Tackle Grackle to make accessible materials
Course materials need to be accessible. The Grackle add-ons assist you with making your materials more accessible even if you’re not a standard Google apps user.
Accurate video captions in minutes
UAF eCampus, in collaboration with OIT, is excited to announce the launch of a new auto-captioning service in Kaltura. It is faster and more accurate than Kaltura’s previous service and makes it easy to edit your captions once they’ve been created. Captions and searchable transcripts have big benefits for all your students, so if you use video content in your course, now is a great time to learn how it works.
Rebuilding your course
As faculty, at some point you’ll have to rebuild and refresh your existing course or rebuild and rebrand one you inherit. If you’ve found yourself in this situation for the upcoming semester, read on. I’m right there with you and these are the steps I’ve taken:
How to advertise your course
Teaching a new class next semester and want to attract students or need to boost enrollment? This is the perfect time to start marketing your course! This practical Teaching Tip will give you some pointers on how to get the word out about your upcoming course.
Use streaming video with Kanopy
The UAF Rasmuson Library has made 20,000 films available through Kanopy, a deep well of curated, high-quality content. It has a friendly interface with a watchlist and recommendations to help instructors find films that align with course content.
How to improve course accessibility with Blackboard Ally
Blackboard Ally is now available to UAF instructors. Here are the first steps you should take to make your online course more accessible.
Three ways to manage WordPress contributions
If you’ve ever used WordPress in your class as a space for student contribution, you’ve likely wondered if there is an optimal way to see what is being published and who is making contributions. This information is vital in an online course where post and comment activity often happens asynchronously. In this Teaching Tip, we’ll discuss strategies that allow you to track student engagement and interaction.
Help students use Google Scholar for research
Google Scholar is a tool students can use to search for peer-reviewed articles, court opinions and patents. It connects to the UAF Rasmuson Library database to make finding full-text articles easy.
Color code your Blackboard Grade Center
The Blackboard Grade Center can be a powerful tool to manage the grades in your course, and to stay on top of students that may need a little extra help. It can be especially useful in courses with a large number of students. Read this week’s Teaching Tip to learn more.
Go offline with Google Drive Stream
Google has released Drive Stream to help you more efficiently manage your Google Drive files offline. The new features make more intelligent use of space on your computer and help reduce the amount of file syncing over network connections.
Turn your videos into video quizzes
Creating a video for your course is a great way to engage students and clearly explain content. But how do you keep students watching, and how do you make sure they are grasping the concepts you’re explaining? Kaltura’s Video Quiz feature is a low-stakes and easy way to interactively enhance and further break down a video for student understanding.
Google Hangouts becomes Google Meet
In the next few weeks, some faculty may notice a switch from “Google Hangouts” to something called “Google Meet”. The two are nearly identical but the change in interface might be a little confusing, so we’ve summarized some of the changes to help you stay ahead of the game.
H5P plugin lets you build interactive content
H5P is a plugin you can use with your WordPress site to create interactive content, such as image hotspots, which can help your students with various learning styles.
Prep your WordPress course site for next semester
Even seasoned WordPress users can learn a new trick. WordPress actively changes as new updates are applied to the main product. Years after I began using WordPress almost daily, a coworker showed me how to edit multiple settings from within one screen! This tip will show you how.
Try Voice-to-text Apps for Audio Transcription
Audio transcription tools enable listeners to give their undivided attention to a speaker and free up hands and eyes from note taking. These apps can help to foster a more engaging group dynamic in the moment and are becoming both more precise and affordable thanks to the advancement of voice-to-text technology.
ZipGrade offers painless grading
Engaging students by checking their understanding often and quickly is a good teaching strategy for helping students retain their understanding to long-term memory. Quizzing students regularly in class can also mean more time grading, but accounting instructor Ruth Prato uses an app called ZipGrade to scan and evaluate student quizzes efficiently. Students love the quick results and Ruth loves the ease of grading
Find Open-licensed Media for Your Course
Engage your students by incorporating polished, open-licensed, stock media in your course to help build interest and garner attention. The curated resources in this Teaching Tip will show you where to find eye-catching images, video and audio.
Create dynamic video presentations with Kaltura CaptureSpace
Kaltura CaptureSpace is a screen recording and presentation tool available free to all UA students, staff and faculty. Learn how to use it for your class.
Collaborative annotation brings context and conversation
Annotating helps a reader engage with, analyze, and comprehend a text. Online, collaborative annotation tools afford these benefits plus the opportunity to interact with peers and other annotators around the world.
Interface literacy for faculty and students
You probably use hundreds, if not thousands, of gestures, keyboard commands and icons every day to navigate the web, perform various actions on a device and interact with others. Doing this in a skilled way is called interface literacy, and it’s an emerging literacy that faculty not only have to acquire themselves, but also must impart to their students.
How to use podcasts in class
Podcasting has been a pedagogical player in the education arena for a number of years. Both face-to-face and eCampus-supported Instructors can use podcasts to provide students with on-demand listening materials.
Why you might want to share work in the open
If you have chosen to teach in the open, there are many tools you can use such as WordPress. There are a few reasons you may be conducting some or all of your course in a space outside of the confines of Blackboard. Read this tip for a few ‘whys’ as well as how you can learn more about Community.
Creating Templates with Google Apps
Similar to Microsoft Word, Google apps support the creation of templates for documents with particular pre-formatted layout and style requirements. Templates are a simple—often overlooked—tool for saving time by eliminating the repetitive processes of formatting and layout. Templates help reduce cognitive overhead by allowing users to focus on creating content.
Navigating nonstop news
How do you follow news online? We have so much access to information we can’t possibly read it all. Do you remember the episode of “I Love Lucy” where Lucy works at a candy factory? She has to wrap all the chocolate coming down the belt but it keeps moving faster and faster. The pace of news today can feel like this.
Publish videos to your course with Kaltura Mediaspace
In this Teaching Tip we introduce Kaltura Mediaspace, a new option that gives UAF instructors a lot of control over how a video is presented in their course and how students interact with it.
Untangling Google’s growing Chrome universe
Have you noticed Google has been growing their list of Chrome-related products? The names are similar but the features are notably different. I was losing track of this growing Chrome universe. This article is an attempt to explain each tool and how you could use it in a classroom.
Get started with new and improved Google Sites
There is a new version of Google Sites and it is really easy to use! Need to make a quick website for your class materials? Want to have your students create simple websites for presentation or other activities but not get bogged down with technology? In this Teaching Tip, we check out the fancy new Google Sites, now available at UA Google Apps for Education.
Five Google app add-ons for teaching
By design, Google Applications offer bare-bones formatting and functionality, but sometimes you need additional features to support your purpose. This week’s Teaching Tip introduces five add-on like the Google Doc Highlight Tool which allows you to designate a certain color of highlight with a theme. Once done, you can gather those selections, organize them by themes, and share the results with others. Explore more!
Use a learning glass to deliver engaging lectures
The “Learning Glass,” sometimes called a Lightboard, is a large piece of glass ringed by LED lights. When fluorescent marker is applied to the surface of the glass, it catches the light from the LEDs and glows clearly and brightly. An instructor can take advantage of this and draw from behind the glass, allowing the audience to see them and their written work at the same time.
UAF eCampus recently installed a Learning Glass unit, joining institutions such as Northwestern, San Diego State University, and University of Florida. Several UAF instructors have already created videos that are being used this semester.
How to use Augmented Reality in class
Have you been playing Pokémon Go lately? You have probably heard about it if you haven’t actually tried it out for yourself. Apart from cute Pokémons, one of the reasons this game is sensational is because it involves Augmented Reality (AR), which is a digital layer that can be seen on top of the real world through your mobile device, which is super fun.