Teaching and Learning Technologies
“Padlet is a virtual wall that allows people to express their thoughts on a common topic easily. It works like an online sheet of paper where people can put any content (e.g. images, videos, documents, text) anywhere on the page, together with anyone, from any device.” (Mrs. Treichler)
Platforms: Web, iOS, Android, also has plugins for Chrome and WordPress
How It Works
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Uses for Faculty & Students |
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Works on a computer or almost any mobile device. |
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For most faculty (and students), the end of the semester is an exhausting race to the finish. Endless cups of coffee, maybe even a Red Bull or two, sustain you through grading marathons and conversations with students that begin with “I really need an A.” Once you surface for a breath of fresh “I just submitted final grades” air, I encourage you to think seriously about instructor burnout and self-care.
Self-care is not limited to expensive spa retreats, Pilates classes, and bubble baths. It simply refers to practices that enhance your physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing. This may mean snuggling with your pet or child, baking 6 dozen cookies to give to colleagues, going for a lunch-time run, or playing Dungeons and Dragons when you get home from work. Self-care also means implementing rituals and practices that make your life easier, such as time-management strategies. Here are a few ideas for the overworked and exhausted faculty member.
Have you ever kept a log of how you spend your time each day? I know what you’re thinking (“No, Jessica, I haven’t because I don’t have time!”) but since many of our habits are both unconscious and unproductive, it’s actually a useful exercise to determine where your precious time goes. For example, how long are you really spending scrolling through Facebook in the evenings on the couch? After completing your time inventory, you may be surprised by how many pockets of your day could be better spent.
Brainstorm ways you could eliminate those time-sucks or reimagine them. For example, if you have a weekly meeting with a colleague, would it be possible to go for a walk rather than sitting in an office or conference room? (read about the benefits of a walk-and-talk) For those who are easily distracted while using your computer, try an application that monitors your time, such as Rescue Time. If you’re watching too many cat videos on YouTube, this app will tell you.
After completing an inventory of my own time, I started setting limits on how long I could spend on mundane tasks and setting a timer on my phone. When that timer goes off, I must wrap up what I’m doing and move on. I also find it useful to use Steven Covey’s time management grid, which characterizes tasks based on urgency and importance (refer to the image below).
Whatever the results of your own time inventory, make it a priority to reduce tasks in quadrants III and IV, delegate what you can, and create rituals that will help you stay focused on quadrants I and II.
As a chronic procrastinator, I have the bad habit of allowing grading to pile up until it becomes so overwhelming that I actually move through the stages of grief. One of the contributors to procrastination is facing a task so large or complex that we don’t know how to start. Feeling overwhelmed prevents us from taking action.
The Pomodoro Method seeks to remedy this by asking practitioners to break down tasks into manageable chunks and take regularly scheduled breaks. When I first heard about this technique, I immediately thought it could make the grading process less painful. So how do you begin?
First, set specific goals for what you want to achieve. In the case of grading, maybe it’s “by Friday, I will grade 20 of my 40 research papers.” Given your goal, how many pomodoros do you need (pomodoros = 25-minute segments)? Perhaps you typically devote 15 minutes to each student’s paper. That means you’ll need 12 pomodoros to reach your goal.
Next, set your timer for 25 minutes and work in a distraction-free setting. When the timer rings, you must take a short break. It’s required. Get a cup of coffee; walk a loop around your neighborhood; play with your pet. When you return, set the timer for your second pomodoro. After four pomodoros, you must take a longer break (30 minutes is recommended). Go for a run; cook dinner; watch an episode of a favorite TV show. Maintain this cycle until you reach your goal. If you have tasks remaining, set a new goal and determine how many pomodoros you still need.
Although not revolutionary, this technique can result in greater productivity by encouraging us to set concrete goals, commit to short segments of concentration, and take regular “brain breaks.”
One of the constant complaints faculty make about students is that they don’t listen. They repeatedly ask questions that have been answered in class, in OAKS, in the syllabus, etc. Thus, faculty waste a lot of time answering the same questions again and again. It’s time to end this madness!
My first suggestion is to establish an “ask three, then me” policy. This policy states that students should consult three sources before contacting the professor. Those sources could be the syllabus, OAKS, classmates, the textbook, etc. Explain to students that you will not respond to emails if the answer to their question is readily available from other sources. As long as you have clearly explained this policy to students (and remind them of it multiple times), this isn’t as cruel as it may sound. It has worked wonders in my own classes, promoting student self-sufficiency and initiative.
One way to encourage students to help one another is to set up a “course lounge” discussion board inside OAKS (for those who have taken our Distance Education Readiness Course, this should sound familiar). This discussion board serves as a space for students to ask questions related to the course, such as due dates, clarifying instructions, and logistical issues. You will find students are often willing to jump in and answer one another’s questions.
If a student asks you a question via email that the rest of the class could benefit from hearing the answer, tell that student to post their question and your reply in the discussion board. And if you receive multiple emails about the same problem, rather than replying to each student individually, post the answer in the discussion board (or in the News tool). If you’re not a fan of the OAKS discussion tool, there are countless other ways to facilitate the “course lounge” concept, including Slack, Realtime Board, Trello, and Facebook groups.
When we’re facing a giant stack of student papers or a looming manuscript deadline, it’s easy for us to abandon self-care practices. But when we’re stressed and overwhelmed, self-care is essential. Make your mental and physical health a priority and schedule it like you would a dentist appointment. It’s non-negotiable. This may require you to say “no” to people from time to time (easier said than done, I know. But your health comes first).
Remember that self-care practices don’t need to be expensive, time-consuming, or elaborate. For example, when writing, set a timer to go off every hour and walk around the campus (when was the last time you realized how beautiful CofC is?). Or, establish a policy of not responding to emails past 9:00PM (and stick to it!). Or, keep healthy snacks in your office to prevent you from either going too long without sustenance or stress-eating Cheez-Its by the boxful.
Self-care isn’t all-or-nothing. Every practice makes an impact on your health. Start small and work simple techniques into your daily life. When one practice becomes habitual, incorporate something else. While self-care will not eliminate stress, it will set you on a path towards greater vitality and job satisfaction.
If you’re interested in more productivity tips and apps, check out our session “Tips and Tools for the Busy Professor” on February 15th at 2:00 PM
This post is part of a series which presents low risk, high reward teaching ideas, inspired by James Lang’s book Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning.
One of the things that I enjoy most about being an Instructional Technologist is that I am constantly required to stay up to date on the newest learning technologies and instructional strategies. Part of my job involves designing and delivering professional development sessions to faculty at the College of Charleston. As we all know, technology is constantly evolving, new tools are being developed and released daily, and old tools are updated with new features multiple times throughout the semester. On several occasions, I’ve spent weeks or months preparing a session on a particular web tool, only to realize an hour before faculty members are set to arrive that the site navigation has changed, the tool’s features have been removed, altered, or upgraded, or the tool was pulled from the web. In those moments when I’m scrambling to pull together a session on something totally unfamiliar, it’s easy to become stressed or anxious, wondering whether attendees will see me as unprepared or unqualified. Surprisingly, some of these sessions have been among my favorites and have received the highest ratings, and I believe that the reason for this is that I was able to better understand how my attendees viewed the content since it was new to me, too.
I recently had the opportunity to read “Teaching What You Don’t Know” by Therese Huston, who is the Founding Director for the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (now the Center for Faculty Development) at Seattle University. As the title suggests, the book provides strategies to help faculty members who are tasked with teaching outside of their areas of expertise. As part of her research for this book, Huston interviewed 28 faculty members on topics related to teaching what you don’t know, which seems to often be the norm in academia.
While Huston understands the disadvantages of teaching what you don’t know, she also identifies some of the benefits to being what she calls a “content novice” early in the book along with a reminder that instructors should focus on creating an environment conducive to learning rather than feeling discouraged because they see themselves as givers of information.
How can your lack of expertise in a certain area actually help you in the classroom? According to Huston, some of the advantages are:
So next time you’re tasked with teaching a class that may be a bit outside your comfort zone, remember that there are benefits to your situation. That new course that you’re prepping may just become one of your most successful due to your ability to reach your students in a different way.
Huston, T. (n.d.). Teaching What You Don’t Know. Cambridge, MA 2009: Harvard University Press.
Twine is an interactive, non-linear story creator. It allows the user to create Choose Your Own Adventure-type stories or branched stories, tutorials, or assignments.
Can be web-based or a downloaded computer app.
How It Works
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Uses for Faculty & Students |
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Each portion of the story is written in a small box. These boxes are then connected by adding the choices in one box which then automatically connects it to the boxes of those choices. When read, the reader will be presented with a story page ending in choices. Depending upon which choice is selected, the reader will be presented with a different part of the story. |
Non-linear storytelling has many uses:
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Things to be aware of:
Dear TLT,
This is my first semester at CofC, and a few of my students have told me that they cannot see their final grades in OAKS. How do I release their final grades? Thank you for your help.
Sincerely,
“The Professor” Roy Hinkley
Botany
Dear Professor Hinkley,
To release final calculated/adjusted grades in OAKS, follow these eight steps:
1. Open your course homepage and click the down arrow next to Grades.
2. Click Grades.
3. From the Manage Grades page, click Enter Grades.
4. Under Final Grades, click the down arrow next to Final Calculated Grade and select Grade All.
5. Click the empty checkbox, next to Grade (upper left), to select all students.
6. Click Release/Unrelease, next to Email, to allow final grades to be released to all students. (Note: If you selected release Final Adjusted Grade in the Setup Wizard, the column will display Final Adjusted Grade, not Final Calculated Grade. The default setting is Final Calculated Grade.)
7. Click Save.
8. Click Yes to confirm the changes and exit.
Please contact your instructional technologist, if you have additional questions or concerns, and check out our upcoming training sessions at http://tlt.eventbrite.com.
Best regards,
TLT
Submit the following form to see it featured on our blog: http://goo.gl/n1N2tq. And, don’t worry, we’ll change your name to a fictional professor in our response!
Professor Hinkley is from what 60’s television series? The first faculty member to email tlt@cofc.edu, with the correct answer, will receive a TLT (BPA-free) water bottle!
We are rapidly approaching the end of the semester. Soon, faculty will receive the results of their course and teaching evaluations. . . Well, perhaps it’s more accurate to say some will receive evaluations of their teaching. Many more will receive evaluations of their personality, wardrobe, voice, sense of humor, and physical attractiveness. . .
When I first began teaching, I agonized over my students’ evaluations. I can still quote some of their comments five years later. Some evaluations made me feel like I could soar while others crushed me. I’ve since learned to take student course evaluations with a grain of salt. There are simply too many flaws that make these evaluations an unreliable measurement, including that they are administered at the very end of the semester.
This is problematic for numerous reasons: First, human memory is notoriously unreliable so student recollections may not be accurate. Second, the end of the semester is when student stress peaks, which could result in venting negative feelings about their professors. Finally, students’ opinions can only be used to change future courses rather than being used to improve the course during the semester.
Despite these weaknesses, student perceptions matter and it’s important to provide a platform for their voices to be heard. What can we do as individual instructors to better assess student learning and satisfaction? I believe the simplest and most effective solution is to administer student evaluations throughout the semester. This is sometimes called “Informal Early Feedback.”
Gathering students’ opinions multiple times during the semester solves many of the problems associated with end-of-term evaluations. Also, responding to students’ comments by discussing them in class and making changes as appropriate can have a powerful and positive impact on the classroom culture. Here are a few ideas to incorporate into your classes:
Exit Tickets: These are quick formative assessments that allow instructors to check students’ understanding and identify areas of struggle. They’re called exit tickets because they are typically administered at the end of each class period. They can take any form and ask any question. For example, some instructors simply ask students to write responses on scrap paper. Others incorporate instructional technologies, such as Poll Everywhere, Socrative, Plickers, or Google Forms. These are two of my favorite exit ticket prompts:
Keep, Stop, Start: Ask students to write on a Post-It note one thing they wish would remain the same, one thing they wish would stop, and one thing they wish would start happening. For example, a student may comment that they like the flipped classroom structure, but they wish the weekly quizzes would be eliminated, and instead be replaced with journaling. I ask students to not write their names on the Post-It and to stick them to the wall on their way out. This helps to ensure anonymity and, therefore, more honest feedback.
Describe Our Class: Around midterm time, I ask students to compose a letter to a friend who is interested in taking the course. I ask them to describe the class, including how each class period is typically structured, how I interact with students, what types of readings are assigned, what types of assignments are completed, what he/she is learning, and whether or not he/she is enjoying the experience. This exercise gives me fantastic insight into how students’ perceptions compare to my own.
It’s easy to allow student course evaluations to distress us. When so much of our identities is connected to teaching, it’s painful to be criticized or even attacked. If you receive negative evaluations, seek out the counsel of your Department Chair or ask a colleague to observe your teaching. And instead of relying only on this one snapshot to assess your teaching, consider implementing informal early feedback throughout the semester. I’ve found that these exercises have actually improved the quality of my end-of-semester evaluations.
This post is part of a series which presents low risk, high reward teaching ideas, inspired by James Lang’s book Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning.
The latest installment in my series on 6 Reasons To Use Google Apps For Education will take a look at Google Docs. Google Docs is a free, web-based, word processing application that is basically like Microsoft Word. All files are automatically saved to the cloud so you never lose anything and can access your work from any computer, anywhere, using just a web-browser. In my mind, this alone is reason enough to use it. As a matter of fact, a month ago my computer died…completely. However, all of my files were saved to Google Drive so I didn’t lose ANYTHING! The other benefit to using Docs is that your students already have CofC Google accounts and it’s easy for them to use and access if you want to use it in your classes. Just like Microsoft Word, Google Docs allows you to write and edit documents, autosave, add images and tables, and create footnotes and bibliographies. But there are so many more features that set this tool apart from Word (way more than six)! Google Docs has all of the same collaboration, sharing and revision history that the other Google tools have (see the other posts in this series on Google Sheets and Google Slides to learn more) so I’m not going to include those below.
So without further ado, here are six reasons you should be using Google Docs instead of Word:
Speech to Text allows you to speak into your computer’s microphone and Google Docs will type what you say. It isn’t perfect but it’s pretty darn good. I am impressed with its accuracy without any of the voice training normally required by these types of applications. I recently read an article that discusses how well it does with dialects and accents. It also apparently works with a plethora of languages. NOTE: It only works with Google Chrome web browser but that shouldn’t be a deal breaker. To learn more visit Type with your voice on the Google Docs help pages.
I love the concept of add-ons for a program because it allows users to add features that aren’t built into the program. My two favorite add-ons right now are SAS Writer Reviser and EasyBib, but there are others that sound really helpful such as VexTab Music Notation, Math, Rhyme Finder, and Teacher Rubric (disclaimer: I haven’t tried the last four).
If you use the built-in style headers then Google Docs will automatically build a document outline that allows you to jump to any point in a document. Unlike a table of contents in Word, this outline always stays on the side of the screen, allowing you to easily navigate the document. Also, unlike the table of contents, the outline is updated automatically each time you add a new header. No more need to refresh the table. Access it under Tools > Document Outline. To learn more visit Edit and use a document outline in the Google help files.
Reason 4: ExploreThe Explore feature is available in each of the main Google tools but it does something different in each tool. In Google Docs, clicking on the Explore icon in the lower right corner of the window will bring up suggestions related to your entire document or to just the text you have highlighted. In Docs, Explore will show you topics included in the selected area, creative commons images that are related to the text, and related research articles pulled from the public web and Google Scholar.
Google Drawing is built-in to Google Doc, allowing you to create charts, diagrams, and drawings without leaving your document.
In addition to fantastic sharing and collaborating features, Google Docs allows users to save their document as a webpage. While you may be saying, “Well Word lets you save as a webpage,” you would be correct, however what Word doesn’t do is publish it to the web and give it a URL. This makes it very easy for students to share their work to an outside eportfolio or a blog or just publish it on the web for others to read. Giving our students a public audience for their work is an important component of some majors and this is an easy way to accomplish it.
I hope that I have been able to sway you, if not to completely change to Google Docs, at least to give it a try. It has evolved over the years into a stellar product so if you haven’t tried it in awhile (a year) then give it another chance. I think it will win you over!
Are you tired of trying to remember every password you have or worried about using the same one over and over? Try 1Password! 1Password is an app that stores all of your passwords in one area, locked securely by one main password. You enter this one password and it will sign you into any of your accounts. It will also generate and save secure passwords for any new accounts you may create. 1Password is integrated into your web browser and on as many devices as you need.
This app uses a combination of encryption and key derivation to ensure that no one can see your data while in use and everything is fully encrypted when you are not actively using 1Password.
You can try it free for 30 days and after it’s $2.99 a month or $4.99 a month for a family subscription.
Check it out: 1Password
Hurricane Matthew forced TLT to cancel our session on “Easier Paper Grading with Google Classroom.” We had several people ask if we could reschedule, so to meet the needs of more faculty we decided to do a recorded version of the class. Check out the playlist to view the entire session, or click on the three lines in the upper right corner to view specific videos in the series.
This week’s Small Teaching Tip is less of a tip and more of an observation and some encouragement. . .
As an instructional technologist, I support faculty’s endeavors to expand their teaching repertoires. Over the past couple of years, I’ve discovered that many faculty are hesitant to try new technologies or teaching strategies.
For some, it’s simply a lack of confidence. During graduate school, most of us were not taught how to teach and so we reproduce the methods we experienced as students. In the United States, we require rigorous training for our K-12 teachers but, strangely, we assume professors will magically know how to teach without such training. For example, when I was a 22-year-old Masters student, I was handed a textbook and class roster and told to “go teach.” Is it any wonder many of us sometimes struggle?
For other faculty, there may also be a fear of losing control or credibility. Exploring new pedagogical approaches or instructional technologies requires patience, flexibility, and persistence. For example, when I first flipped my classroom, it was a disaster. My students were frustrated and I was exhausted. But I learned a lot and didn’t give up. After much trial and error, I’m now happy with my flipped classes and my course evaluations reflect students are, too. But getting to that point required I let go of control and risk damaging my credibility. Not all faculty are willing to do this because we don’t want to be perceived as a novice. After all, we’re expected to be experts. It’s difficult to say “I don’t know” or “this didn’t work out as I planned.”
So if you are hesitant to experiment because you fear failure, chaos, poor teaching evaluations, or just looking like a fool, grant yourself permission to be a beginner. Teaching is a continuous process of learning, growing, and challenging oneself. It’s okay to not know how to do something. It’s okay to feel uncomfortable or awkward. It’s okay to make mistakes. When we try something new, we all start at the beginning.
It’s also important to remember that you don’t have to change every aspect of your teaching in order to improve student learning and engagement. We hope the Small Teaching Tip blog series has made it clear that we can all take small, strategic steps to improve our teaching.
One step you can take is to attend the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Conference on March 7-9, 2017. This conference will feature dozens of faculty-led sessions during which your colleagues will share teaching strategies, best practices, and lessons learned. Be on the look-out for more information about TLT Con in the new year!
