SHSU Online Blog

by Jacob Spradlin spradlin@shsu.edu
Assistant Director of Online Course Development
SHSU Online/Delta Center
Jacob holds a Master's Degree in Instructional Technology and has over 16 years of experience in supporting online, hybrid and face-to-face courses at Sam Houston State University.

 

Assignment Practice

Cutting down on last minute scrambling with technological glitches by having your students practice the activity before the real assignment or assessment is due.

One of the worst feelings as an instructor occurs when you work tirelessly to put together an assignment or assessment in your course only to have the technology fail you. You spend countless hours organizing an activity with the learning objectives in mind, ensuring the activity is perfectly aligned to the curriculum, only to find that the students can't even access it because the technology isn't working. Talk about frustrating!  While in some respects you will always be at the mercy of the technology gods, for example the old adage "It is not a matter of if technology will fail you, it is a matter of when.", seems to come to mind.  However, there is a very proactive way to greatly reduce the chance of a technological failure in your course.........Practice!

 

Oftentimes assignments, assessments and activities that deal with third-party software or technology other than the Internet browser take place at stressful times during the semester or are associated with a stressful activity (test taking).  At this point, you are taking the normal stress and anxiety levels associated with coursework and compounding them with the added fun of using a new or different technology.  Why not introduce your students to the "new tech" at the beginning of the semester or make the activity less than 25% of the course grade.  Below you will see some great examples of "practice activities" that you can use in your course.  You don't have to limit yourself to these activities as this best practice transcends just these examples.

 

The Syllabus Quiz (Killing 3 birds with one stone)

 

This activity touches in three important areas that will affect how the student goes through the rest of your course. By completing this exercise the student will:

• become familiar with the testing mechanism in the learning management system before they take their first major exam or quiz.
• learn how to use-third party applications (ExamGuard or Tegrity Remote Proctoring) to ensure academic honesty during the assessment without the added anxiety of a big test being due.
• at least know the information in your syllabus that you think is most important, ensuring that they have at least looked at the syllabus once during the course.

NOTES: Be sure to make the Syllabus Quiz worth enough points so that the students will follow through on taking it. During this time the student can call the SHSU Online helpdesk (877.870.9214) for ExamGuard issues or the Delta Center Technical Team (877.759.2232) for Tegrity Remote Proctoring help.

 

The "Introduce Yourself" Presentation

 

One of the ways we can bridge the gap of interactivity in online and Hybrid courses is to allow students to record presentations and upload them to the course.  SHSU Online instructors can use the Tegrity tool in their courses and allow students to submit their own recordings. This means that the student can present a project, assignment or some other activity while sharing video, audio and whatever is running on their desktop or laptop computer.  We all know that many students undergo stress when they have to give an oral presentation.  Take that stress and tie it to the added stress of "Can they hear me?", "Is my webcam working?", and "Can they see my PowerPoint?".  Give your students a fun activity at the outset without the added pressure of a major assignment deadline and the stress diminishes considerably.

 

Sample "Introduce Yourself" Presentation Guidelines

• Place activity in first week or getting started unit of your course.
• Include directions on how to access Tegrity and start recording (we have detailed instructions that we can place in your course, just ask!)
• Have student create a 3-5 slide PowerPoint or Keynote presentation that Introduces them to the class and record themselves giving the presentation using Tegrity. 
• Tell them to have fun with the presentation!

NOTES:  For remote proctoring or Tegrity presentations the student will be required to have a webcam and a headset microphone.  If the student has problems getting Tegrity to work, have them call the Delta Center Technical Team (877.759.2232).

 

This principle applies to many other activities you may do in your course.  Having your students create a personal wiki-space using the Campus Pack tool will help when it comes to completing group projects, case studies and portfolios later.  If you require your students to meet with you in real time using the Class Live tool in your course, it is always a good idea to have a pre-meeting meeting to iron out any difficulty they might have in getting the web conferencing tool to work.  Class Live is another tool where a Microphone headset is mandatory.  You never want to get stuck in that feedback loop that comes from hearing yourself in someone else's speakers during a web conference.

If you need assistance incorporating any of these activities in your course, please don't hesitate to contact the Delta Center by e-mail: delta@shsu.edu or phone: 877.759.2232.

The much anticipated Campus Pack 4 summer release is right around the corner. We are happy to announce your Campus Pack 4 service will be upgraded on Saturday, July 2. This update includes some highly-requested new features that will make your Campus Pack experience easier and more engaging.  To understand how social learning "opens the door" to your classroom, click here.

 

The Campus Pack 4 summer release will include these features:

• Mobile accessibility for social media content: (FREE!)
  • Access Campus Pack on all mobile and tablet devices
  • Access all Campus Pack course, group, and Personal Learning Space content
  • View and comment on content

• Social networking for every individual: 
  • Connecting/friending
  • Internal messaging

• Template enhancements:
  • Easier creation and sharing
  • Ability to create personal templates
  • Maintain templates within the Personal Learning Space
  • Develop hard coded templates
  • Using the Learning Objects Community, upload and access templates from peer institutions
  • Ability to import and export templates

• Discussion boards:
  • Create discussions within a course, groups, or Personal Learning Spaces
  • Search topics in discussion

Coming in Fall 2011 - New Social Course Home

SHSU Online's new Course Home allows students and faculty to see, readily interact with and learn from one another.  The new social interface brings important information about the course to the front, allowing students and faculty to interact with key areas without having to dive deep into the course itself.

Information and activity are tailored to what is releavant and important to that user (i.e. activity in threads, new documents posts, user alerts and more).  Students and faculty can then readily communicate and collaborate from the new view.

Take a sneak peak at the the Social area that will show up on the right hand side of your Course Home page.

Turnitin is an academic plagiarism detector, utilized by teachers and students to avoid plagiarism and ensure academic integrity. One advantage to online learning is the convenience of easy access to information and resources online. However, accessible information also increases the risk of students copying content from credible sources and not producing work that is their own. Turnitin is an effective tool you can use to manage and ensure your students' DropBox submissons are original and not plagiarized. Use the Originality Report feature to see what percentage of content in a student submission is not original.

Turnitin is now more deeply integrated with SHSU Online (Pearson Learning Studio).  Enabling Turnitin for any Dropbox assignment is as easy as selected a check box. Check out our new step-by-step guide that walks you through:

• Enabling Turnitin for Dropbox Items
• Modify Turnitin Preference Settings
• Originality Reports

 

Online and face-to-face courses at SHSU have another way to guard against academic dishonesty. Tegrity's Remote Proctoring feature provides a solution for monitoring students testing attempts online. As the student takes an exam remotely, the Tegrity Remote Proctor feature captures all screen activity, as well as video of the exam taker - without the ability to pause. Once the recording is complete, it is automatically uploaded to the appropriate course, where it is immediately accessible by the instructor for potential review at up to 8x speed. 

Here are the step-by-step guides for how to use this great new tool:

• Enable Remote Proctoring
• Using Tegrity Remote Proctor (Student Guide)
• Viewing Remote Proctoring Recordings

If you have any questions about Remote Proctoring feel free to contact the Delta Center.

Increase Student Engagement - Use Campus Pack and Create Student Homepages:

 

Good news for those of you who have been clamoring for the ability to have Student Homepages in your SHSU Online courses!   With an assist from campus pack, students in your online courses can now create and edit a personal wiki site that can be shared with your course and any other courses in which your students are enrolled.  If you or your student has used a word processor then you should have no trouble putting together a person homepage wiki.

 

Check out thse helpful how-tos that you can share with your students under the Web 2.0 section in the SHSU Online Learning Spaces:

• Creating a Student Homepage Wiki with Campus Pack
  
  
• Editing a Student Homepage Wiki with Campus Pack
   
• Sharing your Student Homepage wiki in Campus Pack

*Note:  You will need a Campus Pack link in your course in order to do this, so be sure to add the Campus Pack link first.

Free for all Tegrity users, Tegrity Mobile allows you to watch your Tegrity recordings and search for important terms while you study, no matter where you are. 

• Enable Tegrity App viewing of your course's recordings (How-to)