A new learning community that has formed to explore the opportunities and issues surrounding the broad topic of Online Teaching and Learning met for the first time. I’ll call the group LC:OTL, and we’ll call the meetings gatherings. …I sense much less “pressure” compared to “a traditional committee”…I think that is a huge plus. This open group of practitioners will gather on a… Read more →
How can academic Twitter be useful? Networking: Twitter can be useful for academics to identify and connect with global peers. Connecting with authors of texts or other people working in the same field of interest can be very useful and enlightening. Webinar and conference presenters often share their Twitter handles as well as their email addresses, so it can… Read more →
One of the most useful tools in Blackboard for faculty who accept their work digitally is the In-Line Grading functionality. It allows you to look at, annotate, comment and grade student file submissions without leaving the browser. Over this upcoming winter, some changes will be happening with the tool. This article will keep you informed about the changes. What’s changing?… Read more →
In the spring of 2017, faculty and undergraduate students at The College of Saint Rose were invited to participate in EDUCAUSE technology surveys, giving our institution the opportunity to benchmark its technology attitudes, experiences, and preferences with the global respondent pools and to directly compare between faculty and students. Although there is considerable overlap in student and faculty opinions about technology,… Read more →
One area in which we receive a lot of questions by instructors-to-be of fully online and hybrid courses is about communication in online courses. How much should you communicate? What will students expect? How often should I log into my course? These are great questions! When we’re thinking about instructional design, we call this “social presence”. It’s part of a… Read more →
We know that there are benefits to harnessing certain elements of games in learning, and we know that there are more and less ideal ways to implement games in the classroom. We also know that there are two common terms for this implementation: gamifying and gameful learning. So, what’s the difference between the two? Deterding, Dixon, Khaled, and Nacke attempted… Read more →
Gamifying learning and its young, hip child gameful learning are interesting ideas, often executed poorly. We know that the point of including game-like elements (or games themselves) in the classroom is a way to increase motivation and utilize implicit learning skills. What are the basic do’s and don’ts of incorporating these ideas? Do: Use games the way you would assigned… Read more →
The upgraded TechSmith Relay carries with it a slew of new features, as well as performance improvements on the features you were accustomed to! Some of the features we’re most excited about are Blackboard integration, quizzing, and analytics. For beginners, start by watching the video, “TechSmith Relay in 1 Minute,” then return here to dive in. TechSmith Relay is now integrated… Read more →
The ability for students to benchmark their performance against that of their peers can lead to greater self-awareness, increased effort, and personal achievement. A Blackboard Blog post highlights the use of a tool developed by the University of Maryland Baltimore County. The tool, called Check My Activity, is intended to encourage students’ personal responsibility for learning by allowing them to… Read more →
Increasingly, studies are being released that suggest that video captions help more than just D/deaf or hard of hearing students.* I recently watched a webinar on the “e-accessibility” movement at the University of Cincinnati that focused heavily on captioning and made captions the first step to a universal design environment for students. So how can captions help all types of… Read more →
