News

CITL Teaching and Learning News: August 14, 2020

Aug 18, 2020, 09:57 AM


Announcements

Launch of Illinois Remote Website
 
The new Remote.Illinois.edu website provides links, information, tools, and resources to enable a successful transition to blended or all-online teaching, learning, working, and researching at Illinois. Find helpful guides and training, access software and technology, and get assistance for faculty, students, researchers, and staff.
 
Share Your Teachable Moments
 
CITL is collecting stories from instructors and students interested in sharing their experience of remote instruction. Whether you have an interesting innovation, simple course adaptation, or even an instructional misstep, we hope to share these stories so we can all learn from the collective experience of our campus community. Please take a few minutes to complete this short form to share your Teachable Moments.
 

Need Help in Transitioning to Blended or Online Instruction?

While our physical offices are closed until further notice, CITL is here to help! You can contact a CITL Online Learning Specialist to consult with you on strategies for transitioning your course.You can view recordings of our popular workshops targeting the essentials of moving your course online. You may also want to visit the CITL website for the latest advice on transitioning your course to a fully online or blended format.

Innovation Spaces Update

We are now accepting appointment requests for visits to our spaces! We have developed new protocols to make sure that staff and visitors can use the spaces safely. Visits will be scheduled by appointment with visitor number restrictions so that we can give you an enriching and safe experience. Learn more about CITL's Innovation Spaces here.

Is eText Right for Your Course?

As the pandemic forces moving most classes online, consider using eText@Illinois. Using eText at the “front end” with Compass or Moodle provides seamless grades, quizzes, and other embedded features. It provides a professionally designed, content-rich learning environment while integrating LMSs, video content, and external resources, and serves well for the blended modality.

The eText@Illinois Advantages(https://etext.illinois.edu)

    • Clean user interface mimics the weekly class as outlined in your syllabus.
    • Assured accessibility on any device, and the most accessible, mobile friendly teaching platform on campus.
    • Embeds videos from YouTube, MediaSpace, and other streaming platforms.
    • Access restricted to the class roster, enabling instructors to share copyrighted and proprietary content.
    • Embeds homework questions straight from the LMS into lessons.
    • Lower cost than traditional textbooks.
    • Variety of built-in engagement activities and self-reflection cues.

The CITL Promise and How to Proceed

Since instructors are so busy teaching amid the pandemic’s significant disruption, eText@Illinois can help. Just give CITL access to your previous course materials in the LMS, Box, or other locations, and we’ll convert it to an eText for you to review, revise, and then utilize into the Fall, and beyond! For more details about eText please view this short video.


CITL Events & Workshops

Tuesday, August 18
TechHub Virtual Office Hours
10:00 - 11:00 A.M., Online, Recurrning every Tuesday on Zoom
Jamie Nelson and Megan Baird (CITL)
Tuesday, August 18
Compass Spotlight: Grading with Rubrics
1:00 - 2:00 P.M., Online, Recurring
CITL Staff
Wednesday, August 19
Compass Spotlight: Grade Center
11:00 A.M. - 12:00 P.M., Online, Recurring
CITL Staff
Thursday, August 20
Automated Proctoring of Assessments in Your Compass2G Course
10:00 - 11:00 A.M., Online
CITL Staff
Friday, August 21
Automated Proctoring of Assessments in Your Moodle Course
11:00 A.M. - 12:00 P.M., Online
CITL Staff
Tuesday, August 25
Getting Started with ePortfolios for High-Impact Student Engagement
11:00 A.M. - 12:00 P.M., Online
Kate LaBore
Tuesday, August 25
Compass Spotlight: How to Prepare Copied Material for a New Semester
1:00 - 2:00 P.M., Online, Recurring
CITL Staff
Wednesday, August 26
Compass Spotlight: Group Assignments
11:00 A.M. - 12:00 P.M., Online
CITL Staff

Additional Training and Consultation Opportunities

Statistical Consulting Services

In partnership with CITL Data Analytics and Technology Services, the Scholarly Commons is hosting Statistical Consulting Services: free consultations with graduate students with expertise in a variety of statistical software, includingR, Stata, SPSS and SAS, ATLAS.ti.

Virtual drop-in hours are available from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, and from 10-1 and 2-5 on Wednesdays, or you can request an appointment using this link.

Research Computing Virtual Office Hours

Research IT has partnered with the Scholarly Commons to help researchers with questions about the campus’s high performance computing (HPC) resources. Research IT has a ‘Campus Champion’ available for virtual office hours. Campus Champions act as facilitators helping campus members find the best HPC related resources for their projects. Their role is to help their institution’s researchers, educators, and scholars with their computing- and data-intensive research, scholarship, or creative activity. They can also give presentations that outline available HPC resources to interested campus groups or assist with training events.

If you have questions, you can contact the Scholarly Commons at sc@library.illinois.edu. If you’re ready to get started, fill out Campus Champion’s consultation request form at go.illinois.edu/campuschampion. Once you complete the form, someone will contact you with your office hour time slot and the Zoom link.

Online Training through the Research IT Portal

A variety of training workshops are available through the Research IT Portal. Topic s range from simulating petaFLOPS supercomputers to debugging serial and parallel codes. Visit the Research IT Portal's Online Trainingpage to explore more options.


Teaching Tips

Practical Considerations in Online Learning: Asychronous and Synchronous Environments

(From Tomorrow’s Professor) Online classes can be conducted either synchronously (real-time virtual classrooms or chat) or asynchronously, meaning that postings are staggered. Our preference, based on our experiences with online teaching, is for the asynchronous environment. It is the creation of community in that environment to which all of our previous discussion relates. The asynchronous environment allows participants to log on to the class or discussion at any time, think about what is being discussed, and post their own responses when they wish. However, recent advances in synchronous technology, as well as increasing skill with its use, are helping us see the benefits of this form of technology in community building and the delivery of an online class.

How to Align Your LMS System with the Science of Learning

(From edutopia.org) The demands of distance learning will make your Learning Management System (LMS) more important than ever this year. Have you thought about how to align your tech with the best research on how students learn? Distance learning has brought many changes to our daily practice and made many of us feel like rookie teachers all over again. One foundational tech tool that’s been a lifeline—a pillar of certainty in an ever-changing school landscape—is my trusty Learning Management System (LMS).Like any tool we use in the profession, an LMS requires that we match rich, meaningful learning objectives with the appropriate teaching strategy—and that means we should ask ourselves if we’re grounding our choices in the best research on how students learn. So how do we leverage these research insights to use LMSs in the most effective way possible?




Unsubscribe