Category Archives: Trainings & Workshops

Call for Proposals: Celebrating Teaching and Learning Conference 2019

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Celebrating Teaching and Learning

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

Winterim 2019 Poll Everywhere Workshop

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Are you interested in using a new tool to facilitate student engagement in your Spring 2019 course? “Poll Everywhere” is a live polling tool that allows students to submit answers, in real-time,  to closed or open-ended prompts that instructors create. Students can respond using the Poll Everywhere website, the mobile app, or even through text messages. 

If you are interested in learning more about using Poll Everywhere in your course, consider registering for the Winterim 2019 Workshop at 12:00 pm on Tuesday January 8th.

If you have any questions about Poll Everywhere or any other learning technology, feel free to contact the UW-Whitewater Learning Technology Center.

TED Tips – Issue 24: Winter Break!

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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.

RELAX

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

To register for this workshop: https://my.uww.edu/signup/Registration/Details/15867

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

Resources

LTC Canvas Peer Mentors http://www.uww.edu/icit/ltc/canvas-portal/peer-mentors

Canvas Workshops Winter 2019
https://blogs.uww.edu/instructional/2018/12/12/canvas-workshops-winter-2019/

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

LTDC Virtual Showcase 2019 Call for Proposals

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The education session proposal deadline for the 2019 UW System Learning Technology Development Council Virtual Showcase (https://www.wisconsin.edu/learning-tech/events-conf/ltdc-virtual-showcase-2019/) has been extended to December 21, 2018.

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?

TED Tips – Issue 21: Happy Thanksgiving!

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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

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

RESOURCES:
https://my.uww.edu/signup/Registration/Details/15855

Celebrating Teaching and Learning Conference 2019

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Save the date: Wednesday, May 22, 2019 from 8:30am-3:30pm

Celebrating Teaching and Learning, May 22, 2019

This special event is meant to showcase the wide variety of ways we are all transforming the lives of our students through teaching and learning.

Themes will include:

  • Integrating Teaching and Technology
  • Student Engagement
  • High Impact Practices
  • Civil Discourse and Diversity
  • and other topics

TED Tips – Issue 19: Quality Matters

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“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

  1. Course Overview and Introduction
  2. Learning Objectives (Competencies)
  3. Assessment and Measurement
  4. Instructional Materials
  5. Learning Activities and Learner Interaction
  6. Course Technology
  7. Learner Support
  8. 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

RESOURCES:

https://www.qualitymatters.org/
https://www.qualitymatters.org/sites/default/files/PDFs/QM-Overview-Booklet-digital.pdf

Still time to apply for the 2019 Winterim Online/Blended Teaching Institute

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The UW-Whitewater Learning Technology Center (LTC) is pleased to announce that registration remains open for the Winterim 2019 Online/Blended Teaching Institute. The Online and Blended Teaching Institute is a series of interactive workshops focusing on best practices for teaching online and blended courses.  The structure of the Institute allows participants to explore new instructional and course design methods, and participate in learning activities similar to what a student would experience. To apply, click here. The URL for registration is also available at the bottom of this post.  The deadline to apply is Monday, November 5. Participation in the Institute is competitive, as typically more applications are received than can be accepted. Expect that incomplete application forms will be rejected. Accepted participants will be notified following confirmation from their respective college.

Dates for the 2019 Winterim Online and Blended Institute:
January 4: Face-to-Face meeting, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
January 11: Face-to Face meeting, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
January 18: Online using WebEx, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Submission of final Institute content February 1st

This institute provides you with a foundation in the pedagogy of online and blended instruction focusing on key terminology, principles, and practices. You will explore practical guidelines for teaching online and blended courses, designing content for online and blended courses, and utilizing technology, tools and strategies to facilitate active, participatory, and engaging online learning experiences.

By the conclusion of the institute, you will have created an online or blended learning module which will include pedagogically-appropriate assessments, discussions, and additional learning materials. This module will be developed with feedback from the institute facilitators and your colleagues, and demonstrate what you have taken away from this institute.

If you have any questions about this workshop, contact the UW-W Learning Technology Center.

Application Link: https://uwwhitewater.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3f0THo4dRBWqqm9

Register for the final “Poll Everywhere” workshop of the semester

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There is still some time to learn how to use Poll Everywhere this semester!

Poll Everywhere allows students to submit answers on the Poll Everywhere website, the mobile app, or even through text messages to close or open-ended polls that you create. In the video below, Assistant Professor of Political Science Eric Loepp discusses how he used Poll Everywhere in his course.

If you are interested in learning more, register for the LTC’s workshop at noon on Thursday, Novermber 15th!

If you have any questions about Poll Everywhere or any other learning technology, feel free to contact the UW-Whitewater Learning Technology Center.

Winterim 2019 Online/Blended Teaching Institute

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The UW-Whitewater Learning Technology Center (LTC) is pleased to announce that registration is open for the Winterim 2019 Online/Blended Teaching Institute. Due to popular request, the Online and Blended Teaching Institute will take place in an accelerated format during the 2019 Winterim term. The Online and Blended Teaching Institute is a series of interactive workshops focusing on best practices for teaching online and blended courses. By the conclusion of the institute, participants will develop a course module utilizing best practices for online/blended teaching. To apply, click here. The URL for registration is available at the bottom of this post.

This institute provides you with a foundation in the pedagogy of online and blended instruction focusing on key terminology, principles, and practices. You will explore practical guidelines for teaching online and blended courses, designing content for online and blended courses, and utilizing technology, tools and strategies to facilitate active, participatory, and engaging online learning experiences.

By the conclusion of the institute, you will have created an online or blended learning module which will include pedagogically-appropriate assessments, discussions, and additional learning materials. This module will be developed with feedback from the institute facilitators and your colleagues, and demonstrate what you have taken away from this institute.

Institute Objectives:
• Develop a unit/module utilizing best practices in online/blended course design.
• Demonstrate technological proficiency useful in facilitating online/blended courses.
• Apply methods to facilitate assessment and evaluation.
• Illustrate approaches to building community online.
• Develop strategies for effective time management.

Dates for the 2019 Winterim Online and Blended Institute:
January 4: Face-to-Face meeting, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
January 11: Face-to Face meeting, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
January 18: Online using WebEx, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Submission of final Institute content February 1st

https://uwwhitewater.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3f0THo4dRBWqqm9