the sessions were interesting and quite useful. The first session I'll report on is the one on using iPads in education.
Author Sam Glicksman was the presenter. His book iPad in Education for Dummies was well-received and is a great way to get started using iPads with your students. In the presentation, Mr. Gliksman talked about a few trends and apps to engage the students.
Explain Everything is an app that allows students to add text and video while recording in real time--very much like an interactive whiteboard but more features. New School Technology reviewed this app and has a nice video to demonstrate the features.
Mr. Gliksman also suggested having the students explore time-lapse photography and experiment with a few of the animation apps.
What great ways to enhance student engagement and foster creativity! Let us know if you're using any of these apps and how they're working for you and your students.
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.
There has been a lot of talk recently about the importance of STEM education in keeping America competitive and innovative in the 21st century. What is much less frequently spoken of, however, is the importance of art in innovation. Infusing the artistic (A) into STEM provides the STEAM that drives innovation. Nine creativity-inspiring tips were used to link three seemingly dissimilar entities: 1) The Greek Muses; 2) New Orleans streets; and 3) the idea that art is necessary to drive scientific advancement. So, sit back a take a trip around the streets of the 'Big Easy' to be reminded of how to nurture and support your own creativity to fuel those much desired innovations in science, technology, engineering and math.
Turnitin recently announced two new rubric features. You can now import rubrics from Excel files. Previously you had to create the entire rubric inside Turnitin. Now you can create a rubric template in Excel and upload the template file into Turnitin. The rubric scoring values are added after you upload the template file.
The second new rubric feature is Grading Forms. Grading Forms are simplified rubrics that allow an instructor to give free-form feedback and scores for students across several criteria. Grading forms are easy to create and can be attached, modified, and shared just like Turnitin rubrics.
Microlecturing is a short (1-3 minutes long) multi-media presentation used to engage learners. Jana Jab, co-founder of Edynco, has a concise but detailed article discussing when one would want to use microlectures and how to create them.
What can microlectures do?
provide a brief overview of a topic using key concepts
provide step-by-step instructions (i.e. how to solve a problem)
provide a personal introduction to a topic to engage your learners
provide a breakdown of a larger lecture into smaller more manageable pieces for your learners
