Category: Uncategorized

Connecting at a Distance — Bruce Mills

Posted on by Rick Barth

As the weeks progressed and things got increasingly difficult, I appreciate[d] Dr. Mills giving us the space to speak/write if we needed to and step away if we had to. I don[‘]t think this online transition was perfect, but I think Dr. Mills was consistently thinking about us as people and then as students, and I think that is why I got as much from this class as I did

Even though this class was also asynchronous, I felt a connection to the professor and my classmates that seemed to have been the product of these [weekly MS Team] discussions. It was something I looked forward to every week, because I always left that call feeling as though a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. In times when (emotionally and physically) close contact is nearly extinct, being able to connect with others through serious and relevant texts (and also just have a safe space to discuss personal issues and beliefs) was relieving

I would like to pretend that every student left my spring courses with these same feelings. I am not so naïve. Still, I call them out as both an individual and communal affirmation. In departmental conversations (and across campus) with colleagues, I heard folks imagining and sharing humane and equitable practices —for students and ourselves. We centered on access (to readings and technology), on transparency, and thus on removing barriers that impede learning. Amid this crisis, I was reminded of an essential core to teaching: caring is content.

Let me also offer one final note before the resource link below. As a teacher, I see student motivation and learning as linked to feeling “named” or “seen.” It is about keeping an eye on connecting. Certainly, and this was no small task in the transition to online instruction, the strategies and technologies had to change for this connecting with students. However, the central arc of my pedagogy did not. This centering objective gave me confidence in choosing to select fewer chapters from Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider and, in the case of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, to read only the Prologue, Chapter One, and the Epilogue. It also led me to check in frequently with students and, out of these conversations, standardize days/times for weekly information emails, for weekly Moodle postings, and for group discussions (4-6 people) on Teams.

Alongside this effort to provide a reliable schedule, I instituted a philosophy and practice of reasonable flexibility. The linked article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“5 Ways to Connect with Online Students”) offers a useful summary of things that mirror my own efforts during the spring.

Note: these suggestions point to additional workload in some areas and, as a result, the need to spend less time in others.

Bruce Mills
Department of English

You need to be using screenshots — Rick Barth

Posted on by Rick Barth

In my communication workflow in this crazy online era, I have realized that I can often avoid a wordy description with a picture:

  • A formula or figure from some online source
  • A little piece of the student’s online submitted work I’d like to comment on specifically
  • A funny meme 🙂

I can make that happen with a screenshot. Often I just need to paste the result into a Teams chat (sorry, Zoom doesn’t allow that), an email, or a PowerPoint slide. I can also save the screenshot to an image file to use later. The process is easy for both macOS and Windows10.

Windows10

There are many ways to accomplish screenshots in Windows10. The slickest in my opinion is to flip a switch in Settings that allows the “Snip & Sketch” tool to be activated by the Print Screen button on your keyboard. You do this by going to the windows menu (lower left of you screen), selecting Settings (the gear icon) and searching for “print screen”. There’s a switch to flip: “use the PrtScn button to open screen snipping” as in the screenshot below.

turn on print screen button activation of the screen snipping tool
Turn on screen snipping tool in the Ease of Access menu in Windows 10

Once you’ve done that, press the Print Screen button and you’ll see the screen become a little bit greyer and a few buttons appear at the top center, allowing you to copy a rectangular region, a window, the whole screen. It remembers your selection the next time too.

snip and sketch toolbar ribbon
the snip & sketch toolbar ribbon

After you’ve made your screen shot, its ready to paste (CTRL V) wherever you want. Also, a little window opens in the bottom right of the screen. Clicking on that allows you to save the screenshot in a file, open it to edit, and a few other things.

macOS

There’s not much to say here. Push these three buttons simultaneously and the cursor will turn into a little crosshair that you can drag on the screen to get the rectangle you want to grab.

shift command 4
shift command 4

Here’s a webpage that goes into detail about screenshots on lots of devices.

MATH105 Quantitative Reasoning — Rick Barth

Posted on by Rick Barth

Registration: typically 30 Students (in spring 2020 there were 42 students)

In Spring 2020, I met with students by video during the first week to get acquainted and to demonstrate the software platforms and routines of the course, but otherwise I conducted this class entirely asynchronously. This was in part because the number of students in the class was quite large, and in part because I wanted to spend my time on other pedagogies. I prioritized my time to making 3-times-per-week video lectures and providing same-day feedback on student work, which was also due 3 times per week.

Student feedback from this course, as well as from other students who replied to the TLC student survey in 10th week leads me to plan for next spring to re-use some of the asynchronous content, update some asynchronous content but with less emphasis on synthesizing earlier material, and to add real-time group meetings with students in order to provide more support to students who didn’t get enough personal connection from the routine of submitting work and receiving quick personal feedback.

Workload in a typical week of MATH105

The content of this figure is repeated below in a form suitable for screen reader software.

Three weekly 40-minute group meetings with 10 students each. A single active learning plan to re-use in each group section during the week Through examples from current events, we’ll synthesize earlier weeks and make context for future weeks.

Monday

  • post short recorded lecture
  • make a new assignment
  • grade Friday work
  • Meet Group A synchronously

Wednesday

  • post short recorded lecture
  • make a new assignment
  • grade Monday work
  • Meet Group B synchronously

Friday

  • post short recorded lecture
  • make a new assignment
  • grade Wednesday work
  • Meet Group C synchronously

The recorded lectures will be 10-15 minutes. The assignments will be designed so as to allow me to provide a quick turnaround—hopefully same-day.

Displaying An iPad Screen On a Mac (e.g., to embed a whiteboard in a recorded Teams meeting) — Alyce Brady

Posted on by Rick Barth

This 4 minute video describes the use of QuickTime to display an iPad’s screen on a Mac. The specific context that motivated this video was to describe one of several ways to share a whiteboard in a Teams meeting, especially if you want to record the meeting for students to refer back to. (At the current time, the Microsoft Whiteboard app will not get recorded in Teams meeting recordings.)

The tl;dr version of this is to

  • connect the iPad to the laptop with the appropriate cord,
  • bring up QuickTime on the laptop,
  • choose New Movie Recording,
  • choose “iPad” from the pull-down menu next to the red Record button,
  • but do not start recording.  This will display the iPad screen in the Mac’s QuickTime window, which you can share in Teams using screen sharing.

Alternate Version

A different approach is to start a Teams meeting on your laptop, bring up Teams on the iPad also and join the existing meeting.  You will now be in the meeting twice, from two different devices.  (Make sure to turn the microphone and speaker off on one of the two devices.)  Choose to Share from the iPad (under the “…” option), then switch to whatever app you want to share from the iPad.  As always, you can record the meeting from the laptop.

Five Things: Library Resources to Support Teaching

Posted on by Rick Barth

1. Ask us for help

Do you need help finding a book, film, or other resources for your class? Having problems accessing library databases or an article or eBook? Any questions about library services? Email us at Library@kzoo.edu.

2. Course Materials

Librarians are happy to talk with you about materials for your courses. We can help with off-campus links to articles and eBooks to make it easier for students to access the materials you assign. The library may have relevant eBooks, articles, and videos already in our collections, and we can suggest open access alternatives that may fit your course needs.

3. Customized Library Course Guides

We are more than happy to work with you to create a Library Guide tailored to your specific assignments. We can include video tutorials to walk students through how best to use library resources. Examples of Course Guides: BUSN/ECON 380 and HIST 242. Additional research guides include discipline specific research guides and the general Library Research Toolkit.

4. Embed a Librarian in your Course Moodle or Teams Site

Having a librarian partnered with your course is another way for students to connect with a librarian. We can answer questions from students and share appropriate resources in your course site.

5. Research Instruction via Teams, Zoom, or Stream

If you are holding synchronous class sessions, we can demonstrate resources and facilitate a discussion about research or information literacy. For asynchronous classes, we can recommend or create instructional videos to help your students understand how to access the library’s online resources. Individual students can sign up for Research Rescue through Teams or Zoom—thank you for continuing to send students our way!

Just ask!

Your librarians are available and willing to help make your classes this fall a success. Email reference@kzoo.edu or schedule an appointment to talk about your class needs.

Ideas for Low Stakes, High Engagement Assignments — Alyce Brady

Posted on by Rick Barth

For several years I’ve been interested in shifting my grading practices to focus more on learning than on the kind of content knowledge that frequently rewards prior knowledge and privilege. The move to CR/NC grading in Spring 2020 gave me an opportunity to experiment with this further.  The key concern that I and many other K colleagues had, though, was whether a CR/NC grading system would lead to less motivation and less engagement among students.

My experience this spring convinced me that lower stakes grading does not have to lead to lower levels of student engagement.  In fact, two experiments were so successful that my CS colleagues and I plan to continue these approaches across many of our classes, whether remote or in-person, and whether CR/NC or letter-graded.

The first 6 minute video talks about turning rubrics that awarded points for required criteria into ones that awarded checkmarks, dramatically reducing the number of points per assignment. This approach is essentially a very mild form of gamification. (It is also somewhat similar to specifications grading.)

Low Stakes, High Engagement:  Part 1 – Many checkmarks, few points (Mild gamification)

The second, 6 minute video discusses a move to replace traditional homework assignments with structured reflection assignments.  My original motivation was to reduce grading time, since the class was significantly over-enrolled.  I feared that some content learning would be lost, but found that the weekly writings encouraged students to develop and articulate greater depth and integration than the older homework assignments.

Low Stakes, High Engagement:  Part 2 – Structured reflection instead of traditional homework assignments

This video is posted at Stream. Click here to learn more about Stream.

Goodbye Emails, Hello Teams Chat — Nayda Collazo-Llorens

Posted on by Rick Barth

The Chat option in Microsoft Teams turned out to be an effective way to communicate with students, to the point that we decided to use it instead of email communication.

It offered casual and immediate exchanges (many of us installed Teams on our phones) and I would usually reply right away. It was convenient for students in both my Basic Drawing and Digital Art classes to reach out to me, or to the rest of the class in the group chat we set up early on, with questions as they worked on their projects.

Drawing students could send pictures of their in-progress drawings for feedback. Digital Art students were able to ask questions which would often lead to an impromptu video chat in order to share their screens with me.

It allowed me to see what they were working on and either help with technical issues or offer feedback. I found Teams Chat to be efficient and timesaving, but most importantly I felt it was the closest thing to being together in a studio classroom where I am there to answer questions and help students as they worked on their projects. It was also a quick and easy-to-use tool for me to reach out to students and was surprised by their prompt replies.

Both courses were taught asynchronously and incorporated different platforms. Moodle served as the main repository of information while Padlet served as an interactive collective space (see Sarah Lindley’s post). We also held optional Zoom meetings every week and I found that reminding students of the meeting through a chat message a few minutes prior offered good results.

Math Symbols in Moodle

Posted on by Rick Barth

I know, it isn’t for everyone. But if you need to typeset a math symbol, you need it to be easy to enter and correctly formatted. Moodle has a built-in capability to interpret math symbols using the LaTeX typesetting language.

All that’s needed are double dollar signs, like in this little example: I created an assignment call “latex sample” and typed the following in the assignment description:

The coefficient of $$x^2$$ is $$\pi$$.

That displays in Moodle as

If you aren’t familiar with LaTeX:

Here is my top-ten list of most needed LaTeX symbols.

  1. Subscripts use _ (underscore): $$a_1$$, $$H_a$$, $$k_s$$, etc
  2. Exponents and superscripts ^ (caret): $$x^2$$, $$e^x$$, etc
  3. Greek letter are preceded by \ (backslash): $$\pi$, $$\alpha$$, $$\mu$$ etc
  4. Fractions use a special construct: $$ \frac{ }{ } $$ For example “pi over 2” would be entered as $$ \frac{\pi}{2}$$
  5. Numbers and lots of symbols correspond to their typical keyboard symbol: prime = apostrophe, absolute value = vertical bar on backslash key $$ |x| $$, parens = (), as well as the operators +, –
  6. Integrals use the construction $$ \int $$, for example $$ \int_a^b f(x) dx $$
  7. Multiplication: use \cdot like this $$ x \cdot x^2 = x^3 $$
  8. If you want an old-fashioned “multiply by” symbol, use $$ 3 \times 2 = 6 $$
  9. If you want an old-fashioned “divided by” symbol, use $$ 6 \div 2 = 3 $$
  10. Beware of Percent Sign and literal Dollar Sign: They need to have a backslash $$ 21\% $$ and $$ \$21.99 $$.
  11. As suits this extra tip: infinity is entered with this sad misspelling: $$ \infty $$.

For more information, here’s a complete glossary of math symbols in LaTeX

Activity Completion in Moodle

Posted on by Rick Barth

The Activity Completion feature in Moodle helpful for students to keep their work in your course organized, and can be motivating for them: there’s a feeling of accomplishment when checking those boxes!

A 10-minute video by Josh Moon

This video is posted at Stream. Click here to learn more about Stream.

COVID-19 Spring – It turns out some of my choices align with recommended practices! — Jeff Bartz

Posted on by Rick Barth

After a week of doomsday scrolling in March 2020, it was time to get to work. But what work? The technology options, activity alternatives, and advice for virtual classes were overwhelming. I made some choices and they ended up aligning well with a list of recommended practices published in July 2020:

RECOMMENDED PRACTICES FOR ONLINE INSTRUCTION from Means, B.; Neisler, J. Suddenly Online: A National Survey of Undergraduates During the COVID-19 Pandemic; Digital Promise: San Mateo, CA, 2020.

  1. Assignments that ask students to express what they have learned and what they still need to learn
  2. Breaking up class activities into shorter pieces than in an in-person course
  3. Frequent quizzes or other assessments
  4. Live sessions in which students can ask questions and participate in discussions
  5. Meeting in “breakout groups” during a live class
  6. Personal messages to individual students about how they are doing in the course or to make sure they can access course materials
  7. Using real world examples to illustrate course content
  8. Work on group projects separately from the course meetings

Without knowing that I was doing it, my class was constructed using aspects of Design Thinking. Our class had five major themes – Energy, Efficiency, Fuels, Climate Change, and the Ozone Hole – I thought the major themes would keep the students (and the instructor) interested. Assignments and activities were geared toward understanding the major themes using the standard physical chemistry that we have done at Kalamazoo College for decades.

Our class had asynchronous components aligned with the MWF schedule, with online assignments due each day. Some of the asynchronous activities in Spring 2020 were the same as if we would have met in-person: recorded flipped lectures linked on Moodle, targeted textbook reading, Moodle quizzes on the flipped lectures, Moodle quizzes on the targeted reading, and electronic homework. Students did one assignment looking at aspects of energy they thought would be interesting for the professor to learn. I collected laboratory data and asked the students to analyze it in the same way we would have done in-person.

The synchronous components were weekly problem solving sessions over Zoom. The students showed up, did a warm-up activity, solved problems in breakout rooms, then came back for a closing activity.

Here is how I implemented the recommended practices for online instruction:

Practice Implementation Needs Work
1. Reflection on Learning ✓
2. Breaking up class activities
  • MWF Flipped Lectures made with Explain Everything on an iPad
  • Lecture uploaded to YouTube; link posted on Moodle
  • Targeted textbook reading
  • Homework through Mastering Chemistry
  • Break lectures into even smaller chunks (12-20 minutes and then 4-7 minutes)
  • Mix quiz questions with smaller lectures
  • First-year students should upload their notes from each flipped lecture for credit.
  • Need comprehensive instructions for all activities
    • 3. Frequent Quizzes
  • Embedded questions in lecture
  • Post-lecture T/F on Moodle
  • Pre-class questions on targeted reading
  • All quizzes were low stakes
    		• Add more embedded questions
    4. Live sessions Figure out when to hold sessions
  • Students indicated their availability using a simple scheduling site when2meet
  • Live session times were hosted through Zoom
  • Students indicated which session they would attend by a Doodle Poll each week
  • Sessions involved an ice breaker, some problem-solving in breakouts, announcements, and a low-stakes quiz using Kahoot!
  • Add more accountability to the live sessions.
  • Collect materials from students
  • Add a variety of materials in the live sessions including
    • Applications of the material
    • Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning activities (POGIL))
  • Need comprehensive instructions for all activities
    • 5. Breakout rooms during class
    • Easy to do in Zoom
    • Instructor emailed the problems to discuss before live class started
    		When I popped into some breakout rooms all the microphones where muted. I need to assign roles to the groups and have somebody report out the results from the group. A helpful resource for groupwork
    6. Personal messages With lots of online work, professor can see each student’s progress. Students who were falling behind got messages either email or instant messages through Remind or Slack. More students chose Remind than Slack.
  • Remind will allow the instructor to send out a message to everyone, which could be a way to check in with the class
  • A problem even in face-to-face is how to interpret the silences
    • 7. Real-world examples Created a pre-class movie trailer to describe the applications using iMovie that was sent to all of the students. Putting out the applications that we would study made it important to work them into the class.
    8. Group projects Students chose whether they wanted to work in laboratory groups. Should we do more group work?
    Pros:
  • Working online is isolating
  • Students have 168 hours in a week to schedule a meetup
  • Students gave feedback that working in groups was helpful
  • Fewer papers to grade
    Cons:
  • Some students despise group work
  • One more thing to set up and monitor