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.

Collaborative Reading Online: Workshop Monday!

Are your students reading course materials on laptops or other devices?

Online annotation tools can support students’ close reading of texts in an online environment. These same tools can be used to support collaborative reading where students add annotations, questions, and discussion directly on the texts themselves! Intentional use of social annotation tools make texts come alive for students, create community, increase participation and comprehension, and, as a result, improve learning.

Join us Monday at our workshop, Close Reading Online: Social Annotation and Reading Tools. We’ll look at tools such as Hypothes.is, CommentPress, and RefWorks. We will also discuss criteria for selecting tools and consider issues such as privacy and accessibility. Register here, or feel free to drop in!

Technologies for Teaching & Research Workshops 2019

Time to add our workshops to your calendar! You can find the full list of workshops online and find a print copy in your mailbox. All workshops are open to faculty and staff. Registration is recommended, but is not required so stop by if you schedule allows. Refreshments are served!

Creating Online Coursepacks – Register
Monday, February 4, 3:00 – 4:00pm | Advanced Technology Lab
The library offers many services to help you create online coursepacks that are completely free for your students to access and can be easily integrated into Moodle. We’ll provide an overview of our print and electronic book and journal collections and share several ways that we can help you locate and adopt freely available content, including open educational resources. Bring your syllabus and build a list of resources that will supplement current course readings or replace old material.

Close Reading Online: Social Annotation and Reading Tools – Register
Monday, February 11, 3:00-4:00pm | Advanced Technology Lab
Are your students reading course materials on laptops or other devices? Online annotation tools can support students’ close reading of texts in an online environment. These same tools can be used to support collaborative reading where students add annotations, questions, and discussion directly on the texts themselves! Intentional use of social annotation tools make texts come alive for students, create community, increase participation and comprehension, and, as a result, improve learning. In this workshop, we’ll look at tools such as Hypothes.is, CommentPress, and RefWorks. We will also discuss criteria for selecting tools and consider issues such as privacy and accessibility.

Tools in a Flash: Google CourseKit – Register
Wednesday, February 20, 11:30-12:00 | Advanced Technology Lab
New this semester! Introducing Google CourseKit, a plugin for Moodle that facilitates assignment submission using Google Drive. CourseKit integrates into Moodle allowing students to submit assignments in Drive, and allowing instructors to provide feedback, while also integrating with the Moodle Gradebook.

Digital Connecticut College: Making WordPress & Omeka Sites, and More – Register
Wednesday, March 6, 3:00 – 4:00pm | Advanced Technology Lab
Learn how to make your own websites using 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.

Promote and Preserve Your Research with Digital Commons – Register
Wednesday, April 3, 3:00-4:00 | Advanced Technology Lab
Digital Commons is a free electronic archive of the research and publications of Connecticut College faculty, students, and departments. It can be used to ensure easier access to your journal articles, provide a venue for other unpublished scholarship like conference papers, store and publish datasets, or deliver newsletters to a wider audience. In this workshop we will explain the advantages of using Digital Commons, demonstrate its analytics capability, and show the wide range of faculty and College publications gaining wider audiences through Open Access publishing. We can also show you how we determine what of your published research may be reproduced in Digital Commons. Bring a cv or list of recent publications and we can check it for you in the course of the workshop.

Introducing “Digital Connecticut College”

Yesterday we held a workshop to introduce Digital Connecticut College. Thanks to everyone who attended!

What is 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.

Why would I use it?

Although are are the beginning stages of rolling this out to the community, we can share some ways faculty, staff, and students are already using Digital Connecticut College.

• Faculty research website. Use your domain as a space for digital scholarship, or to share your research with a broader community.
• Online annotation of texts. Upload your course material into an interactive site that allows for student comments, discussion, and annotation. CommentPress and hypothes.is are two available options that we can support.
• Collaborative class website. Several courses created a class website, sharing the results of their coursework with a wide audience.
• Weekly writing. Students post reflections based on course readings or films. The site is shared with everyone in the class, and students comment on each other’s posts creating a vibrant online discussion.
• Small group or individual websites. Students can also share their research or a project by creating their own websites.

How do I get started?

Contact Diane Creede, Lyndsay Bratton, or Jessica McCullough to create your domain and get started! If you have an idea, feel free to contact one of us. We can work with anyone regardless of your experience with technology.

Open Access Week 2018

Every year in October we celebrate Open Access Week, an international celebration of everything open. If this doesn’t sound familiar, read up on the topic through the (brief!) blog posts we published in previous  years:

• What is Open Access
• Impact of Open Access
• Local to Global Open Access
• Is Your Work Still Yours?
• Teaching Open Access

This year we are focused on advocating for the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) on our campus. Many staff and faculty colleagues have been thinking about ways to decrease the total cost of a Connecticut College education by replacing traditional textbooks with OER. During Open Access week this year, we will conduct a whiteboard survey in Shain Library asking students questions about how students use, acquire, and pay for textbooks. In following weeks we will collect and share the results of the survey.

We also invite you to attend and participate in a hands-on workshop to explore and discover OER for your courses, learn about and help shape future grant opportunities for OER implementation. Details are below – feel free to register or stop by as  your schedule allows. As always, coffee and snacks will be provided!

OER and Your Course: Integrating Open Content into the Curriculum – Register
Monday, October 22 | 3:00-4:00pm | Advanced Technology Lab, Shain Library
Open educational resources (OER) are educational materials that are distributed at no cost and have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-­purposing by others. OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks,  streaming videos, tests, software, and other materials. Much work has been done at the College to integrate OER into classes. We will share what OER programming is developing and how to integrate these resources and practices into your own courses.

Copyright Confusion? Attend our workshop next week!

Next Tuesday (October, 2) Fred Folmer will lead a workshop, Copyright Essentials for the Classroom. If you have questions about which materials you can use in in your teaching and research, and when you can use them this workshop is for you. We will help you sort through the key issues surrounding copyrighted materials, including the application of Fair Use as well as various exceptions to copyright, such as the TEACH Act and library reproduction. We’ll also dive into some issues that arise most frequently among college faculty, including the use of copyrighted materials in teaching and assignments; images and video; concerns arising from the public presentation of student work; and copyright/ownership of your own research.

Join Us! Refreshments will be provided.

Copyright Essentials for the Classroom
Tuesday, October 2, 2018 | 10:00 – 11:00 am
Advanced Technology Lab, Lower Level, Shain Library
Register (not required but recommended) by emailing Jessica McCullough or online.

Image credit: Lost and Confused Signpost (CC BY 2.0)

Open Educational Resources: OER Explorers and Informational Libguide

The headlines are frightening: “Student Debt Nears One Trillion Dollars,” “College Costs Out of Control,” and “Betrayed by the Dream Factory.” These are not Hollywood blockbusters, but articles written in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Slate.com about the skyrocketing cost of a college education.

A steep increase in textbook prices is a major factor in actual costs to students.  A 2015 analysis of Bureau of Labor Consumer Price Index (CPI) data found that textbook prices rose by 1041% from 1977 to 2015. The fears of increasing debt are shared by college students across the U.S. Connecticut College student, Jacee Cox in an article in The College Voice described the “dark and frightening online search” that revealed that in 5 years college tuition will increase to $86,787 per year.

Here at Conn, faculty and staff are working to address the issue of textbook costs by creating programming and material about open educational resources. Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or have been released with an open license. In June 2018, librarians at the College formed a group called “OER Explorers” in order to explore programs, funding sources, and support models for adopting Open Educational Resources at Connecticut College.  We also considered challenges and roadblocks for faculty and recommended a grant initiative and implementation plan. OER Explorers are advocates for open and accessible course materials at the College and work to share their knowledge of OER with colleagues across campus.

There is now a dedicated library staff member, Ariela McCaffrey, who will act as point person for faculty, offering consultations and workshops for faculty and staff, developing ways to promote OER, and getting support from stakeholders. A presentation entitled “OER and Your Course: Integrating open content into the curriculum” will be held in the Advanced Technology Lab, Lower Level, Shain Library from 3-4pm on October 22, 2018.

Find more information on the Open Educational Resources at Connecticut College libguide.

Please contact me if you have questions about OER!

Ariela McCaffrey
Research Support and Outreach Librarian
amccaffr@conncoll.edu | 860-439-2103
Shain 226

Find Us at Camp Teach & Learn

Instructional technology is co-sponsoring two sessions at this year’s Camp Teach & Learn. We hope to see you there!

Integrating Global-Local Experiences: Using ePortfolio
Wednesday 23 May 2:15 PM to 3:30 PM

Connections asks students to not only develop purposeful plans for off-campus learning (through internships, community involvement, study away and so on), but also to integrate their global-local experiences with their academic work. Digital portfolios provide a powerful tool to support integrative work, serving as a platform for students to document coursework, record reflections, images, and artifacts, and archive significant academic work beyond the confines of a single course or academic semester. They also can become a locus that students can revisit and share with advisors, peers, and the Connecticut College community in preparation for their senior capstone work. At this workshop we will discuss best practices for using ePortfolios to encourage integrative learning and critical reflection, examine how ePortfolio has been adopted in some of the new Pathways, and share examples of student digital portfolios.

Improve Learning & Decrease Educational Costs: The Case for Open Educational Resources
Thursday 24 May 1:30 PM to 3:30 PM

This workshop will explore strategies for decreasing costs of course materials for students while improving learning. Participants will discuss the benefits of and challenges to adopting Open Educational Resources (OER) and other affordable alternatives and examine examples of courses that have leveraged existing library resources, remixed open ed texts, and integrated content created by students. Come meet the newly formed OER Exploratory Committee, charged with recommending a program at the College to decrease costs of course materials, and offer your ideas, concerns, and suggestions.

Don’t Forget: Tempel Summer Institute Proposals Due Friday!

Tempel Summer Institute Participants and Instructors, 2017

Were you thinking about attending Tempel Summer Institute this summer? If so, don’t forget that proposals are due on Friday!

What is Tempel Summer Institute? It is an annual, one-week immersion program for faculty started in 2000 by a generous gift from Jean C. Tempel ’65. The Institute provides a pedagogical approach to the integration of new technologies into the curriculum, and is led by Information Services staff and two faculty leaders.

During the Institute, you will participate in group discussions on pedagogical challenges and teaching and learning goals, and learn about instructional technologies that can be used to address those challenges and goals. Many sessions are hands-on, allowing you to get a better understanding of the technology. Time for course development is built into the Institute, enabling you to make significant progress on redesigning courses and creating course materials with the assistance of faculty and staff.

Sound interesting? More information and the full Call for Proposals can be found on this page.

TSI 2014 Mascot, By Orizatriz (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons