Student Response Technologies

Teaching Tip: Liven Up Online Discussions with Tech Tools

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 19:18:29 +0000

Teaching Tip: Liven Up Online Discussions with Tech Tools Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/12/2020 - 13:18

Online discussion forums can begin to feel stale as the semester progresses. Shake up your discussions and encourage creativity with engaging, easy-to-use technology tools that are FREE for students and instructors.

Padlet allows students to contribute to a collaborative virtual “corkboard,” and Flipgrid lets students record short videos in place of traditional written responses. Both tools are available to educators and students at no cost. (Some Padlet features are restricted for free accounts; paid subscriptions are available for a low monthly cost.)

Too busy to try a new tool? Invite your students to liven up Canvas-based discussions by embedding images, recording video or audio, sharing video, or hyperlinking to additional resources in their posts.

To learn more about these tools or for guidance on facilitating online discussions, contact us to schedule a consultation with a member of the ASSETT staff.

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Lecture Capture Offers Far More Benefits than You Might Think

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 23:59:43 +0000

Lecture Capture Offers Far More Benefits than You Might Think Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 08/21/2020 - 17:59

Doris Cheung , Dave Benson , Nick Steinkamp , Brad Grabham

Students Are More Engaged, Confident

At first, Professor Janet Casagrand, Senior Instructor in the Department of Integrative Physiology, thought her recorded lectures would be helpful for students who needed to miss class. She had been meeting with them after the fact to share what they had missed and had good reason to think Classroom Capture might help improve her efficiency. While a small percentage of students did use the recordings to make up class, Janet was pleased to find many students who had attended class were also leveraging the recordings:

...so many students use it as a review tool, and they find it invaluable, and even if they’re fast forwarding through most of it, they like to be able to go back, check their notes, a particularly difficult concept--to listen to it again...

Fearing that students wouldn’t come to class if lecture recordings were available, Janet ran some statistics and didn’t see any drop in attendance. Wisely, she had incorporated active learning with clickers in her class to deter that possibility. It turns out that it’s not just the few who must miss class or request accommodation that are accessing the recordings. Classroom Capture enables all students to reinforce their learning:

When there were parts I would miss, it would allow me to go back and clarify. It helped me confirm the notes I had taken with what the professor actually said.

It helped me go back and review certain concepts and topics that were challenging the first time around.

There are many distractions in lecture (e.g., students on their phones, laptops, students talking) that can make it difficult to pay attention or hear everything in lecture. Lecture capture has allowed me to go back and review things that were missed, in an environment without distractions.

While Classroom Capture is just one of the technologies that can help students succeed, the Office of Information Technology (OIT) has been working hard and fast to launch two new services in preparation for remote teaching and learning this fall.

Teaching and Learning Effectively Through a Pandemic

During COVID-19, instructors will likely be teaching using a hybrid modality. Each of the following services has functionality to facilitate hybrid teaching and learning:

Classroom Capture Service with Zoom

Instructors should consider using the Classroom Capture Service for asynchronous recording in conjunction with Zoom for synchronous teaching to allow students who are not on campus to participate. (On-campus students can benefit by rewatching lectures if they should need to.) If you’ve already used Classroom Capture, you can reactivate previously-recorded lectures for use at a later date.

Personal Capture Service

Interested in recording lectures outside of the classroom? You can use OIT’s newest service, Personal Capture, which allows you to create high-quality videos, screencasts, and slideshows anytime, anywhere--like in the comfort and safety of your own home.

Like Classroom Capture, Personal Capture offers features like easy sharing and distribution as well as viewing analytics for instructors, dynamic picture-in-picture playback and searchable content for students.

Remote-Capable Classrooms with Zoom

To help accommodate the need for hybrid teaching and learning, up to 350 additional classrooms are being converted to Remote-Capable Classrooms (RCC) this summer, which allow for in-person, real-time remote participation in conjunction with Zoom. The RCC Service provides instructors with a simple technology solution, a Crestron Mercury X system, that enables the simultaneous delivery of lectures to students that are physically in the classroom as well as students learning remotely. Please note, this system must be used with a BYOD ("bring your own device") laptop to facilitate the Zoom (synchronous) session.

A full list of hybrid-capable classrooms can be found on the Hybrid-Capable Classrooms List.

Teaching will certainly have its challenges this fall, but with these OIT services, instructors have access to technologies that can help make their students’ experience the best it can be.

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Tech Spotlight: iClickers for Remote Courses

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 18:17:54 +0000

Tech Spotlight: iClickers for Remote Courses Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/17/2020 - 12:17

Rob Leary

OIT is moving to a new system for in-class polling and low-stakes, formative assessment. iClicker Cloud, the cloud-based instructor polling software, is more versatile than iClicker Classic, offering the instructor flexibility in polling, attendance, and sharing teaching and grading responsibilities. iClicker Reef, the new student portal for iClicker, is a one-stop option for students to register their iClicker remote, review iClicker questions (and how they answered them), and most importantly, to respond to in-class questions while learning remotely in synchronous classes.

In an all-remote synchronous course, instructors aren’t limited to just multiple-choice questions. They can ask short-answer (up to 16 characters), numeric, and “target” (image-based) questions. Students using mobile polling in iClicker Reef can answer from wherever they are, using their phone, tablet, or laptop. They also can see in real-time what their answer is, whether it’s been recorded, how the rest of the class responded, and even whether they got it correct or not. Students using regular iClickers in a face-to-face class also need to use their iClicker Reef account to register their clickers. Then, all the same metrics are available to them. While there are many benefits to this, one stand-out plus is that instructors no longer need to constantly upload clicker grades to Canvas. The grades are available for students to review on their own device.

For more information about iClicker Reef and Cloud, visit oit.colorado.edu/clickers.

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ASSETT Supports Graduate Students Who Teach

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Apr 2019 16:19:29 +0000

ASSETT Supports Graduate Students Who Teach Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 04/18/2019 - 10:19

Sam Kindick , Ali Ogrodnick

Many graduate students don’t realize that they can take advantage of ASSETT’s suite of services, but they can! Take for example Tyler Denton, a PhD candidate in classics. In fall 2018, Tyler took advantage of two of ASSETT’s services: the Technology Integration Program and the Visualizing Instructional Practices (VIP) Service.

The Technology Integration Program seeks to partner with instructional faculty (anyone teaching at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, graduate students included) to incorporate new technologies into their classes by pairing them with tech-savvy undergraduates, called Student Technology Consultants (STCs). The STCs meet with faculty to discuss their needs and to suggest possible technologies. They often provide an in-class demonstration and offer out-of-class support to students. In recent semesters, STCs have supported technologies like WordPress for blogging, Audacity for podcasting, and Adobe Premiere for video editing.

Tyler was interested in using a classroom response system in his Latin class in order to give his students the chance to participate in various ways. It was also important that the technology minimized downtime during class and didn’t require any extra costs. He worked with Senior STC Austin Chau, who after learning about Tyler’s goals, showed him several apps, including Plickers and Kahoot!, which Tyler ultimately decided to adopt in his class.

The Visualizing Instructional Practices Service, on the other hand, provides course instructors with data about what’s happening during their classes. STCs observe three different class sessions and use iPads to collect information in two-minute intervals. There are several different protocols available, but Tyler requested COPUS (Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM), which tracks what students and the instructor are doing, and BERI (Behavioral Engagement Related to Instruction), which tracks student engagement.

The VIP Service requires very little extra time or work from faculty, who only need to request the observation and then teach as usual. ASSETT offers an optional post-consultation to go over the report and visuals from the observations. Tyler describes the VIP process as “entirely painless,” pointing to the minimal paperwork required as one of the service’s biggest selling points. He opted for a consultation and was pleased by the data because it was “digestible, useful and simple.” He found the VIP Service so valuable that he’s helping ASSETT pilot two new protocols this semester.

Tyler’s experience was positive and he encourages other graduate students to “take advantage of these services early in their academic career.” For more information, visit our website or email ASSETT@colorado.edu.

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Sparking Conversation with Padlet in Brown's Political Science Class

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 17:54:00 +0000

Sparking Conversation with Padlet in Brown's Political Science Class Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/12/2016 - 10:54

David Brown, PhD, is the Department Chair in the Department for Political Science and a research associate at the Institute for Behavioral Science at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder. Gale completed the Fall 2015 ASSETT Teaching with Technology Seminar. He implemented the use of Padlet in his Political Science class in order to bolster in-class discussions and share student's work.

[video:https://youtu.be/6UBNI--08k0]

Teaching and Learning Challenge

The problem that I wish to address concerns trying to encourage a substantive conversation with a large class regarding the problems and issues associated with data analysis. Although I’ve been successful in creating active learning assignments where students work on analyzing a problem, I’ve been less successful in collecting their work and using it to spark discussion in the class. I want to learn how to use technology to help generate a more fruitful conversation.

The title of the course is “Introduction to Research Methods”. It is an introductory statistics course with approximately 180 students (3 TAs). The class is required of all Political Science majors. Out of 180 students, approximately 100 are PSCI majors, 60 are business majors, and the rest come from ECON, SOCI, and IAFS.

The implication of not addressing the problem is a huge wasted opportunity for the students to learn important concepts from the assignments they’re given.

Plans for Implementation

The goal is threefold. First, I want to be able to hold the students accountable for the work they’re doing in class. Although the TAs and and float throughout the class as they’re working on an assignment, our eyes can’t be everywhere at once. Second, I hope by getting students involved in a discussion, the level of interest in the material will climb. My sense is that if they’ve invested in the work and have made an interesting discovery, sharing that discovery with the class will excite, motivate, and reinforce the work they’re doing. Finally, I want the discussion to turn toward issues that are central to the class. Wrestling with those problems in an assignment and sharing that with others will help provide concrete examples of how these problems come up when doing real data analysis.

In each assignment there are certain skills and concepts they have to master in order to complete in the assignment. In one sense there’s simply a test of their ability to execute code in a statistical package. In another sense, to complete the assignment satisfactorily, the student must understand the concept that is underlying the exercise, whether it is data description, regression analysis, regression diagnostics, or logistic regression.

The evidence that I’ve succeeded in sparking a discussion will be whether students become engaged in the process, actively participate and argue with one another. The other marker will
be that the deeper issues involved in the exercise will come front and center.

Indicators of Success

I wanted to get a large class on data analysis engaged in a discussion as students went through various projects that ask them to do data analysis. The class is an introductory statistics course with roughly 180 people enrolled. I have students in groups (around 40 groups). The students are asked each week to tackle a different problem. I wanted a good way for students to communicate with each other and me regarding their findings. So, I needed a means for them to present their findings in a quick and easy way that would allow me to then easily show the rest of the class.

My larger goal is to use this exercise to get students to critically think about the data and see how it relates to arguments they make all the time with little evidence.

I used a program called ‘Padlet’ for students to post to instead of the clunky D2L discussion list. I was worried that they would fill up the screen with their entries and that it would be difficult for me to spot the different contributions. I was also worried that Padlet would not really allow me to show (blow up) things nicely and that it would not really provide a good way to spark conversations. I would set up a discussion board before class and insert into D2L where they could drag and drop their work, identifying the group and including some analysis. Padlet helped tremendously as it provided a very easy way for each group to see what others were doing and to compare their work with others. In terms of the interface, Padlet was extremely easy to use and organize (it really required little if any preparation on my part and on the students’ as well).

Reflection

In short, Padlet allowed there to be an electronic conversation or presentation of everyone’s work. Showing how different groups attacked the problem. It set the stage for me to be able to discuss people’s work and perhaps to identify important problems what were introduced in the assignment. In terms of learning goals, it helped lay a foundation for discussing the problem and getting at the various challenges students confronted in the assignment each week. Perhaps the only pitfall of the program was that it didn’t automatically spark conversation. While it did make it easier for students to instantaneously share their work with the rest of the class and for us to identify it in class, I realized two important things: 1) I still needed additional time to analyze what the students had done and 2) I needed to do a better job of framing the assignments so that students would be cognizant of the deeper issues that they were dealing with like measurement, causation, etc.

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Tweeting in Tyler's Crime and Society Courses

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 06:00:00 +0000

Tweeting in Tyler's Crime and Society Courses Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/28/2014 - 00:00

Tweet for homework? This spring, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder students nominated Sociology graduate student Amanda Tyler for an ASSETT Outstanding Teaching with Technology Award for her teaching of Sociology 2044, Crime and Society. One student wrote, "We used both Clickers and Twitter to enhance learning and incorporate current events into the curriculum." Tyler spoke with ASSETT about how important it is for her to involve students in class discussions: "... I work toward creating an environment where students are able to discuss class material, even when the class has a large number of students. Clicker questions are a great way for me to engage my students in conversation." She says that she uses Clicker questions to poll students about their opinions and start discussions. Tyler explains that when students don't have to worry about whether their answers are right or wrong, the class can better engage multiple opinions. Also, Clicker questions help her gauge her students' understanding of material.

Using Twitter in Class Discussions

Additionally, Tyler creates class Twitter pages as venues for student participation. She embeds the class Twitter page feed onto the D2L course page and asks students to Tweet current event news stories or videos about class topics and write their own discussion questions for homework. Tyler says that she believes that Tweeting provides an opportunity, "... For students to apply course material to their everyday world." Tyler truly involves students in class discussion when she uses students' Tweeted questions as the class's Clicker questions. "Students often Tweet insightful questions that engage their peers in further discussion, so I like to highlight these questions in my lecture slides," says Tyler. In class, she projects the class Twitter feed onto the board and often invites students to Tweet their ideas during lecture. Tyler says that she finds that giving students the opportunity to join the spotlight motivates them: "I think Twitter makes class more fun! I believe that when students have fun learning, it is more likely that they do their homework, and they will want to attend class." Tyler says that she hopes that Tweeting may even help students better remember course material: "They might visually remember a term they learned in a Tweet, which will stick with them later ..."

Case in point: one day during a discussion about the value of eye witness testimony in court procedures, Tyler staged a mock eye witness activity. A colleague came into the classroom and quickly left again. Tyler asked her students to Tweet to the class Twitter page what they remembered they saw. When the students' realized how few of them had accurately remembered what the man had been wearing, they better understood the validity that is often lacking in eye witness testimonies.

In order to give students participation credit for their Tweets, Tyler assigns specific hashtags to each week's Tweets and periodically asks them to submit screen shot logs.

Tyler looks forward to a career in teaching at the college level: "Teaching is one of my greatest passions! It always keeps me on my toes. I am constantly researching and thinking about new ways to engage my students. Being nominated for this award is an incredible honor!"

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Nordic Studies Professor Ben Teitelbaum Nominated for ASSETT Teaching with Tech Award

Anonymous — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 06:00:00 +0000

Nordic Studies Professor Ben Teitelbaum Nominated for ASSETT Teaching with Tech Award Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/31/2014 - 00:00

In preparing for a lecture about dueling Nordic poets, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder Professor Benjamin Teitelbaum was reminded of a modern rap battle. Not one to miss an opportunity to reach his students, Teitelbaum searched for and found a (French) rap battle to play for his Scandinavian Studies class. Such an entertaining class session is not an isolated incident for his Nordic Studies students. Teitelbaum constantly searches for traces of historic Nordic lore in modern society. For example, if he finds a Swedish or Norwegian commercial to be particularly emblematic of Nordic culture, he may include it in a PowerPoint lecture.

Teitelbaum has been teaching at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder for two years now, and this spring, students in Scandinavian Studies 2201, Introduction to Modern Nordic Culture and Society, nominated him for an ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award. Students praised Teitelbaum's inclusion of the clips of films that help illustrate Nordic society. Students also praised his clicker questions. Teitelbaum says that he quizzes students with clickers so that he can take the, "Opportunity to have an instant discussion," with the class about a topic.

Next year, Teitelbaum hopes to incorporate clips from the NBC sitcom Welcome to Sweden into class. Finally, he returns the compliment: "We have wonderful students," Teitelbaum says of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Buffs.

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Survey Students with Google Drive Forms

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 06:00:00 +0000

Survey Students with Google Drive Forms Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 07/25/2014 - 00:00

Wondering how your students are really receiving your new teaching strategy? Why wait until after the semester is over to read students' feedback on FCQs? Create your own student survey right now with Google Drive Forms, and check in with your students mid-semester. ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder students and faculty are already set up and ready to go with Google Drive accounts.

Want help getting started? Read this How To List about how to use Google Forms, and watch this video about how and why to use Google Forms.

You may write your questions with multiple choice, checklist, or open response formatting. Consider trying Kern Kelley's ready-made form templates for educators, here.

After you have created and shared your form with students, their answers will instantly filter into a spreadsheet in your Google Drive account. Just like any spreadsheet, you can display their feedback in graphs or tables.

Good luck with using Google Drive Forms!

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Rockin' Out in Science Class: Students Nominate Astrophysics Professor David Brain for ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 06:00:00 +0000

Rockin' Out in Science Class: Students Nominate Astrophysics Professor David Brain for ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/22/2014 - 00:00

Imagine that as you walk into your freshman year introductory science lecture hall, you hear your professor playing music. Dr. David Brain of the Astrophysics Department at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder says that before each Astronomy 1000 The Solar System class session, he plays, "Snippets of three songs." Brain says that the snippets must have, "Some indirect relationship with the material." He says that he might use Blondie's, "The Tide is High," during a class about the tides on Mars, or play "Toxic" by Britney Spears before a lecture investigating various elements in the Solar System. When the day's playlist ends, students know that it is time for class to start. Brain doesn't hog the role of DJ, either. He invites students to post suggestions to the D2L discussion board page that Brain dedicates to class music ideas - and they do! In a typical semester, students suggest almost 100 tracks. Additionally, the music provides a token to remember the class. At the end of the semester, students can access the entire semester's playlist on Grooveshark.

But there's more to remember from Brain's Introductory Astronomy course than just the music. First, "... We are all scientists ..." greets students at the top of the class syllabus. Perhaps because of this high standard that Brain holds for his students, complemented with his efforts to relate class material to their personal interests, students nominated Brain for an ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award last year for that class. In their nominations, students expressed appreciation of Brain's use of D2L. Brain and his TAs make sure to keep the course D2L page full of relevant current events and extra information about topics covered in class.

Brain also reserves nights at the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder Sommers Bausch Observatory for his Introductory Astronomy students to observe the night sky. As an optional replacement for a homework assignment, students may attend and sketch their observations. Additionally, "Professor Brain also uses the newly renovated [Fiske] Planetarium to supplement class lectures and make the class more exciting," a student wrote in Brain's nomination for the ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award. Brain says that he tries to host about five class sessions in the Fiske Planetarium because there, students can, "Look at the night sky ... without being hampered by clouds," or even travel further out of Earth's atmosphere and virtually, "Fly through the canyons on Mars."

Brain also makes use of Clickers in class. He may ask students to answer a question first on their own, without the opportunity to discuss with neighbors. After students have submitted a Clicker answer on their own, Brain gives time to students to further discuss the question with their neighbors, and then answer the Clicker question again once more after having had the opportunity to discuss the question with their peers.

Brain has just finished his third year of teaching at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, and he explains how much he collaborates with his colleagues and how they meet regularly to discuss best teaching practices. "Everyone is extremely supportive," says Brain of his department.

For the future, Brain considers presenting PowerPoint lectures with headers, images, and blank spaces instead of bullet points. Then, he would spend class time filling in notes with a stylus pen on a tablet device while he lectures, just as his students write down their own notes while listening to lecture. Further, Brain also explains that he feels that PowerPoint is ultimately too linear in nature when it comes to the human dynamics of a live lecture - what if a student asks a relevant question that answering would throw his lecture out of sequence? Brain says that he would like to be able to explore students' questions in the middle of the lecture without forgetting to cover important topics before he finishes.

Ultimately, Brain says his goal in teaching is: "I want [students] to realize that everyone has scientific capability," and to underscore, "... [Students' abilities] to reason things out for themselves."

When Brain is not teaching, he consults for NASA's ongoing MAVEN mission to Mars.

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Padlet Preview

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 06:00:00 +0000

Padlet Preview Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/15/2014 - 00:00

Do most of your students bring their computers to class already? Perfect; keep your students engaged in class by creating Padlet.com discussion boards! Create a virtual sticky note / cork board brainstorm, and hear more students' voices in larger classes!

First, sign up for a free account on Padlet.com. Then, set up a new Wall. Padlet will assign your wall a random URL. You may want to consider creating your own address so that students don't have to worry about typing the random code that Padlet assigns. If so, go to Address on the right hand column menu.

You may also want to consider changing your page's privacy setting. Again in the right hand menu column, click on Privacy. If you don't know your students that well (or you do!), you also have the option to Moderate their posts.

Next, format your wall the way you'd like! Use the Background icon on the right hand side bar to pick a template, or upload your own!

Now you're ready! Start a class brainstorm about an idea, or split students into smaller groups to work together to answer questions and post to your class Padlet page. Ready to write? Double click on the your Padlet.com and start! You may opt to include video or images with your post.

Project your class Padlet page on the board, and discuss your students' input live!

Click on this great video by Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers to learn more about how to use Padlet!

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