On Tuesday, October 10th, from approximately 4:55 PM to 5:15PM D2L users may have experienced slow load times and/or error messages (including “This site cannot be reached). Learn@UW technologists have taken measures to reduce the risk of a re-occurrence for this behavior. If you encounter any problems moving forward, please Contact D2L Support.
Use ePortfolio via D2L to Further Present Your Learning!
The ePortfolio Tool on D2L is your very own Personal Portfolio Tool for storing, organizing, reflecting on, and sharing items that represent your learning!
You can include documents, graphics, audio files, videos, presentations, course work, etc. that demonstrate your improvement or mastery in a certain area. You decide what items you want to include in your ePortfolio, how you want to organize them, and who you want to share them with!
To Access ePortfolio:
- Click the “Tools” dropdown menu on the top-right corner of D2L, then select “ePortfolio”
You can create:
- Artifacts (Individual Items)
- Collections (Groups of related items)
- Reflections (Thoughts about your learning)
- Presentations (Web Projects showcasing your Items and Achievements)
- Learning objectives (Plans for specific learning outcomes)
You can share items with others by giving them permission to:
- View an Item
- Comment on an item
- View comments from others
- Access an item
- View assessments from others
- Edit an item
You can also use the “Explore” Area to see what others are sharing with you:
ePortfolio can be utilized to assist Students in furthering their own work, including showing work among others, we hope this brief introduction to ePortfolio can assist all in their academic endeavors!
If you have any additional questions or concerns regarding this issue, please contact UW-W Desire2Learn Support.
UW Office of Professional & Instructional Development – Spring 2018 Conference on Teaching & Learning
The 2018 Spring Conference on Teaching & Learning presented by the UW System Office of Professional & Instructional Development (OPID) is taking place Thursday, April 12 and Friday, April 13, 2018 in the Memorial Union at UW-Madison.
The theme for the conference is The Joy of Teaching in an Age of Digital Learning. The keynote speaker for the conference will be Dr. Michael Wesch, Ph.D, who is a Cultural Anthropologist at Kansas State University, and a winner of the Carnegie Foundation’s U. S. Professor of the Year Award.
Faculty and instructional staff from all fields are welcome, and encouraged, to submit proposals for the conference. The deadline for submitting proposals is Monday, November 27, 2017. Those with accepted proposals will be informed by December 20, 2017. Proposals are submitted online at this website.
For more information, please visit the website for the 2018 OPID Spring Conference on Teaching & Learning.
Saturday LTC Instructional Development Event
The Learning Technology Center (LTC) is offering an all day Saturday event on December 9th, focusing on instructional development! This event is a great opportunity for instructors who are not able to contact the LTC during our standard operating hours to receive D2L assistance.
Join us at the LTC office, in McGraw 120, as early as 8:00am for D2L one-on-one support that is focused on your specific D2L needs. We are also offering two sessions of D2L basics, which may include information such as how to lock a browser, upload test questions, upload grades to WINS, and much more!
If you are not able to make it to campus, no problem! You can schedule a one-on-one WebEx meeting during the 1:1 appointment times listed below. To schedule a 1:1 appointment, contact the LTC after you register.
Please stop by to get your questions answered, stay until your problems are solved, and close out the semester successfully!
Saturday Event Schedule
*sessions subject to change based on instructor needs.
8:00 – 10:00am Staff available for 1:1 appointments with instructors
10:00 – Noon D2L basics help
1:00 – 2:00pm Staff available for 1:1 appointments with instructors
2:00 – 3:00pm D2L basics help
3:00 – 4:00pm Staff available for 1:1 appointments with instructors
For further questions about the Saturday LTC Instructional Development Event please contact the LTC at ltc@uww.edu. To sign up, go to https://my.uww.edu/signup/Registration/Details/15325 (and log in with your Net-ID and password).
Instructure Canvas contract signed by UW-System Board of Regents
UW-Whitewater has received word that the UW System Board of Regents has signed the contract with Instructure for their Canvas product.
Now that the contract is signed, here is what you need to know:
- The Director of Learning Technology is serving as the UW-Whitewater Institution Project Manager. Please continue to use the Learning Technology Center (ltc@uww.edu) as your primary contact for questions and concerns. Each UW-System Institution has a dedicated project team and will be working together on migration efforts. Provost Elrod and Assistant Vice Chancellor Pokot (ICIT) are the UW-Whitewater project sponsors.
- The earliest opportunity to migrate courses to Canvas is expected to be Fall 2018 with all courses migrated before December 2019. The move from D2L to Canvas is an exciting change, but will not happen overnight. These estimates are not set in stone, and they may change as things progress.
- Please do not contact UW-Madison colleagues or Canvas to gain access to a test course. Though we can understand that you might be excited to get started working in Canvas right away, please do not contact our colleagues at UW-Madison in an effort to gain access to their Canvas environment or use the free public version of Canvas to get started. Both of these environments may be quite different than the environment the UW System will be creating with Canvas and will not be included in migration planning.
- Any inquiries from the media regarding the Instructure Canvas contract should be directed to: https://www.wisconsin.edu/dle/
We will continue to receive more information in the weeks and months ahead, and will do our best to communicate this information with the UW-Whitewater campus community as transparently as possible throughout this transition process. As we understand that there will be a lot of questions during this transition period, the Learning Technology Center has created a website to help keep the UW-Whitewater campus community informed, which can be accessed at this link: http://go.uww.edu/canvas-migration
We understand that whenever a large-scale change like this occurs, there will be a number of questions and concerns that arise. The Learning Technology Center aims to be as transparent as possible during this transition period, and will undertake concerted efforts to keep the UW-Whitewater campus community as informed as possible throughout the change. Please continue to contact the Learning Technology Center (ltc@uww.edu) for questions and concerns related to this transition.
Campus General Access Labs
Did you know that there are six computer labs that are open to all students around campus? If you ever need to access a computer for any of your classwork, these labs are the perfect place for you!
Andersen – Room 1008
M-F: 8:00AM – 12:00AM
Sat: 10:00AM – 6:00PM
Sun: 1:00PM – 12:00AM
For more information on the Andersen Media Lab, check out our blog post on it!
McGraw – Room 19
M-W: 8:00AM – 10:00PM
Thurs: 8:00AM – 6:00PM
Fri: 8:00AM – 4:00PM
Sat-Sun: Closed
Andersen Library:
Available during Andersen Library hours
University Center – Room 146
Available during the University Center building hours
Upham – Room 51
M-Thurs: 8:00AM – 6:00PM
Fri: 8:00AM – 3:00PM
Sat-Sun: Closed
Center of the Arts – Room CA 4*
M-Thurs: 4:00PM – 9:00PM
Fri-Sat: Closed
Sun: 4:00PM – 9:00PM
*Staffed during these hours. Lab may be open outside of posted hours.
All of these labs except UC-146 have both Macs and PCs (No Macs in UC-146). Each computer is equipped with a variety of different programs to meet your needs. Here is a complete list of all the software that is provided.
Programming and Partnership
In my last blog post, I shared the LTC’s mission and promised that I would be back to share about some of the exciting projects that we have been working on. Well, here I am!
Often, our projects do not necessarily fit into one specific area. Today I want to talk to you about one project that I am incredibly proud of–how the LTC supports instructors through cutting edge programming via a partnership with the campus unit, LEARN.
Like all areas of ICIT, the LTC values strategic partnership with instructors, students, departments, colleges, campus units, and administration. We started collaborating with LEARN a year ago on a three-part workshop series offered each semester focused on instructor needs around teaching and learning.
For the past three semesters, we have partnered to offer this series on key focus areas (e.g., facilitating discussions, active learning, and student engagement) following a similar format that starts with the first session being a brief introduction, the second featuring instructors from each college talking about their experiences, and the third exploring how technology can be leveraged to assist in that area. This has been a wonderful collaboration and we look forward to it continuing!
This semester we used data from our annual instructor support survey to help drive decision-making around the topic where instructors identified student engagement to be a key pedagogical challenge for them. Andrew Cole, Learning Technology Specialist with the LTC, lead an interactive introduction to student engagement in “Student Engagement Challenges in the 21st Century Classroom” in September. We had so 
many participants register that we had to change rooms! We still have plenty of room in our second session (Thursday, October 26 from 12-1:30pm) where instructors (Tammy French, College of Arts and Communications; Choton Basu, College of Business and Economics; Kelly Hatch, College of Education and Professional Studies; and Eric Loepp, College of Letters and Sciences) will discuss student engagement strategies that they are using in their own classes. We also still have plenty of room in our third session (Monday, November 6 from 12-1:30pm) where we will be exploring how learning technologies can assist with student engagement (teaser: you’ll even get to try some out and make a plan for how you might use it in your class!).
For more information and to sign-up, please (log in with your Net-ID and password and) visit the LEARN section: https://my.uww.edu/signup/
Sending emails through the D2L Classlist
Ever needed to find a group member for a project, but you don’t know anyone? Ever wanted to start a study group for your class, but you don’t know their emails?
Using the D2L Classlist, you can quickly find the names and emails of your classmates, as well as send a bulk email to everyone at once!
Send an email to everyone in your class by following these simple steps:
- Navigate to the course on D2L.
- Select More Tools on the blue navigation bar and click on Classlist.
- Click on the Email Classlist button at the top.
- Click on the All, Instructors, or Students tab to choose the email’s recipients.
- Click on the blue Send Email button at the bottom to open a new window.
- Add or remove any emails from the BCC box as needed.
- Give your email a Subject, and a Body.
- Click the blue Send button.
The email will be sent using your student email account, so the recipients will see your name as the sender.
If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to Contact D2L Support.
Call for Proposals: LTDC Virtual Showcase 2018
The UW System Learning Technology Development Council (LTDC) Virtual Showcase 2018 will be held April 3-4, 2018. Instructors and professional staff – please consider joining them by submitting a proposal to present or facilitate by November 30, 2017! Proposals may be submitted at the following website: Virtual Showcase 2018
This virtual conference offers an opportunity for sharing your successes and challenges in teaching with technology. This conference will provide you with the opportunity to virtually connect with other practitioners and requires neither travel expense nor a significant time commitment.
Presentations during concurrent sessions will be approximately 30 minutes in length with 15 min Q&A following. Proposals are sought in the following five general categories:
- Digital Learning Environment
- Teaching & Learning Best Practices
- How-to & Resources
- Student Engagement
- Technology
We look forward to learning more about your teaching and learning experiences! If you have any questions contact the Learning Technology Center.
What Are the LTC’s Emerging Technology Exploration Projects?
The UW-Whitewater LTC mission includes six elements. Our “emerging technology exploration projects” align with the WE INNOVATE element. You may have seen calls to apply for these projects in the past (such as the current call for Spring 2018) without understanding exactly what these projects are. This blog post will explain a bit more as to the general purpose of these projects.
Various outlets (such as the Horizon Report) report on trends in higher education each year. Often these trends reflect instructional approaches that utilize new technological innovations. LTC staff members monitor, and examine, these short-term and long-term trends, and evaluate related technologies for potential use at the UW-Whitewater campus.
If a new technology (or a new application of an existing technology) appears to have potential to successfully meet a need that the LTC has identified through communication with instructors, the LTC makes arrangements to conduct a limited exploration of the technology with a small group of instructors. A call for applications/participants is then sent out to instructors across various channels (such as this LTC blog) with the expectations and requirements to participate in the project. Participants are then chosen based on several factors, including scheduling and the constraints of the particular technology or tool (ex. projected student enrollments).
Typically, at least as part of an emerging technology exploration project focused on instructional technology, instructors and students in the course employing the technology are surveyed based on their experiences using the technology. The feedback provided by students and instructors is used to determine future LTC support of the technology.
If you have any questions regarding the LTC’s emerging technology exploration projects, please contact the UW-W Learning Technology Center.