CETL Blog

UDL SLAM 2016 Stories | SLAM Story #1: John Lee (Chemistry)

Contributed by Sue Doner (eLearning) and John Lee (Chemistry)

On October 14, the eLearning unit in CETL hosted Camosun’s first “UDL Slam.” Faculty and staff were invited to share stories about practical applications of UDL (Universal Design for Learning) Principles they have implemented in their courses or programs. The “Slam” format required that these stories include the following details and be told in 5 minutes or less:

  1. The specific barrier to learning;
  2. The solution applied to address this barrier;
  3. Some assessment of the solution to date.

John Lee, ChemistryIn this first in a special series of posts, we give you this engaging and creative example of UDL in practice, which was shared at UDL Slam 2016 by John Lee from Chemistry.

At the bottom of this post, we have included our own mini-analysis (see below) of which UDL Principles & Guidelines underpin John’s solution to a learning barrier.

Barrier: Template-based Lab Reports.

The majority of John’s students hate “tedious lab reports”, i.e. the formal lab reports that follow a dry, written, template format. From John’s observations, the format doesn’t meaningfully engage all learners (such as those with difficulties writing) or even reflect professional practice.  (These lab reports wouldn’t be part of real-world forms of reporting out results.) John feels that the only reason for these templates is to familiarize those students who will be going into 3rd-year Chemistry at UVic with the process used there.

Solution

Give students a rubric to guide what information they need to include in their reports, but beyond that let students choose different methods to present their lab results.

Students have chosen a wide variety of methods and end up learning other skills that they wouldn’t have picked up by completing a dry, template lab report. Students also like to showcase talents that otherwise wouldn’t get noticed in a science class.  Some of the reports styles have included:

  • Comic strips/Graphic novels
  • TV show/video; YouTube and animations
  • Music (song writing)
  • Radio interviews and peer teaching.

Benefits

Primary benefit: Students get into the labs in more depth and really enjoy creating their reports.

Additional benefit: Students often pick up additional skills via the method they choose to create their report (e.g. technological skills; presentation skills).

Examples of Students’ Submissions

TV Show (via YouTube)

  1. “The Life & Death of Sproinky: Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy” by Gabe and Aaron.
  2. “Titration TV: featuring Xylenesuphonic Acid” by Gabe and Aaron.

Comic Strip/Graphic Novel

  1. “Bad Chemistry (PDF)” (PDF) by Ivy and Dayna.

UDL Breakdown & Analysis

We think this story is a great example of a practical application of this UDL Principle:

UDL Principle #2: Provide Multiple Methods of Action & Expressions

The flexible format of lab report submissions that John Lee encourages in his Chemistry course reflects what one of Principle #2’s guidelines (“Expression & Communication) recommends:

There is no medium of expression that is equally suited for all learners or for all kinds of communication.  It is important to provide alternative modalities for expression, both to the level the playing field among learners and to allow the learner to appropriately (or easily) express knowledge, ideas and concepts in the learning environment.

 

 

D2L Tool Tip of the Week: Restoring a Deleted 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 with restoring a deleted News Item in the News Tool in D2L.  For further information, please contact desupport@camosun.ca for assistance.

Steps

  1. Go to the Homepage of your course.

  2. In the News widget context menu, click on Go to News Tool
    In the News widget context menu, click on Go to News Tool

  3. In the News widget context menu, click on Go to News Tool
    Click on the More Actions menu and select Restore

  4. Select the News Item(s) you wish to restore, and click the Restore button
    Select the News Item(s) you wish to restore, and click the Restore button

  5. Click on News in the breadcrumbs (top left) to return to the News tool
    Click on News in the breadcrumbs (top left) to return to the News tool

Things to remember

This Restore function is to restore deleted News items. You can also “restore” dismissed News items by clicking on a News item’s context drop-down menu and selecting Restore.

D2L Monthly Upgrades – What’s new in October

Welcome to our monthly Camosun D2L Upgrade Report.

Once again, not a lot has changed in this month’s upgrade of D2L (next month, I promise there will be more!)  The one minor change has been and additional to the exporting grades function in the grade book.

Basically, now you will have the option of including group membership information with your grade book export (if you have groups in your D2L course site).

To access this feature:

  1. Go to the Grades tool in your course siteexportgroups1
  2. Click on the Enter Grades link (if you are not already there) at the top, leftexportgroups2
  3. Click the Export buttonexportgroups3
  4. Notice the addition of the Group Membership option under User Details.  Once you have finished selecting the items you wish to see exported, click either the Export to CSV or the Export to Excel button.exportgroups4

 

 

 

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

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!