eschudel – Page 26 – Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

And Chaos Reigned

Hello everyone out there. Most of you (all of you?) are now in the thick of the mad rush to move online in the world that is COVID Crisis.

I am going to try and post something every day to support any way I can in the next few weeks.

I know many of you are creating amazing resources to support your faculty and students in this frantic chaotic rush to online learning, and I wanted today to share one of the resource sites we have set up here at Camosun. This is our eLearning Guidance for Remote Instruction.

On this site, you will find some things to think about (and we recommend taking a moment to breathe and calm your mind first). You will also find links to our many tutorials for Collaborate, Kaltura, and D2L – all are CC-BY licenced so you can take and adapt as you like.

I’ll leave you with this for now, and return tomorrow with some more great resources for you. And now, enjoy some entertainment to help you get through the rest of your day:

Integrating Creative Commons Material into your Course(s).

Open Education Week 2020 icon Some of you may know that last term, I completed the Creative Commons certificate. It was an amazing course, and I highly recommend it to everyone. A great example of how to open assignments up so that you are meeting outcomes through a variety of assessment choices (leaving it up to the learners to decide which assessment type is good for them), as well as a great example of using various online technologies to support learners in how they interacted with the course material.

For the certificate, I completed a number of assignments, all of which are available on one of my personal blog sites, but I thought for this final Open Education Week post, I would share my final assignment with you, an online workshop entitled Integrating Creative Commons Material into your Course(s).

I will be working on revising this workshop for delivery at Camosun this spring (as an asynchronous, self-paced workshop), and would invite anyone out there to provide feedback to me. If you have any words of wisdom or suggestions for me, please either comment on this post, or email me at Schudele@camosun.ca.

Thanks for joining me this Open Education Week 2020! I will continue to share posts on Open with you regularly, so please keep visiting!

Open Education Week – The Student Voice

Open Education Week 2020 icon In this world of sky-rocketing costs for students (textbooks being only one of the many budgetary items facing students), integrating Open Educational Resources (OERs) (and other no-cost resources) into your courses can go a long way towards helping students continue, and succeed in, their studies.

On the Douglas College Library Open Libguide site, you can read about and listen to some of the ways OERs are supporting students.

BCcampus has produced the OER Student Toolkit which outlines ways students can advocate for the adoption of OERs at their institutions.

Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) programs across the world have really begun to make an impact on reducing costs for students. The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources relates some of these Impact Stories told by students in their own words.

Speaking of ZTC, you can learn more about what institutions in BC are doing by visiting the BCcampus ZTC page, or searching for individual institutions’ work, for example, the ZTC impact at Kwantlen Polytechnic.

Finally, for a discussion around the pedagogical impact on students through the use of OER, check out Christina Hendrick’s post Engaging Students with OER.

Want to know more about how creating, adapting, or adopting OER can support your students? Email eLearning Support to arrange to talk to an instructional designer.

Open Education Week – Open Images Galore!

Open Education Week 2020 icon Some exciting news from the creative commons (CC) licensed images front. The Smithsonian has announced the launch of Smithsonian Open Access, which has moved 2.8 million digital images into the open.

Smithsonian Releases 2.8 Million Images and Data into the Public Domain Using CC0

Wondering where else you can find CC licensed images to include in your course materials? Start by checking out the Camosun Library Libguide, specifically the section on Open Culture. Here, you will find links to a number of repositories containing images that are either CC licensed or in the Public Domain (PD).

Wiki Commons is one of the places listed, and is a great source for PD and CC images. Just go to Wiki Commons and search for whatever you are looking for. Once you click on am image you are interest in, you can find the licensing information by scrolling down. Look for either the CC licence

CC licence

Or a PD notice

Public Domain notice

And here is how you can use Google to filter your searches for CC licensed images: go to Google Advanced Image Search and scroll down to use the “Usage Rights” option to search for copyright-free materials.

Google Advanced Search

Need more ideas and help? Contact one of your friendly Camosun librarians, or contact eLearning Support (desupport@camosun.ca) to arrange for a consult with an instructional designer.

Open Education Week – Stories from the Ground

Open Education Week 2020 icon So, today I thought I would share some resources and stories around how people in different disciplines have been using OERs (Open Educational Resources) to support their students.

First up, a PowerPoint presentation on Creating Content-Based Instructional Materials for English Language Learners, Using Open Educational Resources. from the University of Arizona. You will find some tips on what you need to think about when creating OER, how to search for existing material, as well as links to the resources created by this group.

Next, a story from a Parker Glynn-Adey, an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga. In Math professor engages students with an open educational resource, Glynn-Adey explains the many benefits (not just financial) to students from adopting an open textbook.

In A growing appreciation for open textbooks, Physics professor Michael Chen describes how “what started for him as a way to reduce expenses for students has since turned into an opportunity to create a resource specifically tailored to his teaching situation.”

And finally, here are some brief success stories from faculty and student co-authors at Queen’s University who have developed their own open textbooks.

Want to know more about how you could create and integrate OER into your teaching, or need help finding OER relating to your discipline? Email desupport@camosun.ca to book an appointment with an eLearning instructional designer.

Welcome to Open Education Week!

T Open Education Week 2020 icon his week, which is Open Education Week as you will remember from my post last week, I will be posting something from the OEWeek2020 universe every day.

Today, I wanted to share a link to the online webinar Beyond Free: Supporting Social Justice through Open Educational Practices being broadcast from the University of Colorado, Boulder, featuring Rajiv Jhangiani from Kwantlen Polytechnic University here in BC. The livestream begins at 1:00pm PST and it’s free to register!

There are also many other great events going on today around the world, as you can see from the Open Education Week website, and you should make sure to check out #OEWeek2020 on Twitter to find lots of resources to help you in you search for information about Open Educational Resources (OERs), Open Educational Practices (OEP), etc.

I’ll be back tomorrow to share another post or webinar for Open Education Week!

Reminder – eLearning Spring Workshops Open for Registration!

I just wanted to send a reminder to remind you to register for our eLearning Spring Workshops. We have amazing offerings at both Lansdowne and Interurban covering D2L, Articulate Storyline, Kaltura, Collaborate Ultra, Open Education, Universal Design for Learning, and a wide range of topics around teaching with educational technology.

Before I give you the links to the spring workshop information, I also wanted to let you know that we have another workshop running on Tuesday, March 17th called Top 10 Digital Learning Skills Strategies for Your Students. You can find out more, and register on our website, but here is a bit more information: “Are you looking for strategies to support your students who are learning to use digital resources? Whether you are using D2L to support your face-to-face teaching, teaching blended, or completely online, we have some tips and resources for you!”

And now, follow the links to our eLearning Spring Workshops at Lansdowne and our eLearning Spring Workshops at Interurban to register for our May/June offerings!

Reminder: Open Education Week is Next Week!!

Next week is Open Education Week. What does this mean, you are undoubtedly asking yourselves. Well, let me tell you!

First, a quote from the Open Education website:

“Founded in 2013 by the Open Education Global (previously Open Education Consortium), the goal of Open Education Week is to raise awareness and showcase impact of open education on teaching and learning worldwide. Open Education Week has become one of the most foremost global events recognizing high achievement and excellence in open education.

The week-long event spotlights amazing work from over a dozen categories including live, face-to-face events, webinars, projects, and resources. The Best-of-the-Best participate in Open Education Week. “

So, here we are in year 8 of this amazing event. Institutions around the world are running face to face and online events, and all online events are free so you can attend from your own desk.

The Events page on the Open Education website lets you know what is happening, and where, but it’s a little tricky to navigate.

Open Ed Week events page screen capture

Interested in an event? Click on it to find out more. And then you can click on Event Schedule to see a complete calendar of events taking place next week.

Event Schedule screen capture

Click on the date to see all the events, Online Events are listed first, followed by Local (on-site) Events. If it is an online event, click on the event title and then you can click Join Webinar to connect to the session once it begins. The Events page does not have an option to automatically add calendar events to your calendar of choice, so you will have to do that yourself. Just make sure you have the time right, as these events are originating from all over the world.

Next week I’ll be blogging some more about Open Education Week as it happens!

New Quiz Building Experience in D2L

There is a new “Quiz Building Experience” in D2L. What does this mean? It means you have the option right not to opt a new Add/Edit Questions interface when you are creating a quiz. Here’s how to opt in, and how to navigate this new interface:

Create a New Quiz, or Edit an existing one.
Make sure your Quiz has a Name, then click Add/Edit Questions.
At the top, right (right above Settings) you will see a little down arrow – click this.
Click Turn it on. If you decide you want to go back to the original experience, you can click the down arrow and the Turn it off button that will appear. Note that eventually, this will be the default experience so it’s a good idea to try it out now!
On the “Ready to begin adding quiz content?” screen, click Import and select Browse Question Library (you could also click Add, but we recommend you create your questions in the Question Library first, then Import them into a quiz.)
Use the arrows to open sections in your Question Library, and the select boxes to select sections or questions to add to your Quiz. Once you have selected the questions you wish to add, click Add.
If you then click on a question, you will be able to edit it (and you will be asked if you want to save it to all the places the question is being used). And if you hover your mouse on a question, and then hold down your mouse on the dots on the left side, you can drag questions around to change their order.
Once you are done adding and editing your questions, click Back to Settings for “Quiz Title” (at the top left).
You can now finish editing your Quiz (Restrictions, Assessment, etc.) and click Save and Close.

This new experience brings the Add/Edit Question interface in line with the design you have already seen in several of the Question types, as well as adding the drag and drop option for reordering which is already present in other D2L tools.

Any questions? Send a note to desupport@camosun.ca to book a consult with an instructional designer.

Camosun Faculty: Please share this message with your students! (time-sensitive)

Dear Camosun College Students,

** Do accessibility-related challenges impact your student life at college? **

Accessibility challenges for students at college can be the result of a mismatch between what you need to succeed as a student and how components of college experiences & environments have been designed.

For example, you may have experienced accessibility-related challenges associated with a physical or learning disability, or associated with speaking English as a second language, or associated with financial limitations, or associated with the use of technology at the college.

The 2019/2020 “Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Project: Phase 2” is a faculty/student-partners project at Camosun College. Our project team is interested in hearing your stories about accessibility-related challenges in college life, learning what would help to minimize those challenges, and creating learning tools out of your stories that will help our college community better understand how we can all help design experiences and environments that are more accessible for everyone.

** What does our college community need to know about accessibility-related challenges? What do you want us to know? **

We invite you to share your stories with us between February 24 to March 16, 2020 in small groups (Sharing Circles) or anonymously (Online Form).

Questions about this project may be directed to: Sue Doner, UDL Project team leader, in the Centre for Excellence in Teaching & Learning (doners@camosun.ca).

Information about this project and a schedule of opportunities for you to participate may also be found on the project website “Practical Applications of Universal Design for Learning”