Programming and Partnership

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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 Chalkboard and cell phonemany 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

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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:

  1. Navigate to the course on D2L.
  2. Select More Tools on the blue navigation bar and click on Classlist.
  3. Click on the Email Classlist button at the top.
  4. Click on the All, Instructors, or Students tab to choose the email’s recipients.
  5. Click on the blue Send Email button at the bottom to open a new window.
  6. Add or remove any emails from the BCC box as needed.
  7. Give your email a Subject, and a Body.
  8. Click the blue Send button.

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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

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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

changes moving forward

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?

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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.

pexels-photo-355988Various 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.

D2L Email and Text Notifications

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Does this red dot scare you? Never miss a deadline, grade, or class update again by signing up for email or text notifications. These alerts can notify you whensms-alert-icon-2:

  • Grades are released or updated
  • News is posted
  • A Quiz end date is approaching
  • Class content is updated
  • Dropbox folder close is approaching
  • Discussions are posted

 

Sign up for email or text alerts through D2L by following these simple steps:

  1. When signed in to D2L, select the drop down arrow next to your name in the upper right corner.
  2. Select Notifications.
  3. Under the “Instant Notifications” heading, check the boxes to customize when and how you will get notifications and click save.

If have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to Contact D2L Support.

WebEx Video Conferencing

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WebEx is an online web conferencing tool that allows you to meet with colleagues or classmates anywhere in the world using your internet connection and web browser. With WebEx, you can host virtual meetings online using audio and video, share presentations and files, chat (IM) with others, and conduct online presentations using screen sharing.
WebEx is available to all faculty and students here at UW-Whitewater.

Staff/Faculty can create and host WebEx meetings using uww.webex.com. Students can create and host meetings using uwwstudents.webex.com. Both websites can be accessed using the users NetID and password. If there is a guest that would like to access the meeting, they can join using a meeting link and meeting password that is generated when the meeting is created.

webex-feature
For more information and training on WebEx, please visit the WebEx Meeting Center documentation.

For WebEx support, please contact the TSC Helpdesk and/or visit this support site.

Google Docs for Classroom Collaboration

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Google Docs Icon

All instructors and students at UW-Whitewater have access to Google Drive. The accessibility for everyone provides a great opportunity for instructors to facilitate an environment for students to work together.

For example, Google Docs is an easy way to have students collaborate with each other on group assignments. The instructor can create a Google Doc for each group. For each Google Doc, the instructor would then send out permissions to group members to make changes to the Google Doc. Google Docs allows all group members to make changes simultaneously, with similar functionality as Microsoft Word. One of the major challenges for students, when it comes to group assignments, is finding an opportunity for all individuals to meet. By providing a virtual environment, students can work together remotely when it is convenient for them, to encourage more equal opportunities for all group members to participate in the assignment. An instructor can also see when a Google Doc was last edited, and has the capability to remove permissions when the group assignment is due.

For further information on Google Docs or Google Drive, please contact the UW-W Learning Technology Center, or learn about training opportunities by clicking here.

D2L Dropbox: Tips and Tricks

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D2L’s dropbox tool allows for students to easily submit assignments to instructors electronically.  Here are some helpful tips to make uploading files to D2L hassle free!

Make uploading-handwritten-white-chalk-blackboard-drawing-download-bar-43659103sure the correct file is selected:  It sounds simple enough, but the easiest way to cause confusion is to accidentally submit your English paper to your Comm110 dropbox. Always double check that the file you selected is the one you want.

Don’t upload from your phone:  You may not have known this, but you can upload files from your phone to dropbox!  Uploading from your phone may seem convenient, especially when you’re in a rush and on the go, but it can be inconsistent. It’s always best to upload from a desktop or laptop with a stable internet connection. If you, or someone you know, doesn’t have access to one, check out our blog on Andersen Media Lab!

Don’t use special characters:  If you’re submitting a file from a Mac, there are someScreen Shot 2017-09-25 at 1.03.57 PM characters that you can use in filenames that you can’t use on Windows. You’re able to use these characters on a Mac, but if you tried to use them in Windows, you wouldn’t be able to even make the file. These characters are   \ / : * ? ” < > |.  The dropbox will not allow any of these characters to be in a filename. If one or more of them are, you will get an error message, and the file won’t upload. So when working on a Mac, be careful not to use special characters.

Make sure your file was uploaded:  After your file has been successfully uploaded to dropbox, you should immediately get an email receipt in your student email. If you check your email and there’s no receipt in the inbox, make sure to try and upload the file again.

If you run into problems trying to upload a file to a dropbox, please contact D2L Support.

Desire2Learn 10.7 Upgrade – What Happened This Summer?

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There was an upgrade to Desire2Learn on Thursday, June 15th and if you weren’t teaching you may have missed it. D2L received a handful of new features, and fixed a slew of outstanding issues.  We are excited to share all of these with you.

This post will highlight a few items we believe are the most impactful, but a more complete “What’s New?“ document is available here: https://spaces.uww.edu/x/TwF5

Additional Functionality for Creating Group Discussions
When creating a new Discussion Topic, there is now a “Topic Type” option.  This adds the ability to create a Group or Section topic that is available to everyone, but only allows students to see threads created by users in their same group or section.

Updated Quiz Question Authoring ExperienceNew quiz expereance
A visual redesign of the Quizzes tool to improve the usability of creating and editing Multiple Choice, True/False, Short Answer, and Long Answer questions. Instructors are able to opt out of the new change individually.

Turnitin / GradeMark Enhancements
Dates are now correctly set in the Turnitin side to avoid the “Error communicating with Turnitin” error.
When you copy Turnitin-enabled folders into another course, you can now enable all folders at once.

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