Teaching, Learning, and Technology
Spring 2015 Edition
Featuring‌ Brett Holbrook Ritsa Mallous John Graney
Are you ready for
nnovation
STREAM?
Meet Our New Instructional Designer
A Message from
Lisa Ciardulli
S
o much great news to report this term. As you may be able to tell by our inspired cover this issue, there has been a big focus on online learning at Santa Fe recently. Ninety-six faculty and staff members have completed the Applying the Quality Matters Rubric (APPQMR) course, including six department chairs and directors. For those of you who teach online and haven’t participated in this wonderful training opportunity yet, you’ll find out more about how it can make a difference with your online classes by reading The Faculty Perspective article by Brett Holbrook. You can also learn more about the Certificate of Online Teaching and Learning program by reading the Faculty Showcase article by Ritsa Mallous. We are also very excited about hiring our third instructional designer, Andrew “Andy” Sheppard, a seasoned instructional designer with many years of experience. There is a lot in store for you in this issue and I hope you enjoy reading about your colleagues, about new and interesting uses of technology, and about what’s happening in educational technology at Santa Fe! If you have a suggestion or idea for an article in a future edition of the Teachology, please let me know.
Lisa Ciardulli Assistant Vice President Center for Academic Technologies
In this issue... The Faculty Perspective on Quality Matters With Brett Holbrook Page 4 Meeting Andrew Sheppard, Instructional Designer Page 6 ESL Students Gain Language & Technology Skills Through Video With John Graney Page 8 Faculty Showcase Creating Enthusiasm in the Online Classroom With RItsa Mallous Page 10 What is Innovation iStream? By Olysha Magruder Page 12 Canvas Mythbusters! Page 16 Back in the Classroom With Dr. Edward T. Bonahue, Ph.D. Page 18
The Faculty Perspective
Quality Matters By Brett Holbrook Associate Professor, Mathematics
I have been teaching STA2023, do take advantage of what I have Introduction to Statistics, online each provided them and are quite successful semester since 2004. Although my in my online classes, many are not, course has come a long way since that especially when compared to my on time, there will always be room for campus students. Why? I think it is improvement. Initially, I only used because they aren’t doing what I ask of PowerPoint lecture notes when I first them. Are they doing this because they started teaching with WebCT. Over the don’t want too, or because my class years I’ve incorporated new tools/ isn’t organized to best fit their needs resources like and give the best podcasts I created “I was able to pick up some great chance for in my office, audio techniques and tips that will help success? recorded After taking improve the organization of my classroom lectures, Applying the online classes.“ whiteboard Quality Matters pictures taken in Rubric (APPQMR) my on campus class, and most recently, course offered by our great team in the video-recorded classroom lectures Center for Academic Technologies here using LifeSize. It seems like each at Santa Fe College, I was able to pick semester I receive emails from students up some great techniques and tips that who have appreciated all of these tools will help improve the organization of and resources saying things like “I’ve my online classes. These improvements never had a teacher provide all of these give my students a better chance of resources.” While some of my students being successful.
Because Quality Matters (QM) really is a large scale undertaking, I’ve decided to work on implementing it in phases. For me, the biggest thing that I needed to do to get aligned with QM was simply modifying the structure and organization of my STA2023 course. So, after completing the streamlined oneday training this past December, I spent some time over winter break doing just that, so that I could implement the changes for Spring 2015. Although it was time consuming, it wasn’t terribly difficult to move my resources around. Upon completion, the “new look” really began to grow on me and gave my class a better appearance and feel; but what would students think? After all the shuffling around of students during the first week of classes, I ended up with 99 students. Quiz 0 (a syllabus quiz) and Quiz 1 were both due on the first week on Sunday, and I had 83 students complete both quizzes. I was astounded at this figure (84% of students completing both of these quizzes by the deadline). I knew that normally the percentage was lower, maybe in the 60’s to 70’s, so I went back and checked, and sure enough, over the past 3 semesters, the average completion percentage was 71%, and that was at the end of the term (that means week 1 enrollment numbers
were probably closer to somewhere in the 60 percent’s). So to have an 84% completion rate after the first week was amazing. I’m thinking that number will be closer to 90% by the end of semester. The other interesting artifact, that I didn’t track statistically, was that, even with nearly 100 students, I have received far less emails this semester asking about what is due, when it is due, and what they should be working on. This is based on four sections of STA2023 online vs. the previous three semesters when I had two or three sections of STA2023 online. The few changes I made based on what I learned in the APPQMR course were well worth the time invested.
What do other SF faculty think of Quality Matters? “I recently took this wonderful course [APPQMR]. It was probably the most eye-opening course I have taken. Most of the many courses I took as a graduate student at the UF College of Education were not as useful as the Quality Matters course I was able to attend at SF.” — Georg Vollweiler Professor of Anthropology
Meet Andrew Sheppard Instructional Designer
Tell us something about yourself! Hi, I’m Andy Sheppard and I’m excited to be joining the Instructional Design time at the Center for Academic Technologies. I’ve spent the previous fifteen years supporting online instruction at the University of Florida. I am looking forward to supporting both online and face-to-face instruction here at Santa Fe College.
What was your prior instructional design experience like? In my prior work at UF, we were pioneers in every sense of the word. The world of online learning was new to higher education. We made great advances, but we also made some missteps as we ventured into that new instructional environment. Ultimately, we were able to learn from our challenges and enjoy many successes. I am hopeful that my experiences with UF will aid in Santa Fe’s increasing utilization of online resources to enhance instruction.
What role do you see for yourself at Santa Fe as a member of the ID team?
As a collaborative member of the ID team, I see opportunities to leverage the strengths from my fellow IDs and our faculty. The best online courses and programs I’ve been fortunate to be a part of were the result of collaborative efforts.
Have you taught in the classroom/ online, and if so, how has the experience helped you? The most rewarding teaching experience I have is as a Community Educator here at Santa Fe College. I teach a technology class to adult learners. This instructional experience has been incredibly beneficial in keeping the student experience at the forefront in everything that I do. I am often reminded that each of us is increasing our technology skills and awareness at varying paces. And, as the expansive growth of digital tools continues, we all benefit from each other’s experiences. It’s impossible today for one single person to be
“Instructor-student and peer-topeer interaction are essential to providing students with a quality online experience.”
aware of every technology resource available to us.
What change to teaching practices should an instructor try just once in their courses? While there are many useful tools that can be leveraged to enhance or improve instruction, as educators, we should always start with a careful examination of our desired learning outcomes and learning objectives. The particular technologies that would improve our instructional practices are informed by our learning goals. CAT has made “Quality Matters� workshops available to Santa Fe College faculty. I see these workshops as a wonderful starting point for advancing our collective goal of continuous improvement. All that said, I can’t help but to note that mobile technologies are nearly ubiquitous. We should be mindful of the potential of these devices as we reflect on our instruction and consider appropriate opportunities to incorporate mobile technology to improve instruction.
Tell us one area of the online teaching and learning process that you think needs improvement? Online courses provide many benefits to learners. A multitude of studies
have found that online instruction is often comparable to - or better than traditional instruction, with respect to learning outcomes. One area that may be overlooked at times, though, is the need for social presence within an online course. Instructor-student and peer-to-peer interaction are essential to providing students with a quality online experience. Fortunately, we have many tools at our disposal to ensure that online courses promote these types of interaction.
Any last thoughts? Would you believe that the iPad turns five years old this year? The near ubiquity of mobile technologies combined with major improvements to Internet and networking infrastructure has resulted in amazing tools that are literally at our fingertips! This is an exciting time to be involved in supporting education. I am looking forward to working with the Santa Fe College community in the days ahead!
ESL Students Gain Language & Technology Skills Through Video By Nina Trombi Contributor
John Graney is often one of the first instructors an international student meets at Santa Fe. As the coordinator of English as a Second Language, John and his staff of faculty and specialists assist students from a variety of cultures, ethnicities, and language skill levels. It’s not unusual to meet an ESL student taking upper-level mathematics courses, and an ESL communications course. In the fall term John took his ESL Communications students to the Educational Media Studio for a very special assignment. They wrote an English-
language script for an imaginary news broadcast. With the help of the Media Studio staff, these students were able to make professional looking videos, and try something new to most people – speaking in front of a camera! When I interviewed John Graney about his students’ video assignment, I wanted to know more about how the experience was for the students themselves who, not only must use and practice English, but also go through the process of using a studio. John quoted one student as saying
the experience was “terrifying” but rewarding as he was able to use the technology in combination with using his English-speaking skills. International students and their instructors face many challenges from different cultural expectations of what a classroom is like, to how they read their native written language. John Graney understands that language skills take time and practice to master, which is much like the use of technologies. His courses evolve each semester through faculty development training and attending conferences. He never loses sight of his main objectives for his students: helping his students increase their language skills, understand American academia, utilize SF resources, and enjoy using new technologies in the classroom to increase student engagement.
John Graney, Coordinator for English as a Second Language program, stands in front of Japanese calligraphy that stands for “courage.” John participated in the Certificate for Classroom Teaching and Learning with Cohort 3 in Fall 2014.
See John’s Students in Action!
Faculty Showcase
Creating Enthusiasm in the Online Classroom By Ritsa Mallous Adjunct Instructor, Education Programs
I taught my first online course last semester, and I was nervous. Being such a ‘face-to-face’ instructor, I was skeptical that I could succeed when it came to teaching and student learning in an online environment. How would I get to know my students? How would I ignite in my students a passion for teaching without seeing them? I truly felt online teaching and learning to be impersonal and not for me.
Reflecting on my attitude about online teaching and learning, I knew I had a lot more exploring to do, and thankfully I had the opportunity to do this by participating in the COTL training. I am a firm believer in lifelong learning as part of professional development as it helps me grow as an educator. A comfortable environment was created at the information session that was held at the beginning of the training, where I was able to voice my
concerns about online teaching. One area I was having difficulty with was offering more choice and variety in my online course. Throughout the training I appreciated the multiple opportunities to collaborate with others in a safe community of online learners. The resources given to us, such as the textbook and video presentations, were extremely useful as they provided theoretical perspectives and research concerning online teaching and learning. I constantly reflected on my online teaching practices and was given support from my colleagues. This instilled more confidence in my teaching practices. Acting upon my newfound
confidence I reworked my course to reflect a number of strategies provided by my colleagues, from the readings, and from the presentations, including an assignment that offered choice and variety. As I utilized these strategies, I found my students responded more and were more engaged in their learning.
between student and professor, but also with fellow colleagues. These relationships will encourage students to take risks and aid in confidence building. When students leave my classroom, I not only want them to have acquired necessary skills for teaching in the real world, but have a set of beliefs and values of teaching, motivation for continuous learning, enthusiasm for their students and teaching, and confidence in themselves as professionals.”
At the start of the training, we had to devise a personal online teaching philosophy. Being new to online teaching, this was a difficult task for me. However, as I thought about my The COTL training helped me to ‘face-to-face’ teaching philosophy, I accomplish this, and I feel I am a more found that this certainly coincided with confident online instructor better any kind of teaching, even online prepared for the online community. teaching. I found that the end goal was the same—a philosophy where collaboration, community building, and engagement is paramount, and where curriculum is learner-centered to meet the needs of diverse learners: “As a teacher educator I strive to ignite in my students a passion for teaching and life-long learning by creating an environment full of enthusiasm, rich ideas, and positive experiences and relationships. I believe that teachers who demonstrate passion and enthusiasm about an area motivate students to learn. In addition, building positive relationships with students, professional and personal, helps to gain a sense of trust and respect not only
Ritsa Mallous, Adjunct Instructor , Education Programs, is a graduate of the Certificate for Classroom Teaching and Learning offered through Academic Technologies.
By Olysha Magruder Instructional Designer
Santa Fe College is a subscribing member of the League of Innovations, an association serving community colleges worldwide (http://www.league.org/index.cfm). As subscribers, we are fortunate to have access to a body of resources through the League's iStream.
What is iStream? iStream is the League’s robust web-based, multimedia portal where you can go to find quick solutions for research and reference needs. iStream offers easy 24/7 access to resources, tools, and information geared specifically for community college and higher education faculty…materials that are not available through any public search engine – not even Google.
Some resources include: Conference Presentations – Find keynote and special session video's, and PowerPoint presentations from the League's international conferences Professional Development –These programs provide faculty and staff comprehensive teaching and learning practices Webinars
eLearning –Learn, Borrow, and Share! Includes Open Education Resources (OER) and specialty options Publications –You have unlimited access to League publications, including: fulllength electronic versions of League books, monographs, and reports; all volumes of Leadership and Learning Abstracts; and results of League CEO Surveys
And a whole lot more!
How do I sign up? It's easy to sign up for your own iStream account to access resources.
First, go to: http://www.league.org/ istreamSite/users.cfm Look for Santa Fe College and follow the prompts. Use your SF email to register. You will receive an email with instructions on how to access your new account.
Featured Resources Each month, we will comb through the resources and send an email with some stellar examples for your convenience. Here are three to get you started!
APP
R
Applying the Quality Matters Rubric Course
On-campus face-to-face sessions are now available on qualitymatters.org. 1. Create your QM account on qualitymatters.org 2. Click on MyQM
3. Choose Higher Education tab to the right of the nav bar 4. Click on Workshop-Register in the navigation bar
5. Choose Dedicated Training and register for a session
2
3
The next F-2-F APPQMR
MARCH 13 9:00 am - 4:30 pm Lunch is provided.
4
5
1. Professional Development: Getting Results. Want to participate in some professional development but don't have to time to meet face-to-face? Try Getting Results, a selfpaced, online professional development course. This course includes topics such as building communities, active learning and teaching, and teaching with technology. The key theme of the course is to encourage you to focus on what the students will do and take responsibility for their success.
To access this resource, login to iStream, go to "Professional Development" and click on "Getting Results"
2. Webinar: Identifying and Reaching Unprepared Students: Strategies for Creating Success in the College Classroom https:// innovativeeducators.webex.com/ innovativeeducators/lsr.php? AT=pb&SP=EC&rID=11219102&rKey=3f9356b 9a0dc28ec
3. League Publications (League Books): Getting Connected: A Social Media Report by Cecilia Rios-Aguilar and Regina Deil-Amen. This is a report describing recent research on social media in the college setting. From the report:
“Beginning in fall 2011, as part of a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant funded intervention, nine urban, small town, and rural U.S. community colleges (located in Arkansas, Arizona, California, New York, Ohio, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming) were selected to adopt a Facebook-based application known as Schools App for limited use by invited students, staff, faculty, and administrators. This is the first longitudinal research study to use realtime data generated by the users of Schools App to examine how commuter based community colleges attempt to use social media technology as a mechanism to increase students’ connection to and success in college.”
To access this resource, login to iStream, go to "Publications" and click on "League Books" then "Getting Connected: A Social Media Report" To learn more about iStream, go to http:// www.league.org/istreamsite/.
Santa Fe College
Certificates for Teaching and Learning
teaching simplified Classroom Teaching and Learning Participants will explore ways to engage learners through applying the latest theories and techniques in the science of teaching and learning. The core certificate will consist of five face-to-face sessions and light work in Canvas.
Cohort 4 Information Sessions March 10 and 11 from 12:-1pm in P-138
Online Teaching and Learning Participants will join a community of peers and become familiar with research-based principles of online teaching and learning, and apply these to an online course. This certificate is offered entirely online through Canvas over the course of eight weeks.
COTL Cohort 3 begins Summer 2015
By Debbie Blair Open Campus Specialist
Myth: I have to log into Canvas to see the calendar. Busted! Don’t miss important dates or deadlines! Now you can sync/feed your Canvas calendar to Outlook, Google/Yahoo Calendar. Click on the calendar for instructions Note: Right now you cannot sync a single Canvas calendar. However it is a feature request so click on “Me too” it if you would like to see it offered. Myth: I don’t know when a student submits a comment with their assignments. Busted! Now you can! Assignment comments from students will now show in your Inbox by using the Filter feature. Myth: I need quiz stats and Canvas doesn’t have that capability. Busted! Canvas now has quiz item and student analysis stats. Previously Canvas featured only item analysis. Now instructors can view all score percentages, high – average – low scores and standard deviation along with question breakdown, discrimination index and distribution scaling.
Notice a new link on the left navigation bar in Canvas? The SF Policies & Resources link was added so that every student has an instant link to the many support services that Santa Fe offers. Thanks to James Nichols for the idea and Diana Matthews for putting it together with input from Dana Lindsey.
Customize Your Canvas Home Page with this Easy Fix! Show your students how to begin the course by using your own customized home page. First, create a button that says Start Here using a free image editor online, or make one yourself using Google Draw! Then save your button to your computer and log into your Canvas course. Upload your new button to your course Files (on the left-hand navigation menu).
Here are some example Start buttons:
Create a page by clicking on Pages, then View All Pages, and then the button that says + Page (it’s blue). Add your page content and insert your recently uploaded button using the Embed Image tool (located on the tool bar above the box you’ve inserted your content into). Once the image has loaded, select the image and then use the Link to URL tab at the top right. Paste the URL of your first module in the box that pops up and click Insert Link. Click Save. Go to Pages and publish your new page, then select the dropdown arrow and choose Use as Front Page. Viola! It’s now your home page
Enhance your teaching with Adobe Join the Adobe Education Exchange. Sign up for one (or all) of the six collaborative classes or choose from a variety of self-paced workshops. The classes are FREE! In the Digital Creativity course you’ll learn to use Adobe Photoshop by creating digital images, use Adobe InDesign to create graphics, and create your own website with AdobeMuse in just one class. You’ll also connect with other educators, join or start a discussion, and have thousands of free resources to search.
Back in the Classroom By Dr. Edward T. Bonahue, Ph.D. Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Originally published November 20, 2014.
The Wednesday Messenger has been a no-show for most of this semester, chiefly because my Wednesday nights have been spent grading papers and preparing for class. Yes, after five years as provost, it was high time for me to get back into the classroom and reacquaint myself with our students and with the core of our mission – teaching. I hadn’t taught a class since becoming provost, and I have also been challenging all academic administrators (including myself!) to do some teaching. So when a humanities class opened up over the summer, Bill Stephenson kindly allowed me to take it on. I've learned (or re-learned) a lot from getting back into the classroom. For starters, I used to feel very secure in my "teaching"; now I am learning to ask if anyone in my class is actually learning anything. From the first week of class, and in each week since then, I've found myself questioning whether my usual
teaching strategies actually do what I had thought they were doing. Will students get more from low-risk reading quizzes or from group work? Should I go over lots of information in class or just publish the PowerPoints and use class for case studies? Should I allow time for engaging but slightly frivolous videos or spend the time on solid course content that I'll be testing? All of us will answer questions like these as seems best to us, and I think the only unwise thing is to stop looking for improvements and to be content with the status quo. I’m teaching a writing-intensive general education humanities course that includes considerable reading, two short papers, three exams with essay components, and a final in-class essay examination. I’d estimate that about half my class are freshmen and half are sophomores or older. A handful do not yet write at the college level, and it has been a struggle to help them frame
their work on questions relevant to the humanities when they’re still struggling with composition. So this class has reminded me that when traditional students opt out of developmental courses and plunge straight into college work, the impact is bound to be felt across the curriculum. I wish I had done a better job on the first day of the semester sharing information about expectations for college-level writing, which might have saved some students (and me) quite a lot of work. Helping students make good decisions about class selection and their academic plan is an area where advisors and the academic departments need to continue working together.
crack-of-dawn delivery route. And those are just the students who cared to share their stories with me. I know almost all of you hear those kinds of stories every day and do everything you can to support students who are sometimes in very dire situations. For all your work, support, patience, and advocacy for our students—thank you!
The best thing I took away from this semester, and the thing that continues to encourage and inspire me, is that despite those hardships, despite miscues and difficulties, our students still choose to be in college. They want to be here. Almost all of them have identified academic and personal goals, and even though those goals may well Finally, this semester has reminded me change, the students can envision that for so many students, life themselves working their way through happens. Sometimes we talk of Santa Fe and moving on to better student retention and success as if things. That’s a powerful motivator for students' lives are entirely within our most of them, and it’s been powerful control. A little tutoring here, some for me too. It’s been great to reconnect support services there, sprinkle in a few with students, to experience their office hours, and voila--how could energy and enthusiasm, and even to get students not successfully finish up the some humanities back into my semester? Well, in my single 32-seat head! Putting the Wednesday section this semester, I had students Message on hiatus was a small price to who had the flu, who had a death in pay! the family, who couldn’t pay rent and were thrown out of their apartment, who had a surprise pregnancy, who are dealing with a child custody battle, and who had to cover their sick father's
The Center for Academic Technologies
Instructional Designers idteam@sfcollege.edu
Open Campus Support http://www.sfcollege.edu/cat/ opencampus@sfcollege.edu 352.395.7344
Educational Media Studio http://www.sfcollege.edu/ mediastudio@sfcollege.edu
teachology Credits A publication of
Design and Layout Nina Trombi Cover Photo “Super QM man” by Nina Trombi Icons are courtesy of The Noun Project and the following designers:
Remy Medard
Murat Yalcin
Andrew Hainen
Tiago Rodrigues
Kyle Tezak
La fabrique creative