Workshop Tomorrow: Digital Connecticut College

Join us at 3 p.m. tomorrow, March 6, in the Advanced Technology Lab in Shain Library to learn how to make your own website using our new service, Digital Connecticut College.

Digital Connecticut College provides students, faculty, and staff with the opportunity to register a domain name and create a digital presence through various mediums such as blogs, portfolios, and wikis. You can easily install open source applications such as WordPress, MediaWiki, Drupal, Scalar, and Omeka to your own domain, and use this space to develop class projects, share your research, and create your digital identity. At this workshop, we will help you get the process started, and show examples of the types of projects that you can create.

Let us know you’re coming by registering here, or feel free to drop in!

Introducing Google Course Kit

Students have long been taking advantage of the college’s access to Google Drive for completing course work. Assignments completed in Google Drive, however, could not be easily submitted as assignments…until now. Google has introduced a new plug-in for Moodle that streamlines the submission of student assignments completed using Google Drive. The plug-in allows students to turn in Google Drive files through Moodle, and then allows instructors to grade and provide feedback through the Google Drive interface, using the native commenting features of Google Docs.

We held a short hands-on workshop on Google Course Kit last week, but in case you missed it, check out more detailed instructions on adding Course Kit to your Moodle site. If you need further help or have any questions, please contact a member of the Instructional Technology team.

 

 

 

Google Course Kit: Workshop Tomorrow!

Do you use Moodle? Do your students use (or want to use) Google Drive for coursework?

Google has recently introduced Course Kit, a plugin for Moodle that facilitates assignment submission using Google Drive. Course Kit seamlessly integrates into Moodle allowing students to submit assignments in Drive, and allowing instructors to provide feedback using Google Drive commenting and editing tools, while also integrating with the Moodle Gradebook.

Join us tomorrow, February 20, from 11:30-noon in the Advanced Technology Lab to learn about Course Kit. Register here or feel free to drop in.

It’s Spring Cleaning Time! A checklist for the end of the semester

As the semester wraps up, we’ve created a list of a few things that you’ll want to remember to do before you head off for the summer.

• Back up your Moodle sites. As a reminder, Information Services keeps five years of course sites active and available to you. This means that as Academic Year 2018-19 becomes active, AY 2013-14 will go offline. Before July 1, make sure that you create a backup of any course sites that contain material that you might want to use in the future. You can create a backup of the entire Moodle site, to be used for a future Moodle course site, or you can download individual file resources.
• Download and save your Moodle Gradebook(s). As a matter of best practice, IS suggests that you save the grades that you’ve entered into Moodle. A course’s Moodle gradebook can be downloaded in Excel format and saved for long-term recordkeeping.
• Check out your Moodle courses for next year. Moodle for Academic Year 2018-19 is up and running. Minor changes to the system may happen over the summer, but all currently scheduled courses have been loaded. If you’re teaching a course that doesn’t appear on your course list in Moodle, first confirm that it’s on the course schedule and you are listed as the instructor. If not, contact the Office of the Registrar. If it is on the course schedule, but doesn’t appear for you in Moodle, submit a WebHelpDesk ticket.
• Return your library books. Books and other library materials that were checked out this year have a due date of May 18. Return all your loans to either Shain or Greer by that date. Don’t forget any equipment you might have borrowed from Media Services or the Digital Scholarship and Curriculum Center.
• Submit your list of course reserves. Please help library staff avoid the crunch at the end of August by submitting your list of Fall course reserves to your library liaison or directly to Bridget Pupillo, Reserve and Circulation Assistant.

 

A Handy Trick for Duplicating Google Docs

Faculty often create assignments in which students are asked to complete a worksheet or template. When using Google Docs for this, a common practice is to either make multiple copies of the template and share the copies with individual students , or to give students access to the original document so the students can make the copy themselves. The former option is time consuming while the latter option is risky, as students may make inadvertent edits to the original document.

At a recent NERCOMP event, I picked up a great Google Drive tip from a colleague (credit to Carol Damm of Brandeis University). There is a quick and easy way to make copies of a Google Doc (or Sheet or Slide): by changing the word “edit” to the word “copy” at the end of the URL for a Google Doc, the URL becomes a command to create a duplicate of the original Doc. The modified URL can be pasted into an email to students, or posted on the course Moodle page. A student clicking on the link will be prompted to create a copy of the original Google Doc, which will then be stored in the student’s own Google Drive. That resulting file can be edited by the student, and subsequently printed, saved as a PDF, or shared.

Watch this video to see how it’s done!