CTC Ed Tech News August 27, 2013

Hello all,

I am remembering to breath most of the time.  The first day of classes was particularly wild for me, but things appear to be settling down.  I hope all is going smoothly for all of you as  well.

Online Orientation for Adjunct Faculty

The Online Orientation for Adjunct Faculty is now live and available.  CTC developed orientation site as part of our Adjunct Faculty Performance Enhancement Program (PEP). Regular faculty may find it useful, too. 

Online Tutorials

Atomic Learning provides a wide array of online tutorials.  We now have a subscription to Atomic Learning.  Faculty and staff can logon on to the UAA Atomic Learning site with your UAA username and password to access tutorials on Blackboard, Acrobat Pro, Camtasia, Dropbox, Photoshop, SMART boards, VoiceThread, and more. There is an Atomic Learning plugin for Blackboard so you can point your students towards tutorials as well.  You may need to make it active in your Blackboard shell by going to Control Panel > Customization> Tool Availability.  Find the 4 Atomic Learning items and check them as available in the columns that have check boxes.  Click submit and Atomic Learning is in the student Tools in the course menu.

Building a Learning Community in Your Classes

Learning is social for most of us.  We can use the tools in Blackboard to build a learning community so students can support each other.  You can create a Discussion Board or blog for students to post questions and comments.  Now is a great time to begin the community building.

Lee

Lee Maria Henrikson

Instructional Designer

Beyond Anchorage Workforce Development Grant

Community and Technical College

University of Alaska Anchorage

907-786-4903

CTC Ed Tech News Aug 19, 2013

Hi all,

It's good to see everyone around the UC and main campus again.

I sent weekly newsletters to all CTC faculty last spring - as I continue this communication in the fall, I am sending it to all CTC staff as well as faculty.  There are tidbits here and there in the newsletter that are of value to all. 

Blackboard Learn

If you haven't done a course copy to get content from last semester into this semester, these directions  will help you.  The Instructor Help in your Fall 2013 Blackboard shell has directions for making your course available to students.  

Blackboard Collaborate

Web conferencing is evolving at UAA. Instructors have a choice between Collaborate and eLive for the fall classes.  In Spring semester, only Collaborate will be available for teaching.  The eLive server will be available through spring to download any recordings you want to save.  See the web meetings page for more info.

Email Correspondence with Students

I ran across these two posts, how to email a professor  and how to email a student last spring.  I highly recommend setting a policy for email in your classes and telling your students your turn around time (e.g. I will reply within 24 hours on working days.  I never answer email on weekends) and sticking to it.)

By the way, all my emails are archived on my blog if you want to go back and find something.

Warm regards,

Lee

Lee Maria Henrikson

Instructional Designer

Beyond Anchorage Workforce Development Grant

Community and Technical College

University of Alaska Anchorage

907-786-4903

Coming Soon: Resources for CTC Faculty and Adjunct Faculty

Here are a few of the projects that I have been working on this summer:

Blackboard Resource Shell

One of my summer tasks is to develop a Blackboard resource shell for CTC faculty ad adjunct faculty.  IT Services has just created the shell for me and I'm starting to work on it.  What would you like to see in it?  How can this shell help you advance your eLearning skills and pedagogy skills? Do you have something to contribute?  Please - reply to this email with you suggestions, requests, and ideas.  

Some of my ideas for this Blackboard shell:

- an example Blackboard "Start Here" module that can be downloaded and used.  A Start Here module sets course expectations and technology expectations for the class.

-links to existing resources at UAA and UA (I am not one for reinventing the wheel)

-a quiz for you :) so you can refresh on UAA policies and see what it's like to take a Blackboard quiz

-a Q and A discussion board forum (with the RSS feed turned on so anyone who chooses can get all the posts)

-an example instructor info section

Online Orientation for Adjunct Faculty

I have been working on an online orientation sits for adjunct faculty that should go live at the end of the month. Regular faculty are welcome to use the site as well.  

Making the IDEA Survey Work

I have learned quite a bit about the mechanics of the survey and written about it in the Online Orientation for Adjunct Faculty. I have also interviewed one faculty member who has very high response rates to the survey.  I will be putting this information together for you. UAA is planning to move to the short form of the survey - as I find out more, I'll let you know. 

CTC Ed Tech May 8, 2013

Hi all,

This will be my final newsletter for the semester.  I will send the next edition the week of August 12.

I have been working with a faculty member on project-based learning this spring and he is continuing to refine and develop his course.  I will be doing some research on assessment of project-based learning this summer.  Let me know if you have any ideas!  

Last week I wrote about screencasts and their uses.  They have become particularly popular with the rise of "flipped classrooms."  I leave  you with an article on flipped classrooms from Smart Blog for Education.

Happy Summer,

Lee

Lee Maria Henrikson

Instructional Designer

Beyond Anchorage Workforce Development Grant

907-786-4903

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