CTC Ed Tech April 29, 2013

Screencasts

Screencasts are not just for flipped classrooms – but for any classroom.  For a screencast, you record your voice with actions on the computer screen.  You need: your computer, the best microphone you can get, and screen recording software. Screencasts are a valuable instructional tool – rather than show a dozen or more students how to do a homework problem, record the solution once, post it in Blackboard, and the students can view the solution as often as they need to.  A recent study found that this is the most popular use of screencasts by students.

Mini lectures are also a common use of the screencast technology.  One surprising use of mini lectures is for instructors to review the material just before class.

The study I mentioned earlier noted that students watch these screencasts strategically: they typically don't watch the entire homework solution, but just the part(s) that they need. 

Several software tools are available for making screencasts.  I have been showing faculty how to make screencasts with Camtasia 7.1.  It has these advantages:  free to UAA faculty on the keyserver; creates MP4 files or posts to YouTube; unlimited length (though shorter is better); and the ability to edit them.

I use a free screencast tool, Jing, fairly often.  It's dead simple, but creates .SWF files – which cannot be viewed on iPhones or iPads – and is limited to 5 minutes of video.  The files cannot be edited in Jing. There are other options for screencasts.  These are the two that I use and teach.

Here's a summary of the research.

Don't forget, I post all my newsletters to my blog.  Next week will be the last issue until August.

Warm regards,

Lee

Lee Maria Henrikson

Instructional Designer

Beyond Anchorage Workforce Development Grant

907-786-4903

CTC Ed Tech April 24, 2013

Congratulations…  You're almost there. We're in the home stretch!  It's the last week of classes!  The IDEA Surveys opened to students today, April 24 and will remain open until May 8 unless you have made other arrangements. 
 
Here are some suggestions to boost response rates on the survey: Put an announcement in your course reminding the students to take the IDEA survey. Tell them how you plan to use the survey results to improve the course next time and thank them for taking the time to fill out the survey.  Lastly, put a link directly to the survey in the announcement:  scroll down to item 3 in the announcement tool and link directly to the course evaluation.  Make it easy for them to find and take the survey.

 
I'll have more on IDEA surveys in the fall – including suggestions on how to make them more useful to you and your students.
 
On another note, IT Services will be purging 2009 Blackboard course shells on May 15.  You can export 2009 course(s) before May 15 if you want to keep a record. 
 
Blackboard has videos on exporting and importing course content. When you export your shell, all the data in it is preserved off line.  I recommend checking everything for the export. As a side note, archiving a course makes a complete copy; however, an archived course has to be restored by a Blackboard administrator.
 
Best of luck to you and your students as you wrap up the semester!

P.S.  All my emails are archived on my blog if you want to go back and check something out.

Lee

Lee Maria Henrikson

Instructional Designer

Beyond Anchorage Workforce Development Grant

907-786-4903

CTC Ed Tech April 16, 2013

Dear faculty,

Your students are curious about you as a person.  You can share some of your interests and history in Blackboard.  Along with your contact information and professional experience, tell them a little about yourself. You can use the Contacts tool – by default there's a link to the Contacts in your course menu. It's called Faculty Info in older Blackboard shells and Contact Faculty in the Summer 2013 Blackboard shell. It's easy to add a picture, too – just make sure it's 150 x 150 pixels. 

The contacts tool in Blackboard has a very limited format and the text boxes are very basic unlike the text editor in the rest of Blackboard. If you want more flexibility, instead of using the Contacts tool, add a content area to the course menu and call it Faculty Info or Meet Your Instructor or whatever is appropriate for you. In the folder, create an item and add all your information, images, etc.  You can even add a little video about yourself.  Here's one I did in 2007.  

Resources:

·       Create a Course Contact in Blackboard

·       Getting  Started with Blackboard (if you aren't sure how to add items to the course menu)

Here's a tidbit to make you more efficient in Blackboard: Course to Course Navigation

New in Blackboard 9.1 Service Pack 8 is Course to Course Navigation.  Note that our Blackboard uses the house icon rather than the course name. You can quickly navigate to different courses - the action link takes you to the same area of the new course that you are currently in. If you are in the Grade Center, for instance, when you use the Course to Course Navigation, you will go to the Grade Center of the course you select from the action link.  Pretty neat.

Warm Regards,

Lee

Lee Maria Henrikson

Instructional Designer

Beyond Anchorage Workforce Development Grant

UAA Community and Technical College 

UC132G

907-786-4903

Helpful Links: CTC Ed Tech News April 1, 2013

Hi all,

Just a bunch of (hopefully) helpful information this week:

1. IT Services will be creating the summer and fall course shells this week.  If all goes according to plan, you will start seeing the courses for which you are an instructor in Banner by the end of the week.
2. The purge of old Blackboard course shells will be on April 15.  All regular course shells for 2009 will be removed.  Dev shells are never removed, just Blackboard shells for regular classes.  
3. The UAA faculty gateway page is a great resource for faculty.  I use it as my homepage in my web browser.  Check it out - it's got lots of resources from around UAA that faculty use regularly and not so regularly!
4. If you aren't on the UAA faculty list serve, you can join.  You don't need to be faculty to join the list.  CAFE sends its announcements for professional development offerings, the Faculty Technology Center posts its workshops and open labs, and the bookstore announces its events.
5. IDEA surveys:  you can still customize the survey for your class.  By default, surveys will be open to students  April 24, 2013 through May 8, 2013.  To change the dates or get info on IDEA, please contact IT Services at 786-4646 opt. 6 or ayidea@uaa.alaska.edu.

Happy spring!  I will be on vacation next week, so the next newsletter will be the week of April 15.

Lee Maria Henrikson

Instructional Designer

Beyond Anchorage Workforce Development Grant

907-786-4903