Dr. Beth Preston is a member of the English faculty at UW-Eau Claire. I have had the pleasure of working with her on her ascent into instructional technology during the past couple years. She has Camtasia-ed, Dreamweaver-ed, QualityMatters-ed, and D2L-ed (among other-eds) her instructional content to increase student learning and engagement.
Beth describes this foray in the following:
In the spring semester of 2005, one of my students asked me, “Dr. Preston, why don’t you post stuff on D2L? It’s so much easier to use than the W-drive.” I looked at him blankly; I hadn’t even heard of D2L at that point in my career. Following this tip, I started asking around, and by Fall 2006, I was using D2L as an organizational tool from which my students could download handouts and some articles. Little did I know where this new-found path would lead.
By the end of 2006, I began using D2L for much more than “handouts”: I started using the quiz feature for short “did you read the assignment” multiple choice quizzes and the Discussion feature for peer-responses to writing assignments. While the multiple-choice quiz with all its features does take more time to prepare than an in-class quiz, once the questions are created and saved in the Question Library, they are effortlessly available and re-usable. More importantly, I discovered that using the Discussion forum for peer-response resulted in a much higher level of engagement among students. My interest in using D2L and in teaching online heightened, and in Summer of 2008, after taking the Summer Online training offered by LTS, I taught my first completely online course, English 275 (The Novel), and I began developing a blended version of English 110 (we meet half the time online and half the time on D2L), which I taught for the first time in Spring 2008. While my novel course uses a traditional D2L format, my blended course is designed in Dreamweaver, which takes more time to create but results in a highly pleasing aesthetic. Students have responded very favorably to both of these courses.
In addition to using D2L, I have enhanced my courses over the past two years by attending LTS-sponsored workshops on “backwards course design,” Adobe Photoshop, Quality Matters, and Digital Storytelling, learning and then including programs such as Audacity, Camtasia, and MovieMaker. I use them myself as teaching tools, and I teach my students how to use them as well. Audacity allows students to post and hear oral materials; Camtasia provides students with my voice narration through a sequence of PowerPoint slides, and MovieMaker encourages students to use visual mediums with voice and text. Students consistently report that the MovieMaker assignments (which usually focus on their relationship to one or more of UWEC’s liberal education goals) are enjoyable and meaningful, and altogether, we—I and my students—agree that the technology included in both English 110 and English 275 enhances the learning experience.
Submitted by Gene Leisz
UW-Eau Claire LTDC Rep
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