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TTAP Program Fall Highlights

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 19:25:55 +0000

TTAP Program Fall Highlights Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/22/2016 - 12:25

Student Fellows (SFs) working for the Teaching Technology Assistance Program (TTAP) were busy this fall semester helping Arts and Sciences faculty across campus. The TTAP program is a new initiative that was launched this fall, with the goal of enhancing the classroom experience for both faculty and students. The following is a brief synopsis of the exciting work that TTAP helped support:

Kubi - Student Fellow Austin Chau supported the use of Kubi technology in Susanna Pérez-Pàmies classes in the Spanish & Portuguese department. The Kubi is a remotely controlled tablet or iPad stand, which greatly enhances video conferencing. This pilot explored Kubi’s capability in allowing students to attend class remotely. Austin was integral to the success of the program, supporting Susanna and her students.
Online Presentation Tools - Austin also supported History professor Vilja Hulden and her students by introducing online presentation tools, as well as tips on effective presentations in her classroom. He continued his support by being an “outside expert,” giving students feedback on their presentations.
Wordpress and Google Maps - Student Fellow Jake Brauchler supported the use of Wordpress and Google maps for History professor, Anne Lester. Over the course of several classroom visits, Jake helped guide Anne’s students in setting up their own Wordpress sites, and also showed them how to integrate Google maps, videos and images into their blogging sites.
Wikipedia - Austin held a workshop for PhD candidate Emily Frazier-Rath’s German class this fall. During this workshop, Austin helped support student’s learning on how to edit Wikipedia articles, as well as helping them understand the formatting and citing standards.
Upcoming Projects - The TTAP program is also looking forward to supporting Theater professor Beth Osnes during the Spring 2017 semester. Her course, “Creative Climate Communication” offered this spring, will bring together theater, discussion about climate change and technology, and a Student Fellow from the TTAP program will help facilitate this exciting project.

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Jany Implements VoiceThread Thanks to ASSETT Teaching with Tech Seminar

Anonymous — Wed, 27 May 2015 20:30:00 +0000

Jany Implements VoiceThread Thanks to ASSETT Teaching with Tech Seminar Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/27/2015 - 14:30

German Language Instructor Berit Jany's students use VoiceThread to fulfill, "I can..." requirements for German Language class. Jany developed her ideas through ASSETT's Spring 2015 Teaching with Technology Seminar.

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Teaching and Learning Challenge

In the German language classroom, we are concerned about our students’ progress in developing all four language skills and using these skills for culturally appropriate communication in the target language. The objectives of our language courses stress students’ utilization of communicative skills (which also include sociolinguistic practices) in order to understand and appreciate other cultures and patterns of thought. As a general guideline for language and culture instruction, the Council of Europe put together the Common European Framework of Reference which aims to provide a method of learning, teaching, and assessing all European languages. Since its implementation in 2001, the CEFR has become widely accepted as a standard for learners’ language proficiency. Language examinations that are required upon entering a German institution of higher education as well as desired by employers as qualification largely correspond to the CEFR. It is therefore in the interest of our language students to adopt the CEFR and to integrate its guidelines into our German language curriculum.

The textbook selection for the upcoming academic year was much informed by CEFR. We selected materials that directly relate to the framework of reference to assist students in developing skills and competences in the German language that arecommonly accepted as standard. Integrating materials that are structured according to CEFR bears many benefits for language students, both for those who pursue majors and minors in German and for those who are from STEMMINT disciplines, interested in internships and study abroad in German speaking countries. But rather than simply informing learners about the progress and the skills that are expected of them in each learning unit, I find it important to help students become fully familiar with these expected skills and competencies and to make them aware of their abilities that they have already developed in the classroom.

All too often students in the foreign language classrooms (especially in the beginning stages of learning the language) become frustrated over their lack of expressiveness and unfamiliarity with complex grammar concepts. They tend to focus their attention on language items that they have not yet acquired rather than reflecting about their achievements already made in their language learning. Using the CEFR may assist them in becoming aware of the proficiencies that they have already gained and raise their motivation and responsibility in the language learning process. Asking students to reflect upon their abilities and compare them to the language proficiency framework will make the learning more transparent and selfdirected, and help these learners to recognize and appreciate their achievements in the foreign language.

Plans for Implementation

The technology intervention in form of an electronic language portfolio will take place in the first two of the three semesters of required foreign language courses in German. The implementation of the project will occur gradually. In the first semester, only one section of the beginner class will be selected for a project trial run. Upon student and instructor feedback on the project, it will be revised and implemented in all German beginner classes and added to the second semester classes in the following semester.

Indicators of Success

The electronic language portfolio (structured according to the standards outlined by CEFR) will provide opportunities for students to reflect on their progress in learning the language and gain motivation and a positive attitude towards language learning from these reflections. Students’ assessment of their own development and their contentment with their learning progress will be detected through interviews and surveys asking about the learners’ interests, attitudes, motivations, expectancies, and achievements. In order to measure students’ increase of motivation through the building of the electronic language portfolio, thereby engaging in a selfreflection task, a questionnaire will be used at the beginning of the semester asking students about their initial expectancies and attitudes toward learning the language as well as intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that fuel their performance and dedication to the learning of the language. At the end of the semester, an online survey will be conducted to find out about students’ level of motivation and their appreciation of personal achievements in the learning of the target language.

The production work on the electronic language portfolio takes place at the end of each textbook chapter, when students will review the objectives in form of cando descriptors. They will be given a list of “I can” statements and respond to these statement, thereby documenting their learning progress. Through this task, they will not only see the areas in which they can already communicate well, but they will also track their development as language learners in form of short recordings.

Here is an example of the “I can” statements taken from the first chapter (in accordance with A1/beginner level of German):

I can...

...say hello and goodbye.
...introduce myself and say where I’m from.
...ask someone where they are from.
... differentiate between a formal and informal address when asking questions and know when it is appropriate to use one or the other.
... ask someone how to spell their name and spell my name.

Students will cover eight chapters in each class which means they will produce eight video entries reflecting on their newly gained language abilities in their electronic language portfolio.

Since the emphasis of this technology project is clearly set on improving students’ confidence in the foreign language and helping them to become cognizant of their gained skills, knowledge, and structures, an easy tool/platform will be used – VoiceThread, available on D2L – which does not require additional instruction in technology, separate accounts, downloads, etc. VoiceThread will also be employed for other tasks in the language instruction, so that it will become a familiar tool for students within the first weeks of instruction.

At the beginning of the semester, students will receive a file that lists “I can” statements for all eight units as well as instructions on how to submit their contributions. Students will be asked to upload this form onto voice thread with their name. After each chapter, students will then return to the form on VoiceThread and use the comment feature to record their reaction of these “I can” statements in German. Posting all of the contributions as comments to one file will allow them to observe the progression in their learning of the language and make them aware of their learning accomplishments in the German language classroom.

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CU's Laura Osterman Implements Just in Time Teaching

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 06:00:00 +0000

CU's Laura Osterman Implements Just in Time Teaching Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 04/02/2015 - 00:00

CU's German and Slavic Languages Associate Professor Laura Osterman implements Just in Time Teaching techniques in her teaching with the support of the Fall 2014 ASSETT Teaching with Technology Seminar.

Teaching and Learning Challenge

Introduction

Through observation of myself, students, and fellow students /scholars in my field (Russian Studies – including literature, film studies, and folk culture studies), I have come to realize that we learn best through a combination of thinking and interacting. That is, we need to sit quietly with a text in order to see its patterns and understand its deeper meaning, but we also need to talk with others about it, and/or to read stimulating material related to it. I have been seeking ways to work these two processes into my pedagogy. I seek a tool which will help students think about assigned material before coming to class, and I would like to use that tool as a springboard for group discussion of the material.

Shortly after I arrived at CU in 1996, I began to use technology to meet these goals: at first I had students in upper division courses participate in an email listserv to discuss the materials we were reading, and later, starting in 2001, I had them use the discussion forum feature in WebCT. I have struggled with the difficulty of reading and grading all these posts, and students also complained about the difficulty of keeping up with an online discussion requirement. To remedy these issues, I began to use online quizzes as an assessment tool in 2004. However, online quizzes were not giving students the degree of active thoughtful participation that I was seeking, so during various semesters since that time I have experimented with requiring weekly or every class period guided written work, submitted online in a dropbox, by email, or in person in class. I have continued to use online quizzes because they are “self-grading” and therefore “easy,” but I have been very frustrated with my inability to write a quiz which will actually tell me anything about how students have processed the reading.

Plans for Implementation

Intervention: Just in Time Teaching Technique

This past summer, I attended the COLTT conference and was particularly interested in the Just In Time Teaching (JITT) technique, which was receiving a lot of buzz. With this technique, the professor assigns specific questions for the students to answer the night before they will discuss the material in class, and then the professor uses the student responses to help inform and structure class the next day. The technique uses long- answer (or short answer) quizzes, called Warmups, which are graded for effort on a 2 point scale. Grading for effort only (either the student receives 2 points for a good effort or not) is a significant improvement which solves the problem of instructor burnout that I had experienced with graded online discussions. The instructor can assess the class’s take on the subject in a matter of ten minutes by reading a sampling of the responses, and can grade the responses en masse: you have D2L automatically assign the highest grade to all, and only change the grades of those students who do subpar work or don’t answer the question, etc.

I chose to test out Just in Time Teaching (JiTT) in order to address three pedagogical goals this semester: 1) to foster student thinking, 2) to facilitate student interaction with the class as an interpretive group, and 3) to improve professorstudent communication.

For feedback from student to professor I also used anonymous surveys through D2L, and for feedback from professor to student I used screencasts for feedback on papers (using Screencastomatic).

I implemented these interventions in my upperdivision, crosslisted class in which I had 15 students this semester, RUSS 4471/ WMST 4471/ GSLL 5471 Women in 20th21st Century Russian Culture. This class, while small, had a few issues: the course counts for the A & S core and thus had students registered who had little interest in the subject matter. Also, it combined students with quite varied areas of expertise: students who know Russian culture well and those who don’t, students who know feminist theory well and those with no experience in this. I noticed a distinct division between the engaged students and those who were less engaged in the course. This was especially palpable in class discussions on the days when I had not assigned a Warmup.

I assigned weekly Warmup quizzes (17 per semester, of which 15 “count”) and one survey (for no credit), and provided screencast feedback on one takehome midterm and the final exam.

How to for JiTT in D2L

There are some technical issues with the Warmup technique on D2L, which I addressed with the help of OIT consultants. For faculty who might be interested in implementing this technique in their classes, here is the workaround which OIT provided me:

Create a quiz. Create questions using the shortanswer option. Write the question. For the answer blank, increase the number of rows to 6 (students will anyway be able to write as much as they want; this just increases the size of the blank). In the answer blank, place a single character: a period. Change the weight to 100%. Change the radio button next to the answer to “Regular Expression.” That is it for the assessment, but you must also create a new report for the quiz. Select the tab called “Reports.” Name your report, and under Report Type choose “Attempt details.” Now, after you get some responses, you may go into Manage Quizzes, click the down arrow, choose “Reports,” click on the new report you named, choose HTML version, and you will see the responses grouped by student. There is no way that I know of to group responses by question and still have D2L show the student names (if anyone finds one, would you please let me know!). For me the report opens in a very small window so I do Control A and save a copy of all the responses, then paste them into a Word document. These instructions are the result of a semesterlong struggle with the technical issues involved in configuring D2L to make grading and viewing student responses easy. By sharing them, I hope to make use of the JITT technique possible for other faculty.

Besides the technical aspects, I had an additional issue with this technique: I had lingering feelings that students should be reading each others’ posts rather than (or in addition to) having me present and comment on selections from their responses in class. However, in an anonymous survey around midterm, I asked whether students liked my inclass, teacherconducted use of their posts, and the response was yes. Later, I varied this technique and got better at using their responses creatively.

Indicators of Success

Assessment of the Techniques

I could see a distinct difference between the classes when a Warmup was due and those when no Warmup assignment was due; when there was a Warmup, students were more engaged in class discussion, more easy to draw out. During the semester, I finetuned the way I used Warmups in class. For most of the semester, in class I discussed a sample Warmup or two on a Powerpoint slide, saying what was good or interesting in the answer and what was thin or incorrect. What I didn’t like about this classroom technique was that it felt awkward; doing it without mentioning the student’s name prompted me to do more talking, whereas I wanted to bring student voices into the classroom. However, a discussion can be fostered with Warmups: a few times I summarized ideas contributed by students on Warmup (on Powerpoint slides or orally) and asked students to fill in the details of their ideas in class, which worked as a springboard for further discussion. Doing this means the professor can’t really critique the Warmup answers substantively, but one can ask for more clarification.

I also tried online discussions for one week in lieu of Warmups with this group (and have used them in the past). I found based upon my experience that online discussions still need to be brought into the classroom and “activated” just as Warmups do, because the majority of students don’t read the responses to their posts. Perhaps using online discussions with a goal (such as a group or individual blog or presentation) would induce students to really work together and become more invested in the process of group interpretation.

Surveys measure student perception of how effective a pedagogical technique is – how well they like the technique – which might be different from how effective the technique is in motivating or engaging students. Nonetheless, surveys at least help gauge what students are noticing about their learning in class. In order to assess student perception of their learning, at the end of the course I used a survey with some open ended questions in order to cast a broad net, and also some more focused questions. I used the following questions. In particular, questions 3 and 4 were intended to compare two different techniques for using Warmups in class: the first more teacher driven and the second a springboard to student discussion:

What is helping your learning in this class?
Talk about how Warmups are being used in this class and how that influences your learning.
On a scale of 110, how useful did you find it to have a sample Warmup discussed by the professor in class (professor says what was good or interesting in the answer and what was thin or incorrect)?
On a scale of 110, how useful did you find it to have the professor summarize ideas contributed by students on Warmup or online discussion and ask students to fill in the details of their ideas in class as a springboard for further discussion?
As best as you can, hypothetically, compare the effectiveness for you of doing a weekly Warmup vs. doing a weekly online discussion (in a class similar to this one).
As best as you can, hypothetically, compare the effectiveness for you of doing a weekly Warmup vs. doing no weekly preparatory writing (in a class similar to this one).
What suggestions do you have for improving the effectiveness of the Warmup technique?
What suggestions do you have for improving the class/the teaching of the class?

Question 3, assessing professordriven in-class reports on Warmups, received an average score of 7.5; question 4, assessing Warmups as springboard to discussion, received an average score of 8.1. The results are roughly equivalent, and also suggest that while most students found this technique useful, it might profitably be used in a variety of ways in order to benefit a variety of different learners. For #6, comparing having Warmups to not having them, the most common answer was that students preferred a Warmup because it forces them to do the reading: if there is just a bimonthly quiz “you are able to fake ways through discussion.” One student noticed that Warmups got them to “really think about the readings instead of just reading it.” Again for #6, among the reasons for not preferring a Warmup was the time it took for the student, and the time it took in class.

I observed that Warmups fostered student thinking about the class material, but for some students the quality of the thinking waned toward the end of the semester.

Perhaps that is inevitable. However, I have seen very high quality, higher order thinking in some students’ Warmups.

One idea for future is to use a few Warmup questions as exam questions. I would be interested in seeing if students do better on an exam if they have completed a Warmup previously on this same question (or a version of it). Another idea is to encourage students to use Warmups as a springboard for papers.

This semester I also tested screencasts for feedback on selected student papers (a total of 7). I used Screencastomatic which I found easy to use and which allowed a 15 minutes for comments (which I sometimes used every second of). I did this only for those papers for which I had a significant amount of feedback to give. Although in class I told students to look at their feedback and wrote the url on the back of their papers, initially only 3 out of 7 students looked at their videos and only one gave me feedback on this technique. When I reminded them individually by email (giving the link), all of the remaining 4 did look at their videos and gave me feedback. All the feedback was positive: they felt they could better understand my critiques and what they could do better next time. I also felt the screencasts “freed” me to give the kind of feedback I would like to give. Certainly it is a time investment (took me about twice as long as usual, often 20 minutes in addition to reading and thinking about the papers) and I guess it works best in upper division smaller classes, but I will definitely use it again. I will continue to assess whether this is worth the time investment.

Reflection

My final assessment is that studying teaching with technology techniques this semester has helped me to enjoy teaching more and find it more rewarding, which I am sure has helped make me a better teacher. As Amanda and Caroline taught us this semester, technology is not a goal in an of itself, but is a solution to a problem how to get students to think and share their thoughts. As it turns out, technology can provide beautiful and simple solutions toward these goals.

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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, CU �鶹ӰԺ 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 CU �鶹ӰԺ 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 CU Buffs.

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Faculty Learn from Teaching with Technology Seminar

Anonymous — Tue, 20 May 2014 06:00:00 +0000

Faculty Learn from Teaching with Technology Seminar Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/20/2014 - 00:00

Faculty members Giorgio Corda, Dave Rickels, Holly Gayley, Janet Casagrand, Elena Kostoglodova, and Jen Lewon participated in both the Teaching with Technology Faculty Seminar and the Hybrid and Online Course Design Seminars this past 2013-2014 academic year. These faculty presented at the Second Annual ASSETT Teaching with Technology Symposium at the UMC Glenn Miller Ballroom in May. Audience members at the Symposium were invited to browse their demonstrations of use of technology in teaching.

Giorgio Corda of the Italian Language Department presented his hybrid and online foreign language course models. He said that he feels that teaching online provides a more fulfilling language learning experience than just in-the-classroom. Corda ascribes to a cooperative learning pedagogy and uses VoiceThread and other programs so that students can comment throughout a video while they watch it. Students' comments on videos are visible to the entire class so that students can help each other. Corda stressed the flexibility that online learning provides makes a more equitable playing field for more students with outside responsibilities to participate. He provides a weekly fifteen minute one-on-one session with students to assess their progress and allow time to answer questions.

Dave Rickels, PhD, uses the Coach's Eye Tablet app that is traditionally used in sports coaching to coach future music teachers with synchronized video feedback. With the app, he can record his own voice over a video of a student giving a sample lesson. He said, "It's very real to the students because they have to watch themselves."

Janet Casagrand, PhD, of the Integrated Physiology Department presented her use of "Screencasts for Student Review."

Elena Kostoglodova, PhD, of the German and Slavic Languages and Literatures presented, "Integrated Camtasian and Voicethreads Tutorials for the Hybrid Language Classroom."

Jen Lewon of the Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences Department presented how she encouraged a student community through social media.

Holly Gayley, PhD of the Religious Studies Department presented, "Documentary Storytelling in the Humanities."

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