Blog Posts
Five Things: What to Know if You’re New to Moodle — Josh Moon
1. Moodle is not connected to the Registrar That means students will not be automatically added to your Moodle site. The easiest solution is to copy and paste the URL for the course and email this to students. That will lead them directly to your course. They can also navigate to it in the categories […]
Five Things: Big ideas I took away from online workshops this summer — Rick Barth
I spent what felt like a lot of time this summer in online workshops about how to teach online. I learned a lot of things — both by positive and negative association! — that will help me make my fall courses have better online content. Here are 5 big things I have in mind. Community […]
Business Communication in a Time of Difficult Communication — David Rhoa
David C. RhoaVisiting Asst Prof of Economics and Business.July 2020 Spring 2020 was the first offering of BSUN/ECON 285 Business Communication. The course was designed from the ground up to be an interactive program that encouraged student engagement and discussion. When we switched to the distance-learning model, I had to scrap most of my planned […]
Using Guest Lectures — Elizabeth Manwell
I was part of a Classics Facebook group called #GuestNatter, where people could volunteer to chat about a topic or to solicit help. I did a video conversation with a colleague a Oberlin for his class, and I invited five colleagues into mine. The conversations I recorded with colleagues were a real grab-bag, but they […]
Using Moodle Feedback — Elizabeth Manwell
I used “feedback” in Moodle to create a quick quiz/assignment that I used to gauge reading comprehension of the “theoretical” piece we read in class each week. Giving feedback to students using it was the least elegant aspect, but it was otherwise a good and quick way to check their understanding of the main points.
Two assignments that take advantage of distance learning to make profound connections — Mark McDonald
Foreign correspondent and bureau chief for IHT, Knight Ridder, New York Times, etc. Author of the new PTSD novel, Off the X, Mark McDonald (K73) returned to Kalamazoo this winter and spring to teach two courses in Journalism. Two interview-based assignments that I used in the Winter and Spring terms seemed particularly successful with the […]
The Simplest Way to Record Video Lectures up to 15 minutes: Microsoft Stream
Everybody at the College has access to a suite of Microsoft programs. Among them is a video sharing platform called Stream. The built-in capabilities of that program make it the easiest way I’ve found to record a video lecture that includes a picture-in-picture webcam video of you presenting the lecture. The one limitation to be […]
Use Teams to record a video lecture
An important note: The steps below work in the Teams App on my machine running in Windows 10. We’ve come to realize that different operating systems have different features and behavior. If you have a Mac, Chromebook, or use the browser-based Teams site, please let everyone know how/if this works for you in the comments […]
Creating Breakout Groups in Teams with Channels — Kathryn Sederberg
Kathryn Sederberg (German Studies) In this post, I share how I used channels in Microsoft Teams to create small groups similar to Zoom breakout rooms, in which students can meet to work on a task and the instructor can “drop in” and move between groups during synchronous class sessions. In my classroom (the one with […]