Category Archives: For Instructors

Google Sites

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Google Sites is for staff, faculty and students to create their own website where multiple people can collaborate and share files.  Anyone in the UW-Whitewater community with proper ID credentials has been granted owner access to this service.  Google Sites is not intended to replace UWW Faculty/Staff Web sites but serves as a supplemental option for creating Web sites that may be used by faculty, staff and students at UW-Whitewater.

With Google Sites, people can work together on a Site to add file attachments, including information from other Google applications like Google Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube and Picasa.  Creating a site together is as easy as editing a document, and you always control who has access, whether it’s just yourself, your team, or your whole organization. You can even publish Sites to the world.

Everything is available to get you started.  Features include creating a page with single-click (no HTML knowledge necessary), personalizing the content or used a predefined template, plus the ability to upload files and attach documents.  Site creators, or anyone granted owner access to a site, can add collaborators or change their site sharing settings.

The tutorial is available at: Google: Docs and Sites or sign up for training at http://signup.uww.edu.

If you have any additional questions regarding this, please contact the Learning Technology Center.

Desire2Learn Service Update (November 2012)

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While we were all enjoying the Thanksgiving vacation, Desire2Learn (D2L) was hard at work deploying Service Pack 5 (SP5).  This update brings some important bug fixes to our D2L system!

Most importantly, some of the annoying bugs users were experiencing with dropbox submissions running through TurnItIn. All dropbox submissions since January 2012 will be reviewed and automatically processed if they are still in queue for TurnItIn.

In addition, some other important changes to note are:

  • Gradebook: Logging now tracks who creates, deletes, and restores grade items.  Instructors can restore, review and recover all deleted items and student grades from the Event Log, accessible through “Manage Grades.”  Also, a confirmation dialog box now displayed when a user clicks “Clear” from the Grade Item page to avoid accidental clearing and saving of grades.
  • TurnItIn Submissions: Two bugs that have prevented some Dropbox submissions from processing through TurnItIn appear to be fixed in SP5. Some submissions not processing because of a third error are still being investigated by Desire2Learn support.

Winterim Instructors:  D2L is scheduled to be unavailable on the first day of Winterim classes beginning at 9:30pm on Wednesday, January 2nd 2013 until 10:30am on Thursday, January 3rd 2013 for file server storage migration.  Please plan your work accordingly.  There will be more information and a formal campus announcement are in the works for the coming weeks.

Course Request Application:  We have overhauled the course request application and a number of new features are available.  For more information see: D2L Course Request Enhancements Now Available.

Winterim & Spring 2013 course requests are now available.  To request for your courses, go to: D2L Course Request Application.

Streaming Video Updates:  We have updated the underlying code that powers the streaming videos produced by the Learning Technology Center to now support playback on iOS devices.  For more information see: Streaming Video Support for iOS.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact UW-W D2L Support.

Weekly Email Updates Available

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The Learning Technology Center (LTC) now has a new weekly email digest powered by MailChimp! With this feature you can now receive a summary of new workshops, teaching tools and software right in your inbox! Get connected with us and Sign Up today!  Emails are sent every Monday morning.

Subscribe to the Email updates.

If you have any questions regarding this, or suggestions on how you would like to receive information updates, please contact the Learning Technology Center.

Snackable Series: Promoting In-Class Interactivity (Part 2)

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The Learning Technology Center (LTC) is pleased to invite faculty and instructional staff to attend the next free session in the Snackable Series “Solving Teaching Challenges One Byte at a Time.” In the “Snackable Series” sessions, a specific learning technology is spotlighted.  The next session will be held November 28 and 29, 2012 and focuses on promoting in-class interactivity.

In this series learn how a variety of technology tools can be used to increase course content retention.  Tools showcased include student response system (i.e., “clickers”), PowerPoint activities such as Jeopardy, and StudyMate learning activities and games.  This session focuses on strategies for leveraging these technologies to promote interaction in your class and increase engagement.

The dates, times, and location for this Snackable are as follows:

Wednesday, November 28, 2012:  Noon – 1 p.m.
Thursday, November 29, 2012:  11 a.m. to Noon
Location: iCIT Training Center, McGraw 112

Register online today for this “Snackable Series” session – seating is limited: http://signup.uww.edu

Call for Proposals: OPID 2013 Spring Conference

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UW System Office of Professional and Instructional Development (OPID) seeks proposals from UW System faculty, instructional academic staff, and students with faculty/staff sponsorship for presentations to be given at their 2013 Spring Conference titled “The Value of Inquiry into Student Learning in the 21st Century.” The conference will be held April 18-19, 2013 at the Madison Concourse Hotel. Presentation formats will include papers, panels, workshops, and poster sessions.  UW-Whitewater faculty and staff are invited to join more than 200 UW System faculty and staff specializing in a wide variety of disciplines will gather together to share “their experience, knowledge, practice, and scholarship with colleagues.”

New this year to the conference is the session track “Leveraging Technology in Teaching and Learning.”  The conference includes the following five session tracks/topics:

  • Scholarly Inquiry into student learning: perspectives, practices, and results
  • Inclusive pedagogy
  • Innovative practices in Online Teaching
  • Leveraging technology in teaching and learning
  • High Impact Practices: Research that links the effectiveness of student learning and high impact practices.

Presentation proposals are due by November 29, 2012 and should be submitted online via the online proposal submission system. Confirmations for accepted proposals will be sent in mid-December 2012. Questions regarding proposals or the conference may be directed to OPID via e-mail.

Streaming Video Support for iOS

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Over the past years, the Learning Technology Center (LTC) has streamed and produced a large amount of video for courses.  We have relied on the Adobe Flash technology to playback the videos that have been produced in Desire2Learn and other various websites.  Effective immediately, the underlying code that powers these pages now supports playback on iOS devices!

What does this mean?  It means that all videos produced or processed by the LTC in the last 2 – 3 years can be viewed on iPhones, iPods and iPads.  The videos continue to work as they always have on computers and other devices supporting Adobe Flash.

Do I have to do anything?  No!  We have designed it in such a way that the change was retroactive to all of the video pages sent out by the LTC.  Your videos should now work on iOS devices.

What if my video does not load on iOS?  Please contact UW-W D2L Support and include the specific course, module and topic link where the video is located.  If the video is in an older format we may need to convert it to a H.264 (mp4) format before it will work on iOS devices.

How does it work? (Warning: Technical Response)  We have updated our underlying code that generates the flowplayer page to utilize Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) which was implemented by Adobe in their Flash Media Server.  Using HLS, we are able to deliver the same quality of video, at multiple bitrates for varying internet connection speeds to iOS devices.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this, please contact UW-W D2L Support.

Spring 2013 Course Requests Open

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Winterim 2013 and Spring 2013 D2L course requests are now available in the D2L Course Request application.

As a reminder, course requests for a semester become available on the first day of priority registration for students, and course shells for D2L need to be requested for every semester you plan on using D2L.

Also, as per some of our previous announcements, the D2L course request application has been updated to make the process much more streamlined. For more information on these changes, please see our related blog post.

D2L Course Request Enhancements Now Available

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The LTC has overhauled the D2L Course Request Application and the new version is now available!  There are a number of changes and enhancements in the new release:

    • New title format for courses! Courses by default will now be named using the following convention: Introduction to Programming (Spring 2013)
      Instructors can also rename their course in D2L if desired
    • We reduced the number of screens and clicks needed to request a course
    • The application now directly pulls cross listed and combined sections from WINS, to eliminate confusion
    • The site design is optimized for mobile devices, allowing you to request your courses when you’re “on the go”
    • Authentication upgraded to use Single Sign On (Shibboleth).  Remember, to logout of the application you will need to close your web browser.

The application can be accessed from the “Instructors” page on the D2L login page, from the “Quick Tools” listed on the sidebar in D2L, or by the direct link D2L Course Request.

We have also created a short video that will walk you through a WINS timetable course request, and explain some of the new features.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this, please contact UW-W D2L Support.

D2L Course Request Outage – Upcoming Changes

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The D2L course request application will be unavailable between 6am and 7am on Thursday, November 8th while we deploy the new version of the application.  We will open course requests for the Spring 2013 semester starting Monday, November 12th.

A few of the key changes in the process are:

    • New title format for courses! Courses by default will now be named using the following convention: Introduction to Programming (Spring 2013)
      Instructors can also rename their course in D2L if desired
    • We reduced the number of screens and clicks needed to request a course
    • The application now directly pulls cross listed and combined sections from WINS, to eliminate confusion
    • The site design is optimized for mobile devices, allowing you to request your courses when you’re “on the go”
    • Authentication upgraded to use Single Sign On (Shibboleth)

We are excited about these changes and we hope that this makes your course request process easier.  If you have any questions or concerns regarding this, please contact UW-W D2L Support.

ePortfolio Tutorial Videos – Now Available!

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The Learning Technology Center (LTC) has created a new video tutorial series for Desire2Learn ePortfolio to help guide students through the basics of the ePortfolio tools.

ePortfolio is a user-centered application for students to store, organize, reflect on, and share items that represent what they have learned. Students can present a professional webpage of their personal learning journey by including documents, graphics, video files, audio files, and presentations that they have created during their collegiate career. This user friendly program will allow students to share their work, achievements, knowledge, and reflections to advisers, potential employers, and their peers.  The videos are available below and can be found on our YouTube channel.

If you have any additional questions regarding this, please contact UW-W Desire2Learn Support.