End of the Semester Pop Quiz:

Test your D2L knowledge with an end of semester pop quiz from OIT: 

1. Can your students automatically see their final grades in D2L? 
2. Do you need to enter grades into MyCUInfo even if you are using the D2L gradebook? 
3. When do students lose access to your D2L course? 
4. When can you request your spring D2L course? 

Answers:

1. No, you must first release grades for viewing in D2L; they are not visible by default. 
2. Yes, university policy requires grades be entered into the Registrar's web grading system no later than 90 hours after the final exam for the class. 
3. Students lose access to your D2L course three weeks after the conclusion of a semester (Friday, January 10, 2014) and at that point can no longer download course materials or assignment submissions, unless you adjust the course's end date. 
4. Now! Take 90 seconds today to request your spring course for one less thing to think about over winter break. 

How did you do?
For more quick tips and for helpful tutorials on smoothly wrapping up the fall 2013 semester, visit D2L - End of Semester Best Practices.

New Report by the AASCU | Online Learning at Public Universities: Building a New Path to a College Degree

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities has released their 2013 report Online Learning at Public Universities: Building a New Path to a College Degree. You can access the report yourself by visiting: http://www.learninghouse.com/aascu2013-report/#report 

Hybrid course formats are formally discussed in a portion of this report, but we can certainly take the online findings and apply them to most of our circumstances too.

Positive Outcomes from Online or Hybrid Programs (p. 14):

• Increased student access (including students from outside of traditional target area)
• Pedagogical improvements
• Increased enrollment
• Increased revenue
• Growth in continuing education
• Enhance value of university brand
• Enrollment shifted from on ground to online
• Increased rate of degree completion
• Strengthened academic continuity in case of disaster
• Increased student diversity
• Improved student retention
• Positive impact to pedagogy of f2f classes!

Challenges to Serving Online Students (p. 13):

• Training and recruiting faculty to teach online
• Measuring outcomes
• Student retention
• Accommodating students with special needs
• Maintaining the Learning Management System (e.g. D2L)

Here is an infographic of some of the findings:

The Learning House, Inc.

New! Hybrid Consulting Office Hours Tuesdays 3:30-5:30pm

Beginning tomorrow, I will be hosting walk-in hours for all Continuing Education instructors teaching hybrid.

If you have any last minute questions about Desire2Learn, your hybrid activities, management of your online environment, learner motivation… please feel free to stop by my office in Hellems 147. No appointment is needed, but feel free to drop me an email if you'd like.

This invitation will span for the rest of this semester so please feel free to come by and pick my brain on Tuesdays from 3:30-5:30pm in Hellems 147!

Technology & Assessment Workshop | October 2nd or 3rd, 2013

Join me at ALTEC for a hands-on workshop on how online technologies can improve and streamline the assessment of your hybrid students!

In this workshop, we will discuss how to use...

• Screencast videos to assess student audio/video assignments 
• Online rubrics for more consistent and transparent grading 
• Turnitin’s Grademark tool via the D2L Dropbox to provide detailed online feedback for student compositions (presented by Anne Becher Senior Instructor and Coordinator for Spanish)
• And more!

Wednesday, October 2nd from 10-12pm 
OR 
Thursday, October 3rd from 3-5pm 
Hellems 145

Email me if you would like to attend!

Need a D2L Refresher?

I am here to assist you one-on-one with getting your hybrid courses up and running in D2L. But here are some additional resources for those independently minded instructors.

Importing Previous Semester's Content:
Here is a short screencast video walking you through the process of importing all of the D2L content (Gradebook, Content, Discussions, etc) from your past semester into your new semester.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlJMUrmIdtU

OIT Screencasts:
My amazing colleague at OIT, Brad Grabham, has created a set of short online screencast videos demoing a lot of the commonly used tools and common questions in D2L.  Feel free to fast forward, pause, rewind at will!

• D2L 10.2 Layout & Overview - https://meeting.colorado.edu/p3ae8nfqj1w/ 
• D2L 10.2 News Widget - https://meeting.colorado.edu/p37www8hvmp/ 
• D2L 10.2 Content - https://meeting.colorado.edu/p3rrixuoq78/ 
• D2L 10.2 Dropbox - https://meeting.colorado.edu/p3nv5lyqaaw/ 
• D2L 10.2 Discussions - https://meeting.colorado.edu/p9tri1fxzi9/ 
• D2L 10.2 Grades - https://meeting.colorado.edu/p9nqkckphcu/

OIT Training Events (live and now also online!):
Did you know that now, OIT is offering online webinars for technology training? Consult the Workshop Calendar here:

• http://www.colorado.edu/oit/support-training/it-training/calendar

Note: some of the events are online webinars, some are in person events. Be sure to click on the event for more information and also be sure to SIGN UP ahead of time!

"Flipping" your Classroom

The Flipped Classroom
(graphic by Anna Cook)

The flipped classroom is a model of teaching in which students view lectures/presentations at home and then come to class to do what is usually assigned as homework. "Flipping" is a model often employed by hybrid teachers as a way to save time in the classroom, and provide a more student-centered approach to our learners.

At the upcoming COLTT conference, myself and my ALTEC colleague Edwige Simon will be leading a workshop on how to flip your classroom using an OIT-supported tool called VoiceThread. "A Model of Teaching: Flip your Classroom" will be on Thursday, August 8th from 1:40-3:45pm. In this hands-on workshop, participants will: 1) learn about the concept of the flipped classroom, 2) learn how to build and assess effective online tutorials using VoiceThread, and 3) brainstorm ways to create engaging follow-up activities for their students.

Here is an example of a flipped VoiceThread tutorial from my Spanish hybrid course from last spring:

(Chrome users may need to switch browsers for the VoiceThread to play)

My students are required to go through the tutorial at home in D2L and comment on the VoiceThread to provide examples and ask questions about the new material. Then, the next time we meet face to face in class, I see if there were any questions/problems and we have the rest of the class to practice the new concepts. It has worked so well for me and my students! 

Please consider attending this workshop at COLTT or schedule an appointment with me to learn more about flipping your own classroom!

Colorado Learning and Teaching with Technology Conference 2013 | August 7th and 8th

COLTT 2013

On August 7th and 8th, the CU Boulder campus will be hosting the 16th annual Colorado Learning and Teaching with Technology Conference (COLTT). This conference is a great way for you to hear about how instructors across Colorado are using technology in their classrooms.

As Armando mentioned in his recent email, he will be hosting one of three events on hybrid teaching with 3 Continuing Ed evening instructors who taught their evening classes as hybrids this past year. Our session, "I'm Tired: Lessons from a Year of Hybrid Classes" will be Wednesday, August 7th from 3:50-4:40pm.

If you are interested in the conference, the Division of Continuing Education will pay for your registration fee. Armando sent out the registration information in a recent email, so check that for the registration code!

More information on the conference can be found at: https://www.cusys.edu/coltt/2013/

D2L Dropbox > Turnitin | Improving how you accept, asses, and comment on assignments

The Dropbox tool within D2L is an easy way to accept student papers and assignments. Advantages of using the D2L Dropbox include:

• No additional emails
• A lighter load to your school bag
• Automatically check papers against Turnitin's anti-plagiarism tool
• Papers are marked with the submission time/date; late papers are flagged
• Connect to your D2L gradebook; when you grade an assignment in the Dropbox, the grade is automatically populated in the gradebook
• Leave feedback within D2L, including audio feedback
• By connecting the Dropbox folder to Turnitin's Grademark system, access advanced online markup tools including a highly customizable rubric

View of Submissions within D2L's Dropbox Tool

View of Submission in Turnitin

Related OIT Tutorials: 

• D2L Dropbox Tutorials
• Turnitin Tutorial
• Grademark Tutorial

It's Time to Request D2L Courses for the Fall

Now is a good time to request your fall 2013 Desire2Learn course from OIT.

- To submit a request to create your D2L course, you will need to go through MyCUInfo. Log in at MyCUInfo, then follow these steps linked to here.

** If you do NOT see your fall course within your Faculty Tool Kit, be sure that you have selected the correct term (Fall 2013) at the top right. Once your D2L course is created, you will simply go to https://learn.colorado.edu/ to access it.

If you have content within another D2L course that you would like to copy into your new D2L course, you can do this yourself once your new course is created.

To move you last semester's materials into the new course, visit the OIT Copy Course Content Tutorial.

Harnessing the Web in your Hybrid: Authentic Resources for your Students

In my individual consults with many of you, I have encouraged the incorporation of authentic resources  into your curriculum.

Why incorporate the real-world into your course?

• improve student motivation- students find real-world activities more pertinent/relevant; they are seen less as busy-work and more as a practical application of concepts
• equip your students for the real world- we want our students to be equipped for the job market  when they complete their studies at CU; the more experience they have with authentic scenarios/situations, the better
• because we can- a portion of our coursework is conducted online, which permits us to easily incorporate internet resources into our curriculum 

Depending on your course, the look and feel of these resources or activities will vary greatly.

Where do I start?

• think of a lesson that is in need of an activity/example- this could be a topic that students have a hard time with; or a topic that has not gone so well in the class before; or a topic that you personally find particularly relevant/interesting
• conduct a web search to see what is available- as you do so, keep your mind open and bookmark any resources you may be able to use in the future
• consider any support or scaffolding- what will your students need (eg instructions, handouts, a list of useful links, a list of relevant terminology) to be successful
• be creative- students don't always want to summarize information; think of more creative ways for them to use/digest/present/interact with the material
• the magnitude of the activity depends on you- it could be an introduction to a larger concept that you are teaching; it could be a follow-up "put into practice" activity; it could be extra credit
• high tech vs. low-tech- choose technology tools that can help organize/facilitate the process; or go low-tech
• get help- schedule an appointment with me if you have an idea and need help executing it!

* Please leave a comment below if you have any suggestions for others!

Encourage Your Students to Customize Their D2L Experience

As you have probably noticed, student photos are not automatically populated from MyCUinfo into D2L. A Discussions forum with no photos from the users is a sad and lonely one!

Additionally, D2L has the capability to send our "notifications" to students via email or text when there is specific activity in their D2L courses but by default, these notifications are turned off.

In order to enjoy these two perks from the system, send an email to your students to encourage them to add a photo to their D2L Profile and to sign up for D2L Notifications.

Here's an example email with links to OIT Tutorials at the bottom:

Hola chicos, 
First, please go in to D2L, click on your name at the top right and edit your Notification Settings for D2L to subscribe to:

• News – new item available 
• Grades – grade item released 
• There are other notifications options as well!

And while you are in there, go ahead and add a photo to your Profile (click on your name at the top > Profile) if you have not already.

If you have any problems with editing your notification settings, visit: http://www.colorado.edu/oit/node/3898 

If you have any problems uploading a photo to your profile, visit: http://www.colorado.edu/oit/node/2269 

Technology Workshops from Your Couch

The Office of Information Technology here at CU is offering a new style of workshop, that you can attend from the comfort of your own couch! Flash events show you what technologies can do and how they can change the way we teach, learn and work. They’re just 30 minutes long and work great for anyone with a busy schedule.

• Going Google: Learn about Google Apps for Education, CU’s powerful new collaborative software. 
• Teaching with Google Apps and D2L: Learn more about how Google Apps is reinventing the ways businesses and educators think about collaboration, resource sharing and creative works. 
• Collaborating in Google Drive: Google Docs allows up to 50 users to easily collaborate real time on a single document. 
• Adobe Connect: Online Rooms, Classroom Meetings & More! Connect, Adobe’s industry leading web conferencing system is now available to all campus users. Learn what Connect offers as a solution for online office hours, one-off meetings with international colleagues (or just across campus), and as an integrated tool within Desire2Learn.
• Conversations with VoiceThread: See how to create media based dialogue with your students using the online program VoiceThread. For a demo of this program, as well as examples of engaging uses of VoiceThread for the classroom, join us online.
• Getting the most from D2L Discussions: In this introduction to the D2L Discussions tool, 
learn how to foster dynamic, active, and compelling online discussions in your classes!

Visit OIT’s Training Calendar to view the comprehensive schedule of Flash events that run through February and March.

CU Boulder has Gone Google

What does that mean for us?

Now CU-Boulder faculty, staff and students have access to Google collaborative applications (Drive/Docs, Sites, Calendar, and more) by simply using our CU IdentiKey information with @google.com.

Go to the sponsored Google products, say GoogleDrive/Docs and sign in using your CU-Boulder username (or username@colorado.edu depending upon the login prompt) and IdentiKey password. These are the same username and password you use to log in to services such as MyCUInfo. and Exchange.

This Thursday, as a part of the Faculty Teaching Excellence Program, Cory Pavicich from OIT will lead a faculty seminar/presentation on Google Apps for Education from 3:30-4:30 in Atlas 200. Please sign up ahead of time:  http://www.colorado.edu/ftep/events/eventdocs/GoingGoogle.html

Thank you for attending!

Thank you to those who attended the event that I hosted today about the D2L Discussions tool. I hope that everyone benefitted from each others' experiences!

Later this week, I will be posting the link to the Google Presentation that includes some notes that I took during the session. I will open it up for editing, so please feel free to do so.

As always, contact me with questions or if you'd like to meet.

Event: D2L Discussion Board BYOL (Bring Your Own Lunch), January 28th

Are you interested in participating in a brown bag lunch with your fellow Continuing Ed hybrid faculty?

The theme of this first brown bag will be the D2L discussion board tool. My thoughts for the topics of discussion are the following:

We share about:

• Our discussion board set-up (requirements stated in syllabus; our role in the process) 
• Student use of the discussion board 
• Our grading plan Discussion Board topics that went over well with the students 

We take away:

• Ideas for improving/streamlining our use of this tool 
• Ideas for creating a more engaging environment for our student 
• An understanding that everyone has had their ups and downs with this tool! 

I learn something new about D2L from each of you in every meeting, so my hope is that you all can share and learn from each other!

Thank you for filling out our Doodle poll to assess everyone's availability. http://www.doodle.com/au9gpt9rkbd7y5wh

We will be meeting Monday, January 28th from noon-1pm in Hellems 145.