Sunday, February 22, 2015

2015-02-22 Instructional Technology Newsletter



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Instructional Technology  News and Useful Tips.
February 22, 2015
Contents: Blackboard Issues, Notes on Classroom Hybridization, Google Image Search




Upcoming Instructional Technology Events

Instructional Technology Workshop
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Two Times:  11:30 and 5:30
Library Fishbowl

The topic is not yet settled - watch this space.

News From Information Services

Blackboard Issues

Instructors have found two issues with Blackboard in the past week.  
Issue 1) An instructor found that she could not copy rubrics from one course to another for the same assignment.

Issue 2) Calculated Formula Questions in Blackboard online questions are not displaying.  This seems to be a problem with security settings either in the viewing browser or in the server configuration.  

The Library is working with OIS on the first problem and OIS is working on the second.

Instructional Technology News

Hybridization on the Rise

As reported in the 2015-02-11 issue of Campus Technology, the NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Edition reports that the number of faculty using flipped instruction to some degree will increase from 30% to 55% in the next year.  The report states that "Flipped learning is seen as especially suited for higher education because the rearranging of class time gives students in large introductory lecture courses more opportunity to engage and interact with their peers.”  

A flipped classroom generally refers to the practice of providing all pure lecture content outside of the classroom time, while paper writing and other productive exercises are moved into the classroom where direct collaboration with the instructor and other students can occur more easily.  A more general term for this move is a hybrid course.  Hybrid courses are courses in which a significant portion of important learning elements are presented outside of the classroom.  In many ways, this is analogous to what many science classes do when an emphasis is placed on lab work.  Students learn the concepts outside of class and then put them to use in the classroom with their peers and instructors.   Hybrid courses are not “online courses” and they avoid some of the pitfalls associated with online classes, most especially the alienation caused by a lack of in-person contact with other students especially.

Although we don’t have data similar to the statistics above for Elmhurst College instructors and classes, it is clear that the available technology has reached a level that supports effective hybridization at many levels.  Additionally, research shows that student learning can be enhanced by the just-in-time interactions with the instructor.  In order to support these benefits, CST and the office of Instructional Technology will be presenting a series of workshops centered on the principles, techniques and technology used in a variety of hybridization scenarios.

If you have particular concerns that you would like addressed in these workshops, please contact Dave Basener, and watch this space for further information.

Spotlight

Image Search (and Reverse Search) in Google

Watch this 5-minute video to find out about image searching in Google Search. It is not perfectly polished, but it you have been to one of my video creation workshops, you know my thinking “perfection”.

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