LTDC Virtual Showcase 2015 – Thursday Schedule

Biological science courses typically are offered with both lecture and laboratory components instructing students in basic course concepts and developing basic laboratory techniques. Often, in an effort to assist students, laboratory sessions are simplified into stand-alone units that are largely passive exercises and may feel divorced from the process of discovery. In an effort to enhance laboratory practice and relevance, I have altered the laboratory sessions in introductory biological science courses from many single, stand-alone sessions into a multi-faceted exercise that requires students to develop laboratory techniques needed to resolve the exercise, and engage in the process of scientific discovery. During this process students determine the procedures, protocols and time-line needed to resolve the hypothesis under consideration as they apply multiple laboratory skills over several sessions. In developing a discovery- focused laboratory, the instructor must select topics of relevance, and of sufficient scope, to allow students to experience and practice core laboratory techniques. The reward for students is experience of scientific discovery process and development of laboratory technique. In sum, this approach to laboratory study draws on the role of human curiosity in motivating the learning process.

University of Venus: Curiosity and the Ideal (Academic) Workplace

The case study for this approach is an introductory microbiology course. Students are supplied with the required laboratory resources, instructed in basic concepts of microbiology, and challenged to isolate and identify each bacterial species from a cocktail containing many types of bacteria. Sufficient resources and training are provided to the students, they, through use of course materials and computer-based instructional resources, must determine the laboratory protocols and the coordination of these protocols to successfully complete laboratory assignment over 8 laboratory sessions. Overall, students have found this approach to laboratory learning engaging, challenging and fun.

Faculty often ask why it’s necessary to post learning outcomes in syllabi, reasoning that, “students don’t read them anyway.” Granted, students have been conditioned to ignore any information that’s not absolutely needed to pass exams. Yet, instructors have the ability to breathe life into outcomes by designing a series of metacognitive exercises that challenge students to track their own progress towards outcome achievement. This presentation will suggest easy-to-implement strategies for coaching students to take ownership of course outcomes and embrace a culture of reflective practice.

One suggested strategy involves a continuous process of reflection on 4-5 essential questions throughout the term. Whether formally—in a portfolio, journal or learning log—or just in their thoughts, students align learning outcomes to course readings, activities, discussions and assessments. In effect, faculty empower students to take ownership of their own learning.

Through continual reflection, students learn to recognize that student learning outcomes (SLOs) aren’t merely bureaucratic requirements that instructors are obliged to post in their syllabi, but self-assessment tools that encourage them to apply what they’ve learned in the course to life after graduation (e.g. facts, methods, or perspectives on how the world works).

Students with intellectual and or developmental disabilities (I/DD) are incredibly underrepresented in higher education degree-seeking programs. Due to lacking compliance of Section 508 standards and poor practices in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) strategies in an online delivery format, there are increased challenges for I/DD students to gain access to associate’s and bachelor’s degree programs. Research has shown that due to the massive underrepresentation of I/DD students in associate’s and bachelor’s degree programs, underemployment, unemployment and lack of competitive wage opportunities are a consistent barrier for individuals with I/DD to gain independent lifestyles. Institutions of higher education have been motivated in creating accessible virtual classrooms for physical, visual, motor and auditory related disabilities, however, web accessibility is rarely reviewed for intellectual or developmental disabilities because of an assumption that I/DD students are not interested in obtaining post-secondary degrees. Recent studies have shown that this assumption is inaccurate and I/DD students are willing and able to earn degrees in post-secondary institutions. This presentation will discuss how utilizing universal design in learning principles in an online educational setting will engage higher education administrators, faculty, instructional designers and academic support staff to create a more inclusive learning environment that will allow I/DD students to practice and have exposure to necessary skills in web-based information delivery systems. Increasing access and inclusion to online educational opportunities for I/DD students promotes employable skills in competitive wage settings to reduce underemployment for a specific population.

Service learning is a powerful tool to foster critical thinking, engage your students, and promote civic engagement. E-service learning is a service learning program or project conducted online. This format allows students limited by work obligations and geography to participate. This session will introduce some formats for online service learning, some common partnerships, and the practices of other faculty.

To prepare new students to be successful online learners, University of Wisconsin at Superior Distance Learning Center started to offer a 100% online, student self-paced orientation program delivered in the Desire2Learn (D2L) Learning Environment in 2010. The user-friendly and user-centered design of the program made it’s possible for the students to acquire an authentic online learning experience transferable to the upcoming online courses they will be taking. The students not only learn how to use different D2L tools by actually using them to complete different assignments, but start building connections to the campus and program as well as useful learning and academic support resources. As the instructional designer and lead instructor for the orientation program, the presenter will share what he learned in the past 5 years and how this orientation program helped the UW-Superior’s online program become one of the nation’s top ranked online Bachelor’s Programs.

Recognizing that technology is an important and integral component of learning and teaching, educators in different disciplines have utilized various forms of media to deliver information and engage students. They have also discussed benefits and limitations of using technology in instructional activities. With a focus on a specific form of media WordPress, this presentation aims to further explore how use of media may foster or impede student learning in some classes and discusses the implications of using social media in pedagogical practices.

The presentation is based on a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) project that aims to engage students in Team-Based Learning by using WordPress as the medium of a collaborative project in Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies. It discusses pros and cons of using of WordPress and blogging student teamwork, collaborative research and writing by providing quantitative and qualitative assessments and the instructor’s reflections.

Although perceptual analysis of voice is commonly used for assessing voice disorders and tools used for perceptual analysis are valid and reliable, it has been under scrutiny due to individual listener variability. Authors have suggested accurate perceptual voice assessment requires “extensive professional experience” which raises important questions regarding how much listening practice is needed to best train students in perceptual voice assessment. Listening practice is a common tool used in training students however, no direct investigations have been done to determine the amount of practice needed for students to enter the profession and competently conduct perceptual assessments in patients with voice disorders.

To determine the amount of practice needed to improve graduate students’ perceptual assessment skills of breathiness, strain, roughness and overall severity in patients with dysphonia, second year graduate students in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders at UWRF were recruited and randomly assigned to three groups: no practice (0 samples per week), low frequency practice (5 samples per week) and high frequency practice (10 samples per week).

Audio samples were delivered to students in these groups using Kaltura MediaSpace in the quizzing tool of the University’s course management system, D2L.

Student ratings of 10 preselected samples were used as a baseline; the same samples were used as a probe after the 5 week intervention phase. Students practiced listening to randomly assigned voice samples for a 5week intervention phase, during this phase, immediate feedback was provided after they listened and completed the CAPE-V form for each practice sample to ensure the practice was meaningful.

With the advancement of technology and the struggle for engagement in classrooms, it is more important than ever to engross students in rigorous, scholarly communication. All too often, classroom conversations become mundane and a regurgitation of assigned readings. Using Twitter can engage students in deeper thought and allow the freedom to synthesize new ideas as well as freely express opinions. Students are now more adept than ever to using smart phones and mobile devices to engage in the world around them. Now is the time to engage students by showing that we, as educators, care enough to bring education to them. It is time we start to dive in and show our students how they can use this social media powerhouse to build a professional learning network, engage and share in scholarly discourse as well as develop their digital literacy. With Twitter, students can begin to connect the world around them with the concepts they are learning in the classroom. These connections are what takes the theory we teach and creates concrete connections to material students only deem abstract. This presentation will show how I, an instructor in the Institute for Professional Educators Development, have used Twitter and the necessary technology to create a running feed of my Twitter as a widget on my homepage in Desire2Learn. I will explain how I incorporate Twitter into my syllabus and online discussions to encourage scholarly connections to the world and allow students to present their ideas from their findings on Twitter. By using hashtags, my class has been able to communicate more thoughtfully and engage in conversations beyond class time and class material. After having incorporated Twitter in my Education class for a semester, I will discuss the qualitative feedback from students regarding their feelings toward the social media integration.

Gamification in higher education continues to draw the attention of instructors who wish to engage and motivate their students to learn more effectively. PBLs—Points, Badges, and Leaderboards—are common approaches for introducing game elements into courses, and badges in particular are “being increasingly used as a rewards system for learners” (2014 NMC Horizon Report 42). In our presentation, we will showcase our use of badges—which we call “achievements”—in both a blended undergraduate business writing course and an online undergraduate/graduate foundations of research course at UW-Milwaukee. The purpose of using achievements in our courses was to reinforce the habits that make our students successful and to reward students for consistent performance on activities and assessments. Students could earn achievements by attending class regularly, visiting the course site daily, interacting in online discussions beyond the minimum, earning high marks on assignments and quizzes, participating during in-class discussions, and winning in-class games. If students earned a set number of achievements throughout the semester, then they received extra credit for the course that was applied to their final grade. We used the Brightspace (D2L) Grades area to visually display the achievements that students earned as well as the remaining available achievements. In this session, we will also discuss our process for creating badges, our methods for tracking student progress, the survey data collected from students, the lessons we learned, and the future directions for achievements in our courses.

There is a rapidly increasing range of academic diversity in higher education, yet many instructors continue to assume that traditional instructional strategies and course designs meet the needs of all learners. How do you ensure that all students are engaged and learning within the online learning environment? The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework firmly supports the idea that “one size does not fit all” when it comes to teaching and learning. The UDL approach considers the widest possible range of learners during the initial design of curriculum, reducing the need to make time-consuming modifications later. This is done through multiple means of representation of content, multiple means of expression, and engagement.

This presentation will focus on how student choice and scaffolding are used in an online course in order to allow students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in a multitude of ways. A critical consideration in course design was to maximize the learning outcomes for all learners without lowering standards or expectations. Participants in this session will see how the instructor has utilized Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in her decisions to allow students choices in how they demonstrate mastery of the course objectives. A foundational framework for design considerations will be provided as well as specific examples of tools used to motivate students, assess their learning, and track progress throughout the course.

What would happen if three organizations joined together to develop a professional development model that was focused on sharing successful online teaching practices from the perspective of faculty members? This presentation highlights the collaboration of three institutional partners: University of Wisconsin-Extension, Division of Continuing Education, Outreach & E-Learning; University of California, Irvine, Distance Learning Center; and University of Washington, Professional & Continuing Education. These three organizations are part of a larger group of institutions committed to working together on a wide range of online learning initiatives. Representatives from the three universities met to develop a platform for faculty to share their online teaching experiences with other faculty. The result is a collaborative website that showcases how experienced online faculty design, develop, and teach online courses. A collection of instructional overview videos and topic-focused interview videos and tip sheets provide answers to the following questions:

1. Where do I start?
2. What happens to my lecture?
3. What will my course look like?
4. How do I communicate with my students?
5. How do students communicate with each other?
6. How do I check for understanding in an online course?
7. How do I grade online discussions?
8. How do I keep students engaged online?

In this session, we will demonstrate creating a Blackboard Collaborate meeting in the My UW System portal and D2L. We’ll also talk about the basics of moderating a meeting.

Implementation of learning analytics has the potential to optimize learning environments for teachers and students alike. Learning analytics leverages digital data to help instructors effectively monitor student learning activity and subsequently provide more timely and frequent personal interventions. Five UW System schools (Madison, Platteville, Colleges Online, Green Bay, and Milwaukee) have been engaged in an early stage pilot of Brightspace’s Student Success System (S3). S3 is predicated on robust predictive algorithms and produces sophisticated data visualizations. S3 allows for: i) identification of predictors of course success; ii) early identification of at-risk students; and iii) establishment of early and frequent interventions strategies.

This virtual session will provide a high level overview of the Student Success System including model creation and data visualization; talk about evaluation results of the 3-year pilot; and discuss lessons learned for future application of learning analytics.

Bringing guest speakers into the classroom can be a challenge due to travel restrictions, time and scheduling issues. The use of D2L Online Rooms allows guest speakers to conduct classroom presentations from their desk. Another advantage is that the presentation can be recorded and used for other classes. This presentation will cover the strategy, use, issues and benefits of using this technology.

Kaltura/MyMedia is a new instructional technology tool available for students and instructors, in Brightspace (D2L). Instructors are using it to deliver lecture capture, flipped classrooms, and screen recording demonstrations for distance education students. Students are using it to deliver presentations and participate in BrightSpace discussion forums.

Kaltura/MyMedia can process and hold various types of media. This repository can be personal or shared in a Brightspace (D2L) course. Instructors can record mini lectures from their web cam, do screen recording for demonstration, voice over a PowerPoint, or upload previously created video. These videos and are stored in the instructor’s own “My Media” repository and can be placed in a variety of the instructors courses.

We will showcase various ways Kaltura/MyMedia is being used at the University of Wisconsin-Stout to enhance student learning and engagement, and provide ideas and strategies for instructors to consider for incorporating video into their teaching practice.

Looking for alternatives to written papers and quizzes as formative assessments? Interested in using technology that won’t cost anything? While the available opportunities are endless, they can also be overwhelming. As teacher facilitators, we quickly understand that students do not always know more about technology than we think. In this session, the presenter will demonstrate how she has used technology in both online and on-campus courses as the basis for formative assessments. Primary focus will be placed upon using Web 2.0 tools and Desire to Learn Components. Examples of student work will be shared.

Assessment is a key component for university accreditation. The Desire 2 Learn (D2L) IPad Grader App is a valuable tool for instructors that can provide digital examples of student achievement, along with accompanying hand-written feedback, necessary to meet the standards required for university course assessment. Through the IPad Grader App, an essay uploaded to the D2L Dropbox by the student can be accessed for grading electronically. The IPad Grader App has two important grading functions-handwritten grading and/or grading with text and toolbar options. These allow the instructor to grade written work in a few simple steps and return the graded assignment to the student with important feedback, without collecting cumbersome hard-copy essays. Have you thought about how you will collect data for course assessment? Do you want to critique documents digitally? Have you explored the tools D2L has created to provide feedback digitally? This presentation will take you step-by-step through the D2L grading process for written material demonstrating the functionality of this digital media.

One of the key factors in student retention is helping them not get behind in class. There are a number of course deadlines through each semester that students need to track. Fortunately, Brightspace provides an easy way to provide students access to those deadlines. This is the Brightspace Calendar Tool. Each Activity Tool in Brightspace has a way to set the beginning and ending dates. These dates, once set, automatically appear in the student’s Brightspace Calendar, and are accessible in a number of locations both inside and out of the class. In addition, important dates can be added directly to the calendar. The presentation will give an overview of how the Brightspace Calendar works inside of the learning management system from both the instructor and student perspective. This will include generating a calendar, publishing it and subscribing to it from a variety of calendars and devices. The Manage Dates tool will also be covered extensively. This lesser known Site Resource gives a complete overview of all course elements and allows dates to be set directly in a single interface. More importantly, it allows a set of dates to be modified in one step. If a Dropbox was due on Monday in the fifth week of the Fall semester, Manage Dates can change that date to the fifth week of the Spring semester. Setting dates seems both simple and bothersome. By the end of this presentation it will be an essential part of every course in Brightspace. Handouts will be provided.