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Academic Technology - at the College of William & Mary -- Academic Technology at the College of William & Mary Sign up for our newsletter! Popular Topics Podcasts Videos Tips Events Mapping E-Learning Digital Humanities Services Tutorials WordPress Tutorials Blackboard Tutorials W&M Wikis Websites WordPress Cascade Tribe Voices Survey Center Blackboard Classroom Technology Collaborative Writing Academic Storage Rich Media Grants Blogging Requirements Faculty Blog Posts Archive About Contributors Rachel Kleinsorge October 6, 2015 Flipped Classrooms at Blackboard Faculty Day Another successful Blackboard Faculty Day was held on September 23rd throughout the day. Over thirty faculty members attended workshops on flipped classrooms, the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program, and Blackboard Portfolios. The session that got the most attention was on Flipped Classrooms. Here’s a recap of what was covered. The ideal flipped classroom is student centered and provides opportunities for active learning as well as higher-order thinking. In these classes students do routine learning activities such as watching a video lecture, reading research, or completing knowledge check questions, outside of class. Class time focuses on interactions with experiments, lab work, peer-assisted learning, and demonstrations. Blackboard Options to Help You Flip Your Classroom Flipped classrooms have been a hot topic for the last few years, but many professors still don’t know how to take the first steps. Blackboard provides some simple options to help you start the flip. Blogs and journals can be used by students to reflect on outside of class activities such as attending workshops or community events. Student blogs can be turned into shared project blogs where everyone in the class contributes what they learn. Discussions boards are an easy way to poll students about their understanding of a topic. They can also be used to solicit ideas for in-class discussion or to let the class vote on what topics need to be reviewed in class. Tests can be set up to provide specific feedback to students, allowing them to receive immediate remediation. Rubrics can be used to show students clear examples of successful work. The rubrics can be set to be shown before or after an assignment is submitted. This allows them to be used as a guideline for students and a grading tool for professors. Open Education Resources, such as the Lynda.com courses or materials shared through text book publishers, can add more chances for student practice or different perspectives on research. Some William & Mary professors have expanded Blackboard’s reach even farther, incorporating social media like Twitter . A few exemplary classes have students contribute two tweets a week that link to a current event or news article. Using the hashtag for the class, the professor can quickly scan the tweets to get a sense of what the students are thinking about. All of these features can also expand the reach of a traditional course. One of our religion professors holds a virtual test prep session using the Blackboard chat feature. Several of our professors use journals to have students keep a semester-long record of their readings or lab experiments. If you’re interested in flipping your classroom or expanding the way you use Blackboard, you can always contact bbhelp@wm.edu or contact your Academic Technologist for help at any time! Filed Under: Blackboard , Blogging , E-Learning , Flipped Classroom John Drummond September 24, 2015 Leveraging the Many, Many Learning Resources of Lynda.com I was having a conversation yesterday with a colleague about ways to market William & Mary’s institutional subscription to Lynda.com. Lynda.com, a subsidiary of business-focused social networking site LinkedIn, is a compendium of tutorial videos which range from quick one-offs to entire multi-hour courses. The site is focused on technical, creative, and business skills, and amounts […] Continue reading... Filed Under: Collaboration , E-Learning , Flipped Classroom , Productivity , Tips , Uncategorized , Video , Web Kim Mann September 3, 2015 How to Make an Academic GIF from Video Last time I wrote about how to make a GIF using still images, and related some reasons why you might want to learn how to make GIFs as an academic. Today I’ll teach you how to make a GIF using video, using my favorite GIF-making application, GIF Brewery. Why Make a GIF with Video? If […] Continue reading... Filed Under: Digital Humanities , Media Production , Software , Student Projects , Teaching Ali Briggs August 27, 2015 Blackboard Accessibility Tips: Designing Courses for Students Using Screen Readers Blackboard hosts an annual conference known as BbWorld. In July I attended my first BbWorld with Rachel Kleinsorge (LMS Applications Specialist) and Kari Slettemoen (Application Engineer). The conference was held at the Gaylord National Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. More than 2,000 professionals in K-12, Higher Ed, and Professional Ed attended. Today’s Learner and […] Continue reading... Filed Under: Accessibility , Blackboard , Tips Jamison Miller August 20, 2015 A Trip to Fredericksburg: the DTLT in the ITCC at the UMW This summer a small group from W&M had the distinct pleasure of taking a short jaunt up the road to visit with our colleagues in the University of Mary Washington (UMW) Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies (DTLT). I’ve posted about the work going on up there before, and after working with director Jim Groom […] Continue reading... Filed Under: Collaboration , E-Learning , Inside IT Rachel Kleinsorge August 6, 2015 Finding Help for Blackboard Is Now Easier I’ve recently returned from Blackboard World, a week-long conference filled with Blackboard workshops and vendor presentations. One of the most interesting presentations I saw showcased the redesign of the Blackboard help system. How to Find Blackboard Help Our default course shell includes a link to the Blackboard help at the bottom of the course navigation. […] Continue reading... Filed Under: Blackboard , Services Kim Mann July 22, 2015 How to Make a GIF Part 1, Using Still Images GIFs are an ubiquitous part of today’s Internet, and I know that I myself can’t remember seeing one for the first time. But, just in case you don’t know what one is, it’s an image format (like JPEG) but one that can include several images that change over time, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly — […] Continue reading... Filed Under: Digital Humanities , Media Production , Web Rachel Kleinsorge June 24, 2015 Quick and Easy Blackboard Test Uploading During my recent Blackboard Basics class on tests in Blackboard I heard a lot about how long it takes to create test questions. Professors shared their frustration about the time lag between clicking on an option (say, adding a unmatched answer to a matching question) and the Blackboard screens reloading. The class agreed that it […] Continue reading... Filed Under: Blackboard , Teaching , Tips John Drummond June 17, 2015 A Homebrew Method of Collaborative Qualitative Research During the prior spring semester, I took a graduate course in qualitative research methods that focused on “action research.” That’s nothing unusual as far as graduate programs go — but what made this course truly unusual was that the entire sixteen-member class worked on a single, monolithic research project examining factors contributing to successful completion […] Continue reading... Filed Under: Collaboration , Research , Student Projects , Writing Mike Blum June 5, 2015 Study Abroad Technology Tips Part One, Preparing for Your Trip Here’s the first installment of technology tips for leading study abroad courses. For this first post in the series on study abroad technology tips, we’ll begin with before you leave for your trip. Imagine that it’s about two weeks before your trip, and you know that you need to get ready for documenting your adven...