Dear Colleagues,
It's been one of those mornings when everything conspired against me. I couldn't login to my bank's website to update my mortgage info, a listserve that I belong to bounced a message that I sent and few other things went amok that weren't tech related. Then, my cursor went wild and crazy all on its own on my Mac Book Pro – my wonderful workhorse of a computer. Arrgghhhh! What was my word for today? Equanimity. That was beyond reach about an hour ago. I was ready to take a mental health day since productivity was eluding me. Two reboots, a disk scan, a PRAM reset, and a couple other tricks and my Mac is behaving again.
So, if your day or week is anything like my morning, keep breathing, take a short break, drink a cup of tea and eat chocolate, and then calmly do what needs to be done to finish the semester. We are all so close!
Syllabi Continued
Last issue I talked about the syllabus: what is required by UAA, building in flexibility, and how it can introduce the students to your passion for the course. Carnegie Mellon University has a nice checklist for items to include in a syllabus as well as some sage advice and examples of syllabi.
Quality Matters this Summer
There will be a summer session on Applying the Quality Matters Rubric on June 5-19. Details to come. I highly, highly recommend this session. Check with Darlene Gill if you want a reference.
They added the summer session partly at my request so you all could participate. It's free, it's online, it's asynchronous and you learn a lot about good course design. According to research, higher education faculty prefers professional development outside the semester. Here's your chance!
Ed Tech Workshops in May
My colleague Katie Walker in the College of Education is hosting these sessions and invites others to join them. They are all 4 pm – 5 pm.
Monday, May 4 – Using VoiceThread for student discussion and presentation
Wednesday, May 6 – Designing an effective Blackboard Learn course (research based – Quality Matters)
Friday, May 8 – Creating video tutorials and screencasts
Tuesday, May 12 – Active learning in Blackboard Collaborate
Thursday, May 14 – Options for student/student interaction
All are online via Blackboard Collaborate and are appropriate for any experience level. Please RSVP to Katie at kmwalker@uaa.alaska.edu.
Click this link to join the Blackboard Collaborate session then enter your name. (If you haven't used Collaborate before, you will need to download and install the launcher program - which can take a little while. The session is open 24/7 so feel free to jump in any time to test it. Call the UAA Call Center at 786-4646 for help.
Tech Distractions
This article, "Tools That Limit Distraction May Raise Student Performance in Online Classes," reports on a study that used simple tools to limit students' access to Internet distractions while doing work on a computer in an online class. Of the three tools tested, the commitment tool, the focus tool, and the reminder tool, only the commitment tool was statistically significant. Student completion rate in the nine-week MOOC on statistics offered by Stanford University increased by 40% for those that used this tool.
An interesting finding is that the strongest students benefitted the most from using the tool. That is, even the best students are distracted by all the possibilities of the Internet when they are working on their schoolwork on a computer.
We all face the challenge of distractions from email, Facebook, alluring websites, etc., when using online tools. And will power is a limited quantity. Here's a teaser interview with Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal, author of The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It.
Warm regards,
Lee
