TLT is offering the opportunity for faculty to join a Professional Learning Club (PLC) that will take place during the 2015-2016 academic year. A Professional Learning Club is a group of faculty that meet to collaboratively reflect on and improve their teaching practices. It involves examining the relationship between teaching practices and student outcomes, evaluating those practices using the students’ work, and then reflecting on the success of the strategy to improve the outcomes.
If you are interested in learning more about PLCs and how you can be part of one please join us March 24th at 2pm in JC Long 219 for an informational session. During this session we will review the purpose of the PLC, the roles and responsibilities of the participants and the outcomes. It will also give you an opportunity to ask any questions you may have.
If you can’t attend the session then check out our PLC page on this blog then contact your Instructional Technologist to discuss any questions you may have.
We think this is going to be a constructive, collaborative and fun opportunity for faculty so I hope you’ll check into it.
There have been many times during my teaching career that I’ve wanted to gather my students’ input to make decisions. Would they be amenable to a due date change on their upcoming paper? What resolution would they like to research for their next in-class debate? Would they like to meet in the library or the classroom to work on their group projects?
In some cases, a student may be hesitant to express their opinion in front of others (who wants to be the one person who opposes a due date extension?). Other times, I simply want a quick and easy way to “take the pulse” of my class without counting raised hands or scraps of paper.
Tricider has provided a simple and free solution to all my brainstorming, crowdsourcing, and voting needs.
A user initiates a poll or brainstorming session simply by proposing a question. Then, participants can contribute their own ideas, up-vote other’s contributions, provide arguments for their votes, even upload images. Tricider can be used to help make both large and small decisions, such as where to eat lunch!
Welcome back, faculty! Whether you’re new to the classroom or a veteran professor, the beginning of a new semester is a busy time for all of us in academia. Between planning and preparing courses, attending faculty meetings, and getting to know new students, you may feel that there is little time for seeking out or implementing new technology.
With your busy schedule in mind, the folks at Top Hat have put together a list of the Top 10 EdTech tools for 2015. These tools can be used in your courses to increase collaboration, improve organization, and encourage participation. Many of these tools are also relatively simple and can help set up your classes for success this semester.
To view the complete list on the Top Hat blog, click here.
As always, if you find a tool that you may be interested in using this semester, you can contact your Instructional Technologist for ideas or assistance.
A “spooktacular” time was had by all at the TLT Faculty Showcase! A hearty thank you to the faculty who shared their innovative teaching strategies: Gustavo Urdaneta Velasquez, Mary Ann Hartshorn, Laura Penny, Sherry Wallace, and Lancie Affonso. Not only did we learn how to more effectively engage our students and manage our classes, we also played Plinko and enjoyed trick-or-treating!
Plinko!
For those who couldn’t attend, the following applications were discussed:
Google Docs (Free; Web, iOS, Android) is a cloud-based word processor that allows users to create and share work from any device that connects to the Internet. Users can work on the same document both synchronously and asynchronously, making it ideal for collaborative projects. Mary Ann Hartshorn’s students use Google Docs to crowd-source references for research papers. The students each contribute to the annotated bibliography then collectively edit the document for proper APA formatting.
To establish community and encourage communication, Mary Ann asks her students compose a “Where I’m From” poem at the beginning of the semester, which they share in the OAKS Discussion boards. In addition, throughout the semester, students take turns as discussion leaders charged with facilitating the boards. Mary Ann has found this continuous interaction throughout the semester encourages students to complete the assigned readings, engage in peer teaching, and establish relationships with one another.
Using Google Docs and the OAKS Discussion tool
What student wouldn’t love to play games in class? Kahoot (Free; Web) is a student response system founded on game-based digital pedagogy. Gustavo Urdaneta Velasquez tests his students’ understanding of Spanish vocabulary and grammar by creating quizzes that incorporate text, images, and video. Using any device with a Web browser, students play against each other hoping to top the leader board. Gustavo is able to see how well his students understand course content and use the students’ answers to provide “just in time” feedback.
Lancie Affonso starts his “flipped” classes by checking his students’ pulse. LinkedIn Pulse (Free; Web, iOS, Android) is an RSS aggregator that exposes students to industry-specific resources and professional networking. Students get up-to-the-minute news from industry professionals, business publications, and news media, which inspire lively class discussions.
If you’ve ever wished you could scribble all over PDFs or Powerpoint slides while lecturing, Laura Penny has found the app for you. Goodnotes ($5.99; iOS) is a note-taking, annotation, and digital whiteboard app. Using the external display feature, Laura projects her iPad screen to the class and annotates while she lectures. She can then export those annotated slides and share them with her students.
Socrative (Free; Web, iOS, Android) is a student response system that helps instructors assess student understanding through quizzes, polls, and games — no clickers or subscriptions required! Sherry Wallace uses Socrative in her art history classes to evaluate students’ knowledge based on their exploration of websites such as the Louvre and Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. Socrative captures students’ responses in real-time, which encourages discussion and allows Sherry to clarify confusion.
Looking for a way to deliver content while encouraging discussion, especially in an online class? Instructional Technologist, Chris Meshanko, shared the perfect tool to accomplish these goals — Voicethread (Free; Web, iOS, Android) is a cloud-based application that allows users to upload, share, and discuss documents, presentations, images, audio files and videos. Chris has devised twelve fantastic ways to integrate Voicethread into your classes including icebreaker introductions at the beginning of the semester, guest lectures, syllabus question & answer, peer evaluation, and a variety of formative assessments. Making Voicethread even better are the College’s site license and its integration with OAKS.
If any of these tools sound promising to you, contact your Instructional Technologist to learn more.
We hope you’ll join us for the November Faculty Showcase on 11/20/14 from 11:00-12:00 in Tate Center 202.
Your fun-loving Instructional Technologists: Mendi, Chris, and Kaitlin
Are you looking for an easy to use, collaborative whiteboard app that works on all tablets, phones, AND computers? Check out AWW: a web whiteboard (https://awwapp.com). Recommended by Sarah Davis in Teacher Education (EHHP), it allows you and your students to collaborate through drawing. Sarah used it to online tutor her niece in math. It’s great for writing, math, brainstorming, anything that can be done by drawing or writing.
It also couldn’t be easier to use if it had to be. Just go to https://awwapp.com and click Start Drawing. Once in the board just share the link with your users via email or a tweet and you’re on your way to collaboration.
Have you ever told your students not to be afraid to ask questions because their classmates probably have the same question(s)? Well, professors shouldn’t be afraid to voice their queries either! It’s likely the questions you have about implementing instructional technologies are shared by your colleagues. So we are starting an online community, called “Dear TLT,” to answer your questions, inspire discussion of best practices, and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration. Much like “Dear Abby,” your instructional technologists will respond to your questions with advice, suggestions, and troubleshooting tips.
To submit a question for TLT, please complete the following form: http://goo.gl/n1N2tq.
We look forward to corresponding with you!
Please note: Questions will be answered on a first come, first-served basis and added to TLT’s blog as space permits. If you need an immediate response, please contact your instructional technologist.
I love Google Docs for sharing and reviewing documents but I do miss the features of Microsoft Word’s track changes. Well, Google Docs has recently added that feature. Now when you open a Doc you will see a new item in the toolbar entitled Editing. This gives you the choice of “Editing” as you normally would, “Suggesting” which turns on the track changes, and “Viewing” which views the original document or the accepted changes. This long awaited feature elevates Google Docs into an even better collaborative tool than it was before. If you are interested in using this feature just open a Google Doc and, under the Editing menu choose Suggesting then make your changes.
As of the writing of this post it appears that this feature is only available in Docs and not in Spreadsheets or Presentations.
This week’s guest blogger is Miriam Klous in Health and Human Performance.
In May 2013 I attended the Faculty Technology Institute (FTI) training. We learned about new technologies that could be useful in a classroom setting, research or service. In my classes, I have been trying to increase the interaction with the students and particularly between students. Through the FTI I learned new iPad applications that could help me increase this interaction. One of the applications that was very helpful is ‘PollEverywhere’ and in another project I have been combining Google Moderator and video creation apps.
Many times in my classes when I ask questions, the same students answer. Of course there are several ways of dealing with this, but I found ’PollEverywhere’ to be an effective tool to influence this. Basically, I create questions online with the app ‘PollEverywhere’ and provide them with multiple answers (true-false and open-ended questions can also be created). The students have to text or email a number representing the answer they pick to a (phone) number. You are able to follow the voting directly on screen, and it can be anonymous. For me it is a great way to see if students have difficulty with a question/content. If everybody answers the question correctly, I know I can move on with other content. If the answer to a question is very diverse, additional explanation of the topic may be necessary. Besides, the student can see that he/she is on the right track or, if not, that he/she is not the only one choosing that answer (while staying anonymous). When discussing the question and the topic after the vote, I perceive more interaction with the students. It seems like students trust asking follow-up questions now that they know they are not the only one that picked a certain answer. The questions can be created very easily and quickly and could be done in class. I prefer to prepare the questions ahead of time and login to ‘PollEverywhere’ to provide them to the students.
In addition to ‘PollEverywhere’, I also wanted to develop a project that makes students work together outside class time. Previously I had students writing research papers/labs together, but I was looking for a project where I could implement sophisticated technology. Therefore, in my EXSC 433 ‘Research Design and Analysis’ course I had students work together on a video project with the topic ‘How are we all consumers (users) of research?’. Students at an undergraduate level seem to have difficulty understanding why learning about research is important/exciting. However, research is all around us, it is a part of our daily life. My goal was to make students more aware of research in our daily life by letting them make a video on this topic. Most students really enjoyed the assignment and I believe they received a better understanding of how research is integrated in society and it will be part of their life even if they don’t have a research job. In the FTI I learned about making videos and editing. This experience in FTI made me comfortable enough to implement this in my class, knowing I could help the students when it was necessary. Students first received feedback on their storyboard before they started creating the video. In this project I also implemented the Google Moderator app. I wanted students to be involved in the development of the rubric. The students could make suggestions on aspects of (creating) the video that they believed were essential for a good video and thereby required for successfully fulfilling the assignment. Therefore, I created a rubric and placed it on Google Moderator. Students could log on to the Google Moderator and vote on the items if they believed were important aspect of (creating) the video. They could also reformulate items or add items and other students could vote again on those items. I assigned class time for students to spend 5-10 to do this, to make sure they knew how to vote or add items/comments. I received great feedback on time restrictions for the video and suggestions to reformulate certain items. Based on the feedback I created the final rubric. This strategy helped to have the students be aware of the aspects they would be assessed on and also to have them agree on the assessment of their assignment.
I see the benefit of the FTI training. The interaction between students in my class and myself definitely improved. Of course there were some issues along the way with students not doing their part, but this would probably also have been the case in more traditional group work. I definitely will keep on using those apps, and hope to implement other applications that I learned during the FTI training.
Our guest blogger is Jessica Smith, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication. Jessica attended the Summer 2013 FTI.
Think of any movie that features scenes of the college classroom. Hollywood portrayals typically include the archetypal professor, wearing glasses and chalk on the sleeve, standing before a theatre-style hall, lecturing from a podium. When I first began teaching, I had visions of Robin Williams, in Dead Poets Society, serenading his students with lessons about love and life.
These Hollywood fantasies were quickly crushed my first semester teaching. Students slept, read newspapers, worked on homework, and gazed out the window. Now, they text their friends and surf the Web on their laptops. Despite my frustration over their lack of engagement, I was determined to craft lectures that would rouse my students to declare “Captain, my captain” while standing on their desks.
I didn’t realize until after that first semester that my steadfast commitment to becoming a “sage on the stage” was actually preventing me from inspiring and motivating my students. I have since dedicated myself to learning about innovative methods for engaging students, including the latest education technology tools. One such tool is Google Apps for Education, a suite of web-based applications.
Since the College has a site license, many students and faculty use this free resource for individual academic pursuits. But I believe Google Apps was especially designed for use in the classroom, allowing students and faculty to collaborate on projects, activities, and assignments. This semester, I have made a concerted effort to use Google Apps more frequently and creatively in my classes.
In this post, I’ll address how I use Google Apps for various forms of collaboration, including:
Workshopping and peer editing
Collaborative writing and peer instruction
Brainstorming and crowdsourcing
I teach in the Communication Department, so my students complete numerous writing assignments throughout the semester. One of the most important phases in the writing process is revising and Google Docs is ideal for workshopping and peer editing. Students compose their writing assignments in Google Docs (or upload their document to their Drive) and share it with their classmates and me. I ask students to focus on two or three specific tasks (such as reviewing APA format or critiquing thesis statements). To teach students how to effectively edit, hold them accountable, and assign participation points, I track my students’ comments on their classmates’ documents. Kaitlin Woodlief, one of our TLT gurus, taught me how to comment in Google Docs: Students select the text they’d like to comment on then go to Insert > Comment > type their feedback. The comment will be saved with the student’s name and date/time. This allows me to keep track of students’ comments so I can ensure they are truly doing their best to help each other improve their writing.
After workshopping with their classmates, I then have students edit and revise their papers independently. I have them follow the same commenting procedure and ask them to make notes about their revisions (e.g., explaining why they did or did not accept a classmates’ suggestion). This not only helps students think more critically about the evolution of their writing, but also helps me evaluate their revision skills.
Google Docs is also fantastic for collaborating during class on low-stakes writing assignments, which prepare them for their larger papers. For example, I have pairs of students compose “summarize and respond” paragraphs together. I ask them to bring laptops or tablets to class so they can work simultaneously on the same document (TLT Tutorial: http://youtu.be/xLN7hTlzrtc). For students who don’t have access to a laptop or forget theirs, I bring my own devices for them to use. This type of collaboration presents students with a useful challenge—learning to write together. I’ve also witnessed many instances of “peer instruction” as one student teaches another about a concept or technique. To read more about collaborative writing, visit: http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop2l.cfm.
Finally, Google Moderator provides yet another opportunity for collaborating (TLT Tutorial: http://blogs.charleston.edu/tlttutorials/2013/04/24/google-moderator). This is a crowdsourcing app that allows users to submit questions or ideas, vote on those submissions, and rank them by order of popularity. When I teach argumentation, students submit resolutions they would like to debate, vote on their favorites, and watch the most popular resolutions rise to the top. We then choose the resolution that received the most votes as the one we debate in class. This allows students to brainstorm topics then pick the ones they actually are interested in researching and debating.
Since quashing my delusions of grandeur during my first semester teaching, I realized professors are no longer the center of the higher education universe. Google allows students to fact-check lectures with just a few keystrokes. They can crowdsource notes and help each other with projects using social media. Massive open online courses like Kahn Academy and Coursera allow students to learn from some of the brightest minds in the world. Therefore, professors must adapt their teaching styles from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side.” One way to accomplish this is to incorporate more collaboration into the classroom and Google Apps provide tools that make it simple and meaningful.
Our guest poster this week is Paul Collins, Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance. Paul attended the Spring 2013 FTI.
As part of the Scenery and Lighting Design and Production concentration in the Theatre major, students are required to take a course in which they learn Computer Aided Drafting and Design. The software on which the students learn is brand new to nearly all of them, and very complicated. We spend time in class going over the necessary skills and tools, but the students are then expected to complete exercises in the computer lab as homework. Because of the complexity of the software and the lack of experience that the students have with it, struggles are very real and frequent, and I spend a lot of time with individual students working through the process.
While I work closely with each of the students, I have also noticed in previous semesters that the students do a great job helping each other. Sometimes while I am working with an individual in class, another student has a question about something, but by the time I get to this student, a neighbor has helped to solve the problem. I encourage the students to work on their homework in the lab together so that they can take advantage of what I call ‘the collective wisdom of the class’.
During the Faculty Technology Institute (in Spring 2013), I was introduced to a tool that has allowed me to expand this ‘collective wisdom’ beyond the walls of the classroom. Celly (simply http://cel.ly/ in your web browser) is a kind of online discussion board, similar to other discussion boards that you may be familiar with (including the tool available in OAKS). However, the advantage that Celly has over traditional discussion boards is the ability for the user to receive and send messages in a number of different ways: via email, mobile app, online web portal or text. The text feature is what makes this tool truly powerful- by connecting the discussion to a cell phone, posts to the board are more immediately available both to the students and to me. A question can be put up on the Celly, and be responded to almost immediately by whoever gets to it first. Here is an example of one of the conversations (note… read the conversation from bottom to top)
In this situation, a student asked for clarification about a handout. Within a minute, another student joined the conversation to try to help, as well as giving advice on how to create the shape in question. I also was available to help at this time, and checked the handout so that I could answer the question. Within 8 minutes, I had the problem figured out, and posted a clarification to OAKS to clear things up for the whole class. This is only one example of what is a relatively easy question, but would likely have caused this student to either be unable to continue, or at the very least have to go back and make significant revisions. If the message had gone to a discussion board or email, the response time would not have been nearly as quick as the text message allowed.
There are a few things that I’d like to mention, though: First, this is a small class. With a larger group of active users, receiving the messages via text could quickly become overwhelming (especially if you do not have an unlimited texting plan). There is an online web portal which updates immediately, and you can receive the messages via email or mobile device, but this also brings you back to the response time issue that traditional discussion boards have. Each individual user (student and faculty alike) has the ability to set notification preferences to whatever combination of methods desired.
Celly also allows me to contact the class via text message without sending from my personal phone (and thus sharing my cell number with the whole class). I will send out a ‘how is the homework going?’ reminder message around Friday or so, as the homework is due on Monday. However, if this ‘reminder’ feature is the primary reason for using a service such as this, Remind101 is probably a more appropriate tool (as this service allows ‘outgoing’ text messages from teacher to student, but not vice versa).
Celly also has a ‘private messaging’ feature that allows users within the ‘cell’ to send messages to individuals rather than the group.
When this tool was initially introduced to me during the FTI, I did not think that it would be one that I would wind up using, but I’m glad that I gave it a shot this semester. I think that it is a powerful tool for those students who have chosen to participate, and I will continue to use it in the future.
TLT is offering the opportunity for faculty to join a Professional Learning Club (PLC) that will take place during the 2015-2016 academic year. A Professional Learning Club is a group of faculty that meet to collaboratively reflect on and improve their teaching practices. It involves examining the relationship between teaching practices and student outcomes, evaluating those practices using the students’ work, and then reflecting on the success of the strategy to improve the outcomes.
