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 […]
Posts
Online Shared Workspace Environment with Padlet — Sarah Lindley
Lots of people wonder how it would be possible to teach ceramics and sculpture online. It turns out that giving up the messy materials of clay and plaster was less disruptive than losing the group discussion and shared workspace that are essential to a sense of community and rapid artistic growth. This 5-minute video shows how […]
Five Things to Promote Equity in an Online Class — Josh Moon
I started working in online learning ten years ago as a teaching assistant in graduate school. The idea of equity and compassionate practices weren’t on my radar then. We asked students to submit pictures to verify their activity outside of class, used digital plagiarism tools, and requested documentation when they missed time (including for funerals. […]
Quizzes and Assignments in Moodle Make Feedback Easy
Frequent assessment and timely, detailed feedback are hallmarks for successful course design in any situation, and all-the-more so as we move to online course delivery. I’ve been using Moodle quizzes and assignments for ten years and find that it fits a high-volume workflow in a way the efficiently makes use of my time while allowing […]
Getting Started with Moodle — Josh Moon
When someone is using Moodle for the first time, I like to invite them into my office so we can sit side-by-side and look at the interface together. Recognizing that we will have many new Moodle users and meeting in person with everyone is neither prudent nor feasible, I’ve set up a set of resources […]
Four Models for Your Moodle Course — Josh Moon
Using Moodle does not mean that there is one solution for every instructor, group of students, discipline, or pedagogy. With this in mind, we’ve created four different models to demonstrate what various utilizations of Moodle by an instructor might look like: The Basics: A very simple, minimalist Moodle example A full-featured example using many features […]
Teaching Commons Discussion Threads at Teams
Conversations at the Teaching Commons Teams site. From this link, you’ll see the following. We suggest that you Download the app or, if you have the Teams app already installed on your device, hit “Launch it now”
Summer Teaching Development Moodle Site
Summer Teaching Development Moodle Site The focus of this site is going to be links to external long-form sources as a complement to the growing wealth of college-created blogs and videos at the Teaching Commons. At this Moodle site you’ll find links to articles, podcasts, videos, graphics and other content. The emphasis is on topics […]
Taming the “Brute Force” Approach to Create a More Sustainable Online Course — Patrik Hultberg
Brute force: the application of effort of force instead of efficient, carefully planned and precisely directed methods. That sums up my approach to the sudden switch to remote teaching and learning. As it turns out, it can work. But 10 weeks of constant around the clock teaching and decision-making had taken its toll. Over the […]
Explain Edu: An iPad App for Recording Powerpoint Lectures — Ann Fraser
In this video, Ann walks us from beginning to end of the process of using a program called Explain EDU to record lectures . It works on iPhone and iPad. You can import pdf files of your PowerPoint lectures — one slide per page — and then narrate the slides. You can do the narration […]