Looking to learn something new?

In addition to following our blog (which we hope you're all doing now - sign up to follow by email using the tool on the right), are you looking for some great resources to keep up with the latest news in higher ed technology and online education?  Here are a couple of my recommendations:

The EDUCAUSE Review has an online edition that provides articles on many technology-related topics.  They recently shared their Top 10 of 2012.  One of these articles provides a great overview of the many different types of online educational delivery models.  There are so many rapid changes occurring in online learning - this article provides a great overview of many of the changes and new approaches.

The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) is a leading organization in the world of online learning.  If you ever get a chance to attend any of their conferences, I highly recommend it.  I've attended and presented at their International Conference on Online Learning a few times (held in the fall in Orlando, FL!) and have found it very worthwhile.  Sloan's peer-reviewed publication, the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, has just become freely available online.  The JALN is another great publication to check out regularly. While you're checking out their recent articles, you may want to take a look at this article from 2012 featuring a look at Bay Path's online faculty orientation program. Sloan's Publications page also contains many other great resources, including a number of year's worth of survey reports with data on online education.

If you're looking for some face-to-face learning opportunities, there are a number of great conferences coming up in the near future (some with online attendance options if you can't travel).  Check out the following upcoming conferences:

• NERCOMP Annual Conference - the north east regional affiliate of EDUCAUSE, in Providence, Rhode Island, March 11-13
• Emmanuel College in Boston will be hosting a small, local Canvas User Group on April 4. This event is still in the planning stages, so not a lot of details are available yet
• Sloan's Emerging Technologies for Online Learning conference, Las Vegas, NV, April 9-11
• Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium's online and blended learning conference at Quinnipiac University on June 11
• InstructurCon - the official annual conference on all things Canvas, in Park City, UT, June 18-20
• Sloan's Blended Learning Conference and Workshop, Milwaukee, WI, July 8-9 

Lots of great learning opportunities - I wish I could attend them all.  If you have the chance to attend any, either face-to-face or virtually, I highly recommend it.

The fields of ed tech and online learning are constantly changing and evolving.  Keeping up with these changes is difficult. The resources above, as well as this blog, can help you stay informed.

Effective Use of Video in Online Courses

Have you ever considered using video in your online classes?  Do you use video and want to learn how to improve what you're doing?  You may want to check out this free webinar on Thursday, 1/24 at 2pm entitled, "How to Make e-Learning More Effective with Video".

Using video can really help you enhance your classes, and Canvas has some great tools for bringing video into the online classroom.  Videos can range from recordings of you speaking to screen recordings that you narrate to demonstrate how to do something, such as creating formulas in Excel.  Short videos can make it easier for students to understand what they're learning because they're seeing an actual demonstration, not just reading about the material. Using a mix of video and text-based instructional materials can really make your course even better.

Another thing you can do with video is record and share live events from your face-to-face classroom. If you're looking to record in-class events, such as guest speakers, to share with an online section of your course, or for your students to reference after the event is over, you can record the event and place a link in your Canvas class.  The College now has the Tegrity lecture capture system to help you make your own recordings - in the classroom or at your desk. Tegrity's overview page for instructors gives some good information about what the system is capable of doing.  If you're interested in learning how to use Tegrity in your class, contact Justin LeTellier, Bay Path's Manager of New Media Services. And speaking of Tegrity, the ITS department is offering workshops on Tegrity on January 30 and 31.  Check out the IT Resources tab of the My Bay Path portal for details and to sign up.

If you can't make the webinar, but are interested in learning about best practices for video in online courses, this article gives some good tips. If you're looking to use video without creating your own content, there are lots of good resources available online and through Hatch Library's subscription to Films on Demand.

New Year, New Changes in Canvas!

As most of you are aware, Canvas continually makes improvements to the learning management system to allow for a better, richer experience for faculty and students… many of these improvements take place behind the scenes with relatively little noticeable impact to the typical Canvas user.  Some changes, however, are strikingly obvious… like the recent changes to discussion boards and the improvements made to the Recent Activity stream.  The rest of this blog entry outlines some of the changes you may have recently seen (or will be seeing soon).

Some already-implemented recent improvements include:

New Dashboard

The Dashboard is now more simplistic and better organized to give students and faculty a clear understanding of "What is going on and what do I need to do?" The Dashboard is filtered into categories such as Announcements, Conversations, Assignments, Discussions and other Notifications that have indicators to show what is read or unread. Clicking on the x to the right of the item can clear these recent activities.  Users can now drill down into each category further to view numerous older items within a specific category.

Discussion Search & Pagination

First, Canvas added search functionality to Discussions.  From any individual Discussion Topic, a user can search the entries (or comments) on that topic.  As users type text into the box, discussion replies are filtered and displayed on-screen. There is also an "unread" button that lets the user filter the search results even further to view all discussion threads they haven't reviewed yet.

The second enhancement Canvas made was the addition of pagination to Discussions. This means that a known maximum number of discussion threads are displayed on the screen. This assures that discussions can render correctly in supported browsers.

Quizzes – One Question at a Time

Faculty can now choose to deliver one quiz question at a time for all types of quizzes and surveys. This checkbox is titled “Show one question at a time” in the quiz options. Faculty can also restrict students from going back to questions they have already answered using the additional checkbox titled “Lock questions after answering”.  Lock Question After Answering is only available if One Question at a Time is selected. Faculty must set the one-at-a-time question options for each quiz they wish to enable.  

If Lock Question After Answering is chosen, students will be warned in one of two ways:

•       When students first take the quiz, or resume the quiz, they will be warned that once they have submitted an answer they will not be able to go back and view or change that answer later.

•       When students leave a question blank and attempt to move to the next question, they will be warned that they can’t return to answer the blank question.  

Students won’t be able to use the back button in the browser, manipulate the URL, or leave the quiz in hopes of returning to access the previously locked question.  

New improvements coming on or about January 5^th

Discussion Expand and Collapse Buttons

Discussions will now have expand/collapse functionality to help with readability. Collapsing is “sticky” across pages, so if the first page is expanded or collapsed, subsequent pages will also be expanded or collapsed.



These details for these features have been sourced from Canvas’ Release Notes page.  Please feel free to contact the Center for Online Learning at Bay Path College (online@baypath.edu) for any questions you may about using Canvas for your Bay Path class.

Annotate Directly in SpeedGrader!

Since Canvas debuted at Bay Path last year, many of our faculty have made mention of the fact that it would be great if they could annotate student submissions from directly within Speedgrader.  Up until now, this hasn’t been an option.  Beginning on September 29^th, we can!

Canvas now integrates with a took known as “Crocodoc” that can be used to preview and annotate homework submissions in the Speedgrader application.  Instructors can now annotate using a variety of tools directly on assignments to provide specific feedback for their students.  

Annotating student submission in Speedgrader with Crocodoc

Keep in mind that Crocodoc will only be used for supported file types: .doc/.docx, .pdf, .ppt/.pptx and .xls/.xlsx.  When another file type is submitted for a homework assignment Canvas will fall back to the previous previewing tool, which won’t have the annotation feature.  Also, Crocodoc will not be available in the iOS app at this time.  

For more information on these changes, please visit Canvas' Release Notes page.  If you are a Bay Path faculty member and need assistance with using Canvas in your classroom, please contact the Center for Online Learning and Instructional Technology via our Technology Support Center at 413.565.1487 or its@baypath.edu.

Managing Your Social Media Presence

The world of social media is changing rapidly.  Many of us have played around with tools like Twitter and Facebook, usually for personal uses, but these tools can be very useful as professional resources, as well.  They can be used in the classroom for educational purposes and also for marketing programs or communicating and networking with others in your field. 

One common issue that comes up in discussions about managing social media networks is that it can become overwhelming to keep up a profile with so many different sites.  How does one manage so many online identities?  A tool that I’ve found that works well is HootSuite.  HootSuite is a dashboard that allows you to manage multiple social network accounts from one place.  You can even schedule tweets/status updates and submit the same text to post in multiple accounts at one time.  The free version lets you connect up to 5 different accounts from sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. 

               

I’ve found this very useful in managing my own social media presence.  While I have a personal Facebook profile, I also manage a Facebook page for a community service organization to which I belong, and I also manage their Twitter account.  I use HootSuite to schedule updates of upcoming events to both Facebook and Twitter for their accounts simultaneously.  I can go through the organization’s event calendar and schedule repeated reminders for events to be posted as they get closer without having to do it the minute I want the message posted.  It’s very convenient!  I also use Twitter myself personally to follow ed tech topics.  I find the interface on HootSuite is easier and I use this site whenever I use Twitter.

If you’re using social media and want to find out about how wide your circle of influence is, you should check out Klout.  Klout is a site that creates a score for you based on your interactions within social media.  Anyone who has a Twitter or Facebook account can sign in; then you connect your various social media accounts to Klout and it calculates a score based on who has “liked” or “retweeted” your comments. What these scores actually mean has yet to be seen, but it is interesting that people (and employers) are looking at this.  Wired magazine recently featured an article on Klout.

If you’re curious about exploring these tools, or learning to use HootSuite, feel free to contact me and I’d be happy to show you what I’m doing and what your options are.