CTC Ed Tech News January 22, 2014

Hi everyone,

This week's newsletter has some administrative detail to attend to and a few hints for finding things on the UAA website.

Use Your UAA Email 

All faculty and staff have a UAA email account. It's actually university policy that we use this account for all UAA-emails. There are several good reasons to conduct all your UAA email via your UAA account:

• Privacy of student information. We know that the UAA email accounts are private and not read by your email provider

• Keeping your work/professional email correspondence separate from your personal. (I turn off my work email when I go on vacation, but I keep my personal email turned on).

• Public records act."Any e-mail sent from users at UAA or residing on UAA e-mail resources may be considered a public record under the Alaska Public Records Act (AS 40.25.100-.220) and may be subject to disclosure." (from the university policy).

• Blackboard email is sent to UAA email accounts.

Particularly because of FERPA and student privacy, it is important to use your UAA email account to correspond with students via their UAA email account.

Add/drop deadline Friday, January 24, 5pm

The Add/Drop Deadline for regular, semester length courses is this Friday, January 24 at 5 pm. Students can drop a class and their tuition will be refunded 100%. If there are students registered for your class that you have not seen, you can drop them as well. This saves the students money and may save headaches for the Registrar later on when students come back asking for refunds for a course that they didn't know they were signed up for. You are under no requirement to do so as students are adults who have signed up for the course and if it costs them their tuition (and likely late fees, etc), then so be it.  At the end of the semester, you would give the students a grade of NB or F.  

Tips for Using the UAA Website

I now use the Employees page as my home page for the UAA website. It's got some good quick links. I am also using the Search box on the UAA web pages more and more to find what I need. So next time you're looking for something on the UAA website, start at the Employee portal page (yes, there is a link to the CCGs on that page). If that page doesn't have what you seek, you can look at the Quick Links at the bottom or try the search box in the top right.  

CTC Ed Tech Jan. 14, 2013

Welcome back!  

If your beginning of the semester has been like mine, it's been hectic. Let's take a breath and move forward with our tasks and projects.

Here are my offerings for this week:

Creating a Climate for Learning. At the Adjunct Faculty Orientation at Chugiak-Eagle River Campus on January 7, I showed the 20-minute mentor video, How Do I Create a Climate for Learning in My Classroom? In the video, Dr. Maryellen Weimer presents a research-based case on the importance of creating a climate for learning in your classroom and then describes activities that can be used to encourage this climate. The biggest action an instructor can take to foster a climate for learning is to talk about learning often. I also like the suggestion to have the students write a paragraph on how they learn in this type of course at the beginning of the semester and then having them revise/rewrite the paragraph at the end of the semester. Dr. Weimer has more ideas on creating a climate for learning in the handouts and supplemental materials that are available on a secure part of the CAFÉ website. Log in with your UA username and password; scroll down the list to How Do I Create a Climate for Learning in My Classroom? Please note that the videos don't work. 

Detours, Digital and Otherwise. Now is the time to prepare for a weather or technology-related cancellation of your class. Minimally, set up a communication protocol that you can use if Blackboard is down or if class is cancelled. For distance classes, the eLearning Workgroup created a web page on Digital Detours and a handout is also available. 

My Blackboard. I hope you are getting used to the cool new features of our latest version of Blackboard. You've probably wondered about the red box with the number in it beside your name in the upper right corner. It's called My Blackboard.  Find out about it and be sure to watch the video on the page. The Updates area in My Blackboard is the source of the numbers in the red box; it indicates new notifications for your courses.  In the Updates area, click on the gear in the upper left to customize the notifications for all your courses. You can even turn them off. At the bottom of the notifications list is a link, View Notification Settings; click it if you want to customize the notifications for individual courses.