I spent upwards of 20,000 minutes of 2021 listening to podcasts—and I’m proud of it. This is a habit I developed at the beginning of graduate school that converted the time I spent cleaning my apartment, cooking, and commuting from tedious to pleasing.

So when Professor Rachael Deagman Simonetta in the English Department reached out to the Student Technology Consultants team for help building a podcasting assignment for her course, I was thrilled to take it on. Imagine my excitement when I checked my phone after leaving Rachael’s office to see an additional podcasting assignment request from Dr. Emmy Herland from the Spanish and Portuguese Department.

Both instructors had the same end product—a podcasting assignment for their students in lieu of an essay—but very different end goals. In Rachael’s course, Writing for the Real World, students needed to develop the skills required to write podcast scripts, which is a common ask for her students when they enter the job market. Emmy’s course was focused on linguistic variations in Spanish, so the speaking component of the podcast was more important to her. Neither instructor really needed to focus on the audio quality or the artistry of the episodes themselves, like the media courses I’ve taken. Self-recording, editing audio, and building an episode was outside of the wheelhouses of many of these students, and they wouldn’t have much more time to devote to learning those steps than they would to writing an essay.

I needed to build an instructional system that was easy to understand and execute, consisted only of free technologies, and could scale to meet the experience level of individual students. I listed out all of the components I thought about when it came to creating and consuming podcasts and cut things away until I was left with three easy steps: recording, editing, and assembling. For each step, I made a short video, a written transcript, and optional steps if students wanted more of a challenge or further simplification. I put these all on the internet with the help of our web expert Ashley Lawhorn, and the Quick Podcasting Guide was born!

All of this happened after a single meeting with each professor and a few emails sent back and forth. Our Student Technology Consultants are eager to take on projects like this that empower instructors in Arts & Sciences to tackle new technologies and make the learning experience for CU students even more relevant and engaging.  This particular project clearly lined up with my own interests…and chances are whatever technology-driven project you’ve had simmering in the back of your brain will find a wonderful partner in one of our STCs. Let us help you make this semester’s instructional dream a reality without overwhelming your own bandwidth: today!

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We have launched the Quick Podcasting Guide! This concise 1 - 2 - 3 tutorial provides text and video instructions on how to use and Anchor.fm to develop podcast content in your classroom through recording, editing, and assembling. It also provides additional tips for diving deeper or simplifying this process to fit your time and technological capacities. This project was born out of the , which we encourage you to use if you would like assistance using technology to provide for your students. Got something in mind? We’d love to hear from you! Please email Matara.Hitchcock@colorado.edu with your questions and ideas.

  Click Here to Learn More

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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 .

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Screencapture of the banner image from .

With Digication, you can easily create an ePortfolio that showcases your scholarly, research or professional work. An ePortfolio can contain written works, photos, videos, collaborative assignments, projects, or reflective pieces and is a great way to gather artifacts of work in one convenient place. Students can use an ePortfolio to showcase work for a particular course which could then be graded by the instructor. Faculty can use an ePortfolio to highlight their research, accomplishments, collaborate with others in their department, or use during instruction. Digication ePortfolio is provided as a common-good service and is free of charge to CU �鶹ӰԺ faculty, staff, students, and alumni.

To learn more about Digication, please visit the .

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To further the goal of building a more welcoming and inclusive community, our campus recently introduced . Available in Canvas courses, NameCoach allows classmates and instructors to record and share their preferred name pronunciation.

To get started, look for the NameCoach area in your course navigation menu in Canvas to record your name and locate where you can find students’ recordings. Detailed help instructions can be found on .

Even if you choose not to record your name, you can explore the NameCoach area in your course navigation menu to listen to your students’ recordings to learn how to pronounce their names at the start of the semester. 

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is a project based on the Domain of One’s Own initiative that originated at the University of Mary Washington and has spread to several colleges and universities. It  provides learners with the opportunity to take control of their digital identities while designing and hosting their own web presence. Access the CU Arts & Sciences domain at .

What

BuffsCreate gives all learners in Arts & Sciences the opportunity to own a sub-domain and server space to freely design a web page to host their academic, research, professional, and/or creative works via a panel of open source applications such as Wordpress, Drupal, Omeka, Scalar, or Media Wiki.

Why

We inhabit digital spaces in all aspects of our lives: professional, academic, civic, social, and personal. For many of us, our activities in those spaces occur with platforms and tools that we do not control. What if we invited learners to think critically about broader questions of how they use these spaces, how to develop a digital identity, who owns that identity, and how that identity is shared and circulated? This reflection invites exploration of how information is authored and circulated and how identities are constructed and mediated.

BuffsCreate presents the opportunity for learners to experiment with and practice essential digital and information literacies while designing a digital identity that represents them and their ongoing goals. With BuffsCreate, learners take ownership and control over their digital content rather than forfeiting control and freedom to corporate entities.

How

In partnership with the University Libraries, ASSETT is piloting this project over a two-year period. Pilot testing begins in spring 2019 and in fall 2019, all Arts & Sciences learners will have access to BuffsCreate, where they can register and design their sub-domain.

For more information

Do you want to learn more and get started with BuffsCreate? Contact Amanda McAndrew at ASSETT.

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