Celebrating Teaching and Learning Call for Proposals
CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Celebrating Teaching and Learning Conference 2019. This special forum hosted by the LEARN Center and the LTC showcases the wide variety of ways we are all transforming the lives of our students through teaching and learning. The Conference will be held Wednesday, May 22, 2019 on the UW-Whitewater campus. Concurrent presentation sessions will consist of 45 minute presentations with 30 minutes to discuss their topic and 15 minutes for questions and answers.
We encourage proposals in the following themes:
Student Engagement
Integrating Teaching and Technology
Civil Discourse and Diversity
High Impact Practices
Something Else
To submit a presentation proposal or learn more about this year’s Celebrating Teaching and Learning conference visit: Conference Website
As a member of the UW-Whitewater community, you are invited to submit a session proposal for the campus event Celebrating Teaching and Learning Conference 2019. This special forum hosted by the LEARN Center and the LTC showcases the wide variety of ways we are all transforming the lives of our students through teaching and learning. The Conference will be held Wednesday, May 22, 2019 on the UW-Whitewater campus.
Proposals are due February 22, 2019.
Presentations — Concurrent Presentation Sessions will consist of 45 minute presentations with presenters having 30 minutes to discuss their topic and 15 minutes for questions and answers.
We encourage proposals in the following themes:
Student Engagement: Topics may include learner engagement strategies, discussing different ways of supporting students in courses, incorporating active learning strategies, or other engaging teaching activities.
Integrating Teaching and Technology: Topics may include lessons learned from Canvas, integrating emerging technology into teaching, managing mobile devices or apps, ePortfolio, or preparing students for 21st century skills (e.g., evaluating information, being a digital collaborator).
Civil Discourse and Diversity: Topics may include effective discussions, cultural navigation skills advocacy, relationship building, and a campus culture of belonging.
High Impact Practices: Topics may include showcasing high impact practices, community based learning, undergraduate research, first year experiences, or LEAP projects.
Something Else: Have an idea that doesn’t fit into the themes above? That’s okay! Submit your idea using the “Something Else” theme!
To submit a presentation proposal or learn more about this years Celebrating Teaching and Learning conference visit: Conference Website
As the 2018 Fall Semester concludes, I want to reflect on the first six months of writing this blog. It has been a great honor to share discoveries, explore new ideas, and write about topics related to Technology, Education, and Design. I hope that these TED tips continue to inform and inspire as we celebrate teaching and learning at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater.
Winter Break
Over the last six months, we have explored the difference is between a Learning Management System (LMS) and a Digital Learning Environment (DLE). This distinction is important as it helps to lay the foundation for some of the key decisions applicable to the migration from D2L to Canvas at Whitewater and throughout the UW System.
Canvas has been a source for several posts. The LTC Canvas peer mentors shared some of most important lessons learned while working with Canvas in the classroom. We looked at ways to support communications in Canvas and the importance of making a good first impressions. We explored grading and using Speed Grader in Canvas.
What are some different ways technology can be used in the classroom to support your teaching learning? Tools like Poll Everywhere can increase student engagement and interaction. “23 Things for Digital Knowledge” provided activities that can build student fluency in digital literacy.
TED Tips have explored the 2018 NMC Horizon Report and its view the trends, challenges, and developments in educational technology as it impacts higher education. Using the Horizon Report provides a lens to highlight pilots and innovative work taking place on campus like Adaptive Learning.
The blog will continue to promote workshops sponsored by the Learning Technology Center and its many partners and collaborators. For example, there is a series of upcoming Canvas workshops this winter: Canvas Open labs, hands on workshops for newcomers to Canvas, Construction Zones to help instructors move their courses from D2L to Canvas, and deep dives into single topics to help with your teaching. Grading in Canvas and building and using rubrics will be explored in early January. For a full list of times and locations of the upcoming winter Workshops visit the LTC. https://blogs.uww.edu/instructional/2018/12/12/canvas-workshops-winter-2019/
The next session in the 2018-19 UW-Whitewater LEARN Center/Learning Technology Center Workshop Series: “Back to Basics to Balance Workload” is Thursday, January 10th from 10:00am to 2:00pm in the University Center. This four hour workshop includes lunch and is designed as a hands-on activity to help prepare for your spring classes! Session Four: Setting the tone early saves time in the long run: Crafting your syllabus and engaging students before the first day of class and beyond.
During the morning session of the workshop, presenters will share evidence-based strategies for creating a more learner-centered syllabus and share tips for engaging students from the first day (and even before class begins!). After a lunch discussion, participants will learn more on how to better utilize Canvas in their courses in a way that clarifies organization and sets expectations in a more transparent manner. Participants will end the session with time to revise their syllabi, first day activities, and/or Canvas course pages and share their materials for small group feedback.
Participants will leave with:
An overview of best practices for syllabus development
Experience with a variety of first day activities that can increase student engagement and sense of community
Ideas to organize their Canvas course pages
Revised syllabi/activities to enhance student engagement
Thank you for taking the time to read these posts! TED Tips will return in 2019. Topics next year will build on and support some of the upcoming workshops with TED Tips planned to explore several types of rubrics, building them in Canvas, design of a course homepage, navigation, analytics, and many others. I hope to experiment a bit more in format and content and hope to record the occasional complementary podcast! Until then, have a great holiday break, recharge, and relax! See you next year!
– Ted Witt
Teaching, Learning, and Technology Consultant
LEARN Center/Learning Technology Center Workshop Series: “Back to Basics to Balance Workload.” Session Four: Setting the tone early saves time in the long run: Crafting your syllabus and engaging students before the first day of class and beyond. https://my.uww.edu/signup/Registration/Details/15867
The UW System’s annual LTDC Virtual Showcase will be held on April 2nd and 3rd, 2019. The theme for this year’s showcase is Building the New: Innovate, Integrate, Motivate. We want to hear your tips, tricks, and tales from the trenches as it relates to teaching, learning, and technology.
LTDC Virtual Showcase April 2-3 CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Please consider submitting an education session proposal (https://uwex.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eP9Str1A4qJz2hn). It’s a great way to present at a national conference without having to leave your campus or department. Presentations during concurrent sessions will be 45 minutes: 30 minutes for presentations and 15 minutes for questions and answers. All sessions will be given via a web conferencing tool. Sessions will be recorded and available for archive viewing. The LTDC highly encourages collaboration, use of appropriate and acceptable technologies, multiple institutions, and multiple discipline proposals.
Proposals will be selected and placed into one of the conferences tracks. The tracks are:
Digital Learning Environment – What have you learned about the DLE that you’d like to share? Discovered interesting features that everyone should know about?
Teaching & Learning – Have you used technology to prepare instructors to teach or to assist students with learning? What train-the-trainer opportunities have you created?
Technology and Other Resources – Have you created a wonderful set of resources for faculty and students? What new tool have you discovered that you want to share?
Student Engagement – What are you doing to promote student engagement in your classes? How are your students connecting with each other and you?
Library and Digital Media – How have you incorporated media or leveraged the library into your classroom? Let’s hear about your LibGuides, user guides, knowledge bases, and instructional videos.
Open Educational Resources – What type of Open Educational Resources have you discovered in the public domain or introduced with an open license?
Podcasts have recently seen a dramatic increase popularity. Podcasts are audio shows, often produced on a particular theme or topic, and hosted online. These audio files can be extremely valuable resources. Several have archives of hundreds of episodes. Many come with corresponding “vodcasts” (video files) as audio supplements to other media. They can provide a great supplement to class, replacement for a lecture, or additional resources for students. Because they are easy to create and accessible, a podcast assignment could replace a written paper or report. They are portable audio files; perfect for a commute, time at the gym, or other activities.
podcast
Many previous radio shows and (more recently) TV shows have been repackaged and rebranded with corresponding podcasts. Most podcasts have free webpages (many embedded from this post) that allow you to navigate to the webpage, find the link and site you are looking for, and press play. These are also great because it can be easy to link from a classroom page to an online resource. Several of the prominent sites include guides on how to incorporate them into your own classes.
Various podcasting apps or “podcatchers” can help enhance that experience. These let you to download to a mobile device (for offline listening), update when recent episodes come out, and allow you to search and browse by topic to help find the shows you are interested in. I recommend trying one, customizing the settings to meet your particular needs, and experimenting with different shows.
What follows are some of the most common applications and services (there are many others). This should not be seen as an endorsement of any particular service but a list to help get you started. There are several types of apps, services, and many contain upgradable premium functions.
Free services:
Apple Podcasts (built into your iPhone).
Google Play Music (Android users)
Premium(ish) services:
Spotify (known mainly as a music service but recently expanded into podcasting)
Pocket Casts. App specifically for the full podcast experience; easy to search, curate, and see updated episodes. https://www.pocketcasts.com/ ($4.00)
Overcast. Gold standard for iOS podcast apps. https://overcast.fm/ (podcast player for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch; free with premium $10/year)
What are some good podcasts?
Radiolab with Jab Aburmrad and Robert Krulwich. Since 2002, Radiolab has been devoted to investigating a strange world. My favorite from this year has been “Unraveling Bolero”: a story about obsession, creativity, and a strange symmetry between a biologist and a composer that revolves around one famously repetitive piece of music. I was obsessed when listening the original episode and ended up staying in my car for fifteen minutes after I had reached my destination to finish the podcast. https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/unraveling-bolero
“Higher Ed” podcast by Jennifer Statyon. These 15 minute podcast cover a wide range of topics that apply to education. A recent one called “Better Problem Solving Through Puzzles” (October 28, 2018) advocates that puzzles are a great approach for students because it often simulates more real world on the job problems. http://kutpodcasts.org/higher-ed/higher-ed-better-problem-solving-through-puzzles
“Research in Action” (“RIA”) is a podcast about topics and issues related to research in higher education. The goal of the podcast is to do two things – increase research literacy and build community among researchers. Katie Linder, research director at Oregon State Ecampus, hosts. Of note, RIA includes a number of resources for instructors and specific guidelines on how to incorporate podcasts into their own classes. A very recent episode from November 26, 2018 called “Getting Started with Podcasting” that was one of the points that inspired me to blog about this topic this week. https://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/research/podcast/e139/
Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast. “This is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to increase our personal productivity, so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.” The podcast focuses on topics such as digital pedagogy, creativity in teaching, educational technology, and many others. https://teachinginhighered.com/episodes/
Finally, it is relatively easy to create your own podcasts or create assignments that have your students create their own! At its most basic, any audio recording that you make and then upload to your students could be considered a podcast. Or consider having your students create their own podcasts instead of writing a paper. While the most popular and professionally developed podcasts have high production values – most phones contain a microphone suitable or recording. Computers also contain the basic equipment to facilitate ease of use
Consider activities:
Create a 3-5 minute unit or module overview! This audio file could be included with your material each week and help focus students on the weekly objectives, what to do, and any specific tips to be successful with key concepts and homework for the week.
Replace a written paper with a podcast assignment. Have students record a short 60 – 90 second audio report.
Have student research podcasts about specific topics. While not a substitute for formal research, it helps identify additional resources and allows students the opportunity to evaluate appropriateness for a course.
– Ted Witt
Teaching, Learning, and Technology Consultant
Back in Issue 10 “Tips and FAQ’s from a Peer Mentor” at the start of the semester, we introduced the LTC faculty peer mentors that are available for each college to assist with the Canvas Transition. Canvas 24/7/365 is still the place to go for Canvas questions, but the peer mentors can help by sharing what they have discovered and learned.
lessons learned
The peer mentors gather monthly to share notes and discuss what we’ve learned. Now that we are approaching the end of the semester, I want to share some of the lessons learned this term in Canvas from our most recent Peer Mentor meeting. These are all Tips shared by the mentors on things they learned this semester while using Canvas. Hopefully they can help you!
Lessons Learned
Provide a link to the Canvas Student Training during the first module or week in class. Canvas Student Training link: http://go.uww.edu/canvas-student-training
Provide a bit of navigation and orientation to the class at the beginning of term. Show students where important things are located in Canvas. Review with them where they need to go and what they need to do. While Canvas is mostly new to us as faculty, it is also mostly new to students. Even thing like how to submit an assignment in Canvas can be really helpful. Providing that guide to where things are in your course can be really helpful to students.
Setting up the Course Home page in Canvas is important. Organizing content by weeks or by topic helps a lot. Don’t underestimate the important of structure. Students have the tendency to click on the assignment tab – and they miss the rest of the weekly content, the readings, and other supporting activities. It is important to link back to those weekly modules from the assignments…and remind students to check the content in each module each week.
Creating a weekly checklist or “TO DO” list is very helpful to students. D2L could create those as you were creating content, Canvas does not do that. I create a checklist item for students and post it at the top of each module as a roadmap for the week. I can also physically hand out a notecard with that weekly checklist to students in class so they know where to go and what to do.
Creating larger assignments with multiple parts is easier to set up in Canvas as a series of different assignment submissions. It is also easy to create these as multiple “zero” point assignments. So, for example, if a student needs to submit a rough draft as a paper, create a separate assignment for that rough draft – you can then use speed grader, provide feedback, and return it to students. The FINAL paper or submission can be created as a separate assignment in Canvas.
Setting up the gradebook to reflect more logical areas that corresponded with assignments makes providing feedback and grading much easier.
Canvas Peer Mentors The peer mentors are available to:
Help answer your transition questions.
Provide you with training information and resources about the Canvas platform.
Work with you to understand different ways that Canvas can be leveraged for enriching teaching and learning.
College of Arts and Communication
Jodi Galvan
Bill Miller
College of Business and Economics
Kelly Delaney-Klinger
College of Education and Professional Studies
Carmen Rivers
Eileen Schroeder
College of Letters and Sciences
Kris Curran
David Reinhart
– Ted Witt
Teaching, Learning, and Technology Consultant
An abbreviated TED Tip this week: I want to take the opportunity on behalf of the Learning and Technology Center to give thanks! Happy Thanksgiving! I am thankful for the opportunity each week to write these blog posts and explore some of the ideas and themes about which I am passionate.
It has been an honor to explore the themes of Technology, Education, and Design (TED). I continue to examine our technological environment and learn more about the tools available to us. What can they do? How do we use them well to enhance our teaching and learning? What types of things help us to make a difference in our students’ lives? What contributes toward student success? How do we design experiences that support our students in this way? Please feel free to drop by Learning Technology Center on the Whitewater Campus, leave a comment here, or send me an email!
I plan on continuing to provide tips each week on these themes and am thankful to have a platform to do so! There are a number of planned tips over the next few weeks. Topics include: how to design successful layouts and content, how to build rubrics in Canvas, and an exploration of additional tools and services. There are more stories to tell and things to be thankful.
Happy Thanksgiving
The next Workshop in the 2018-19 UW-Whitewater LEARN Center/Learning Technology Center Workshop Series “Back to Basics to Balance Workload” is this coming Tuesday, November 27 from 12:30 – 1:45 in the University Center room 259A. This workshop is specifically focused on “Using Groups to Engage Students and Maximize Instructor Time: A Conversation about How to Use Team Projects in the Classroom.” Eric Loepp from Political Science and Michele Peets in Management will discuss how and why they use group work, what benefits you can gain from using group activities, what strategies work, and practical tips to help you save yourself time.
Well-structured group work can produce a more meaningful learning experience for students. Instructors are the critical factor in facilitating a successful environment for that meaningful work to occur. This workshop will review the benefits of group work in the classroom, the conditions needed for successful implementation, and provide tools to assist in transforming a traditional classroom setting into a thriving group environment
Participants can expect to:
Learn why we use group work as a classroom strategy
Identify the benefits of group work in the classroom
Learn strategies for employing group work in assignments
Take away practical tools/ resources for instructors to use
– Ted Witt
Teaching, Learning, and Technology Consultant
I’ve been asked several times where the inspiration for TED Tips originates, so this week I want to explore that source of inspiration. TED Tips talks TED talks. As such, what are TED Talks?
“TED is a nonpartisan nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks. TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science to business to global issues…”
https://www.ted.com/
While TED Talks have been around since 1984, they saw a spike in interest and use correlated to the increase in popularity of YouTube. Most TED talks are recorded, of high quality, and the videos are made easily accessible. Another feature of TED Talks lends itself well for internet consumption. TED talks follow strict guidelines and adhere to high quality standards. No talk can exceed 18 minutes in length… According to TED Talks curator Chris Anderson, 18 minutes is “short enough to hold people’s attention, including on the Internet, and precise enough to be taken seriously.”
I have named this blog TED Tips for similar reasons. I cannot resist a good pun and acronym – so basing the blog name off of my name “Ted” made sense in the context of my job in the Learning Technology Center as a Teaching, Learning, and Technology Consultant. My job title can apply directly to the use of TED as “technology, education, and design” as it applies to higher education. Finally, I find affinity with the mission of the original TED Talks, exploring all ideas and sharing those ideas with others. I hope that this blog lives up to those standards and source of inspiration.
I want to share a couple of my personal favorite TED talks and some of the ideas worth sharing. I recently discovered the following talk on the TED Radio Hour. NPR produces a radio version of the show and the accompanying podcast works wonders during my commute. Podcasts and radio broadcasts keep me thinking and engaged while I can focus driving.
Recently, I was visiting with my goddaughter – a spunky, somewhat awkward, still discovering herself twelve year old. She likes cooking, acting, polar bears, and obsessed with the band BTS. Like many pre-teens, she struggles with confidence and overcoming perceived obstacles, social barriers, and school drama. A version of Megan Washington’s talk entitled: “Why I live in mortal dread of public speaking” played on the TED Radio Hour. I immediately connected some of the themes and strategies outlined in the talk to the struggles of my goddaughter.
The synopsis of her talk reads and I’ll share the embedded link.
Megan Washington is one of Australia’s premier singer/songwriters. Since childhood, she has had a stutter. In this bold and personal talk, she reveals how she copes with this speech impediment—from avoiding the letter combination “st” to tricking her brain by changing her words at the last minute to, yes, singing the things she has to say rather than speaking them.”
The second TED talk I want to highlight is Steven Johnson’s entitled “Where Good Ideas Come From”. I have often share this with students when hoping to provide time for creativity to develop. Contrary to the notion that inspirations strikes in a flash or “Eureka!” moment, good ideas take time to develop and often require clashes with other ideas. Steven Johnson elaborates on this idea in a corresponding book, TED talk, and an even shorter animated version is worth the multimedia experience. I’m including a link to that animated version here:
Finally, I want to share one final TED Tip: There’s a TED app that builds personalized recommendations based on your preferences delivered directly to you. I’d encourage you to check it out and explore more ideas worth sharing.
– Ted Witt
Teaching, Learning, and Technology Consultant
“Grounded in research. Driven by best practices. A community that puts learners first.”
As I mentioned last week, I was recently at the annual Quality Matters Connect conference in St. Louis. Quality Matters is an inter-institutional peer review process dedicated to the continuous improvement of online and blended course design. This week TED Tips explores Quality Matters (QM). I serve as a Quality Matter Coordinator for the University of Wisconsin Whitewater. I am an official liaison between UWW and Quality Matters and am a go-to person for anything related to it. Please contact me if you have questions!
online course design is at the heart of quality matters
Quality Matters (QM) is a faculty-centered, peer review process designed to certify the quality of online courses and online components through a continuous improvement process. QM promotes and improves the quality of online education and student learning. It does so through the use of current, research-supported, and practice-based quality standards and appropriate evaluation tools and procedures. It supports professional development in the use of rubrics, tools and practices to improve the quality of online education. A QM-Certified Course is an online or blended course that has met QM Standards for a QM Rubric in an Official Course Review. Quality Matters is supported by the non-profit MarylandOnline. The QM Certification Mark is more than an achievement for online course design — it is evidence of an interconnected, continual process provisioned with tools, support and professional development that helps you develop and provide successful experiences to your learners.
Quality matters is best known for its review process for online or blended courses. Four underlying principles guide Quality Matters:
Continuous: The Quality Matters process is iterative and committed to continuous quality improvement. Given review, revisions, and support, all reviewed courses will eventual meet expectations.
Centered. Quality Matters is supported by national standards of best practice, research literature, and instructional design principles.
Collegial. The process is faculty driven; peer reviews are diagnostic and collegial, not evaluative nor judgmental.
Collaborative. Reviews are flexible and offer constructive feedback. They are not prescriptive.
The three main elements of Quality Matters are the QM Rubric, the peer review process, and professional development. It is important to emphasize that Quality Matters addresses only the course design of online classes. Quality Matters does not address the delivery (how instructors actually teach courses).
Quality Matters does not address other factors that may impact the quality of online courses such as faculty or learner readiness, and our digital learning environment. Many of these other factors are themes we explore each week in this TED Tips Blog. The Learning Technology Center offers additional faculty development opportunities to learn about Canvas or methods to improve your online and blended teaching effectiveness through programs like the upcoming Winterim Online / Blended Teaching Institute. Quality Matters addresses one aspect of online course quality – course design.
The most recent QM Higher Education Rubric, Sixth Edition, released July 2, 2018. The Quality Matters Rubric is designed to provide a rigorous set of Specific Review Standards that can be applied to online courses as part of a commitment to continuous quality improvement . While the emphasis is on online or blended courses, many of the design principles could also apply to traditional face-to-face courses.
These General Standards are:
Quality Matters Sixth Edition Rubric Workbook
Course Overview and Introduction
Learning Objectives (Competencies)
Assessment and Measurement
Instructional Materials
Learning Activities and Learner Interaction
Course Technology
Learner Support
Accessibility and Usability
QM courses use a faculty driven peer review process. There are several options for reviewing a course ranging from formal official course review following QM processes and protocols, an internal review, or more customized consultations. Internal reviews can guide and improve existing courses. Quality matters standards can be introduced to help scaffold the development of new online classes.
The review process is faculty driven and starts with a self-reported worksheet that lists basic information about the course that is useful to the review team, such as the delivery format, instructional materials, and supplemental materials that may require review. A formal peer review team is comprised of three faculty members includes a course representative. Each team includes a master reviewer that manages the process to ensure consistency and rigor; a Subject Matter Expert to advise the team about disciple-related materials and practices, and an External Reviewer outside our school to assist in providing helpful recommendations. The recommendations are constructive, specific, sensitive, and balanced to the course being reviewed. There is opportunity for revision to the course based on that feedback. Only official QM-Managed reviews can lead towards official QM Certification.
If you are interested in learning more about Quality Matters in Online Learning, exploring additional professional development opportunities, or would like to discuss other factors of the design and delivery of online courses please contact me at wittt@uww.edu.
– Ted Witt
Teaching, Learning, and Technology Consultant
