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Published on Leave a comment on Looking Back in Order to Plan Ahead

by Karen Nichols

Happy New Year! During this time we are bombarded with lists of the best (and worse) from 2015 as we attempt to summarize what last year was all about. Well, I'm adding to this assortment a list from Faculty Focus' Top 15 Teaching and Learning Articles of 2015*, in order to see what topics interest the faculty.

If two of the articles focused on "flipped" classrooms, then we can gauge the continuing interest in this technique.  Two of the top articles pertain to effective discussions, in the classroom and online.  The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development has posted several blogs on discussions (such as The Ultimate Guide to Discussion Boards! and  Improve Online Discussions using ABCs) plus hosted a workshop, but it may be a good idea to keep in mind the need to continuously improve in this area.

And what is Faculty Focus' number one article of last year?  More Evidence That Active Learning Trumps Lecturing

This is actually reflected on our campus as well as we have given presentations and workshops on metacognition and active learning for several individual departments in addition to a general offering to all faculty.

Here's a four minute YouTube video, "What is Active Learning?"

Please feel free to contact us for more information on metacognition and active learning.

*According to Faculty Focus, "each article’s ranking is based on a combination of factors, including e-newsletter open and click rates, social shares, reader comments, web traffic, reprint requests, and other reader engagement metrics."

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Published on 1 Comment on Metacognition: The Gift That Keeps Giving

by Janice Florent

the thinker statue

Students who succeed academically often rely on being able to think effectively and independently in order to take charge of their learning. They are thinking about their own thinking; mastered the knowledge about their own learning. This is referred to as metacognition. Metacognition is the ability to think about your thoughts with the aim of improving learning.

Students who do not learn how to "manage" themselves well as they proceed through school experience more setbacks, become discouraged and disengaged from learning, and tend to have lower academic performance.

In an Edutopia article, Dr. Donna Wilson, provided the following steps for helping students learn how to be more metacognitive:

  1. Explicitly teach students about this essential learning skill by defining the term metacognition.
  2. Ask students to describe the benefits and supply examples of driving their brains well.
  3. Whenever possible, let students choose what they want to read and topics they want to learn more about.
  4. Look for opportunities to discuss and apply metacognition in a variety of lessons so that students can transfer it for the most benefit.
  5. Model metacognition by talking through problems.

If this has piqued your interest, read the Edutopia article, Metacognition: The Gift That Keeps Giving.

Additionally, incorporating metacognitive strategies into your Blackboard course design can help to create autonomous and self-starting learners, who are responsible for their own learning and are willing to share the synthesized version of their knowledge with peers. For more information read my Metacognition for Effective Online Learning blog post.

Image Credit: Image by 139904 from Pixabay

Published on Leave a comment on Bb Tip #149: Add Profile Avatar to Humanize Course

Humanized learning increases the relevance of course content and improves students' motivation to log-in to your course week-after-week. Whether you are teaching a face-to-face, hybrid, or online course, humanizing and personalizing your Blackboard course can go a long way to providing an inviting space for your students.

One of the ways you can humanize your Blackboard courses is to add a profile avatar. By default, when you do not setup your profile avatar it will appear as a blank avatar in the Blackboard system. Rather than having this gray faceless image, faculty and students can upload a profile image (avatar) to represent them throughout the Blackboard system.

profile avatar

The profile avatar appears in the page header, people tool, blogs, journals, discussions, wikis, and roster. The profile avatar also appears in the notifications modules—What's New, Needs Attention, and To Do—which appear on the Xavier University tab or on a course's home page.

The recommended pixel size for an avatar is 150 by 150. Larger images should be clipped.

You can only have one avatar picture at a time to be used throughout the entire Blackboard system.

NOTE: The University has the following policy regarding profile avatars:

Users may not send, display or receive pictures or other media which are copyrighted, abusive, obscene, sexually inappropriate, threatening, racially offensive, or considered harassment or offensive to human dignity.

Faculty should include this statement about what is not an acceptable profile avatar when they ask students to upload a picture to be used as their avatar.

Follow these steps to do it.

To upload a picture to be used as your profile avatar:

  1. Expand the [Global Navigation Panel] by clicking the arrow on the right of your name.
  2. Click on [Settings].
  3. Click on [Personal Information].
  4. Click on [Personalize My Settings].
  5. Select [Use custom avatar image]. Click [Browse My Computer].
  6. Select the avatar image file and click Open.
  7. Click [Submit].

Want more information?

Step-by-step instructions to upload profile avatar (PDF) are available.
Humanizing your courses.
Personalize your Blackboard course using template variables.
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 Redesign Your Syllabus for the New Year

by Janice Florent

syllabus graphic

In a recent Inside Higher Ed blog post, Travis Grandy, PhD student in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, writes

Do you ever feel like you want to get more out of your syllabus? Sure, it plays center-stage during the first day of class, but does it really have to end there? Perhaps it’s a matter of presentation.

He goes on to express his frustration of writing a carefully detailed syllabus only to see his students tuck it away never to be seen again; assuming they read the syllabus in the first place.

After seeing an article on creative approaches to the syllabus, Travis felt his syllabus had a design problem as his syllabus had over the years ballooned to over two thousand words, single-spaced, with a few bullet points.

Travis redesigned his syllabus to not only make the content more useful for his style of teaching, but also easier to use and visually engaging. His revised syllabus ended up being full-color, using illustrations and visual metaphors to convey content, and was intentionally designed help students more easily find the information and get excited about the core purposes of the class. It is important to note that to make his syllabus accessible, Travis made his syllabus available in other formats as well.

Travis’ strategies for a syllabus redesign and ways to better integrate the syllabus into teaching and learning are:

Have Your Syllabus Reflect What You Value Most

Design elements to draw attention to the things about your course that you most want to stick with students. This should not come at the expense of being detailed about your classroom policies or meeting institutional requirements for what should be listed on a syllabus.

Tips for the Design Process

  1. Start from a Template: Templates can include great options like two-column newsletter style or a table of contents to make your syllabus easier to reference.
  2. Get Visual: A visual doesn’t have to be elaborate, but strategically using images, shapes, or flow-charts can be an equally effective way of drawing attention to the most important parts of your syllabus.
  3. Design with Accessibility in Mind: You want to make sure your syllabus is accessible for all students. This should include providing your syllabus in multiple formats and also using easy to read fonts and high contrast colors.
  4. Build Your Design Knowledge: Educate yourself on effective design practices and visual rhetoric.

Beyond the First Day of Class

Use the syllabus at key moments: A great time to ask students to look at the syllabus is when you transition between major units or assignments of the course. You can turn this into a class activity such as having students write a short reflection about how their work in the previous unit helped them develop competencies or achieve course outcomes.

Reinforce concepts from your syllabus in assignments and grading: Use concepts from your syllabus consistently in other course documents including assignment prompts and grading rubrics.

If you do decide to redesign your syllabus keep in mind that accessibility is very important. Don’t assume that a full-color syllabus is accessible to all students. For accessibility, provide multiple options for students to access the content so they can choose what works best for them. This can include printing in color or black and white, sharing the syllabus as a PDF (with character recognition), and using alt-text and captions for images and diagrams.

For more information read the Inside Higher Ed blog post, Give Your Syllabus an Extreme Redesign for the New Year. Another great article on syllbus redesign is Writing Syllabi Worth Reading.

Image credit: "27Apr09 ~ Planning" by grace_kat is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

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Published on 1 Comment on Make Course Content Accessible

by Janice Florent

One of the reasons hybrid and online courses appeal to students is when a course is well designed the student has the opportunity to playback or review a concept until they have mastered it.

In order for course materials to be accessible for all learners the course material should be provided in multiple formats. Having the material in multiple modes allows the student to choose the mode that works best for them.

If your course material is visual provide an audio version as well. If your course material is auditory, make it visual too. Incorporating transcripts, subtitles, closed captioning to audio and visual content in a course is invaluable for students with disabilities, diverse and/or preferred learning styles, and English as a second language (ESL) students.

Designing your courses with accessibility in mind will save you some time in the event you do have a student with a disability. Remember accessible content is not only for the impaired. Students without disabilities will find having accessible resources within your course a bonus.

Here are a few simple steps, from my previous blog posts, that you can take when creating content and setting up your course that will make it more accessible:

As we start a new year and a new semester it is a good time to start to make your courses accessible. Here is a link to a 10-Step Guide to Making Your Course Accessible for All Students.

Published on Leave a comment on Bb Tip #148: Beginning of Semester Tasks
checklist

As you prepare for the start of the semester, it is a good time to get started setting up your Blackboard courses. Blackboard courses are automatically created using the course information in Banner a few weeks before the start of the semester. You can post your syllabus, course documents, and announcements to your Blackboard courses. You can also customize your course menu and/or add a course banner.

If you teach a course that is cross listed you will have a Blackboard course for each cross listing. You can combine the cross listed courses into one Blackboard course so that you can post course materials and grades to one combined Blackboard course. Combining courses may also work for you if you are teaching different sections of the same course and would like to have the different sections combined into one Blackboard course so that you can post course documents and grades in the one combined course. The beginning of the semester is the best time to combine your Blackboard courses before you add course material or grades to the courses.

Follow these steps to do it.

Listed below are links with instructions for

Want more information?

Attend a drop-in session to get one-on-one help.
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 (audio)BOOM in the New Year!

by Karen Nichols

Last year at this time, I wrote about using sound files in your courses and shared with you an audio recording of Louis Armstrong reading 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. This year, I wish to share with you an app called audioBoom. This app offers numerous possibilities and resources for including audio components in your teaching. This is one of the apps featured in the 12 Apps of Christmas that I recently wrote about and I'm thoroughly enjoying all of the information, instructions and tips being provided.

audioBoom is free and offers one the possibility of posting one's own audio files, podcasts, etc., as well as numerous resources. You may just hear the sound file or click on a player which features a photo or some type of graphic.There is an American version of offerings, but you may curate whatever you like from the BBC news to personal channels to lifestyle magazines.

LifeMinute.tv is one such lifestyle magazine that I found while browsing and thought it was a good example of the variety of topics and formats you can see and use.

audioBoom interfaces with Facebook, Twitter and Google+. In addition to explaining how to get started with audioBoom, the entry from the 12 Apps of Christmas also gives excellent suggestions for its educational uses, so I recommend that you check it out.

Wishing everyone a very happy holiday season and a wonderful New Year!

Published on Leave a comment on Online Charts

Made with OnlineChartTool.Com

If you need to make a chart or a graph in a hurry, point your web browser to OnlineChartTool.com. It's a web-based tool which allows you to create charts in nigh on a dozen different styles: bar, line, bar-line, area, pie, radar, scatter, bubble, meter, pyramid. It's relatively easy to get started and suitable for student assignments. (As always, play around with it yourself first.) You don't even need to create an account — though if you do, you'll be able to come back and edit your charts later.

Published on Leave a comment on The 12 Apps of Christmas

by Karen Nichols
The University of London and the Dublin Institute of Technology both launched on 1 December their respective 12 Apps of Christmas. It's not too late to sign up. These are free online courses, aimed at students and instructors of all ages who are interested in learning more about integrating mobile learning technologies into their studies or classes. I have to admit that I was disappointed on December 1st when the University of London revealed the first app--Google Translate. I thought I knew all about this app, but I was surely wrong! Their presentation was easy to follow and well-illustrated. I truly had no idea that sound files would work on Google translate. Each app includes educational applications and actual activities for you to try of which there are several for Google translate. So check out the site and see if you may be interested in participating in reviewing the apps and these mini-courses and providing feedback. 15-20 minutes a day are kindly requested for you to give feedback to them. Here's the link:
http://www.openeducationeuropa.eu/en/news/new-edition-successful-12-apps-christmas-online-courses-students-and-teachers

And here's a demonstration of Google translate and the song LaBamba!

Published on Leave a comment on Bb Tip #147: End of Semester Tasks

image showing classroom with empty chairs

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.