Month: December 2014

Independent Study Opportunity in Online Teaching

I am pleased to offer an opportunity for independent study in the spring to a CON graduate student who is interested in teaching online in an academic setting.

The focus of this independent study is online teaching in a class of undergraduates from a wide variety of disciplines. You will learn about the principles of effective online teaching during the first seven weeks of the spring 2015 term and then co-teach an online course with me (Joni Tornwall) in the College of Education (ESEPSY 1159, Online Learning Strategies and Skills) during the last seven weeks of spring semester. Please see this example of an Individual Study Form that a student developed for her independent study. She also kept a blog that tells her story throughout the independent study experience.

If you think you might be interested in a similar experience, please contact me. I would welcome an opportunity to talk with you about your goals and what you need from an independent study in online teaching.

Upcoming events in the College of Nursing

Strategies for Digital Communication in Challenging Student Encounters
When: Monday, December 15, 1-2 p.m.
Where: Room 168
Who: Instructors of academic courses in the College of Nursing.  Due to the sensitive nature of the topic, this session will not be recorded or available virtually.
Registration is limited: https://survey.con.ohio-state.edu/Checkbox/Strategies-for-Digital-Communication-in-Challenging-Student-Encounters.aspx

No matter whether you teach online or face to face, situations arise for every instructor in which student behavior presents a communication challenge.  If you use email, discussion boards, or any other text-based digital format to communicate with students, there are approaches to ensure your words are consistently clear, positive, and supportive, even in response to student behaviors that may seem less than favorable.

In this presentation and round-table discussion, join your CON peers for a few pearls of wisdom that come from the teaching trenches.  Learn seven strategies for managing digital exchanges in challenging student encounters.  You’ll leave the workshop with templates for language you can use in digital communications with students.

Final Grades Submission work session
When: Wednesday, December 17, 2-4 p.m.
Where: Room 198 (Note the change in room number! We will be in 198.)
Who: Anyone who wants one-on-one assistance with submission of final course grades, either through Carmen gradebook or directly in Faculty Center
No registration necessary; come and go as convenient for you!

Drop in to Room 198 any time between 2-4 p.m. to get one-on-one assistance with final grade submission.  This is an open forum for questions, demos, and assistance with Carmen Gradebook, preparing final grades, transferring them to Faculty Center (the Registrar) working with grades in Faculty Center, and making sure your grades are, in fact, posted in SIS and go to the Registrar.  Bring your laptop or use one of ours.  Nathanael, John Pryba, and Joni will be available to answer your questions and walk you through the grade submission process or prepare you to submit grades when you are ready.

Questions?  Contact Joni Tornwall at CON-InformationTechnology@osu.edu.

Grade Carmen Dropbox submissions quickly and efficiently

Grading in Carmen Dropbox just became a lot more efficient!  With the addition of voice commenting to TurnItIn’s features in Dropbox, you can now offer richer feedback to your students more quickly.  No more downloading student submissions, typing out comments using Word’s “Track Changes” feature, saving, and re-uploading.  Do it all in Carmen and save it there instead of on your computer!

Any of the images below can be viewed in full size by clicking on them.

First, you need to enable Originality Check on your Dropbox folder.

Step 1:

Enable Originality Check, Step 1

Continue reading →

Copy your Carmen course for the new semester

  1. Go into Carmen and enter the destination course.
  2. Click on “Edit Course”.
  3. Click on Import/Export/Copy Components.
  4. Under Copy Components from another Org Unit, click Search for offering.
  5. Type in the course number (or leave blank to see all courses) and click on the magnifying glass.
  6. Check the button next to the course and click on Add Selected.
  7. Click on Copy All Components (to copy everything) or choose Select Components to pick and choose what to copy. Generally, copying all components is a good choice for moving from one semester to the next.
  8. Wait while the course components copy.
  9. You will see a green checkmark when the copying is finished. (If you don’t, see the NOTE below.)
  10. Click on View Content or any other link in the navbar to see what’s been copied over.

NOTE: If the course copy process produced an error, stop and send an email to CON-InformationTechnology@osu.edu with the following information:

  1. The course name and number in parentheses as it appears in Carmen that you are copying into (the new course).
  2. The course name and number in parentheses as it appears in Carmen that are copying from (the old course).
  3. A screenshot of the error or the text of the error message you received.

Errors in course copying are sometimes caused by blank content modules or submodules in the old course from which you are copying, or they can be caused by content files that are “broken.” Look for red exclamation marks in your Carmen Content items in the old course. Removing those items may resolve the error encountered during the course copy process.

Red exclamation in Carmen Content

 

Why you should take a (second) look at SoftChalk now

SoftChalk Cloud

SoftChalk Cloud is probably a better choice over the desktop version (Create). Wondering why? Read on . . .

There have been some exciting developments recently around the potential for using SoftChalk at Ohio State. Even if you’ve considered SoftChalk in the past, now is a good time to take a fresh look at what this lesson-authoring tool has to offer and how you can get the most out of it by collaborating with your colleagues on campus.

Integration with Carmen

Valerie Rake and her eLearning Support team are planning to complete integration between Carmen and SoftChalk Cloud. (This integration is specific to the Cloud version of SoftChalk.) This means that students who open your SoftChalk lessons in Carmen will not need to log in again to Cloud, and their scores on assessments within your lessons will go directly to the Carmen gradebook.

Out-of-the-box Accessibility

Ken Petri in OSU’s Web Accessibility Center said, “I know there is a lot of use of competing products, such as Articulate, Captivate, and Lectora. But none of these has the level of accessibility out of the box that SoftChalk does, and even with lots of work (and work-arounds) those products can’t be made to be as thoroughly accessible as SoftChalk. Right now, SoftChalk is simply a better option with regard to accessibility.”

Ease-of-use and Convenience in the Cloud

I have used the desktop version of SoftChalk (SoftChalk Create) for years, and after using SoftChalk Cloud, I will never go back. With Cloud, you can create your lessons in a web-based application that does everything the desktop version does, save it to the Cloud, edit it from any computer connected to the internet, share it with a collaborator who can also edit it, and publish it for your audience. You can provide students with a hyperlink, or you can embed the lesson in a web page or in Carmen. Need to edit an existing lesson? If it’s in the Cloud, you make the edits and save. No more zipping the lesson package, uploading to Carmen, unzipping, relinking, etc. Read more about SoftChalk Cloud.

New eBook Builder

This is a really impressive new feature in SoftChalk that I’ve not had a chance to explore in depth, but I want to! You can publish your lessons in ePUB3 format to be accessed by your audience online or offline in iBooks for iPads or other ePUB3-compliant eReaders. Adobe Digital Editions has worked well for me. Learn more and download a sample SoftChalk eBook.

Strength in Numbers

Because of the recent changes described above, more departments on campus are considering adopting SoftChalk as a lesson authoring tool. In fact, a group of campus partners would like to collaborate to get the volume discount on SoftChalk licenses and form a users’ group to share lesson authoring ideas and examples. The price we all pay per license for SoftChalk will depend on the number of licenses we collectively want and on the number of existing licenses we already own.

If you currently own SoftChalk licenses (either Create or Cloud), or if you would like to join your colleagues on campus in a group purchase of new licenses, please respond to our survey. Even if you already own SoftChalk licenses and don’t plan to purchase additional licenses at this time, it may be to your advantage to respond to the survey because the information we collect may affect your renewal price. We also want to include you in the collaborations that occur in the users’ group that will form around the SoftChalk creators on campus.

Need more information?

Try SoftChalk Cloud free for 30 days.  Check out the Lesson Challenge winners for examples of SoftChalk lessons, or download one of the example lessons from SoftChalk.  View their video tutorials, or download their guides (including one for students!).  Or, just send me an email (tornwall.2@osu.edu), and I’ll be happy to talk with you!

SoftChalk Lesson Challenge Winner