Fried Friday: World Seem a Bit Crazy These Days?

Click Link to view infographic
Do you believe in global warming? Believe that we’re on the brink of nuclear destruction? Comet going to hit the planet sometime soon? Enjoy the following infographic Apocalypse When? A Visual Guide to Doomsday Possibilities.

I share this not only for a fun Fried Friday post, but also to underscore the power in presenting information in graphical formats. Next Tech Tuesday we’ll talk more about infographics, but until then, if you are interested we have some resources posted at our iTeach Resource link that you can look at.

Click on the image to view.

Monday Morning Mentor is Back!

Title III is once again providing interested faculty a chance to start their weeks off with dynamic, professional development – in only 20 minutes! The Monday Morning Mentor is a program from Magna Publications.

How does this practical and convenient program work? Each program is available online starting at 9 am CST – yes, that’s 6 am AK time. But don’t worry about setting an early alarm as the programs are available for on-demand viewing for one full week. New programs are available weekly beginning Monday, January 26 and continue every Monday through May 11.

mentor

“In a compact format designed for busy schedules, the programs will deliver focused, fact-filled examinations of issues important to faculty and staff. Those include:

  • Student engagement
  • Teaching and learning
  • Teaching online
  • Assessment and learning goals
  • Classroom management
  • Legal concerns
  • Physical/mental/emotional health
  • Service learning”

-Magna Publications

The first program on January 26 is What Kinds of Questions Encourage Student Interaction? For a complete list of programs and dates, view the program schedule.

Just another awesome opportunity provided to you by your Sitka Title III team!

Using Feedback for a Deeper Learning Experience

We can teach less, provide more feedback, and cause greater learning than if we just teach.   — Grant Wiggins 2012

As educators we use feedback (or at least what I used to think of as feedback) constantly to adjust our presentations, discussions, and to improve our student’s performance. Regardless of whether we deliver our content online or face-to-face, this feedback plays an important role in the effectiveness of our teaching. After reading several articles on feedback, I’d say that instructors often provide their students with:

  • Evaluative information such as scores on papers and exams, gold stars and rejection for unacceptable work.
  • Advice on ways to improve such as comments on papers “needs more work” or “you forgot to include your sources”.
  • Praise for work well done, “good job” or “excellent analysis”.

Grant Wiggins, in his Seven Keys to Effective Feedback, suggests that this information may be interesting and useful, but strictly speaking, it is not “feedback.” In fact, he goes further and states that in general, we give far too much advice and not enough critical feedback to our students. Wiggins defines feedback in a 2012 PPT as “useful information about what you did, given a specific goal.”

In his post What feedback is and isn’t Wiggins provides the following examples as a quiz: which of the following 4 statements is feedback?

  1. “Nice job on the project, Sheshona!”
  2. Next time, Sam, you’ll want to make your thesis clearer to the reader”
  3. The lesson would be more effective, Shana, if your visuals were more polished and supportive of the teaching.”
  4. You taught about ants,Stefan? I LOVE ants!”

Ready with your answer? Wiggins states that NONE of the above are feedback! (1) and (4) are evaluative statements and (2) and (3) provide advice. Feedback does not need to be bossy or prescriptive. Rather, feedback should simply state what did or did not happen. For example, feedback after a student presentation could state “I counted your use of ‘um’ to be 12 times in five minutes.” Or, it could state, “Each time you paused and asked the group a question, I noticed that heads were nodding and all students were making eye contact with you.”

Before we examine this more closely, let’s look at some different types of feedback described by the TKI New Zealand Ministry of Education 2009.

TKI distinguishes between evaluative (involving a value judgment) and descriptive (describing what the student said or did and including information meant to improve performance) feedback. They report that descriptive feedback has been shown to be more effective and can be further broken into feedback all very intentionally linked to the task in three ways:

  • Reminder prompts — “How might you have developed that thesis more effectively” or “Do you recall last week’s discussion about….”
  • Scaffold prompts– “Why don’t you try applying the Pythagorean theorem…” or “Which class of prescription drug restricts the number of refills you are permitted before requiring you to revisit your physician?”
  • Example prompts — When multiplying two negative numbers together don’t forget …. for example, -7 x -5 would be….

Research (Clarke, 2001)  has shown some interesting and perhaps counter-intuitive findings when it comes to feedback and learning. In Unlocking formative assessment, Clarke finds that too much feedback and the student becomes dependent upon the instructor rather than learning to trust in his or her own judgement and conclusions. Instructors might ask students “Do you know what to do next?” or “Was that helpful?” or even “If you get stuck this week, what will you do?” but don’t assume that your students need constant feedback or hand-holding.

Clarke goes on to show that providing an evaluative score on a paper was least helpful while providing comments alone on papers showed improvement from one lesson to another. Providing both an evaluative and a descriptive comment appeared to remove all of the benefits of the descriptive comment.

We’re tackling the topic of feedback because Marnie asked us to unearth some resources for her and was interested in hearing how other faculty are using feedback in their courses. Thank you Marnie for suggesting this important topic.

Feedback IS an essential component of the teaching and learning process and deserves more than a casual post in the FLC. We would like to suggest that you join us for a one-hour roundtable discussion on feedback. Let’s all read the following articles:

We can discuss these readings and share our understanding and our best practices.

Tech Tuesday – Twitter

Think Twitter is just a waste of time? Think again. Its organizational structure makes it an effective tool for connecting with students and others online.

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Are you a Twitter skeptic or wary of the technology? Read How Twitter Can Be Used as a Powerful Educational Tool written by Alan November and Brian Mull and put those doubts to rest! They explain how Twitter can be important part of the learning process. When you’re ready to give it a try, Twitter has great resources to get you started!

Fried Friday: Make Life a Little Easier

We are all busy and the Internet is an enormous resource where busy people often get lost for hours on end. Seriously, we know… hours and hours.

This first FLC Fried Friday of 2015, enjoy makeuseof’s great list of The Best Websites On The Internet. they have compiled divided into 14 categories. The list is updated on a regular basis so you can bookmark this site and return to it often.

While this might not make you laugh today, it is sure to lighten your load just a little!

Click for Website

 

Okay and for those of you who might need or miss Fried Friday’s opportunity for a random smile, how about this YouTube video of a Screaming Frog:

 

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Tech Tuesday

iTeach2015_v20

Ways to Help Your Students Get a Good Start in 2015

Here are a couple of resources that might be very helpful to you as you begin the Spring 2015 semester.

Nicole developed a Getting Started Tutorialresource that is posted on the Tips for Student Success blog, which we think you might want to include in your Getting Started or Start Here area. This provides valuable information for students about how to pick a proctor, how to access email, where to find textbooks and more. You can include this in your course by linking to the following, or capturing the image below and linking it to the resource as I have here. Link to Copy

Next, we’ve received received some inquiries about the Plagiarism Tutorial from faculty who wish to verify that their students went through the tutorial and successfully completed the quiz. You can put the quiz directly into Blackboard by downloading the zip file attached here and then uploading it into Blackboard quiz Pools. The zip file will unpackage itself and you wlil then be able to create a quiz wherever you would like selecting the questions from the pool. Plagiarism Zip File. You can modify the questions once you’ve imported them. The questions are also available in Word format.
Thumbnail_Fattic_Example

We came across another way to create a “Getting Started” or a “Start Here” and are sharing it here with you. Many faculty create a Getting Started folder or learning module inside of Blackboard. Lorinda Fattic shared with us another way. Lorinda wanted to create a starting announcement that contained all of the information that students require for success in her course without creating another click for them. This is another great example of getting your students started off on the right path from the first day of class. Thanks for sharing with us Lorinda.

Remember, if there’s a tutorial that you need created and you don’t see it here– please request it by clicking on the Not Finding What You Need page at our blog and submitting your request. We’ll do our best to quickly create or find you the help that you need.

 

 

Resources for Your Students

E-learning concept

At the beginning of each semester we like to remind you about the resources we have for your students. The Tips for Student Success blog is a great resource for your students, providing short tutorials supporting student learning and addressing specific college-level concepts or skills. When we find resources already developed that may benefit your students, we will post them as well – like this awesome one developed by Excelsior College! Scroll/search through the blog and see how many other great resources we have found.

Currently our tutorial page includes the following:

  • Tips on How to Be An Engaged Online Learner
  • Blackboard: Behind the Scenes
  • Is Online Learning Right For Me? (starring our very own UAS staff)
  • Create Posts in WordPress
  • Edit Your Posts in WordPress
  • Time Management for Students
  • Test Taking Tips
  • Basic Grammar
  • Email Etiquette
  • How to Study
  • Note Taking
  • How to Write a Basic Essay
  • Plagiarism – What it is And How to Avoid It

Please share the Tips for Student Success blog with your students!

Like what you see? Have a resource you’d like us to add? Or do you need a quick tutorial for your students? Let us know!

 

Image: ©iStockphoto.com/Jirsak

SoftChalk Training Opportunities for January 2015

SoftChalk Short Courses are live, one-hour training webinars, conducted online by a SoftChalk instructor. The courses typically include a presentation and examples, as well as an opportunity for you to ask questions and receive assistance from the instructor.

softchalk

Upcoming Short Courses

  • An Overview of SoftChalk Cloud
  • An Overview of SoftChalk Create
  • TextPoppers, Images and Hyperlinks
  • Navigation Features and Sidebars
  • Embedded Media
  • Quizzes, Quiz Groups and SoftChalk ScoreCenter

Visit the Short Courses page for details and register today!

Fried Friday — Happy Holidays Everyone!

Everyone knows that this time of year is often very stressful. We hope this video clip helps to put the holidays into perspective and starts your vacation with a smile!

 

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The Faculty Learning Corner team wish you all Happy Holidays! See you in 2015.

Happy Holidays

Photo credit: TJCoulston