Author: eschudel

Social Media in Teaching and Learning

So today, I ran a workshop on the Power of Social Media in Teaching and Learning.  As we discussed in the session, there are many things to keep in mind when considering using social media in education (privacy being only one of these many things), and at some point I will write a post outlining some of these considerations.  But, at the end of the session I shared a document listing a number of really useful social media tools, as well as ideas of how they can be used in educational settings, and links to specific examples.  And after I thought I should share them here as well so others can take a peek and think about how these tools might support their students.

If you would like an electronic copy of this handout, or if you would like to know more about using social media tools in your teaching, come and talk to us!

Social Media Workshop, September 21 2016 – Examples to Think About and Links to Check Out

Networking Tools

Example activities

Image sharing

  • Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/ (used for storing and organizing images and sharing them out, with search functions) – CAN LIMIT SHARING
  • Instagram – http://instagram.com/ (a photo sharing app for smart phones built for social networking and sharing images) – MOBILE (limited)

Example activities

Video sharing

  • YouTube (for storing, organizing and sharing out videos) – http://www.youtube.com/ – CAN SHARE TO LIMITED PEOPLE
  • Vimeo – https://vimeo.com/ – for storing, organizing and sharing out videos – NO ADS, FREE LEVEL IS LIMITED
  • Slideshare – http://www.slideshare.net/ – for creating voiceover PPT presentations and sharing them (note, no privacy options unless purchased)
  • Vine – https://vine.co/- create and share looping videos – smart phone app allows you to create a video up to 6 seconds long with the in-app camera – MOBILE

Example activities

  • Showing activities on a field trip
  • Student projects (showing steps of an activity, lab experiments, etc.)
  • Interviews, case studies, practicum activities (privacy could be a concern – waivers, etc.)

Organizing and sharing information – Curation: collecting and sorting content, and in this case, digital assets (digital curation)

Example activities

Blogs (for pushing out content, usually posting content on a regular basis, and allowing for interaction by way of liking and commenting) (wordpress, blogger, tumblr)

Example uses of Twitter

  • Announcements and reminders
  • Quick links to interesting resources, searching for experts in the field and industry-related feeds
  • A way for students to network with industry and industry professionals
  • How about a twitter story, for example in ESL
  • In the classroom – a way of keeping tabs on ongoing questions during a lecture or video
  • 60 Inspiring Examples of Twitter in the Classroom: http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2011/12/60-inspiring-examples-of-twitter-in-the-classroom/

Use of blogs in education

Collaborative tools

  • Wikis (for example, Wikipedia) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
  • Etherpad – http://etherpad.org/ – a synchronous wiki-like tool used for notetaking and archiving – can be used by multiple people at the same time, so is a collaborative tool – I’ve seen it used it in meetings where everyone can take notes at once to make sure everything gets recorded.
  • Google Docs – https://docs.google.com/

Example activities

General examples

Synchronous communication

  • Skype (a synchronous communication tool) – http://www.skype.com/en/ – LIMITED VIDEO
  • Google+ hangouts – you can broadcast video “hangouts” where people can get together and discuss issues live, or bring in guest speakers – https://plus.google.com/hangouts

General Resources

D2L Monthly Upgrades – What’s new in September

Welcome to our monthly Camosun D2L Upgrade Report.

For this month’s upgrade, not a lot has changed, but there is one thing that may affect our faculty here at Camosun: a small addition to quiz tool.

Direct export of report data to Microsoft Excel

In the past, you have been able to export quiz results to a CSV file for viewing off-line.  Now you can also export quiz results directly to Excel.  For those of you who didn’t know about this function, try it out!

To export quiz results to Excel:

  1. Go to the Quizzes tool in your course.
  2. Click on the little down arrow next to the title of the quiz you want to see results for and select Grade.

    exporttoexcel1

  3. At the top of the page, either in the Users or Attempts tab, click the Export to Excel button.
    exporttoexcel2You will then be prompted to save the generated Excel file to your computer.

You can also export a quiz’s Statistics to an Excel file now by:

  1. At the top of the Quizzes tool main page, click on Statistics.exporttoexcel3
  2. Click on the title of the quiz you wish to see statistics for.exporttoexcel4
  3. In the User Stats or the Question Stats tab, click the Export to Excel button.exporttoexcel5You will then be prompted to save the generated Excel file to your computer.

 

 

 

D2L Tool Tip of the Week: Creating a News Item

This tutorial is designed for faculty who have previous experience using the News tool or the HTML editor in D2L and will cover the steps involved when you wish to publish all student feedback for a Dropbox activity at one time.  For further information, please contact desupport@camosun.ca for assistance.

Steps

  1. Go to the Homepage of your course.
  2. News-CreateANewsItem1a-700
  3. News-CreateANewsItem1NEW-700
  4. News-CreateANewsItem2-700
  5. News-CreateANewsItem3-700

Things to remember

Each new News Items will appear at the top of the News widget feed. If you want to reorder your News Items, select Reorder News Items from the News context menu.

Also remember that students can dismiss News Items from their view of the News widget. If you want to make sure that students see your News Item again (if you are worried they have dismissed it), you need to Edit the News Item and select Major edit – send a notification and restore it for those who dismissed it.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) “Slam”

You are Invited to eLearning’s Inaugural “UDL Slam”!

Do you often ask yourself questions like: “Does anyone else at Camosun encounter this same barrier or challenge for students in their classes?” and “What are my fellow instructors trying out in their classes to address these barriers that might work for me too?” Or maybe you have come up with a solution to a barrier and would love to have 5 minutes or less to share your idea with colleagues.  Yes?  This event could be for you!

In the spirit of bringing members of our teaching & learning community together to share creative ideas to address barriers and challenges to student learning, we are excited to invite you to participate in Camosun’s first ever UDL Slam!

Need a little background on what UDL or Slams are before you decide?

UDL

At its core, UDL (Universal Design for Learning) is about proactively designing “barrier free” learning opportunities for students. UDL recognizes that we cannot design learning experiences for a singular type of student. UDL is therefore based on three key principles for providing a diverse community of students with Multiple Means of:

  1. REPRESENTATION.
    This is the “what” of learning and learners differ in how they perceive & comprehend information given to them.
  2. ACTION & EXPRESSION.
    This is the “how” of learning and learners differ in how they navigate a learning environment & express what they know.
  3. ENGAGEMENT.
    This is the “why” of learning and learners differ markedly in the ways in which they can be engaged or motivated to learn.

Slams

“Slams” have long been popular, competitive events in poetry circles where participants recite original works no longer than three minutes long. The idea has been adopted by tech giant, Google, which regularly hosts Demo Slams at its education workshops to encourage members of the public to present short and user-friendly tutorials about the innovative uses they have come up with for a technology. These ideas might be obvious to you but can be amazing and inspiring to others.

Whether or not they are competitive events, in any Slam event participants are required to present a concept to an audience within a tight and enforced timeframe before giving the floor to the next participant in line.

Format for UDL Slam 2016

Are you intrigued? Excited to share your ideas and hear creative solutions from around the College? Here’s what you need to know to participate.

There is no need to prepare formal presentations for a Slam – this is about rapid-fire sharing of ideas and hearing from as many participants in the space of one hour as possible.  There are lots of faculty around Camosun who are using UDL in their teaching practices and our key goal for this event is to collect as many exciting ideas as we can about UDL principles-in-action.

You will have a maximum of 5 minutes to share your UDL Slam story. Your story needs to include:

  1. Your name & the course/s you are talking about;
  2. The barrier to learning you identified in the course (and who it affected);
  3. The solution you designed to address the barrier;
  4. Your assessment of this solution (if you have already implemented and tried it out: Any lessons you learned? Adjustments you’d make?).

Bare-bones format for a UDL Slam story:

“My name is ### and I teach ###. I have decided to do ### project in my course in lieu of a final exam because I found the barriers to success were ####. I hope that the results will be ###.”

Slam! (On to the next participant)

We will not be taking questions in between each Slam story, but will hold 15 minutes at the end of the event for discussion.( Participants can also follow-up with each other as needed, and eLearning will include details about UDL stories in subsequent blog posts.)

For more information about how to participate, visit to our website at http://web.camosun.ca/cetl/content/universal-design-learning-udl-slam.

Top Ten Things for Faculty to Know about D2L at Camosun

We get a lot of questions from faculty members about D2L and how it works at Camosun.  So, I thought:  why not write a post that addresses what we think are the top ten!

What is D2L?

  • Desire2Learn (D2L) is Camosun College’s learning management system. D2L enables faculty who are teaching face-to-face, blended, or completely online to deliver content, manage online activities and group collaboration, as well as provide online assessment options for students.
  • Your D2L site can only be accessed by students registered in your course, eLearning staff, and other Camosun employees you request access for.
  • To get started with D2L, please request a consultation with an eLearning instructional designer. You also check out our current workshop schedule (http://web.camosun.ca/cetl/elearning-workshops) for upcoming D2L learning opportunities.

How are D2L course sites set up?

  • Your course must be flagged for D2L when the course is set up for registration in Colleague. To ensure that it has been flagged, check with the person in your area who sets up courses in Colleague for registration (often the Chair).
  • Approximately 30 days before the course start date, you will have access to your blank D2L course shell (as long as you are listed in Colleague as the instructor of the course).
  • 7 days before the course starts, you will see the names of registered students appear in your D2L course site Classlist. Students are added to and dropped from this list as they are registered in, or unenrolled from, the course through Colleague. Waitlisted and late registering students gain access to their D2L courses the day after they are registered.
  • On the start date of the course (as it appears in Colleague), students will have access to the D2L course sites they are registered in. Students will then have access to the D2L course site for 20 days after the end date of the course (as it appears in Colleague).
  • You, as the instructor of the course, will have indefinite access to your D2L course sites unless you arrange with DESupport to have them removed from D2L. This process requires an email from you to DESupport (Desupport@camosun.ca) clarifying which courses you wish to have removed.

If I teach multiple sections in a term but only want one D2L course site for all my students, what do I need to do?

  • BEFORE your students are added to your D2L course site (which happens 7 days before the start date of your course), contact DESupport and let them know which sections need to be merged into one course site.

What is a DEV course site, and how do I request one?

  • A D2L DEV (development) course site is a static course site that students cannot access. It is a place where you can build and revise your course site before your live course shells become available to you.
  • A DEV site must be associated with a course you are teaching (for example, if you teach Math 100, you can request a Math 100 DEV site).
  • To request a DEV site for one of your courses, email DESupport. To learn more about DEV sites and how they can be used, talk to an eLearning instructional designer.

How do I get access to someone else’s course site?

  • You will need to ask that person to contact DESupport and request/give permission for you to be added to their course site.

Where do I go to get help with D2L?

  • You can ask for help from DE Support (desupport@camosun.ca) or book a consult with an eLearning instructional designer.
  • You can come to an eLearning drop-in session or workshop (http://web.camosun.ca/cetl/elearning-workshops).
  • You can also access our D2L On-Demand Training site. It will see it in your My Courses Widget (when you click on Student) in D2L. If you don’t see it in your course listing, contact DESupport to give you access.

How do I log into D2L?

  • Go to online.camosun.ca and enter your C# and password. You can bookmark this URL to return easily to the Camosun D2L site.

How do I find my courses in D2L?

  • Once you have logged into D2L, you can find a list of all the courses you are registered in by looking at the Select a course… drop-down menu, or the My Courses widget on the main Camosun D2L page.
  • If you have access to fewer than 40 courses, they will all show in your My Courses widget, but if you have more you will only see your 10 most recently accessed courses, and may need to search to find new courses as they are added to your site.
  • You can use the pin icon in the Select a course… drop-down menu to “pin” courses to the top of the list (so that, for example, the course(s) you are teaching right now always appears at the top of the list). You can access instructions for this in the On-Demand Training course site, or by contacting DESupport.

How do I copy course material from one course to another?

  • Use the Import/Export/Copy Components tool in your D2L course site (under Edit Course). You can access instructions for this in the On-Demand Training course site, or by contacting DESupport.

How do I customize my course homepage and navigation bar?

  • Use the NavBars and Course Home tools in your D2L course site (under Edit Course). You can access instructions for customizing NavBars and Homepages in the On-Demand Training course site, or by contacting DESupport.

D2L Monthly Upgrades – What’s new in August

Welcome to our monthly Camosun D2L Upgrade Report.

Quizzes – Quiz attempts override for individual students

Now you can set up Special Access in a Quiz to allow individual students (or specified groups of students) to have a different number of quiz attempts.  To do this:

  1. In the Restrictions Tab, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Add Users to Special Access.
    SpecialAccessAttemptsOverride1
  2. Select Override attempts allowed, then select the number of attempt you with the selected student(s) to have, and click Apply.
    SpecialAccessAttemptsOverride2
  3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select the student(s) you with to have this special access.  Click Add Special Access.
    SpecialAccessAttemptsOverride3
  4. Click Save and Close.
    SpecialAccessAttemptsOverride4

You have now given permission for a selected student or group of students to have a different number of attempts on a quiz from the rest of the class.

Intelligent Agents – Tool Improvements

In addition, there have been improvements made to the Intelligent Agents tool which you can read more about at https://community.brightspace.com/resources/documentation/release_notes/current in the August 2016 Release section.

If you have questions about Intelligent Agents, or would like to learn more about what they are and how they can support the learning experience for your students, contact desupport@camosun.ca and ask for a consult with one of our instructional designers!

 

eLearning Fall Workshops Open for Registration

Don’t forget to register now for eLearning Fall 2016 Workshops. 

The eLearning Workshop Series is designed to assist faculty (beginner to advanced) with incorporating educational technologies into their teaching, as well as with blended and online course/program planning and development.  Make sure to register for the session(s) you would like to attend so that we can notify you if there is a room change or cancellation.

This fall we have an exciting array of new workshops covering everything from D2L, WordPress, multimedia design and integration, and social media, which will include considerations around issues of accessibility, copyright, and inclusion of library resources in your D2L courses.

Visit our website at http://web.camosun.ca/cetl/elearning-workshops to find out more!

D2L Monthly Upgrades – What’s new in July!

And now for our third, and final, “catch up with D2L monthly update changes” post:  July.  Moving forward, I’ll be posting monthly, about a week or so before the updates take place so you know what’s coming!

So, this month we will be seeing (will be, because the updates happen this Thursday/Friday…):

First, let’s catch-up from one leftover upgrade feature from June (we had to reset a few things to get this working!)

Groups – group enrollment single user member-specific

This is a really nice feature if you need to have groups that each contain just one student, for example if you want private discussion forums where individual students can post their personal journal entries.  And, if a new student enrols in the course, a group will be set up for that student automatically.

Looks like this:

  • In the New Category area, under Enrolment type, choose Single user, member-specific groups

    SingleUserGroups1

  • If you wish each student to have her own discussion area (for example, if you want them to keep a private journal in the Discussions tool), select Set up discussion areas under Create Workspace and click Save

    SingleUserGroups2

  • Finish setting up your Discussion Forum and the Group Category and click Save.  You will now see that your Category has been set up with a Group for each individual student.

    SingleUserGroups3

Now, for the updates for July:

Discussions – copy discussion thread replies

If you find yourself needing to copy a discussion thread from one Topic to another (for example, if a student started the thread in the wrong Topic), you can now also copy all replies within the thread as well.  Handy if there has been a bit of a discussion that you don’t want to lose.

Here’s what this option looks like when you choose Copy Thread:

CopyThreadReplies

Discussions – show Forum description in Topics

You can now choose to display your Forum description/instructions in Topic descriptions.  That way students can always see your instructions without you having to add them manually to each of the Forum’s Topic descriptions.

Here’s what this feature looks like:

ForumDescriptionsinTopics

The next upgrade post will be in August!

If you have any questions about these, or any other changes to D2L, contactdesupport@camosun.ca.

D2L Monthly Upgrades – What was new for June

And here we go with our second post in the “catch up with D2L monthly update changes” series:  June

So, for June we saw the following changes:

Grades – automatically set the grade item score based on a rubric score

And another great change to the Rubrics tool – you can now use Rubrics you’ve attached to Grade Items to automatically add grades to your gradebook!  No more doubling up on effort.

Here’s how it works:

  •  Go to the grading area for the Grade Item you’ve attached your rubric toRubricsInGrades1
  • Click Assessment for each student in turnRubricsInGrades2
  • Score your rubric and click Save and Record .  You will see the Grade column updated for the student.RubricsInGrades3
  • When you are finished grading the Grade Item, click Save and Close.RubricsInGrades4

Groups – automatic creation of discussion topics

This may not apply to everyone, but now if you add a group (in the Groups tool) to a Group Category due to new students enrolling in the course, a discussion topic is automatically set up for that new group (if you have set up discussion topics for your Group initially).  Just a nice feature so you don’t have to remember to do this manually!

Groups – descriptive naming for discussion topics

A small change, and maybe not something you’d notice, but now when you create a group with discussion forums, the forums contain the name of the Group Category + “Group #”, meaning that the forums will be named for the Group Category with the Group’s number.

Here’s what it looks like:

  • Create your Group Category, making sure to Set up discussion areas.  Click Save.GroupsDescriptiveName1
  • Set up the Forum for your Discussion areas.  Click Create and Next.GroupsDescriptiveName2
  • Click Done.GroupsDescriptiveName3
  • Now, go to the Discussions Tool and find the Forum you created.  Note that the Topic Titles contain the title of your Group Category, with the Group #.GroupsDescriptiveName4

Overall, little changes, but all enhancing the D2L experience.

 If you have any questions about these, or any other changes to D2L, contactdesupport@camosun.ca.

D2L Monthly Upgrades – What’s New for May

Last week I told you a bit about the upgrade to D2L, which took place at the end of April.  Something else you should know is that Camosun College’s D2L will be going through monthly upgrades (called Continuous Delivery), and I will be bringing you news of what changes these upgrades will bring to you as they happen!

So, in a short series of posts, I will outline the main changes to D2L since the end of April.

First, here are the main changes from the May upgrade:

Rubrics in Discussions now transfer their scores into the Topic Score

I, personally, am excited about this new option.  What does it mean for you?  Well, if you use the D2L Rubrics tool to assess discussion postings, the overall grade in the rubric will now be automatically transferred into the Topic Score area for the discussion topic in question.   AND if you have your Topic connected to a Grade Item, you can publish that grade right to your Gradebook!

Here’s what it looks like:

  • Click Topic Score to open the RubricGradeWithRubric1
  • Select the scores on the Rubric and click Save and Close.GradeWithRubric2
  • Notice that the Rubric’s score now appears in the Topic Score areaGradeWithRubric3

And then, when you have completed assessing/scoring the Topic, you can select Publish to Grades and click Save and Close to export your grades to the Gradebook (if you have the Topic connected to a Grade Item).

GradeWithRubric4

Discussions calculation method addition – sum of post scores

This means that you now have the option of having all of a discussion posts’ scores added up for an entire Topic as the assessment for that Topic.

To find this, when editing the Topic, go to the Assessment tab and in the Select a calculation method drop-down, select Sum of post scores.

SumOfPostScores

 If you have any questions about these, or any other changes to D2L, contact desupport@camosun.ca.