Snow Days Got You Down? Level Technology to Make Up Missed Classes

Have your courses been impacted by the snow days?  Looking for a way to continue student learning even when classes are cancelled due to weather?

North Shore Community College’s learning management system, ANGEL, is a great instructional technology tool that can aid you in maintaining the continuity of your course.  All courses automatically have an ANGEL shell that provides faculty with a “private classroom” area for you and your students.  In ANGEL, faculty can post announcements about the status of class with instructions on how to proceed through related learning activities; upload various types of content such as assignments, readings, lecture notes, or PowerPoint slides; link to related online resources such as YouTube videos or web sites; set up drop boxes where students can submit homework; and facilitate discussions for students to engage with the course e materials. 

To aid faculty in using ANGEL, Instructional Technology and Design is offering the following services and resources.

One-on-one Consultation and Training

Staff members from Instructional Technology and Design are available during the day and in the early evening to schedule one-on-one ANGEL consultations and trainings.  These can be done in person, over the phone or virtually.  Please email itd@northshore.edu if you would be interested in scheduling a session.

ANGEL Overview Sessions

Instructional Technology and Design will be offering several ANGEL Overview sessions in the evening on both the Danvers and Lynn campuses.  These sessions will demonstrate how to post an announcement, upload a document, create a discussion forum, and make the course site available to students.  The sessions will be offered:

• Monday, March 10th from 5:30pm-6:00pm in DB304
• Tuesday, March 11th from 5:30pm-6:00pm in DB304
• Wednesday, March 12th from 5:30pm-6:00pm in LW323
• Thursday, March 13th from 5:30pm-6:00pm in LW329

If you are interested in attending one of these sessions, please RSVP to itd@northshore.edu.

How-To Videos

Instructional Technology and Design has developed a resource guide that provides links to various how-to videos on using ANGEL.  These quick videos will walk you through the various components of ANGEL so you can learn them on wherever and whenever it is convenient for you. 

Access the videos here: http://goo.gl/MweuaQ

If you have any questions about using ANGEL, please do not hesitate to contact Instructional Technology and Design at itd@northshore.edu.

Online and Hybrid Course Accessibility Checklist

North Shore Community College is committed to providing equal access to all educational courses for all students.  To assist faculty in developing accessible online and hybrid courses, Instructional Technology and Design has developed a checklist that outlines things to think about when designing an online or hybrid course and in developing online content.  Our checklist is based on a great resource developed by Portland Community College (thank you so much for your permission to use).

Online and Hybrid Course Accessibility Checklist

Design

• Navigation is clear and consistent.
• Contrast between text and background colors is strong.
• Flashing content is limited and only used when necessary.
• Clearly identify the destination of a link so that users know where they will be taken if they click.
• Instructions, operation, or navigation do not depend on solely visual or solely auditory information.
• The page/site is navigable with just a keyboard (no mouse or touchpad necessary).

Documents and Multimedia

• Alternative text is provided for all images and graphics.
• Text transcripts are provided for all audio.
• Captions are provided for all video.
• In documents, use text formatting styles provided.
• Tables are kept small.  Large tables are broken into multiple smaller tables.
• All external content linked to from within the course should also be accessible.

Technology

• Technology utilized within or incorporated into the course should also be accessible.

Throughout the year, we hope to publish several additional blog posts to provide tips, best practices, and resources for faculty that will help them accomplish the various items in the checklist.

What strategies do you follow to ensure that your online and hybrid courses are accessible?  What challenges do you encountering in developing online content?  Do you have any helpful resources to share?

Announcing Atomic Learning - Online Technology Training Tutorials

North Shore Community College is dedicated to ensuring that all learners have the 21st century technology skills needed for today's world.  That is why Instructional Technology and Design is pleased to announce Atomic Learning, a new online, on-demand training and professional development resource that will provide faculty, staff, and students 24/7 access to over 50,000 technology training tutorials. 

What is Atomic Learning?
Atomic Learning is an online technology and software tutorial service.  Through Atomic Learning, you can view short, easy-to-understand video tutorials to get just-in-time answers to your “how do I do that?” questions by clearly demonstrating how to accomplish specific tasks in over 200 software applications and technologies, such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suites, ANGEL, Google Apps, Windows and Apple operating systems, Web 2.0 tools and iDevices.  Or you can view a series of videos to learn an entire software application.  In addition to the technology training how-to tutorials, Atomic Learning also includes workshops on a variety of technology topics, such as avoiding plagiarism, computer literacy basics, using Microsoft Word to create MLA or APA citations, being an effective online student, Web 2.0, and effective presentation design. 

These online training tutorials are:

• Available on demand 24/7 on and off campus.
• Open to all NSCC students, faculty and staff.
• Answers to many of the common "how do I do that" technology questions.
• Expansive and includes many software programs and technologies such as Microsoft Office, Adobe, Windows and Apple operating systems, Web 2.0 tools, Google Apps, and iDevices.
• Easy to access by logging in with your Pipeline username and password.
• Easy to search using keywords, specific applications, versions, and/or platforms.
• Easy to share with direct links through email or in ANGEL to support necessary software or technical skills.
• Available on an iPad.

How do I access Atomic Learning?
Atomic Learning is available on and off campus and can be accessed through NSCC's portal, Pipeline, by clicking on the My Course tab – just look for the channel called Technology Training Tutorials - Learning Made Easy. Click on the Atomic Learning web site link and enter your Pipeline username and password.  Atomic Learning can also be accessed on an iPad.  Just download the app at the App Store. You will need to use your full NSCC email address as your username.

How do I log in?
From Pipeline (My Courses - Technology Training Tutorials), just log in with your Pipeline username and password.  If you are using the Atomic Learning iPad app, you will need to use your NSCC email address as your username.

How can it be used to support teaching and learning?
Atomic Learning can be used in a variety of ways to support the teaching and learning environment.  Here are just a few ideas.

• The how-to tutorials provide visual step-by-step directions on how to perform functions with a variety of software applications which can supplement and enhance the instruction of those software applications.
• The how-to tutorials can enable students to learn the necessary technology needed to be successful in their classes.
• The how-to tutorials can serve as a resource to support students in completing projects that utilize technology by providing directions and answering questions.
• The technology workshops can provide multimedia materials to aid faculty in infusing 21st century skills into the curriculum.

We are delighted to present this resource to the NSCC community and hope that you will take advantage of it with your students or for your own professional development!  If you have questions  about Atomic Learning or need assistance in using it, please contact us at itd@northshore.edu.

Have you viewed any of the tutorials or workshops in Atomic Learning?  Did you find them helpful?  How might you see these being used to support students?

August Instructional Technology Workshops

We hope everyone is having a great summer!

In August, Instructional Technology and Design will be sponsoring a series of workshops on a variety of topics around integrating technology into the teaching and learning environment.  All North Shore Community College faculty are welcome to attend.  The workshops will be in Danvers Berry 202 unless otherwise indicated.  Check out the workshop descriptions to learn more about each workshop.

If you are interested in attending any of the workshops, please take a moment to RSVP.

Tuesday, August 20th

9:00am to 10:15am, New to ANGEL
10:30am to 12:00pm, ANGEL Discussion Forum*
1:00pm to 2:00pm, Blogger
2:15pm to 3:30pm, Flipping the Classroom [DB304]

Wednesday, August 21st

1:00pm to 2:00pm, Communicating with your Students Virtually (Google Chat, Skype, Google
Hangout, etc.)
2:15pm to 3:30pm,  Screencasting – Creating Videos

Thursday, August 22nd

9:00am to 10:15am, ANGEL Rubrics*
10:30am to 12:00pm, ANGEL Gradebook*

Tuesday, August 27th

9:00am to 10:15am, Smart Classroom [DB304]
10:30am to 12:00pm, Encouraging Student Collaboration with Google Documents and Google Sites
1:00pm to 2:15pm, New to ANGEL
2:30pm to 3:30pm, Advanced ANGEL - RSS Feeds, Automated Agents, etc.*

Wednesday, August 28th

9:00am to 10:15am, Getting Started with Clickers [DB304]
10:30am to 12:00pm, Creating Accessible Online Course Content [DB304]
1:00pm to 2:00pm, ANGEL Assessment* [TBD]

*Note: Participants attending these ANGEL workshops should have already attended a New to ANGEL workshop or have experience in using ANGEL. 

Please let us know if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you at the workshops!

What workshops are you planning to attend? What other workshops would you like us to offer?

Locating and Evaluating Open Educational Resources

This blog feature was originally featured in NSCC Technology Across the Curriculum's annual publication: Mousetales.

Many faculty are looking to open educational resources to provide students with engaging and interactive multimedia resources or offer students low-cost quality content and materials that are alternatives to high-cost textbooks.  Open educational resources are “teaching and learning materials that are available freely for anyone to use” (from the Learn about the Movement page on the OER Commons web site).  These resources can range from individual items such as syllabi, lectures, learning activities, videos, simulations, and lab exercises to complete courses or textbooks.  Even though there are a lot of benefits to using open educational resources, it is often challenging to locate relevant and appropriate quality materials due to the large amount of resources available on the web.  This post aims to provide faculty with some resources that will help them find and evaluate open educational resources. 

Directories or repositories of open educational resources are one of the best places to start when looking for these types of materials.  There are also specific repositories for subject specific open education resources as well as ones for open courses and open textbooks.   Here are a few to start with.

OER Commons
OER Commons is a collection of over 40,000 resources that can be browsed by subject area, grade level or material type.  An advance search is also available to limit a search by a variety of different criteria including subject area, material type, media type, accessibility, and conditions of use.  Many of the resources have been reviewed and rated using the Achieve OER Evaluation Rubric.  And each resource is clearly marked with the conditions of use.  

Connexions
Connexions is a project of Rice University and is “a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc.” (from the Connexions web site).  There are over 21,000 reusable modules that can be browsed by subject area or searched by keyword.  Materials found here have a Creative Commons open license that allows for free use.

MERLOT: Multimedia Educational Resource for Teaching and Learning
MERLOT is a “free and open online community of resources designed primarily for faculty, staff and students of higher education from around the world to share their learning materials and pedagogy. MERLOT is a leading edge, user-centered, collection of peer reviewed higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services” (from the About Us page on the MERLOT web site).  There are currently over 40,000 learning materials that can be browsed or searched.  An advanced search is also available to limit a search by keyword, language, material type, audience, resources with peer reviews and comments, resources released under Creative Commons, are not copyrighted or have no cost associated with them.

Open educational resources can also be located through a variety of search engines such as Google.  For example, Google allows you to search for materials that have a Creative Commons license.  This short video demonstrates how easy it is to locate open educational resources that have a Creative Commons license.  Resources that can be freely used can also be found through the Creative Commons search.  This search allows you to easily locate images, music, videos, and other media that can be reused, remixed, and shared. 

The next challenge in using open educational resources is evaluating the resource to determine their usefulness and appropriateness.  The Evaluating OER Rubric is a helpful tool as it provides some basic questions to consider about an open educational resource.    

Here are a few more resources if you would like more information about open educational resources.

• Open Educational Resources Guide by George Fox University Library
• Locating, Creating, Licensing and Utilizing OERs (an open, self-paced online course by Open SUNY)
• About Creative Commons

If you want to learn more about open educational resources or would like some assistance in incorporating them into your classes, please feel free to contact the Instructional Technology and Design team at itd@northshore.edu.  We would be happy to help.

Are you already using open educational resources in your classes?  If so, how are you using them?  And what resources are you using? 

What concerns do you have over using open educational resources in your classes?

3 Steps to Video Excellence

Over the last few months I've been presenting in several classrooms where faculty were looking to introduce students to instructional technology of some sort, which usually fall into the category of digital or face-to-face presentations.  In preparing and developing for these classes, I let my mind wander a bit on how to do this in a way that balanced the students' need to understand the tools, exciting enough for them to want to use the tools, and manageable for them to actually integrate the tools.  Here is the triangulation that I developed that can be done with using nothing more than your computer (an maybe an external microphone if you don't have an internal one) and little knowledge of basic programs.  In total, this entails creating a presentation that can be engaging and easily moved into a video for later use.

This process requires 3 programs--all of which are web-based (and free).  The only obstacles are that two require registration (Google and Prezi--though if you have a North Shore Community College account that is your Google account and Prezi offers an Educational License that is free when you use your school email account) and the video can be no longer that 15 minutes.  But for videos that are going in an online environment (for either face to face or online teaching), this is good because it helps the instructor or student keep focus on what they need to communicate is a confined time.

Step 1:  Google Slides (Presentation Tool)

We're talking primarily about Google Slides here, but Powerpoint works just as well for this part.  Either way, you'll need to opt to select "Download as a Powerpoint" when you are done with the Google Presentation in order to integrate it into Prezi.   For a good primer on Google Slides, check out their help feature which has really good information.

In Google Slides, you can compose your  specific content and information.  This might include images, videos, and text.  You can think of them as your "scenes" and what you want to convey in each scene.  When completed with the content, this is also a good time to work through the presentation to get a sense of how long it will take you and the flow of it.   

Step 2:  Prezi  (Optional)
Once you have  content settled into scenes in Google Slides, you'll want to download it as a Powerpoint file (pptx).  (If you've been using Powerpoint; you are all set).  Then you'll want to go to Prezi.com and create an account.  Be sure to sign up for an educational license if you are a college student or instructor.   This will provided you with additional benefits.  Like Google, Prezi has great support and guidance for learning the tool and for something like this, you don't need to know much about Prezi beyond the basics.  

Once you have created an account, and started a new Prezi, you'll want to select the "Insert" menu and choose "Powerpoint."  You'll be given the option of how many of your slides you want to import as well as the design you want to use.  Those are aesthetic choices you will need to consider in terms of what the information is you are conveying and how it should look laid out on Prezi.  

When you have sequenced and aligned your scenes in a way that works for you, you'll want to run through the sequence from start to finish at full screen.  This will benefit you in two ways.  The first is that it will make sure everything runs smoothly.  It will also give you another opportunity to pace through it and see how it works in terms of time.  

It should be noted that this is an optional step and one that you might not be ready to tackle with your first video or two.  Prezi can be a little overwhelming if you haven't used it much or are still not comfortable with Web 2.0 tools.  However, if you're just importing your entire Powerpoint and not necessarily manipulating much of the content besides cleaning it up any glitches in the transfer, it can be easy to do in an hour or so (at least the first time).  I've added it as a step here because the moving and fading tool features allow for your Powerpoint to come alive a bit more than just a typical Powerpoint.   We'd also recommend you check out our previous post on Prezi to get a better sense if the tool if you haven't used it before.  

Step 3:  Screencast-o-matic 
 Once you have created an excellent Prezi, now you can get ready to make a video of it with the use of Screencast-O-Matic.   We're big fans here of Screencast-O-Matic as we've mentioned before. Screencast-O-matic is a free tool that only requires a brief and easy installation of a browser applet in order to run.  The program will record what's on your screen (screencast) and whatever sound you create (or you can keep it mute).  

At this point, you'll want to have a tab on your browser to open up the Screencast-O-Matic tool while also having a tab open on your browser with your Prezi that you want to record.  Set your Screencast-O-Matic to capture the full screen and then set your Prezi to full screen.  When you are ready, press the big red button on Screencast-O-Matic and begin recording.  

3 Notes about recording:

1. Don't expect to get it right the first time.  You'll probably need to restart at least once.
2. Don't aim for perfection.  Look for a conversational voice and don't worry about a few mistakes.  If you aim for perfection, you will lose your mind and lots of time trying to get it "just right."
3. Do your best to prepare a script that you work from.  This is useful not just for you to follow along but you can make the script available so that it meets accessibility requirements for your students. 

Storage
This is not so much a step but a consideration. Now that you've made a great video, the question is where to put it.  You can certainly store it in your ANGEL course.  However, I find it useful to upload it to my Google Drive and then embed it into an ANGEL page.  This allows me to also share the video out with other people and places as I see fit.  If comfortable, you can also put it on YouTube.  The one challenge if you are going to use YouTube is that you would need to create a separate account since your NSCC account can't be used for Youtube accounts. 

Here is an example of a video (also reiterating much of what's in this blog post). 

Have you tried any of these tools?  How do you like them?  What challenges have you run into?  Have you produced any interesting content that's available to see (share the link below!)?

Best Practices for Smart Classrooms: Accessing Resources

There are many resources for Smart Classrooms that are available on NSCC's Campus Pipeline (http://pipeline.northshore.edu) under the "My North Shore" tab.  

When you click on the "My North Shore" tab, look under the "College Departments" header and then click on the "Academic Technology" link.  

This is the initial view under Campus Pipeline.  Note the College Department section on the left.  Note Academic Technology in that section.

Here you'll find many helpful resources from classroom documentation to step-by-step guides and video tutorials.  If you have any questions about these resources, please contact Dave Houle at dhoule@northshore.edu.

These are the resources under
Campus Pipeline -> MyNorthShore -> CollegeDepartments -> Academic Technology
 

Professional Development - Anytime, Anywhere

This year, Academic Technology is piloting a new on-demand online professional development service – Magna Commons.

Our subscription to Magna Commons provides North Shore Community College faculty and staff with instant access to current and archived versions of the most popular Magna Online Seminars, covering a broad range of teaching and learning topics such as student engagement, technology and Web 2.0, grading and feedback, academic integrity, and course design.  There are also a variety of seminars specifically targeted to faculty teaching in an online or hybrid environment.  These seminars are delivered by educators from institutions across the county.  Each online seminar presentation also comes with a PowerPoint handout, supplemental materials, and a transcript.

Sampling of the professional development titles available:

• Five Strategies to Engage Today’s Students
• Ten Ways to Actively Engage Your Students
• How to Deepen Learning through Critical Reflection
• Active Learning That Works: What Students Think
• Finding The Right Technology to Support Learning Outcomes
• Grading Strategies to Promote Student & Faculty Success
• Engage Online Students with Targeted Feedback
• Selecting and Using Technologies in Online and Blended Courses
• Best Practices for Designing Successful Blended Courses

To access the professional development seminars, you will need to create an account on Magna Commons and enter in our Authorization Code.  You will only need to do this once.  After you have done this, you will have instant access to Magna Commons from any computer, whether it is on- or off-campus, with your unique username and password.  Seminars can be viewed by subscribers on a computer or many mobile devices.

For information on creating an account and accessing Magna Commons, please refer to the announcement in the Bulletin on October 9, 2012 or email itd@northshore.edu.

Enjoy--and let us know if you check it out, some of your thoughts and experiences!

Some of Ted Talks' Best: Round 1

So I recently contacted faculty to find out what are some of their favorite TED Talks. For those unfamiliar with TED, get ready to be blown away and inspired. TED is where the cutting edge meets the open public. It's a regular conference (and many mini-conferences) that take place wherein people deliver a presentation based upon their most recent and powerful research. Some have equated them to Randy Pausch's famous Last Lecture or the lecture of your life, and there's much truth to how these talks can inspire, motivate, and make us think. This is why they are great for the classroom. Coming in at 5-18 minutes long, each talk can serve as a springboar for discussion, debate, and paradigm change within a vast array of disciplines.  Most recently, TED has recently released  its TED-Ed platform, an easy-to-use toolbox for instructors to flip their classroom with TED Talks (or any Youtube video).

So in our first round, we have four different faculty here at North Shore Community College, sharing what they find to be some of the most inspiring and useful TED Talks that they've come across--either for their own experience or their inclass-usage.

Aimee Mullins: My Legs Give Me Super Powers
Laurie Carlson (English): "She talks about prosthetic limbs as an enhancement rather than a deficiency. The video deals with disability, feminism, and body image, all of which I feel are important topics and ideas for our students to be aware of and grapple with."

Bill Gates: Innovating to Zero
Barbara Ikalainen(Green Initiative Coordinator, Environmental Studies): "I show this to my Environmental Science students to promote a discussion on how to meet our future energy needs. He is referencing a new nuclear technology (nuclear fusion, not nuclear fission). It's not that I'm a proponent, but he brings up all the evidence of global climate change and he is actively looking for a solution. The dilemma that he poses is the difficulty of the democratic process towards technology and changing public opinion and how solutions to climate change will necessitate working with countries unfriendly to the USA."

Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity
Kara Kaufman (History): "This TED Talk is a great counterpoint to the book Origins of the Modern World, by Robert Marks that I assign in World History II. Marks and Ferguson are examples of a debate within world history scholarship regarding the role of the West in the past 500 years. Marks takes a non-Eurocentric perspective while Ferguson's point of view is Eurocentric. The TED talk is also useful in that it is not a book. In other words, students are already reading most of Marks' book, so I like that TED  delivers excellent information in an alternative, entertaining format."

Amy Purdy: Living Beyond Limits
Dawne Spangler (Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment; Math): "Purdy discusses her journey adapting to (and maximizing) life after losing her legs. Really interesting. (For example: now she gets to be as tall as she wants to be - depending on the prosthetics she chooses!). Inspiring and Uplifiting!"

Temple Grandin: The World Needs All Kinds of Minds
Dawne Spangler (Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment; Math): "Grandin explains the "thinking in pictures" that comes with her autism, and describes how that has influenced how her career in engineering. An Interesting Contrast!"

Hans Rosling: Stats that reshape your world-view
Dawne Spangler (Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment; Math): "Rosling demonstrates world trends, using interactive statistical charts - with moving bubbles and colored snakes to describe things like the relationship between GNP and longevity! Colorful, Fun and Easy to Understand!"

Tavi Gevinson: A teen just trying to figure it out
Dawne Spangler (Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment; Math): "A high school sophomore, Gevinson discusses her (plural) e-zines and her publishing success. Fun and Encouraging!"

We'll be posting more soon, but in the meantime, what are your favorite TED Talks?

Freeing The Course Part 4: Assignments

In this final entry on freeing the course (check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), we are looking at free tools and resources relating to assignments.  These might be ways of changing up assignments, making them more interactive, or even in some cases, easier to evaluate and access.  Many of these resources we’ve mentioned before in different capacities, but they are definitely great for thinking about assignments as well.

GoogleDocs
Yes, GoogleDocs, again.  Whether you want them to develop a document, spreadsheet, or presentation, you can use GoogleDocs for the space to be used.  You can also create surveys and possibly quizzes if you want to engage your students further.  What’s great about GoogleDocs is its collaborative nature and the ways you (or your students) can share files coupled with the document history where you can directly compare differences between older and newer versions.

• More discussion about this tool.
• Youtube playlist on GoogleDocs.

Diigo
Diigo is a familiar tool on this blog and rightly so.  It’s a social bookmarking site where an instructor could create a group for the class.  Herein, they could add substantive links related to course topics along with descriptions and explanations of what the sites were.  Another idea would be for the instructor to incorporate a large range of links and assign the students different links to go to within Diigo and annotate.  Diigo allows for individuals or groups to annotate their bookmarks, thus allowing for an engaging dialogue among the students about a site’s content.

• More discussion about this tool.
• Youtube playlist on Diigo.

Wikis
Yet another great tool we enjoy on this blog, Wikis can be used in a variety of ways.  Whether you’re sending students to create an entry on Wikipedia itself, or encouraging them to make a course notebook in wiki format, there’s some great ways instructors can make students creators and owners of the course content.

• More discussion about this tool.
• Youtube playlist on Wikis.

Glogster
Glogster is a free digital posterboard that allows the user to put up images, text, sound files, and videos all integrated into a collage.  It’s a useful tool as a compliment to inclass presentations or as a means of online presentations.

• More discussion about this tool.
• Youtube playlist on Glogster.

Blogs
Blogs are great for assignments.  There are many different ways of using a blog, but there are several that seem to do well.  

1. The instructor writes the blog entries (as kind of mini-lessons or making connections from content to the world at large) and the students must comment.
2. Students create their own blogs and then comment on one another’s blog.
3. One blog is created for the class and different students must post about related material over the course of the semester.

Regardless of how you go about approaching it, blogs can be a great assignment that help students think and communicate more critically.

• More discussion about this tool.
• Youtube playlist on blogs.

Screen-cast-o-matic
We’ve talked about this tool before as a teaching tool, but it could also be used as an assignment for students to create a narrated presentation utilizing course materials or research.  It’s a quick tool to learn and faculty could assign students to develop different videos around course concepts.  Faculty could also assign students to create a virtual tour of the internet to present their research.  Audacity is a similar tool, though it’s only for audio recording, but faculty might assign similar projects.

• More discussion about this tool.
• Youtube playlist on Scree-ncast-o-matic.

So what other tools out there help you to free up the course?  We’re always looking for new ideas and tools, so please let us know.

Freeing The Course Part 3: Course Delivery

We’re back again with Part 3 of Freeing the Course.  Be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2 and be on the eye for our future pieces. 

By course delivery, we’re talking about what can produce and provide for your students that goes beyond the readings.  This may include videos (externally or internally created), podcasts or lecture recordings, or even the presentation programs that communicate your teaching in the classroom. 

Video Resources
There are a plethora of video resources Video resources out there for you to take advantage of including Learner.org, YouTube.com/EDU, TED (and check out their latest feature on flipping the classroom option), and of course, the Library’s FilmOnDemand.  For more information about these resources, check out this previous post on Video Resources for Your Classroom.

However, here’s one quick reminder about using videos in and outside the classroom.  Always be sure to provide a clear frame for watching the video and a clear sense of what they should be doing with the video—that is, how they should integrate it into the other course material.  Students need to be directed to what to focus on in order for videos to work the best.  Instructing them to watch the video but not making clear what they are watching for can make follow up discussions lackluster and problematic. 

Presenting Unique Content
Rather than use external material, if you want to create your own course material to deliver to students, there are some great resources available for that too. 

We’ve talked about Screen-Cast-O-Matic on this blog before and it’s because it’s a great (and easy!) tool that allow faculty to create narrated screencasts (of powerpoints, websites, etc).  It takes minutes to learn and then, faculty can focus their time and energy on thinking about how they want to present the material for their audience. 

Audacity is a free sound recording program that allows users to make recordings for whatever purpose they might find.  In particular, you can make mini-lecture podcasts for your students that recap the day’s lessons or cover other material. 

Prezi is a fun presentation tool that provides a 3-Dimensional infinite canvass for you to connect your ideas.  The fascinating element about Prezi is that it allows you to visually display relationships in ways that are not as well executed in programs like Powerpoint.  Additionally, you can integrate images and videos into this as well as convert them in PDF for your students if you choose to.  Check out our YouTube playlist that explores Prezi. 

Finally, there’s Google Presentation.  It has many of the features of Powerpoint, but again, is free.  You can choose to download it as a Powerpoint file if you choose or even PDF.  You’re also able to share it easily with students.  Where this also wins out against Powerpoint is that if you share it with students, you can utilize the “Comment” feature to spur a discussion around the Powerpoint or encourage students to annotate the powerpoint about what they found useful or care to elaborate on. 

For our final post, we’ll be exploring communicate and course extras that you might consider as you move forward. 

What other free resources do you use in order to delivery the course content to your students?

Technology Spotlight: Screencast-o-matic

Screencasts or “digital recording of computer screen output” that often contain audio narration can be powerful teaching tools and there are many tools available that can be used to create screencasts.  A great tool to quickly create short screencasts is Screen-cast-o-matic.  Screen-cast-o-matic  is a free, easy to use, online screen recording program.  Features of the free version include:

• a maximum recording time of 15 minutes per screen recording,
• free web hosting for screen recordings on Screen-cast-o-matic,
• the ability to record from a web camera,
• the ability to publish screen recordings directly to YouTube,
• and the ability to save screen recordings as video files (MP4, AVI or FLV).

To get started Screen-cast-o-matic, click the blue “Start Recording” button.  The screen recording program will open up on your screen.  Drag or resize the box to set the recording area.  Only the area of your computer screen inside the box will be captured.  You can place this box over Web pages, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, ANGEL, or other software programs.  Once you are ready to record, click the “Record” button.  You can pause your recordings if you need to switch programs.  When you are done, click the “Done” button.  At that point, you can decide if you want to save your recording as a video file or publish your recording on Screen-cast-o-matic or YouTube.  When downloading (publish to video file) a fullscreen screencast, make sure to rescale the width of the screencast size (600 px is a good size).  For more information, view this quick demo on using Screen-cast-o-matic.  If you would like to host your screen recordings on Screen-cast-o-matic, you will need to create an account.  To register for an account, just enter in your email address and a password and click “Register”.
Tips when creating a screen recording:

• Write out a script of your screen recording.  The script will be helpful when creating the screen recording but can also be used as a transcript or for captioning to help make your screen recording accessible.
• Chunk longer lectures into shorter presentations to allow students to process the concepts.
• Use a headset microphone for best audio quality and set your microphone volume before starting.
• Record in a location with minimal noise distractions.  You might also want to put a sign up on your door so you won’t be interrupted.

Screencasts can be used to:

• Produce lessons that students can watch anywhere at any time
• Allow students to feel more connected to their instructors in an online class
• Share information with students through video and audio
• Demonstrate how to use specific software programs or create tutorials and how-tos
• Perform regular and standardized training
• Narrate PowerPoint mini-lectures
• Explain difficult concepts or illustrate confusing tasks
• Provide explanations for solutions to problems
• Provide feedback to students on assignments
• Walk students through discipline specific Web sites
• Orient students to an online course

Examples of screencasts created with

• Designing and Teaching an Online or Hybrid Course at NSCC (narrated PowerPoint)
• Accessing Content Orientations (tutorial or how-to on particular task in software program)

Additional resources on screencasts:

• 7 Things You Should Know About Screencasting 
• Screencasts as a Pedagogical Tool
• Using Screencasting to Engage and Build Community with Online Learners
• Screencasting for the Online Classroom 
• Talking with Students through Screencasting: Experimentations with Video Feedback to Improve Student Learning

If you are interested in learning more about the benefits of screencasts in your teaching or would like to learn more about using Screen-cast-o-matic, please feel free to contact Instructional Technology and Design at itd@northshore.edu.

• Do you think screencasts have potential as a learning/teaching tool?
• Have you used screencasts in your teaching? If so, in what ways?  If not, do you see any uses for screencasts in your teaching and how might you use them? 
• Have you used Screen-cast-o-matic or another tool before?  What have been your experiences in using those tools?

Freeing The Course Part 2: Course Readings

So now we come to the next part in our series on “Freeing the Course.”  In the first part, we dealt with free programs and tools, this time, we're looking at free readings and material for your class.  We all know that textbooks are a significant challenge for any course.  The prices are challenging for students between affording them, getting them from the bookstore, and glitches or problems with financial aid.  Then, of course, there is the problem of ordering them online on their own and waiting.

So what about free material online?  There’s lots of it.  Vast amounts, in fact.  So what do we make of that and how do we use it?  There are several considerations that you want to think about before venturing onto using online materials that is worth considering.

1.    How much will they be reading online?  Reading on screen has been found to be more challenging than reading a physical text.  Some of this may come to change with improved technology, but it’s something worth keeping in mind.  One way to offset this is to make sure the physical text may be available (on reserve in the library, as a “recommended” purchase in the bookstore, or just through the library and inter-library loan.

2.    Do you want students to have the readings in class?  Many faculty members will want students to have them in hand in class.  So this might mean you need to clarify your technology usage policy in your classroom to encourage students to bring laptop or tablet devices.  However, many of your students may want to print the material.  If that’s the case, please make sure you provide them with sufficient guidelines on how to print efficiently (such as double-sided or printing 2 pages on 1 side of a paper to get 4 pages per piece of paper).  Not only does this promote more environmentally friendly results, but students are limited in the amount they can print before the school charges them and you don’t want to use the student’s entire semester budget for just your class.

3.    How reliable are the readings to stay where they are?  We know the internet can be quirky.  That awesome site that’s here today can be gone tomorrow.  So in selecting readings, make sure you choose reliable sites or sites that have been around for several years (though that’s no guarantee that they will always be around).  You might want to find the source in several places or alternatives to each reading.

4.    What do you want the students (or yourself) to do with the readings?  As we’ll see below, the online environment allows for something that you cannot with regular texts (at least not as easily) and that is create a collaboratively annotated online text.  So maybe all you want your students to do is to read the material.  But you can also start to push the students to engage with the material and voice opinions or thoughts on particular passages directly onto the page, using tools like Diigo.

Ok, so what are some of those resources that you may want to consider:

The first handful sources of particular use for the Humanities and Social Sciences (though other disciplines are apt to find great nuggets to include in their courses from these sites):  The Internet Archive, The Gutenberg Project, Wikisource, and Librivox.  There are large repositories of the public domain which includes books and textual material in the case of Archive, Gutenberg Project, and Wikisource, but also sound in the case of Librivox and images, sounds, videos, text, programs, and well, the entire internet, in the case of The Internet Archive.  Some of these sites only offer html-based text resources, but Archive does a decent job of providing formats that are operable in different eReaders.

Librivox offers user-based sound recordings of works that are in the public domain.  This can be great for giving students access to audio renderings of readings.  However, it could also be a great idea as an assignment for students to create additional reading in the public domain; it might be a great service learning project for a communications, media, or English course.
Meanwhile, if you are looking for a standard textbook, Flatworld Knowledge might be your place to be.  From this site, you can select and use an online textbook FOR FREE for your class.  As the site explains it, "It’s this easy: search our catalog, request a print review copy or review our book online, complete an online adoption form, give a URL to your students, and download our supplements. Done. It really is that easy."    The text is free for students to read online and if they want to order a physical copy, they can for a reasonable price.  Faculty can also chose to customize the text if they so choose.

In addition to these Internet-based sources, there are also two great tools that are available through the library.  The first is Ebrary, the library’s digital library, giving students access to 1000s of books both popular and academic.  Faculty can assign entire books or individual chapters from a range of books.  Ebrary also includes some great tools such as a notes section, annotations, and highlight so students can engage more with the text.  Overdrive is another great source for access to digital copies of both books (more popular books in this case) and audiobooks.  The one drawback with Overdrive is that there are limitations on the amount of students that can virtually check out a book.  But it might be useful to direct students if you have them doing research or required to read an outside book on their own.

Finally, for developing content online as opposed to standard pay-for texts, I’d highly recommend Diigo.  This is a social bookmarking tool that allows you to not only create and share bookmarks, but if you create a group, you can collaboratively annotate and highlight any page you bookmark (or that students bookmark).  Some faculty enjoy using a variety of websites including blogs, newspapers, and other online sources.  They can create a Diigo group for their class, organize the links into different “chapters” or “weekly readings.”  But what’s great is that the faculty can annotate and highlight passages on the website that students will be able to see or faculty can require students to write commentary on the website.  In effect, this creates a “living text” that the faculty member can use each semester, adding or subtracting as it makes sense to do so.  For more exploration of Diigo’s uses, check out our playlist on Youtube.

One last note.  It’s important that you explain to students the expectations around your course material in terms of how they should be used.  Students may not have had material online to read and so giving them some directions and guidelines about how to read (and notate) online as well as resources to overcome problems and alternative places they can find the material is really important.  It’s frustrating to the faculty member when the student doesn’t do the reading, but it’s equally frustrating for the student when the reading isn’t accessible.

• What are barriers for you to keep you from using online materials instead of the standard physical text?
• What kind of online material have you used?  What did you like and dislike about it?
• What would be your ideal for online materials?  How would it work?

For Your (and their) Viewing Pleasure: Video Resources

Adding video content can certainly be a useful tool for any class and can be an important bridge of engagement to make material more dynamic.

Video can be done in a lot of ways.  Tech-savvy faculty most likely have a webcam, digital camera, or even their own cellphone to which they can record material and upload it to their own YouTube Channel or to the course in any manner they propose.  We also welcome faculty to work with us and media services to create video material for the online class.  However, here, I'm going to cover 3 awesome video resources for you to consider for your online course.

1.  Films On Demand
The Good:  FilmsOnDemand "is the leading source of high-quality video and multimedia for academic, vocational and life-skills content."  Here, faculty can find an excellent array of videos that they can use for their course either as required or supplemental material.  They cover topics from Anthropology to World Languages to Archival Material to Biology to Criminal Justice and more.  It's a video database that our library has in its collection and has been a great boon to many faculty in their teaching.

The Bad:  You'll need to remind students of the following (from the NSCC Library's Website):
"In order to access some library resources off campus you must have a library activated NSCC ID. The fourteen digit number on the bottom of your ID is your library card number. Enter in this number when accessing databases off-campus."

Also, you'll need to make use of the proxy server link in order for this to work right.   For more information on integrating videos directly into ANGEL, check out the Library resource here.

The REALLY GOOD: What's great about this tool is that if you make an account with Films On Demand, you can do some really great things with playlists.  Playlists allow for you to compose a particular selection of videos that you feel go well together.  For instance, you could assemble a playlist of documentaries and archival films from World War II or bring together the different documentaries and dramatic renderings of the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

However, FilmsOnDemand takes it one step further.  Every video on the site has been broken down into smaller snippets and you can also make playlists just using these snippets.  If you think of the full video as a music CD, you can use it entirely, OR you can select specific tracks from each video to make your own mixed tape (remember mixed tapes?).

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2.  YouTube
The Good:  A vast array of material for you to use and bring something into the classroom that students are already familiar with.  Additionally, many schools have been putting up lecturers and presentations on a variety of college-level material.  YouTube EDU is chockfull of great lectures that you can incorporate for better learning and understanding.

The Bad:  Well, it's Youtube; filled with many many many distractions (we've all been there).  That's the obvious challenge.  YouTube now also features much more ads than previously.  Additionally, not all videos are stable and may change or disappear entirely.  The other challenge is that there are complications since YouTube is owned by Google, but doesn't come with the suite of services that NSCC gets by using Google for its email server services.  What this means is that you can't syncrhonize your YouTube account and North Shore Gmail account.  Maintaining two accounts isn't necessarily a problem for you, the instructor, but it can create a barrier (and just be frustrating) for students.  (Though this is largely a problem when you are sending them to YouTube, not when you are incorporating a YouTube video into ANGEL).

The REALLY GOOD:  Like FilmsOnDemand, you can assemble playlists for students to watch and send them one link (instead of a list of links); however, you cannot break the videos down into segments (anymore than they already are on the site) as you can with FilmsOnDemand.  The other great piece about using YouTube videos is that you can encourage and stimulate conversation since each video comes with its own discussion board.  The conversation will not only be with other students but anyone else who happens to come upon the video.
Here's an example of what you can find from YouTube.

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3.  Archive.org
The Good:  Archive.org serves as  the internet archive of all things in the public domain.  Books, recordings, videos, etc.  The site has an enormous collection of material and in particular, videos from the 20th and 21st century.  It's a great resource much like the above in that you can find great material to integrate into your course.

The Bad:  Unlike the previous two, you cannot make a playlist.

The REALLY GOOD: Unlike the other two sites, anything on this website is available for download.  YouTube and FilmsOnDemand do not allow you to download the videos; but most videos on Archive.org can be downloaded in a variety of digital formats.
Here's an example of what you can find at Archive.org.

• What are some of the ways you use video in your course? 

• What do you find beneficial about them? 

• What resources do you rely upon when you look to integrate video into your course?

Let's use hear your thoughts and ideas on the subject!