Teaching

Using Zoom, CarmenConnect for Online Conferencing and Synchronous Learning Experiences

Did you know after 8 minutes of lecture, college students begin to fade out? If they are intensely focused, that increases to about 20 minutes.

Due to clinical skills lab construction, some lectures that currently take place in the VMC have been moved to the Goss auditorium. Goss’s smaller size has necessitated live streaming core lectures to the AT Lab overflow location, and VIS has worked to implement a solution with the Zoom conference tool. While Zoom is not currently among OSU’s officially-supported online conferencing tools, both VIS and OTL have found it to be a great alternative that can be easy to set up and use.

If you have used CarmenConnect before, you will be familiar with Zoom online conferencing features, including audio and video, text chat, screen share, breakout rooms, as well as ongoing and scheduled meeting rooms. In particular, breakout rooms are a great way to implement group work and discussions in a online, asynchronous setting, where students are expected to connect individually.

Compared to free Zoom accounts, CarmenConnect does have the following advantages:

  • Cleared by OCIO Cybersecurity for data element classifications up to S2 (Internal).
  • Supports session recordings directly stored in the cloud with a sharable link.
  • No time limit for meetings with 2+ participants.
  • No technical or arbitrary limit to the number of concurrent attendees allowed that we are aware of.

While Zoom is currently a temporary solution to the CVM classroom situation, you may find online conferencing tools appropriate for other synchronous education experiences, such as bringing outside expertise into your classrooms. For example, Professional Development 3-B invites an outside expert to speak about animal law via Zoom.

If you ever run into a situation where you cannot be physically present in class, or if you are interested in other educational applications of online conferencing tools, please feel free to contact cvmotl@osu.edu for some ideas! For general business-related conferencing needs, please consult vishelp@osu.edu.

For more information:

Competency-Based Veterinary Education Framework Introducted at AAVMC

A new Competency-Based Veterinary Education (CBVE) framework unveiled Saturday at the 2018 conference of the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC) represents three years of intensive work and lays the framework for schools to develop a competency-based curriculum.

It is probably the most significant work of the organization to date and facilitates the shift from faculty-centered teaching to student-centered learning, said Chief Executive Officer Andy Maccabe. “We don’t consider this product to be a perfect, final product,” he added. Instead, it will be updated and revised as educators implement it, and all schools are invited to adapt the framework.

The framework encompasses 9 Domains of Competence with corresponding competencies. These include:

  1. Clinical Reasoning and Decision-making
  2. Individual Animal Care and Management
  3. Animal Population Care and Management
  4. Public Health
  5. Communication
  6. Collaboration
  7. Professionalism and Professional Identity
  8. Financial and Practice Management
  9. Scholarship

In addition, the framework is accompanied by Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) or essential tasks that veterinary medical students can be trusted to perform with limited supervision in a given context and with regulatory requirements, once sufficient competence has been demonstrated. The 8 EPAs include:

  1. Gather a history, perform an examination, and create a prioritized differential diagnosis list
  2. Develop a diagnostic plan and interpret results
  3. Develop and implement a management/treatment plan
  4. Recognize a patient requiring urgent or emergent care and initiate evaluation and management
  5. Formulate relevant questions and retrieve evidence to advance care
  6. Perform a common surgical procedure on a stable patient, including pre-operative and post-operative management
  7. Perform general anesthesia and recovery of a stable patient, including monitoring and support
  8. Formulate recommendations for preventive healthcare

The EPAs are accompanied by descriptions of activities, relevant domains, and elements within the activity. AAVMC conference attendees from our college look forward to sharing more information upon their return.

 

CBE (competency-based education) has a “tyranny of utility.” … It has to be highly applicable. All learning activities are connected to “a golden thread” through the curriculum or they are “selective electives.”
– Jason GRank, CanMEDS, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada

Transforming PowerPoint into Standalone Learning Modules

Other posts in the series:

  • Creating Custom (Talking-Head) Videos with MediaSite

In this installment, we would like to show you how to turn your existing PowerPoint presentations into standalone learning modules.

(Before you start, please make sure that you have the latest versions of PowerPoint on your devices; CVM PCs should come with Office 2016, which is the latest release version.)

Continue reading →

Faculty and Staff Development Session Focuses on Pedagogies of Inclusion

Six faculty joined Office of Teaching and Learning staff to discuss pedagogies of inclusion during a Thursday morning event on “Inclusive Pedagogies.” The conversation was rewarding, and lasted well past the session with instructors sharing their how they approach engaging as many students as possible.

Inclusive pedagogy is a method of teaching that incorporates dynamic practices and learning styles, multicultural content, and varied means of assessment, with the goal of promoting student academic success, as well as social, cultural, and physical well-being, and it often reflect the strategies we know work to engage all students.

All instructors are urged to begin to assess assumptions they have about experience, knowledge, ability, identify, and viewpoints.

Tips and takeaways from the session included the following, among others:

  • Recognize any biases or stereotypes you may have absorbed.
  • Rectify any language patterns or case examples that exclude or demean any groups.
  • Attend to student identities and seek to change the ways systemic inequities shape dynamics in teaching-learning spaces, affect individuals’ experiences of those spaces, and influence course and curriculum design.
  • If discriminatory remarks are made in your class, it is your responsibility to interrupt them and point them out as such. If you do not, students may think that you either approve of or are unaware of the impact of the comment or behavior.
  • Do not assume that all students will recognize cultural, literary or historical references familiar to you.
  • Convey the same level of respect and confidence in the abilities of all your students.
  • In class discussion, be wary of unfair patterns of communication (e.g., men interrupting women, a white student getting credit for a student of colors idea) and ensure fair access to class discussion for all students.
  • In courses in which class discussion is important, consider calling upon students rather than only relying on volunteers. Some students may be willing to participate but may not volunteer, for cultural or personal reasons.
  • Consider who comprises panels of experts or guest lecturers.
  • Use Universal Design for Learning (UDL) when preparing activities, materials, and presentations.

What’s New In CarmenCanvas (As of Feb 17, 2018)

(For a full list of updates, please see release notes from 1/27/18 and 2/17/18)

For Everyone

  • In Inbox
    • The course menu is now an autocomplete menu, which should make finding the course that you’d like to message much easier.
    • The “new message” icon has been updated.
  • In SpeedGrader DocViewer
    • Free text annotations can now have either a white or transparent background. You can also now adjust the text size. 
    • Multi-page documents can now be navigated using the forward/backward pagination links, or by typing in specific page numbers
  • In the Rich Content Editor, you can now indicate images as being “decorative”; decorative images are those that do not necessarily contribute to the content, and as such you do not need to input alt text.
  • There is now a distinction between the “settings” (i.e. gear) and “options” (i.e. three dots) icons.
    • The Settings icon contains selections that would actively change how the page is displayed.
    • The Options icon contains selections that link to additional functionality or other Canvas areas.
  • The file download icon in Modules has been updated to a paperclip/attachment icon.

For Instructors Only

  • You can now leave individual feedback in group assignments that are individually graded.
  • There is now an additional “Student View” icon on the course home page.
  • In the New Gradebook
    • You can now enter grades as percentages or according to a grading scheme; previously, you could only enter point values.
    • “Muted” and “Unpublished” statuses are now indicated with text in the assignment column header.

Creating Custom (Talking-Head) Videos with MediaSite

A recent email from Caroline El-Khoury, PPS director, noted, “Classes are held unless the University closes. During inclement weather some faculty members may choose to cancel their own class and send a lecture capture link to the students rather than rescheduling.“In this update, we want to give you an option that will allow your class to “meet” even if all of you can’t be on campus. In particular, these following tips will help you create your own custom talking-head videos, which you can then provide to students on Carmen.

(For completeness’s sake, you can also perform a custom capture using one of the college’s capture-equipped rooms, and requesting a link from VIS.)

Equipment
At the very least, you should have the following tools available (recommendations not meant as product placement):

  • A webcam – We have used the Logitech C920 and we like it; you may also have one already built into your monitor or your smartphone/tablet
  • A microphone – We have used the Blu SnowBall for various custom caption solutions; if you have a headset with microphone, such as the Apple EarPod (free if you are an iPhone user), it may also be a good option. 

Many laptops come with a microphone built-in, but we have found that these usually do not yield clear recordings.

Using MediaSite

MediaSite is the university’s solution for video capture and consumption. What’s nice about MediaSite is that it can give us in-depth analytics on areas such as who’s watched a video, how much of the video an average viewer watches, and popular segment(s) of the video. With MediaSite, you have the option to create content with a combination of video, audio, slides, and desktop recording. MediaSite is the system that is being actively investigated for use in the Clinical Skills Lab.

(Before you start, here are 10 tips to record yourself with a webcam, written by Laura Schmitz for the UniCast blog.)

Custom talking-head videos can be created on your own PC/Mac device using the MediaSite Desktop Recorder application. Here are some tips to get your started:

If you are using a smartphone or a tablet, such as the iPad:

Finally, you can share your media by Adding a Presentation to Carmen, or by Linking a MediaSite Presentation elsewhere. 

In the next installment of this series, we will show you how Top Hat can be used as more than an in-class audience response tool!  As always, please feel free to reach out to CVMOTL@osu.edu for ideas and/or assistance.

Tips for Writing Good Multiple-Choice Questions

  • Base each item on an educational or instructional objective of the course, not trivial information.
  • Try to write items in which there is one and only one correct or clearly best answer.
  • The phrase that introduces the item (stem) should clearly state the problem.
  • Test only a single idea in each item.
  • Be sure wrong answer choices (distractors) are at least plausible.
  • Incorporate common errors of students in distractors.
  • The position of the correct answer should vary randomly from item to item.
  • Include from three to five options for each item.
  • Avoid overlapping alternatives.
  • The length of the response options should be about the same within each item (preferably short).
  • There should be no grammatical clues to the correct answer.
  • Format the items vertically, not horizontally (i.e., list the choices vertically)
  • The response options should be indented and in column form.
  • Word the stem positively; avoid negative phrasing such as “not” or “except.” If this cannot be avoided, the negative words should always be highlighted by underlining or capitalization: Which of the following is NOT an example ……
  • Avoid excessive use of negatives and/or double negatives.
  • Avoid the excessive use of “All of the above” and “None of the above” in the response alternatives. In the case of “All of the above”, students only need to have partial information in order to answer the question. Students need to know that only two of the options are correct (in a four or more option question) to determine that “All of the above” is the correct answer choice. Conversely, students only need to eliminate one answer choice as implausible in order to eliminate “All of the above” as an answer choice. Similarly, with “None of the above”, when used as the correct answer choice, information is gained about students’ ability to detect incorrect answers. However, the item does not reveal if students know the correct answer to the question.

From Writing Good Multiple Choice Questions by Dawn M. Zimmaro, Ph.D.

How Many Options Should a Multiple-choice Question Have? Maybe Just 3

Exactly how many options should a multiple-choice question have? The answer has varied over the years, but one meta-analysis suggests fewer than many of us currently use. As recently as 2002, researchers suggested we use “as many plausible distractors as feasible,” but that may mean just 3, according to Michael C. Rodriguez in “Three Options Are Optimal for Multiple-Choice Items: A Meta-Analysis of 80 Years.” 

Rodriguez writes, “I would support this advice by contributing the concern that in most cases, only three are feasible. Based on this synthesis, MC items should consist of three options, one correct option and two plausible distractors. Using more options does little to improve item and test score statistics and typically results in implausible distractors. The role of distractor deletion method makes the argument stronger. Beyond the evidence, practical arguments continue to be persuasive.

  1. Less time is needed to prepare two plausible distractors than three or four distractors.
  2. More 3-option items can be administered per unit of time than 4- or 5-option items, potentially improving content coverage.
  3. The inclusion of additional high quality items per unit of time should improve test score reliability, providing additional validity-related evidence regarding the consistency of scores and score meaningfulness and usability.
  4. More options result in exposing additional aspects of the domain to students, possibly increasing the provision of context clues to other questions (particularly if the additional distractors are plausible).”
We may not feel comfortable moving from 4 or 5 options to 3, but the message is clear, there’s no reason to spend valuable faculty time and energy on developing non-plausible distractors, and more than 5 options does NOT improve a question.

What’s New in CarmenCanvas (01/06/2018 Release)

(Read more about this release in the release notes.)

For Everyone:

  • (CVM-Specific) A “CVM Course Schedule” link is now available in the left menu within courses. This will take you directly to the CVM Schedule site.
  • The image picker in the sidebar of the Rich Content Editor now provides a checkbox to mark an image as a decorative image. (This can be used from an accessibility standpoint to indicate the image does not provide relevant meaning.)
For Instructors Only:
  • Updates to the new Gradebook: Ask us how to opt-in!
    • You can now set rules for late and missing submissions. For missing submissions, you can set a default percentage of the total possible score; for late submissions, you can set a percentage that will be deducted from the final assignment score per day/hour, as well as a lowest possible score.
  • Rubric criterion now support extra credit (i.e. excess points above maximum point value specified).
For Students Only:
  • Submissions to graded discussions can now be found under your personal “Submissions” folder.

AAVMC to Unveil Competency Framework for Veterinary Medicine

For the past two years, a group of respected educators from the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges member institutions has been working to develop a competency framework for veterinary medicine that aligns with approaches used by other health professions.

The Office of Teaching & Learning became aware of this work when it began and participated in an activity designed to provide feedback to the group working on this project, specifically examining a very early draft of the competencies during a session at the 2016 Veterinary Educators Collaborative.

The finalized framework will be introduced during a plenary session at the 2018 AAVMC annual meeting in March.

Council for Professional Education Chair Tod Drost and OTL Director Melinda Rhodes-DiSalvo will be present at the meeting and are excited to share what they learn with colleagues at CVM and consider how the framework might assist in advancing educational excellence. In essence the framework will respond to the questions “What does the public expect a graduate veterinarian to be able to do?” and “How do you actually assess students’ competencies in these areas?”

According to AAVMC: “The framework will be introduced as a ‘best practices’ model which all member institutions are welcome to adopt or consult as they modify existing curricula or develop new ones. While no action will be taken to adopt the program as an official standard for evaluating educational outcomes, the body of work represents the most substantial effort ever undertaken in this area of academic veterinary medicine and is expected to serve as a valuable tool to guide curricular development, refinement and outcomes assessment.”

The project was led by Associate Deans for Academic Affairs Dr. Jennie Hodgson of the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine and Dr. Laura Molgaard of the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine.

AAVMC’s website has additional information about the process and working group.