Tuesday, October 08, 2013

CTC Ed Tech News October 8, 2013

Hello everyone,

I hope that you are settling in to the semester nicely.  In this newsletter, I will continue the discussion of Understanding by Design, explain about the Faculty Information Form requests that were emailed to you last week, and share some feedback from a faculty member.

Understanding By Design:  Big Ideas and Essential Questions

To continue the thread from last week's e-newsletter, UBD argues for designing a course around a "big idea" that encompasses the course. The big idea may not be immediately obvious; it could be messy and controversial.  It is unpacked or discovered by students as they proceed through the course.

The Essential Questions help the students grapple with the big idea. They are " thought provoking questions [that] foster inquiry, meaning making and transfer" (McTighe and Wiggins handout, 2011).  Let's take a look at an example provided by a CTC staff member who is an adjunct instructor for English 212, Technical Writing.  

Big Idea: Technical communication rules the workplace.

Essential Questions:
  • How can the writer analyze audience needs?
  • How does research fit into workplace communication?
  • Whom does the communicator need to involve? (team work, collaboration)
Do you see how students will have to really think about and argue with the big idea?  Do you see how the essential questions can help?  

I will lead a beginning workshop on Understanding By Design on Friday, October 10, at 1 pm in UC 132M and via Collaborate.   Please check in with me before the session since I am on call for jury duty and may need to reschedule it.  
 
IDEA Faculty Information Form (FIF) now available

IDEA is our online course evaluation system; The FIF link was emailed to faculty last week. If you want to customize the course evaluation and get more accurate results, complete the FIF. Here is a guide for completing it.  You will receive the reminder emails to your UAA email account to complete the FIF each week, so doing so sooner means those emails cease.  

For those of you that haven't heard, the UAA Faculty Senate decided to go to the short form of the student survey this year and to make the survey available only to classes with more than 10 students.  For more information on the IDEA survey, contact Michael Smith in Faculty Services.

Faculty Gateway Page Feedback Request

UAA WebPros are pursuing updates to some UAA Webpages based on changing needs of our audience and website users. We are asking your feedback during this stage as a potential user of these pages. Please use this Feedback form so that we can track this. 

Page group in review: 

Background: 
In light of recent upgrades, branding efforts and design refresh on the UAA Websites, UAA Web Pros have been looking over pages that are still in past template designs. We have a few pages that are considered "Gateway" pages, meaning pages that historically tried to serve as a"one-stop" for a certain audience to link to everything they might need. Over the last several years, there has been a considerable shift in the way people use the web. Current research show that people now search for what they need on the web, and that pages set up as "link farms" can actually hinder navigation for the user. Web and user interface design has changed to reflect these trends. 

Recent refreshes to the style of a few other "Gateway" pages are already in progress, which provide a more "modularized" look, including:
Data-based decision-making:
We looked specifically at the usage statistics on the pages and on each of click-able areas. The range we looked at was the last one year. Attached is a screen shot of the Analytics we have on the Faculty Gateway Page.  

Summary/Interpretation of key findings that are driving our proposed changes. 

Faculty Gateway
The top most-used links from Faculty Gateway:

1. 49%: Faculty/Staff email
  (in footer template-NOT from the link on the actual page). This was a surprising finding from the UAA Homepage as well, indicating to us that this is a usual behavior for getting to faculty/staff email. 
2. 11 % UAA Homepage (in template)
3. 11% Blackboard (in body of the page)
4. 4.4%: Faculty Staff Directory (in template)
5. 0.9%: Campus Map (in template)
6. 0.8% Faculty Technology Center 
(in body of the page)
7. 0.5% A-Z (in Template)

The remaining (less than) 20% of the usage of the page is comprised of a total of other links that all equal less that  .5% usage each. Many links had not been clicked on at all in the past year. 
We believe that some faculty are using this as a homepage, but only to link directly to email and blackboard, and to get the occasional update. 

Staff Gateway
We found very low usage of this page, along with similar usage stats to Faculty Gateway with most used areas being part of the template and footer. 

Adjunct Gateway
There is also very low usage of this page. There are only 4 active links on the Adjuncts gateway.  While the original idea for this page seems to be to celebrate adjuncts, and we feel that isolating them away from other faculty resources may actually provide opposite effect of inclusion. 

Proposed Changes:

1. Adding "Blackboard" to the main (all) navigation on all pages in upper right in the UAA Webpages, It is our 2nd most visited page to the UAA Homepage. 

2. Creating  one "Faculty/Staff" gateway page from UAA Homepage with these features:

Modular Boxes (with 5-6 links max in each) for: 
1. Faculty
    ---with Adjuncts Corner for handbook and orientation or something similar
2. Staff
3. Future Employees

2 large button for Faculty/Staff email and Backboard

Embedding a combined calendar that feeds:
1. Faculty/Staff Master Calendar
2. FTC and CAFE workshop events
3. Academic dates and deadline calendar

Again, we are open to feedback and ideas during our process. Again,  Please use this Feedback form so that we can track this. 

Mail bag
Last week I sent a link to an article about using email with students.  Here's the reply I received from Carrollea Hubbard on how she uses email and other communication tools with her students:

I have found blogging a useful communication tool for teaching with technology.  I have taken two courses in the EDET UAS program where blogging is key focus for student/teacher communication, works great.

As far as my classroom, I encourage the students to check their email frequently because this is where they will find important course information.

I provide the added enthusiasm for email correspondence by letting them know that I love to receive emails and that I check my email at least 10 times / day between work, home, and school, with emphasis on school.

I have suggested we start a class hashtag for Twitter or a class blogging website but have yet to receive feedback on these communication platforms.

For now, it's Bb announcements with an email too.

Good, fun, and effective communication is the key to a successful learning environment.

I hope this helps you with ideas,

Carrollea

I am working on good, fun effective communication with all of you - to build relationships and encourage wise, effective use of technology to enhance teaching and learning. 

Warm regards,
Lee

Lee Maria Henrikson
Instructional Designer
UC 132G
Beyond Anchorage Workforce Development Grant
Community and Technical College
University of Alaska Anchorage
907-786-4903















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