Come grow with us!

A plant for every desk!

1,000 words

Source: UXperience.com

The Genius of a Good Graphic (TED Talk)

Directly from TED.com:

In a talk that's part history lesson, part love letter to graphics, information designer Tommy McCall traces the centuries-long evolution of charts and diagrams—and shows how complex data can be sculpted into beautiful shapes. "Graphics that help us think faster, or see a book's worth of information on a single page, are the key to unlocking new discoveries," McCall says.

Do you have what it takes?

I snagged this one from the venerable Stephen Downes' OLWeekly and must share his anecdote as introduction to the study:

My first reaction was to roll my eyes when I read the title of this paper, because the designation of 'award winning' professors is unscientific at best. I remained sceptical on reading about the "five different roles: facilitator, course designer, content manager, subject matter expert, and mentor," because I know there's a lot more than that. But persisting with it paid off as it turns out to be an interesting and thorough article. There's a good (though not comprehensive) list of competencies (table 4) and an emphasis on the need for quality online instructors to be strong online learners themselves. The authors write, "Our study emphasizes the need for instructors to maintain a strong willingness to learn and grow in their pedagogical and technology skills. This requires seeing oneself as a lifelong learner, allotting time to learn about online teaching and learning, staying abreast of the latest research, theories, and techniques of teaching online, experimenting with technologies, making mistakes and learning from them." Too true. 

Award-Winning Faculty Online Teaching Practices: Roles and Competencies provides a robust and comprehensive framework for preparing faculty for online teaching and learning. 

UX: User Experience (& Why it Matters)

From the Interaction Design Foundation:

User experience (UX) design is the process of creating products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability, and function.

As educators, it behooves us to think about UX and to apply the basic principles of sound UD (Universal Design) to any coursework we put online whether for an on-ground, hybrid, or asynchronous online course. UX goes beyond but includes issues of ADA accessibility and acknowledges and addresses the vast differences in how humans interact with digital content. It stands to reason that a well designed user experience can only benefit teaching and learning outcomes.

The IDF maintains a working (and dynamic) definition of UX and bountiful guide to its principles and resources at its UX Design site. Worth bookmarking and sharing!

Writing vs. Writing

As a student and educator for the past 20 years or so, I've seen the traditional world of academia both embrace and resist technology on myriad fronts over the decades. This one is a classic struggle between traditionalists and those more progressive faculty who understand that the world is changing around us, whether we participate in that change or not.

I offer this piece for consideration not only by those responsible for teaching English and writing, but by those teaching in all academic fields. All the expertise in the collective field of an(y) academic area is worthless unless one can communicate it effectively to both colleagues within one's field of expertise/study and to a greater public audience, when appropriate.

Tell Me a Smart Story: On Podcasts, Videos, and Websites as Writing Assignments takes the concept of writing to "new millennial" levels with the actual experiences of one instructor whose iterative approach to integrating multimedia as assignment options for students led to breakthroughs for both her and her learners. (Be sure to read the comments on the post as well!)

Skeptics will, I’m sure, insist that podcasts, videos, and websites are not writing assignments.

I would argue that they absolutely are. They require students to organize materials in a similar way and to literally write out their scripts. And just because these arguments are not made in a dry, formal prose style doesn’t mean they aren’t effective or smart. In most cases, I’ve found that students who choose to do one of these nontraditional research projects are making better arguments and end up putting a lot more effort into the overall project. 

Worth a try? For ideas on how to integrate multimedia creation into your course assignments or assessments, contact Tess.Olten@uah.edu.

OER Research Fellowships

For faculty interested in becoming an OER Research Fellow:

We (the Open Education Group) ... are in the process of identifying early career researchers and/or qualified Masters/PhD candidates in the United States and Canada for a fellowship to research topics related to Open Educational Resources (OER).

Successful candidates will publish papers relating to the educational outcomes that take place when OER and/or open pedagogy are substituted for traditional learning materials and approaches. OER Research Fellows will receive funding to attend two conferences, one of which will be the Open Education Conference in Phoenix, AZ, October 30–Nov. 1, 2019. The second conference will be the 2020 OpenEd conference (date and place to be determined).

In addition, Fellows will receive mentoring in OER research and guidance in identifying, researching, and writing specific OER projects. Small stipends will be made available to OER Research Fellows who successfully complete the program; the overall funding support for Fellows will be approximately $5,000 (including conference costs and stipend).

Apply here! The deadline is May 15th.

Panopto: Securing Folders & Videos

Secure Access to Folders and Videos is one in a series of Panopto Advanced Training Webinars and the recording is now available for your review. Captions will be available within a few days. For those who view the video, Panopto seeks feedback on this survey.

And here's a handy extra article on using Panopto's quizzing feature to assess learning in Canvas.

Cool Tool: Draw.IO (*Free!)

Ever been stuck finding a way to create a flow chart or diagram for a report or your course materials? Draw.IO could be the answer to your prayers. It comes with many templates and a fairly robust set of tools for a free program. And it works great with Google Drive! Certainly worth bookmarking and sharing with students and colleagues.

In case you're interested in the nitty gritty, PC Mag gives it to you straight and recommends it among free programs.

Mining USAFacts.org

It happens all the time. I find bits and pieces of great info and resources I want to share with my colleagues when I least expect it. Watching CBS Sunday Morning this past weekend, my ears perked toward the end of this story about Steve Ballmer, ex-Microsoft billionaire recently turned philanthropist at the urging of his wife. Check out this video, which begins at what I consider the "good part" but feel free to rewind if you'd like his whole story:



USA Data has a lot of promise in teaching and learning in virtually every field of study. While government databases have offered access in the past, most require a level of expertise to use and analyze that leave the resource still out of reach for many would-be researchers.

What a great resource to introduce to colleagues and to our own learners!

Mistakes as a Part of Learning

Do your courses allow for the free-range thought and exploration that leads to ... mistakes being made—without penalty to the final learning outcome and quantitative assessment of the entire process?

Be inspired by Phil Plait as he explains how mistakes are integral to learning, discovery, and growth.

Phil Plait was on a Hubble Space Telescope team of astronomers who thought they may have captured the first direct photo of an exoplanet ever taken. But did the evidence actually support that? Follow along as Plait shows how science progresses -- through a robust amount of making and correcting errors. "The price of doing science is admitting when you're wrong, but the payoff is the best there is: knowledge and understanding," he says. (TED.com)

From On-ground to Online: Advice You Need From the Trenches

Where I teach — a small, primarily residential liberal-arts college — there was a time when professors would have avoided online teaching like the plague. Five years ago I wasn’t teaching any online courses. This semester, my entire course load is online. And so is next semester’s. 

What’s interesting is how many of us who work at "traditional" colleges — where dorms and dining halls occupy equal pride of place with classrooms and laboratories — are now trying to figure out how to create an online version of a face-to-face courses we’ve been teaching for years.

From 4 Lessons From Moving a Face-to-Face Course Online at Chronicle Vitae.

Alabama Canvas Users Group

Great news for UAH faculty and staff! Canvas is launching an Alabama Canvas Users Group which will meet for the first time on April 18th in Opelika. ETL staff welcome faculty to join the fun! To register and for full event information, please visit the Alabama Canvas Users Group event page.

From the Canvas event announcement:

We’ll discuss hot topics trending in the Ed tech world, host Alabama specific topics and Canvas-defined sessions. We’ve jam-packed the agenda with awesome sessions from educators, innovators, and thought leaders from in Alabama. 

Plenty of ed-tech goodness—new skills and techniques, networking, collaboration, idea-sharing, and other fun—for Canvas users and non-Canvas users alike. We promise there’s something for everyone! Join us for a full day of learning and awesomeness or risk suffering in everlasting FOMO. 

There is no cost to attend this event and lunch will be provided. Space is limited so reserve your seat now, for a full day of nothing less than awesome.

Doodly has arrived at UAH!

This news has special importance for those using Screencast-o-Matic or Panopto to create videos for their on-ground, hybrid, or online courses or announcements. The team in Online Learning is ready to help faculty take their videos to the next level with added "footage" that we can create in special animated formats that include chalkboard (green, black, or custom), glassboard, or whiteboard, a variety of hands (different genders and ethnicities), myriad modes of writing, fonts, characters, props, scenes ... you name it! We've got it.

And we're ready to help! Email Tess.Olten@uah.edu for more information about Doodly, other video production software and services, and growing your online presence here at UAH!
 

Screencast-o-Matic & Master Courses

Please check out this useful video for two reasons:

• It's great advice. Please contact us for a Master Course if you are building a course for on-ground, hybrid, or online delivery. Even on-ground courses benefit from having a Master Course with all its content online. Not only will it help organize the course from one semester to the next, but you can maintain academic continuity with your classes in case of campus closure to emergencies like weather.
• It's Screencast-o-Matic! This video was produced using a tool new to UAH and available for your use now at no cost to you nor your department! Contact Tess.Olten@uah.edu to find out how to gain access to our premier team license!

The Swiss Army Knife of Search Engines

There was a time when a search engine was simply a search engine. But then along came Google. Fast Company's 40 Incredibly Useful Things You Didn't Know Google Search Could Do is not only an easy and fascinating read, it's worthy of bookmarking for future reference—and sharing!

Are you using Google Drive?

In ReviewGeek.com's Google Drive Has Quietly Become One of the Best Backup Options Around, I'm reminded that not everyone knows about the magic of Google Drive.

Are you still carrying files around on a thumb drive? And has that thumb drive been backed up after every change, deletion, addition to its files? What would happen if the thumb drive were lost or damaged? If you're not already totally dependent on Google Drive, you need to be.

And if you're a Dropbox fan, the ReviewGeek article has great information comparing the two and highlighting the benefits of Google Drive. I've had great experiences with the related mobile apps for all of Drive's components.

Luckily, UAH is a Google school so the account has already been created for you. If you're already logged into the single sign-on system, you can simply visit: Drive.Google.com to get started.

If you need help learning how to use Google Drive to enhance your course development and delivery, please contact me at Tess.Olten@uah.edu to set up an appointment to chat!

Virtual museums!

You and your (online, hybrid, or on-ground) class can now take virtual tours of many museums! Check out Museum Views on Google's Art and Culture platform!

How Can We Help the Forgotten Middle Meet Their Potential? (TED.com)

From TED:

You know the "forgotten middle": they're the students, coworkers and regular people who are often overlooked because they're seen as neither exceptional nor problematic. How can we empower them to reach their full potential? Sharing her work helping young people get to and through college, social activist Danielle R. Moss challenges us to think deeper about who deserves help and attention -- and shows us how to encourage those in the middle to dream big.

What is the NGDLE?

Get used to seeing this acronym: NGDLE.

It stands for Next Generation Digital Learning Environment. Educause explains in 7 Things You Should Read About NGDLE:

NGDLE is an ecosystem of interconnected and flexible applications that support learning through five key domains: interoperability; personalization; analytics, advising, and learning assessment; collaboration; and accessibility and universal design.

Even if we're on the front end of teaching and learning and not actually building these learning networks ourselves, it behooves us to be part of the conversation about how they are designed and implemented and well-versed on how they work and impact teaching and learning.

Educause is hosting a webinar titled, "Sustainable Innovation + Faculty Choice + Student Centered Design = NGDLE" and it's free for any Educause member.* Even if you can't attend, you will receive the link afterward for viewing.  Did you miss the webinar? Watch it here!**

*UAH is a member institution and its employees all qualify for no-cost attendance through our membership.
**If prompted to log in, use your UAH credentials. You can create a free account with an email associated with any school with membership in Educause.

24 Stellar Sites for Free Stock Photography

You're going to want to bookmark this list of 24 Stellar Sites for Free Stock Photography (gleaned from The eLearning Coach)! My handful of favorite sites are on the list, and I'm so happy to now have additional sites to peruse, especially those specializing in vintage photos from the public domain or "quirky" photos with a twist. Each site operates slightly differently, so be sure to read the description for each site before clicking over.

Gratisography features "quirky" photos that can be fun and engaging!

New Year's Goodies from Connie Malamed, the e-Learning Coach

I have been following Connie Malamed on the Web and on social media. She calls herself "The e-Learning Coach" and I have to say—she's got it going on!

She started the New Year off with a decadent 110-link list to all sorts of goodies for the course developer working with digital tools and in an LMS.

Enjoy the PDF guide to e-learning resources, and check out the e-Learning Coach on social media and on her site on the World Wide Web (where you can subscribe to her email newsletter)! In addition to her website and social media presence, she hosts a podcast series and has published several books worth checking out.

Watch out for loopholes!

Happy New Year!

Calvin & Hobbes, cartoonist Bill Watterson

Win a Starbucks gift card!

I received a nice surprise in my email! It's a digital gift card for Starbucks for $10. If you are the first to email me at Tess.Olten@uah.edu with "Starbucks" in the subject line of your message, the gift card is yours—just for reading!

Little "Easter eggs" like these are fun to hide in your syllabi and reading assignments too. They could be extra time on a deadline, or a few extra credit points on an assessment. They add a little adventure to curriculum as well as rewards for engagement!

Status: CLAIMED! Congrats to Terrie Pierce Shull. Thanks for reading!

Panopto 6.0 Webinar

"We invite you and your colleagues to join us for a deep dive into Panopto 6.0. In addition to looking at new headline features such as the new analytics interface, we’ll also show you changes and new settings that you may not have noticed yet.

The webinar is set for Wednesday, December 19th at 11:00am ET (8:00am PT) — to save your spot, just click the link below.

REGISTER HERE 

If you missed the live webinar, you can review the recorded version.

A Vision of Students Today

This video was made as a class project in the Cultural Anthropology class taught by Dr. Michael Wesch in 2007! Imagine how many things have changed in the last 11 years, especially with technologies like social media, mobile technologies, virtual reality and simulation technology. Where do you go to keep up?

Free images from NASA!

NASA has made their entire media library freely accessible and openly licensed.

"No matter if you enjoy taking or just watching images of space, NASA has a treat for you. They have made their entire collection of images, sounds, and video available and publicly searchable online. It’s 140,000 photos and other resources available for you to see, or even download and use it any way you like."

National Distance Learning Week (NDLW): NEXT WEEK!

National Distance Learning Week (NDLW) starts this coming Monday, November 2 and runs all weeks with virtual events available every day. In addition, UAH's Online Learning team will kick off the celebration with a table on the Charger Union lawn on Monday, Nov. 2. We will be distributing final exam goody bags with literature about UAH's online learning courses and programs to students.

On Thursday, November 8, over fifty registered faculty will enjoy with an all-day NDLW conference that focuses on myriad topics related to online learning and technology integration in the classroom. Online Learning wishes to thank representatives of the Student Success Center, Professional Studies, Academic Technology and faculty/staff from nearly every college who came forward to present or assist with the planning of the event.

We look forward to seeing you!

Digital Transformation in Higher Ed: What is it, and why should you care?

LIVE WEBINAR: Thursday, 11/8 at 1 pm CDT

This free live webinar hosted by Educause gives a glimpse into both the present state of and future view into the digital transformation of higher education. It should be of particular interest to administrators in leadership as well as any faculty or staff member interested in the issues around academic technology integration and digitization of services and support for students, faculty, staff, and administration.

Registration for Digital Transformation in Higher Ed: What is it, and why should you care? is free to any who work for UAH or other Educause member organizations. Online Learning/ETL is happy to host a group discussion around a viewing of the recorded webinar for work groups, colleges, or departments. Please contact Tess.Olten@uah.edu for more information.

NOTE: You may have to register for a free account with Educause in order to register for the live event. This is a one-time thing and you will only need to log in for future event registrations.

Quizzes.Next: New Canvas Assessment Tools are ready for testing!

In late May, I posted a sneak-peek into Quizzes.Next, the next generation of assessment tools in the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS). ETL is ready to begin testing these tools in our LMS test environment! Any faculty with specific assessment challenges using the current tool set are encouraged to work with Online Learning to explore these new tools and test their limits.

For those who missed the sneak peek, here's another peek!

Most faculty who teach in the Canvas learning management system (LMS) are familiar with the "Quizzes" tools and features for creating a variety of surveys, quizzes, tests, and exams. What faculty may not have yet heard is that Canvas is taking assessment to the next level with the release of Quizzes.Next tools, currently available only in the UAH test environment after being released this past summer.

Explore the links below but know that this tool will not immediately replace the current quiz features, and that it can be used in any course, even in combination with the traditional quiz features within the same course. Quizzes.Next is simply a new set of additional tools that support a wider variety of assessment strategies.

Quizzes.Next is not yet active in the UAH instance of Canvas. When we do implement it, faculty will have plenty of time to explore the tools and decide which are right for you and your course, curriculum, and assessment style. After a long period of running both old and new tools in conjunction with one another, the old set of tools will eventually be phased out. But this process will allow for plenty of time for testing, feedback, improvements, and integration into course assessments. For those familiar with the current quiz features in Canvas, this feature comparison chart might prove helpful in determining how best to begin testing. For a peek into how it all looks and feels, check out the video instructor guide for Quizzes.Next.

You can begin exploring Quizzes.Next with these links:

• Quizzes.Next Guide (Instructors, Students)
• Quizzes.Next User Group (Canvas hosted)
• Quizzes.Next FAQ

Faculty interested in testing the Quizzes.Next tools and features are encouraged to contact Tess Olten (Tess.Olten@uah.edu) for more information.

Here's an extended introduction and preview from the Canvas folks when Quizzes.Next was introduced at the Instructure conference in 2016:

Free Starbucks Gift Card

I just received a nice surprise in my email! It's a digital gift card for Starbucks for $10. If you are the first to email me at Tess.Olten@uah.edu with "Starbucks" in the subject line of your message, the gift card is yours—just for reading!

Little "Easter eggs" like these are fun to hide in your syllabi and reading assignments too. They could be extra time on a deadline, or a few extra credit points on an assessment. They add a little adventure to curriculum as well as rewards for engagement!

Status: See 12/14/18 post to see if this prize has been claimed.

Visual Thinking Strategies

Utne Reader's book excerpt "Visual Thinking Strategies: Learning How to Teach with Art" (Philip Yenawine) offers relevant and insightful advice to anyone whose work involves teaching and learning, regardless of your subject matter or area of academic expertise.

After a great deal of thought—while digesting developmental research and theory by cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen and others—we realized the problem. What MOMA visitors really needed was what Wyla needs: not answers but permission to be puzzled and to think. Consent to use their powerful eyes and intelligent minds. Time to noodle and figure things out. The go-ahead to use what they already know to reflect on what they don’t: the first steps in learning. Again, not answers but ways to figure out things on their own. ... 

... Here’s one way to think about our conundrum: our teaching seemed to engage audiences, but not enable them. Although attentive and appreciative, visitors still didn’t learn viewing skills, facts, or ideas; we didn’t even empower them to be keen observers. 

This led to confusion: when you consistently command the attention of viewers, and when they praise and thank you for your efforts, it is hard to face that, when tested later, they retain little of what you taught.

How Can I Keep Students Engaged with Instructor Presence?

This Magna 20-Minute Mentor video called How Can I Keep Students Engaged with Instructor Presence? is available now in an entire video series on engagement and creating community.

Explore the importance of faculty presence for student success in distance education. Learn how to analyze, evaluate, and improve your level of instructor presence in your courses. (Includes supplemental guides and transcript.)

Does the link not work? You must be logged into the Magna 20-Minute Mentor site in order to view it. Everyone who works for UAH has free access to the Magna 20-minute Mentor Series. It's easy to register to gain unfettered access to quick "bite sized" video mentoring that's easy to fit into any schedule! Learn how to register on the Online Learning Faculty Resource Site.

The OER Struggle

What do faculty do when they can't find the curriculum they need in the OER community? Some are creating their own! And this is no straight text e-textbook either. Take a peek!

Composition class is about reading and writing, but the iBook allows students with different learning styles to engage with the material, noted Jason LaMar, supervisor of instructional technology innovations in the Digital Education and Instructional Services division. "There are a lot of video clips and audio segments, as well as interactive pieces that are tactile," he added. "Tapping into all those learning styles was a huge benefit of the platform."

Nip it in the bud!

Not everyone is old enough to remember Barney Fife's repeated exclamations to "Nip it! Nip it in the bud!" when addressing various issues that face sheriffs and deputies. Most who aren't old enough have no doubt heard it from various sources over the years.

Purdue University is addressing the problem of students distracted by online viewing in classrooms in a novel approach. Purdue is throttling their bandwidth! Of course, this wouldn't prevent a student with an unlimited data plan on their phone from tapping into the streaming services, but it's an interesting traditional approach to the newer problems presented by mobile technologies.

Purdue University students who were hoping to sneak in an episode of Queer Eye during their economics lecture are out of luck. The university recently debuted a pilot program that restricts access to five popular streaming sites -- Netflix, Hulu, Steam, Apple Updates and iTunes -- during class time in four of its biggest lecture halls.

 

What Baby George Taught Me About Learning • Dr. Michael Wesch

If you have not yet been "introduced" to Dr. Michael Wesch, you're in for a treat. I'll be posting more content around his work, but this is a great introduction both to him and to his perspectives on teaching and learning in the Digital Age, from the vantage point of a cultural anthropologist.

If you find him and his perspective interesting, check out his free open online course in Cultural Anthropology. If you decide to enroll let me know—I couldn't resist enrolling myself!

OLC Scholarship Opportunities & Awards

Applications are now being accepted for the Women in Digital Learning Leadership Scholarship and the Bruce Chaloux Scholarship for Early Career Excellence. The scholarships include OLC Accelerate 2018 conference registration.

The OLC Accelerate Conference will be held November 13–16 in Orlando, Florida.

Submissions are welcome until September 1, 2018. Winners will be recognized at OLC Accelerate in November.

Submit your application now!

And while you're at it, are you or your colleagues doing outstanding work in the field of online teaching and learning? Currently, five categories of OLC Awards of Excellence are recognized. Learn more about each award and start the nomination process. Nominations are open until September 4, 2018.

OLC welcomes you to share techniques, strategies, and practices in online education that have worked for you! Learn more and submit your effective practice. The deadline for submissions is August 30, 2018.

Award winners will be recognized at OLC Accelerate 2018 in November in Orlando.

The Syllabus Challenge

It's finally fall! While it may still technically be summer and our sandals and shorts are still on our closet floors instead of being stored away, those in education as either students, faculty, or staff know that fall begins when the new semester starts. For those of us at UAH, that is this week!

As students file into classrooms and log into course shells, the first thing they typically seek is the syllabus—the blueprint to their success in our specific course. But rather than reading the syllabus in its entirety, it's often scanned, skimmed, or overlooked completely by students. You know the ones—they will email in a panic at 11:45 pm about a due date that was clearly communicated in the syllabus. They'll act surprised that you don't allow plagiarism in your writing course. They'll wonder why you're not in your office to answer the phone at 11:45 pm, forcing them to email you and wait for an answer.

For as long as syllabi have existed, there have been those students who refuse to read them. They are the equivalent of road maps and user's manuals for some people who simply can't be bothered to sit and read a linear course plan front to back. The good news is that it's a common enough problem that there are some really great ideas we can borrow from each other.

In the Chronicle of Higher Education's "Is Anybody Reading the Syllabus?" "Easter eggs" or "hidden gems" are offered as a solution for engaging students with their course syllabi. While I have found that Easter eggs work best if tied to a reward like extra credit or additional time on a deadline, there are myriad strategies for making them work in your course and gradebook.

The CHE piece also addresses engaging students by assigning them the task of designing or creating parts of the syllabus (thereby, course) such as assessment strategies. Professor Lisl Walsh details how she invited her students into the process of designing their learning experience by sharing particular choices to be made with each class of students. Their buy-in to the consensus-based syllabus meant a deeper engagement with the material, and better outcomes not only for students, but for her in terms of her SIEs at semester end.

With the syllabus serving not only as a blueprint, but also a sort of contract with your class of learners, it's worth considering how well your syllabus design is working for you. Do you get an inordinate number of emails from confused students? Do your students hurt their scores by not following directions or processes that were clearly delineated in the syllabus? Do they complain on their SIEs that you seem buried or confused by your own course content? It might be time for a syllabus overhaul.

Here are a few tips that are essential tasks for every single semester:

• Read your own syllabus front to back. There may be some surprises lurking in there even for you! Most syllabi are simply "rolled" forward rather than being written anew each semester. There could be information in your syllabus that refers to outdated policies or resources that no longer exist.
• Have a centralized syllabus and delete all other versions. Your syllabus can live in Google Drive and be linked throughout a course or LMS. By centralizing it to ONE version with links, your students will only see the most current version every time they click the link.
• If you make a change mid-semester, be sure to make an announcement. Students who read the syllabus as assigned don't like surprise changes after they've familiarized themselves with policies and due dates. It's okay to make a change, but give your students advance notice and an announcement to be sure everyone is on the same page.
• Delete all outdated or irrelevant material completely. Your online students don't need to know your policy for classroom behavior, and your on-ground students don't need to know your online policies. 
• Keep it simple. A streamlined, well organized syllabus is easier to read and navigate. Adding graphics, Easter eggs/hidden gems, or opportunities for extra credit will make it even more engaging.
• Keep it current. All course schedules and due dates must be updated every single semester. And don't forget to check every link. 
• Make it ADA accessible. You don't always know when you have students with disabilities who are navigating your course with adaptive equipment. Ensuring that your syllabus (and other course content) is ADA accessible helps ensure that every student has the same access to course documents.

Not sure where to start? Schedule a meeting with the instructional designers in Online Learning, and we'll be happy to help you get started.

MORE READING

The 3 Essential Functions of Your Syllabus, part 1
The 3 Essential Functions of Your Syllabus, part 2

(Truly) Free photos and graphics

We are often so overwhelmed with the complexities of building courses that we don't take the time to make them beautiful and aesthetically engaging. A captivating graphic or photo can actually improve engagement of online learners with the curriculum.

Wading through general Google searches (even Creative Commons) looking for the right license (no copyright, no limits on usage, no need to attribute) can be burdensome. Enter sites like Pixabay and Pexels. There are over 130 sites that allow you to use freely any graphic in their collection. Pixabay and Pexels have so much I rarely have to look further.

Photos or graphics don't have to informational to help engagement. Even a few ornamental graphics can make learners more inclined to stick with the course.

As a reminder, we should never upload a graphic or photo without alt-text for screenreaders. This helps keep our content fully ADA accessible!

Respondus Lockdown Browser & Respondus Monitor Updates

Respondus Lockdown Browser and Respondus Monitor updates have been announced and there are plenty of chances to get up to speed before the semester starts. Watch the quick video below for updates on Monitor and peruse these Respondus webinars offered in August to orient faculty new to the products as well as update those who are veteran Respondus users.

Storytelling and Instructional Design

Dr. Northrup didn't know what he was going to do. His SIE's were dimming, his plate was already full to overflowing, and now he has to teach his ancient history course online. He already had trouble engaging students with the content in the physical classroom, and he had no idea how to begin designing an online course that would fully engage his students.

See what I did there? You can do it too! Don't overlook the value of storytelling in instructional design. Here's your introduction!

Comics in Coursework

I just discovered Pixton comic maker and I have to say, my head is spinning with ideas on how to use these in teaching and learning. Pixton comes at a cost, but it's a low one well worth considering either for your own coursework, or for your students to use in the production of learning activities and assessments. And it's just plain fun!

You can create avatars that are very customizable. This isn't like Second Life level of customization, but you could approximate most looks. Bodies can be posed, backgrounds and props can be added from libraries or uploaded (which I haven't tried yet). It's well worth exploring! Let us know if you do something interesting with Pixton and we'll showcase your work!

Additional Reading/Viewing

Why I Teach Comics in Higher Education (PDF file)

You are fluent in this language (and you didn't know it)

"Without realizing it, we're fluent in the language of pictures, says illustrator Christoph Niemann. In a charming talk packed with witty, whimsical drawings, Niemann takes us on a hilarious visual tour that shows how artists tap into our emotions and minds -- all without words."

Writing Effective Quiz Feedback

Canvas allows for feedback to be automatically given to students who answer specific questions both correctly and incorrectly. It's a bit more of a chore in the original design of the quiz or exam, but even template auto-feedback can stand to have some sensitivity and neutrality woven in to the response.

e-Learning Heroes highlight a quick five-tip list of best practice [5 min. read] for giving feedback to students on quizzes and exams.

And if you've got only four and a half minutes more to spare, check out this informative introduction to the wonders of formative assessment, which we love to talk about!

Screencast-o-Matic has arrived at UAH!

UAH has a new tool and the staff in Online Learning are excited to start spreading the word! We now have a site license in place for Screencast-o-Matic, a tool that combines webcam and screen recording, editing, captioning, and streaming all in one package. It even integrates with Canvas!

You can learn more about features and functionality on the Screencast-o-Matic website. We have the team premium tier of service, which means we all get all the tools and functionality they have to offer!

In order to access the site license, however, you will need to sign up for an orientation session to get started. The next one will be held on Friday, July 13 from 10 am to noon in the new Faculty Resource Center (FRC) located in 129 Shelby Center (SST). You can sign up now!

Salmon Library Multimedia Lab

Not everyone knows about the new Salmon Library Multimedia Lab located in Salmon Library at the heart of the UAH campus. Available to students, staff, or faculty to use at no cost, the lab is a spacious state-of-the-art lab for creating audio, video, and multimedia using hardware and software that produces professional results.


Multimedia production is ideal for online or on-ground teaching and learning, promotional video, or for assignments and assessments in academic coursework.

Everyone at UAH should know about the Multimedia Lab! Stop by for a visit next time your'e at Salmon Library and ask for a tour. It's an amazing asset for student, staff, and faculty alike!

OPEN LAB hours are back in the new FRC!

Online Learning is pleased to announce Summer Open Lab Hours in the new Faculty Resource Center (FRC) located in the Shelby Center (SST). Open lab hours provide faculty who are working on developing or redesigning courses in the Canvas learning management system (LMS) the opportunity to work on their courses in an open computer lab away from their phones and busy departments, and just an arm's reach away from over-the-shoulder, just-in-time support and assistance from a team of instructional designers and academic technologists. Faculty who have attended open lab hours have exclaimed that it's their most productive time spent in Canvas!

Our Open Lab Hours run officially every Wednesday from noon to 2:00 pm (June/July), but faculty who can't make it at that time are encouraged to book an appointment in the lab or one-on-one consultation with an instructional designer by emailing OnlineLearning@uah.edu to get started.

SNEAK PEEK!

Watch for news and details next week regarding the new site license for Screencast-o-Matic, the video production tool designed to streamline work and produce very high quality instructional or promotional videos for use in online courses.

We'll also be announcing the date of an ETL Open House celebration for the new Enhanced Teaching & Learning (ETL) located in Shelby Center (SST) to be held this fall.

Fake news is nothing new!

It said that "victors write history" and when we hear this statement, we often nod knowingly and passively ruminate the enormity of the task of finding the absolute truth about any issue or subject, from history to medicine to science. With increasing frequency, the mainstream news is full of revelations about scientists who cheat the scientific research process and manipulate data to their own (or their research sponsors') ends. It's easy to think that these problems are new because, unless we run in highly academic circles, we remain largely unaware of any controversy surrounding information in print.

In the past, most of us opened a print encyclopedia with confidence that its contents were irrefutable. To a lesser degree, the same was true with periodicals like magazines and newspapers. It never occurred to many, even very learned and educated folks, that historical accounts may have been swayed by individual perspective, opinion, or bias. Scientific facts seemed fairly static and rarely changed. Medical news was rarely challenged by public opinion, and if controversy occurred, it did so out of the eye of the mainstream in academic circles until new truths emerged. And if Truth did change, it was always with the deeper understanding that discovery brings forth, typically without apparent political, religious, financial, or social biases.

But now we know better. Now we know that the idea of "fake news" is really an age-old habit of misinformation we've historically been able to sweep under the rug—until the development of a democratized Internet that allows and even promotes unprecedented forms of peer review, public scrutiny, and accountability for process as much as for outcome. Without pointing fingers, I can think of numerous major issues in current news regarding the history taught in schools, the viability of current medical advice, or the validity of economic models that produce questionable results, depending on one's perspective. While social media has had a major role in spreading "fake news," it has also played a major role in holding media outlets accountable for the veracity and integrity of the news and information they share. It seems that innovation always brings a double-edged sword into the cost/benefit analysis. But now is no time to surrender the media to the outlaws and pirates!

Few would refute the notion that it's of increasing importance for our students to know how to navigate, vet, and curate information. But it's becoming increasingly apparent that we all (students and professionals alike) also need to know how to publish and promote content that is accurate, true, and withstands the tests of peer review, public scrutiny, and the various benchmarks one must meet in the entire spectrum of communication in academic and professional fields.

Where to begin? Contact OnlineLearning@uah.edu for help with producing academic content or for guidance on how you can help your students become more proficient in information literacy.

Additional Reading/Viewing

How to Navigate Questionable Information (a 4-video TED series)
This Encyclopedia is a "fake news" buster for the Ages (Fast Company,  S. Melendez)

SNEAK PEEK! Quizzes.Next: Canvas takes Assessment to the Next Level

Most faculty who teach in the Canvas learning management system (LMS) are familiar with the "Quizzes" tools and features for creating a variety of surveys, quizzes, tests, and exams. What faculty may not have yet heard is that Canvas is on the brink of taking assessment to the next level with the release of Quizzes.Next tools, currently in beta testing and expected to be widely released this summer, after a few years of beta testing and user feedback.

Explore the links below but know that this tool will not immediately replace the current quiz features, and that it can be used (or not, as you wish) in any course, even in combination with the traditional quiz features within the same course once it has been released. Quizzes.Next is simply a new set of additional tools that support a wider variety of assessment strategies. Faculty will have plenty of time to explore the tools and decide which (if any) are right for you and your course, curriculum, and assessment style. After a long period of running both old and new tools in conjunction with one another, the old set of tools will eventually be phased out. But this process will allow for plenty of time for testing, feedback, improvements, and integration into courses assessments.

You can begin exploring Quizzes.Next with these links:

• Quizzes.Next Guide (Instructors, Students)
• Quizzes.Next User Group (Canvas hosted)
• Quizzes.Next FAQ

And here's a sneak preview from the Canvas folks when Quizzes.Next was introduced at the Instructure conference in 2016:

The Brave New World of Online Learning: Amy Collier at TEDxStanford

Still not sure if online learning represents more hype or hope? Amy Collier has a fresh perspective about open online learning and its role in education.

"... (T)he words 'open' and 'online learning' are probably some of the most abused words in education right now. By 'open' I mean that at its very core it should be accessible to as many people as possible. But that’s just the beginning. Because I think 'accessible' can be pushed to reimaginable, editable, changeable, so that ideas can continue to grow. By 'online' I mean that web technologies can connect people to information and to each other. And by 'learning' I mean that it needs to significantly impact the way people think, what they do, what they say."

[Transcript]

The Era of Online Learning: A TEDx Talk by Niema Moshiri

"In this talk, Niema Moshiri talks about his experience as a student in a massive classroom, and how this to his goal of rethinking education.  As classroom sizes continue to increase, he illustrates the benefits of adaptive online education as a replacement for the traditional classroom."

Designing for Accessibility: A TEDx Talk by UDL Advocate Elise Roy

TEDx speaker Elise Roy makes the case for designing environments and tools with disabilities in mind from the start. This ensures that such areas and tools are accessible and usable for everyone. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) helps designers think inclusively from the very start.

"I've been a design thinker for nearly all my life. ... My constant need to adapt has made me a great aviator and problem solver. And I've often had to do this within limitations and constraints. ... Design thinkers often seek out extreme situations because that often informs some of their best designs. ... You are a designer. Everyone is. ... Let people like me help you. Let people with disabilities help you look sideways, and in the process solve some of the greatest problems. "

Source

KQED News / WCET-WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies

Additional Reading

Improving Accessibility Often Falls to Faculty. Here's What They Can Do.

“Eskridge and Kwong ... underline the importance of faculty teaming up to create more accessible learning materials.  ... 'I can't stress enough that it’s the importance of community when we are trying to solve a problem.'”

Quiz Security in Canvas: Maximizing Security to Minimize Cheating

This Canvas guide to maximizing quiz security to minimize cheating aggregates all the tools and advice into one handy reference point for setting up quiz-style assessments in the Learning Management System (LMS). Properly formatted, quizzes are an effective means of both summative and formative assessment, depending on how they are designed.

For help designing assessments or knowing which tools are most appropriate for your classes, contact instructional designers in Online Learning by dropping a line to OnlineLearning@uah.edu today!

Teaching with Wikipedia

From Teaching with Wikipedia: A High Impact Open Educational Practice:

"Supporting higher education instructors who teach with Wikipedia is Wiki Education‘s specialty. We offer free resources for instructors to do this, which take the form of instructional design consultation, assignment management software, tutorials about how to contribute to Wikipedia, and print resources about editing in particular disciplines. These tools all come together in our Dashboard, a free and open-source web application that we consistently improve. In fact, we’ve built a volunteer development community around that continual improvement, and we engage a number of newcomers in this tech development."

“I call my senators, I vote, I donate to the ACLU, and now, I edit Wikipedia."

Future of Online Learning

In the Future of College Looks Like the Future of Retail, Jeffrey Selingo purports, "There are undeniable advantages, as traditional colleges have long known, to learning in a shared physical space. Recognizing this, some online programs are gradually incorporating elements of the old-school, brick-and-mortar model—just as online retailers such as Bonobos and Warby Parker use relatively small physical outlets to spark sales on their websites and increase customer loyalty. Perhaps the future of higher education sits somewhere between the physical and the digital."

Similar to e-commerce firms, online-degree programs are beginning to incorporate elements of an older-school, brick-and-mortar model.

Special thanks to Dr. David Johnson for this contribution to our blog!

OER Stewardship

Proponents of the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement are passionate and committed to the precepts of open access and free distribution of educational assets for the benefit of the masses. But how is such an egalitarian community ensured its sustainability, especially in an educational landscape crawling with private industry profiteers who are incorporating OER into their own pay-to-play offerings?

This brief overview of the CARE movement and considerations for committing to its success are a worthy read for anyone teaching online or considering doing so in the near future.

For more information on OER, how to find and/or produce it, and how UAH instructional designers can help you carve out your place in the OER community, please contact OnlineLearning@uah.edu.

The values expressed by the CARE Framework support a hopeful vision for the future of OER and education, positively impacting not only issues of access and affordability, but also the seemingly intractable issues of equity and inclusion. Thus the CARE Framework is meant to be applied by all individuals, organizations, and institutions who share a stake in the field’s long-term success and sustainability. This includes individuals who create or adapt OER for their own teaching and learning purposes; nonprofit OER publishers and libraries; commercial OER publishers; as well as educational technology vendors looking to incorporate OER into their products or services. CAREFramework.org

Formative Assessment? ONLINE?!

Yes, it IS possible to use formative assessment tools and strategies to guide the teaching and learning process in asynchronous, online course environments. Formative assessment focuses on FEEDBACK and requires tools that provide full-loop feedback in real-time to make sure that responses are timely and relevant.

Want to learn more about how formative assessment can fit in with your on-ground or online class? Contact Online.Learning@uah.edu for a personal consultation and course review.