CTC Ed Tech News August 27, 2014

 Here are my offerings this week:

Resources for you

Pedagogy Unbound – "A place for college teachers to share practical strategies for today's classrooms." Search for keywords, peruse the suggestions, or use the form to add your own suggestion. 

Vitae group site by the Chronicle of Higher Education has just added a groups section. I found the strategies on the first day of class in the Teaching Tips group interesting. You can peruse the site without joining. If you want to contribute, you'll need to sign up.

Collaborate Breakout Rooms and Application Sharing 

Join an online workshop on Friday, Sept. 29 at 3pm on breakout rooms and application sharing.  Join in the * CTC Faculty Resources shell or via this link.  This is for those who have attended at least one workshop or used Collaborate.

Note: If you have not used Collaborate this fall, you will need to download the new launcher.  This takes about 5 minutes – or longer if your internet connection is slow.

1. Click on the link for the session
2. Look for the prompt to download the Launcher and click on its link.
3. Directions for installing the Launcher on Windows.
   1. You will install the launcher.
4. Directions for installing the Launcher on MacOS
   1. You will unzip the launcher.
   2. By default, it sits in your Downloads folder. If you prefer, move it to the Applications folder.

If you have a chance, please let me know if you plan to attend.

Blackboard tips and tricks- part 2

Continued from last week

Do Not Use Special Characters in Names and Titles in Blackboard. Ever. Special characters are all the punctuation marks and symbols available on a keyboard (#!< for instance). The use of special characters in any name or title in Blackboard may cause error messages and display problems. To be clear, you can use special characters in any content but not in any name or title.

Many of the issues related to the grade book not functioning correctly are caused by the accidental use of special characters such as (!@#$%^&*) in an assignment title. Using a-z, A-Z, and 0-9 are all acceptable in names and titles. Use the following: (underscore _, dash -, and period.) ONLY once in a name or title. Using multiple underscores, dashes or periods can cause display problems. Example- Black.board-Assignment_1.doc is acceptable.

Use Your Student Account. All instructors should have a student test account that is a student in all your Blackboard classes. You can log in to Blackboard as a student to try out a quiz, see what is available to students, or see what the student grades view looks like.  

Make sure you log out of Blackboard before you log in as a student. Or, log in in a different browser (e.g. use Chrome as an instructor and Firefox as a student). Here is the format of the account:

• username: your username followed by _student
• password: your ID number followed by _student    
• For example: 
• djones_student
• 30123456_student

Please note that you cannot submit grades to UAOnline for this account. I have occasionally seen instructors not have a student account – just call the Call Center if you don't see your student account in a course.

Request a Development Course Shell. You can request a Blackboard shell in which to develop a course. Just use this form from IT Services. Make sure you list yourself as a user and give yourself the Instructor Role. Develop a new class, play with Blackboard features, use it for a department document repository….

Be Careful When Deleting Items. Never delete anything that is connected to the Grade Book or has student submissions. It is always better to make things unavailable thus hiding them from view than to delete something. Once you delete something in Blackboard it is gone, there is no recycle bin!

To make an item unavailable, access the items contextual menu and change the setting for "permit users to view this content" to NO. Content areas located on the page menu are made unavailable in a different way. To make a content area unavailable select its contextual menu and select "hide link".

You can hide items from the students in the Grade Center by clicking the action link in the column heading and toggling the Show/Hide to Users option. An item that is not visible to the students will have a small red circle with a slash in the column heading.

eLearning Workgroup Looking for Members

The eLearning Workgroup is looking for additional faculty members. eLearn provides leadership in matters of eLearning. It is a working group and is productive in terms of exploration, collaboration, production and sharing of tools and methods, and evaluation of technologies. Good examples include the annual eTech Fair, policy development, evaluating and recommending technologies and tools (Collaborate, Quality Matters, etc.). eLearn has just moved from being a subgroup of IT Services' University Technology Council to affiliation with Academic Innovations and eLearning. Meetings are on the 2^nd and 4^th Fridays from 2-3 pm in Collaborate. It's a great way to connect with other faculty and staff who teach with and use technology. Contact Heather Nash if you are interested.

Freshman this year

I find this list from Beloit entertaining. It reminds me how fast the rate of change is these days. 

Thank you!

CTC Ed Tech News August 22, 2014

Here are my musings for this week:

Thinking About Learning

I have an ongoing fascination with how learning happens, how to facilitate learning, and how to verify that learning has transpired. Here are two articles on learning that I recently read:

Confuse students to help them learn –A fascinating article on research about engaging learners by not presenting everything in a straightforward, clear manner. The right amount of confusion causes cognitive dissonance and engages the brain in resolving the dissonance. In the study, students who were presented the material in a straightforward fashion didn't learn the material as well as students who had to figure it out. However, the students who didn't have to resolve confusion had more confidence that they had learned. 

Expert performance and training: what we really know -This article by a computer science professor reminds us that how students study is important.

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." Albert Einstein

Caring About Student and Their Success

At the CTC In Service on Thursday August 21, the Dean asked all of us to walk out of our offices or classrooms between classes during the first week and welcome students to the fall semester and provide assistance for those who need help. Then, during the semester, don't just notice if students miss classes, act on that knowledge. Call them, ask why they stopped chasing their goal of earning a degree, and offer assistance to get back on track. 

Blackboard Tips

Clear your Browser Cache

 When you receive any error messages in Blackboard, first clear your browser cache and cookies or try using a different browser before submitting a help ticket.

Clear Word Formatting

This is an ongoing problem in Blackboard. Unfortunately, MS Word copies proprietary HTML code into Blackboard that doesn't always play nice with Blackboard. Occasionally, Blackboard does not strip all of the bad code out and the web browser will display the content incorrectly. You can clear the formatting by highlighting the text and clicking on the "Remove Formatting" button that is to the right of the highlight button (in the text formatting box). In most cases this works. If not, copy text into Notepad(PC) or TextEdit (Mac) and then paste back into Blackboard.

Allow Mixed Content in Browsers

All new versions of browsers are set to block mixed content by default until the user changes this setting. If a picture, presentation, audio track, or video is missing inside Blackboard, most likely the problem is the decision to embed HTTP (un-encrypted) content into a HTTPS (secure) environment. If you need to embed the HTTP content in a HTTPS page (all Blackboard is HTTPS), see this tutorial on how to allow mixed content on Firefox, Chrome, and IE. Please remember that to view HTTP content in a HTTPS environment, every student has to follow the tutorial directions, not just the author/instructor. You can as an alternative, link out to the content and have it open in a new window or tab. 

Creating Tests: Avoid 'Force Complete' or Suffer the Consequences

We see a great deal of help tickets because of Force Complete in tests. When a test is set to Force Complete, it must be competed in one session. After a session begins, the student must complete all assigned work within the session. Students may not exit a session for any reason. So, if that same student has to restart their computer or exit the test for issues such as internet connectivity, they are then kicked out of the test and the only way to regain access is to email their instructor to have their attempt reset. We strongly recommend NOT using Force Complete. Instead, set a timer and enable auto-submit inside Blackboard. Using the timer/auto-submit option, students can re-enter the test and continue where they left off as long as there is time remaining. The timer/auto-submit option accomplishes the same goal of Force Complete, without students having to email the instructor because they lost connectivity.

These tips were slightly edited from a list from Arizona State University. They said it was ok to share, just give credit to ASU. More from this list (tailored to UAA's context) next week.

CTC Ed Tech News August 15, 2014

Here's what's on my mind to share with you this week:

Starting Fresh. ProfHacker, one of my favorite reads, has a list of five things to do before the semester begins. It's a non-academic list. The comments have some good suggestions, too. What's on your to do list to set up for a great semester? For me, it's planning my work, archiving and starting new mail folders, and determining my schedule so folks know when I'll be around. 

Academic Integrity. There are a new tutorial and quiz on Academic Integrity that you can embed into Blackboard course. There's a link to the direction to embed the module in Blackboard, too. 

Collaborate update. Blackboard Collaborate now needs a one-time download of a launcher to run on your computer. You and your students will be prompted to download the Launcher the first time you start Collaborate. It takes several minutes to download, so it is good for everyone to do so well in advance of your first class meeting.  Here are directions and links to the launcher download.

Resources. Here are several options to help you get off to a good start:

• Faculty Quick Links from CAFÉ – commonly used resources
• Online Orientation for Adjunct Faculty – everything (I hope) an adjunct or regular professor needs to get started, complete with a planner
• Instructor Resources -  Educational Technology Resources
• AIE Bootcamp week of August 18: many sessions are in Collaborate, so you don't have to go to the main campus
• CTC Faculty Blackboard shell – basic example shell that you can join as a student. Here's a video on how to enroll in the shell.

CTC Ed Tech News August 5, 2014

It's almost time for faculty to come back on contract- and I see more professors around this week, getting a head start on their fall courses. I feel the energy starting to build….It's an exciting, fun time of year.

Blackboard Course Copy

I have assisted several faculty with copying material from last year's course to the current one. There are a couple tips if you use Blackboard tests or assignments and you want them to copy over into the new course. Here's a nice how to on the process.

The Perils of Downloading Software

Last spring I wrote about security issues on the Internet. I continue to be appalled at how dangerous the Internet is and how easy it is for your computer to be compromised. Given how essential computers are to our work, it's important that we are very careful when downloading software. Here are a few tips:

• When using a Search for software to download (like Java), never select the ads or sponsored links.

• Look at the name of the link and its actual link code. If it looks peculiar, don't select it.

This article explains some of the reasons downloading software and add-ons has become so risky.

Active Learning for Students

This article from Inside Higher Ed discusses research on student learning in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) that finds students learn more with active learning than just lecture. We have several faculty who are using the Team-Based Learning model and others who have extensive lab exercises. As you develop your fall classes, I encourage you to try at least one different teaching technique and assess its impact on student learning.  

Active Learning for You

Academic Innovations and eLearning has a slew of workshops the week of August 18. Check out their calendar and register for one of their sessions.

I will be doing an Intro to Collaborate on Friday August 15 at 1:30 pm. More details in next week's newsletter.

This newsletter is archived at http://ak-lee.blogspot.com.