Tech Tip Tues… Wednesday! Yeah, Tech Tip Wednesday!
This week’s Tech Tip is so big, so huge, and so massive, that we actually had to wait 24 hours to post it! Are you ready?? Here it is: Say hello to Akindi because after this semester, the College of Charleston will no longer support Scantron. Don’t worry! Akindi is super painless! We have a plethora of training tutorials on how to use this wonderful DIY Bubblesheet test response system. Contact your Instructional Technologist if you have any questions about this marvelous technology!!
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Tech Tip Tuesday: Communicate in a New Way in OAKS
In our OAKS (D2L/Brightspace) classes there are often two types of communication: detailed and thoughtful discussions and class questions and answers. While the Discussion tool is great for the first type of communication, it’s less effective for the Q&A type.
Now, however, OAKS has a new tool called the Activity Feed. This is a tool that you can add to your Course Home and allows you and your students to communicate quickly and easily.
The Activity Feed functions more like a chat feed. Check it out.
You, as the instructor, can set it up so that students can only comment on your posts or can create their own. This interaction is what sets it apart from News which is a more static means of communication. However, like the News tool, it can take advantage of Notifications, so the students can make sure they won’t miss a message AND it’s the first thing they see on the Course Home when they enter the class.
Activity Feed:
- On the Course Home
- More interactive
- Allows Notifications
- Great for quick communication
HOW TO:
Add it to your course home
- In OAKS, go to your course
- Select Management > Edit Course > Homepages
- Next to CofC Default Course Homepage choose the dropdown arrow and choose Copy.
- Now click on the copy to open it.
- Rename your homepage to something you can easily identify (ex. My course home with activity feed).
- Now scroll down to the Widgets area and click Add Widget in the area where you want to see the Activity Feed.
- Select the Activity Feed box and then click Add.
- Move the feed to the proper location by dragging it.
- Click Save and Close.
- Now at the top, under Active Homepage, choose your new homepage from the dropdown menu and then choose Apply.
- Click on Course Home in the top left and you should see your new homepage with the Activity Feed.
Configure your Activity Feed
- On the Course Home click on the dropdown arrow next to Activity Feed and choose Manage commenting and posting.
- Determine who can post and who can comment. I would recommend checking Enable comments on posts and Allow all learners to create posts.
- Click Save.
Use your Activity Feed
- Just type your message in the box and click the blue + to post it.
- I would also recommend that you not use the Assignment feature of this tool at this time as it can be confusing for the student.
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Strengths in 60! Service Learning
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Tips and Tools for Teaching and Student Success with Clifton Strengths.
This is a series designed to help instructors and departments on campus incorporate a Clifton Strengths activity in 60 seconds or 60 minutes. Each strategy provides an opportunity for you and your students or team members to use strengths every day and to create “Moments That Matter” around strengths in the classroom. These strengths teaching and learning strategies are organized as opportunities for engagement, creative applications, assessments, and recognition. Have fun.
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Service Learning
Provide service learning opportunities through internships, clinical settings, and visits to business and industry. Include strengths observations as a part of the experience in addition to the content and career observations.Ask students to integrate strengths observations into their service learning narratives as a way to link strengths with “real-world”opportunities.
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By Idahlynn Karre Copyright © 2008 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved. Gallup®, Clifton StrengthsFinder®, and StrengthsQuest™ are trademarks of Gallup, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners
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Writing Student Learning Outcomes
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What is the purpose of Student Learning Outcomes?
SLOs help us, faculty/program/ department/school, to determine and define what we want the learners to be able to DO, KNOW, & VALUE as a result of taking the course AND helps us design, evaluate and redesign the instruction for the future. These SLOs are an important component of course creation.
SLOs should be:
- Student focused
- Measurable and Observable
- Contain a verb from the upper levels of the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy
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What do students really need to get out of your class?
When writing an SLO, one of the most difficult parts is making them measurable. The first step in this process is to
identify what the student NEEDS to know/value/be able to do.
Stay focused on the knowledge or skills they will need to retain to be successful in later classes, in the profession, and/or in life.
“I want students to …”
I want teacher candidates to …”
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How to write an SLO
Step 1: What do students really need to get out of this class? (know, do, value)
Step 2: What performances, if achieved, would cause you to agree that students know it, can do it, or value it?
Step 3: For each performance, describe the quality or quantity you will consider acceptable to show they have achieved it.
Step 4: Test your performances. Ask yourself, if a student completed exactly what is outlined in Step 2 & 3, would I consider them to have completed the outcome listed in Step 1?
Step 5: Write S.M.A.R.T. Learning Outcomes (SLOs)
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SMART outcomes are set with the purpose of increasing student achievement. They are specific in that they clarify precisely what students should learn, the level of the learning (proficiency level), the assessments that will be used to make the proficiency determination and a time frame. A SMART Outcome is:
Specific ‐ A specific SLO has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a general one. To set a specific outcome you must answer the “W” questions:
- Who: Who is involved?
- What: What do I want to accomplish? (USE BLOOM’S VERBS!)
- When: Establish a time frame.
- Which: Identify requirements and constraints.
- Why: Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the outcome.
from UMass Dartmouth http://www.umassd.edu/fycm/goalsetting/resources/smartgoals/
Measurable ‐ Student success is measured by assessment. It answers the question – HOW, How much? How many? The criteria should be concrete and geared toward measuring progress.
Answer the question, “How will I know they’ve accomplished what I expect them to in this course?”
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Attainable but Aggressive ‐ The outcome should be set high but within reason. High outcomes are not always attained but that does not mean it was a failure.
Results Oriented/Relevant ‐ Results tell you who has achieved proficiency. These results determine which students need remediation or enrichment. Relevant allows you to narrow the outcomes into those that are most important instead of trying measure everything in the course which can often happen.
Time Bound – All outcomes are bound by a clearly‐defined time frame. Setting a time lends a sense of urgency and allows you benchmarks by which you can examine your data and make relevant changes to move you and your students toward the final outcome.
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Examples of SLOs
MODEL: As a result of WHAT, WHO will be able to ACTION VERB + DEFINED BY EXPLICIT AND OBSERVABLE TERMS.
As a result of PARTICIPATING IN THIS EXSC 315, STUDENTS will be able to ANALYZE AND SUMMARIZE a research study as using concise and non-judgemental language.
As a result of passing TEDU 201, the student will be able to debate major political and economic issues that have influenced policy decisions in education as determined by federal, state, and local agencies.
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3 Ways to Reduce Your Holiday Stress
The holiday season is right around the corner and, for many of us, that means heightened stress levels. Errands, chores, travel, family tension, and paying for gifts can all contribute to our stress and anxiety. But have no fear! Try these tips to have a calmer and merrier holiday season.
Lower your expectations
This seems a bit grim, but many of us want the holidays to be perfect. Perfect food, perfect decorations, perfect family togetherness. But this expectation puts a lot of pressure on yourself and your family, and often leads to exhaustion and conflict. Try to take a step back and be realistic. Get rid of the “have-tos” and the “should dos.” Being flexible and focusing on what really matters will drastically lower your stress.
Schedule self-care
It’s essential that you protect your energy during the holidays. Don’t be a martyr — if you hate baking, buy a pie instead of making one. If you need space, make a hotel reservation for your family rather than having them stay at your home. It’s also important to set aside time to decompress. How you practice self-care is very personal and may take trial and error to identify a few practices or activities that make you feel calmer, happier, and healthier. But it’s worth the experimentation. Once you find something that works for you, schedule time to do it just like you would a doctor’s appointment.
Give to others
One of the best ways to feel less stressed and more grateful is to give to others through small acts of kindness. Volunteer, donate, or participate in a community event. Even small gestures, like holding the door for a stranger, has the potential to reduce stress and increase feelings of positivity.
While a stress-free holiday may be unlikely, by lowering your expectations, scheduling self-care, and giving to others, you can have a more peaceful and joyful winter season.
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Role Play as a Learning Tool
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I was inspired by a Faculty Focus article when creating this newsletter. This article spoke about adding role playing activities to your teaching to act as practicum experience but I think you can take it further. The article states, “Role play can be implemented by college instructors and professors as an additional way to increase practice of skills within the confines of a college classroom among peers.” Staying within these constraints, this strategy can be used in almost any discipline. It’s just a matter of creating a scenario or roles/characters and having your students submerge themselves into the activity. Hopefully, during this submersion, they will get to experience a practical skill or what it’s like to be in a specific scenario.
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HERE’S HOW IT WORKS:
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- Create your outcomes. Write down the outcomes you wish to happen as a result of the activity.
- Write up debrief questions that will let you know if you met your outcomes.
- Create a scenario. Examples include: “You are in a pub in Nazi Germany…,” “It’s Parent-Teacher Conference day…,” “You are a member of FEMA’s first responders after a hurricane disaster…,” “You are on a team of researchers who will look at the effects of exercise on…”
- Create the roles/characters. On notecards, write up the different roles that the students will take on. From the examples above they could by “SS, Jew, Woman, etc.,” “parents of a student with a learning disability, parent of an unengaged student, etc.,”
- During class, post the scenario on the screen. Give each group a stack of role notecards. The students are then given a minute to get familiar with their roles and jump into the scenario.
- Debrief. Set a specific time for the activity to take place then debrief with all the student groups.
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Uses:
Just a few of the possible role playing opportunities are:
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- Classroom management,
- Parent teacher conferences,
- Student teacher conferences,
- Mentoring,
- Historical scenarios,
- Exercise Science testing,
- Disease containment,
- Natural disaster recovery,
- Interview with and Nutritional plan creation for a patient,
- Interview with and Exercise plan creation for a patient.
These are only a few. Let your imagination run wild.
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Strengths in 60! Assignment Alignment
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Tips and Tools for Teaching and Student Success with Clifton Strengths.
This is a series designed to help instructors and departments on campus incorporate a Clifton Strengths activity in 60 seconds or 60 minutes. Each strategy provides an opportunity for you and your students or team members to use strengths every day and to create “Moments That Matter” around strengths in the classroom. These strengths teaching and learning strategies are organized as opportunities for engagement, creative applications, assessments, and recognition. Have fun.
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Assignment Alignment
Develop assessments and testing strategies to provide for a range of learning styles and strengths. Make sure to ask student to not only complete the assignment using their strengths, but also be prepared to tell why the choices they made in doing the assignment aligned with their strengths.
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By Idahlynn Karre Copyright © 2008 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved. Gallup®, Clifton StrengthsFinder®, and StrengthsQuest™ are trademarks of Gallup, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners
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Cool OAKS Tip to Find At Risk Students
OAKS contains data that will help you know which students may be in trouble. NOTE: this will only work if you have released the Final Calculated Grade.
- In OAKS, go to Communication > Classlist
- From the dropdown arrow next to your first student choose View Progress
- Above the Grade area for that user you will see three grades, Current, Maximum, Minimum.
The Maximum grade will give you a guide as to how that student will do in your class based on acing all of the remaining assignments in the grade book.
Important things to note before this will work properly:
- Your Final Calculated/Adjusted Grade must be released for the student to view.
- All of your gradeable items must be in the grade book (Grades > Grades).
Again, it’s a guide that you can use to find the at risk students and to help them make the best decisions.
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TECH TOOL: Augmenting and Customizing Your Textbooks!
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Customizing your Textbooks with AR!
Textbooks are awesome. Almost everyone uses them. But sometimes they don’t cover the material in the same way you are or they aren’t as clear, customized or interactive as we wish they were. However, adding augmented reality, or AR, can take these static textbooks and give them all the customization and interactivity that you and your students need.
BLIPPBUILDER
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With the free BlippBuilder online, faculty, teachers, and students can create their own augmented reality experiences. It’s as easy as:
- Take a picture of a textbook page or other item.
- Use BlippBuilder to add interactive elements such as images, video or text.
- Publish it.
Any user with the Blippar app can then scan the item and access all of the interactive links.
Here are some examples:
- Add a video lecture to a section of the textbook where students have difficulty understanding a concept.
- Update an outdated section of a textbook with a more current or relevant example.
- Create solution videos for difficult problems from the textbook that outlines how to solve the problems correctly.
- Add explanation videos or audio files to poster sessions.
- Create read-alongs for children’s books for your young students.
- Add supplemental material to anything to further explain or enhance it.
Really you are only constrained by your own imagination.
Check out this page on Blippar in the Classroom
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SEE IT IN ACTION
How to CREATE it
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How to VIEW it
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