Google Docs and Forms are terrific tools for teaching! Did you know that each ASU instructor and student get unlimited space on our ASU Google Drive (requires login with your ASURITE@asu.edu account) ? It's a great way to share files and collaborate. Three words specifically describe why you should use Google Drive, Efficiency, Collaboration, and Engagement. Google Docs are documents that can be shared with your students. There are a number of ways to use them to engage your students. You can have specific students be required to take notes for the class, or build a study guide for exams. Student teams can share a document, and you can leave comments, or start a 'chat' while everyone synchronously is working on it.  Google Docs are also easy to publish to the web for quick and fast websites. Google Forms are a survey tool that can be used for getting quick feeback from students. You could set them up for "Bell Ringer" activities, like "Ticket

Which type of video is best for your class? Matthew Robinson, Instructional Designer for UTO, shared best practices for both videos in the studio, and at your desk. Some key themes were: Research studies show students stop watching videos around 6 minutes Showing the professor talking is better than just slides and audio, and having two or three people in the video interacting is even better! "Cut the filler, maximize the THRILLER!"- cut out repeated information and stick to the key information that you can be enthusiastic about. Spontaneous and casual videos are a great way to communicate announcements and give feedback to students. Matthew shared the steps ( see handout ) for creating these using the Blackboard/YouTube tool and how to set up your webcam for the best look. Next semester, we are looking to do an 'advanced' video webinar that can address some issues for making videos more interactive, and adding closed-captioning and transcripts! Resour

Our Guest Blogger for this week is Shelley Haydel, PhD. Dr. Haydel is an Associate Professor in the School of Life Sciences and a Researcher in the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. She is posting about one of the most difficult areas in teaching for both students and faculty. Group work presents unique challenges for both students and instructors. I always tell my students that they will never work in a vacuum. No matter their career choice, they will have to interact, communicate, and work effectively with others. Think about nurses – they must interact, communicate, and work effectively with physicians, other nurses, technicians, administrators, etc; and they must interact and effectively communicate with patients and family/friends of their patient. Think about working in a lab – in an effective research environment, everyone is working together towards a common goal. The same is true for group work. S

This week's Guest Blogger is Sara Brownell, PhD . Dr. Brownell is a neuroscientist turned full-time education researcher. As a Science Faculty with Education Specialty, she uses both qualitative and quantitative data to better understand how undergraduate biology students learn and how instructors can develop more effective ways to teach. One of the great benefits of being a college-level instructor is that we have great flexibility in what we teach (e.g. what example to use, what level of detail to omit) and how we teach it (e.g. case studies, demonstrations, or traditional lecturing).  However, in designing our lesson plans, we can also be inadvertently choosing who we are teaching to.   This is obvious, but each student is unique and their life experiences before showing up in our classes can be incredibly different.  They come to our classrooms with different prior knowledge in biology, different reading levels, different math abilities, different interests and motivation

This presentation was given to the ASU Association of Women in Science (AWIS). In a world where everyone can create a PowerPoint slide, we have to be able to stand out and be noticed when presenting information. If we are passionate about our research, then we want to get our audience excited, too. One way to do that is through visuals. The first tip was "Be Different" . It isn't just about using different technologies, but using them differently. We demoed some technologies that look different and have different features than the typical PowerPoint, and we talked about using PowerPoint's animation to create promotion videos. The second tip was "Stay Simple" . Best practices are the "Power of 3", using visually stunning photos, and sticking with a single technology. You can also use visual sentences and infographics to share more information, and PechaKucha presentations to keep you focused. The final tip was "Share Your Vision&quo

On Friday, faculty met to learn about the future of icourses in SoLS (PowerPoint) and share some ideas for best practices. Mike Angilletta opened the workshop with a call for SoLS icourses that will draw students to a summer class, including unique classes that aren't taught during the regular academic year, and popular courses that have high enrollment. Details will be coming out soon in the new Undergrad Program Newsletter from Courtney Shobert .  We went over the new suggested SoLS iCourse Standards for all icourses, and how they fit with building quality courses through the use of the Quality Matters rubric and best practices for online courses. The SoLS standards are set up to support the 7 categories of quality learning that include Course Design, Delivery, Content, Infrastructure, LMS, Faculty and Student Readiness. Faculty are encouraged to begin developing about 6 months before course starts, so courses are complete before the semester starts. We also heard

Thank you to all those who attended our TeachT@lk Webinar!   Our TeachT@lk webinar, held on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 3-4pm, covered several important aspects of creating "good" rubrics to make the grading process more effective and efficient. Throughout the session, we reviewed crucial components of rubrics (ie., critieria, level of competencies, descriptors) and discussed multiple examples (e.g., discussion participation, standard-based rubrics). Additionally, we looked at strategies to get started creating good rubrics and using them with Blackboard. Below are some of the resources mentioned during the webinar, along with the slides and recording.  If you have questions, or are interested in integrating rubrics in your class, please contact Amy Pate ( amy.pate@asu.edu) . Webinar Recording & Slides: Adobe Connect Recording (60 min.) Presentation Slides Helpful Resources: Assessments with Rubric , ASU  TeachOnline Should you use Rubrics , Faculty F

There are lots of opportunities over the next couple of months to share ideas for implementing technology and active learning into your classroom. Attend a SoLS Workshop, or a CLAS TeachT@lk Webinar to discuss new ideas with fellow faculty and learning professionals. Register for any of the workshops and webinars below at: http:// goo.gl/forms/1or7An71K m WORKSHOP: Active Learning Activities with iCourses Friday, November 14, 3-4pm, LSC180 Online students can learn actively! This workshop will present ideas for activities that engage your students, and some best practices for developing iCourses. WORKSHOP: Using Google Docs,Forms and Sites Friday, December 12, 2-3:30pm, LSC180/182 Google Docs, Sites and Forms are all free, and great resources for your class collaborative activities.  Learn some new ways to use these fun tools! WEBINAR: Quick and Fast vs. Slick and Professional” – Which videos are best for your classes? Tuesday, December 9, 3-4pm This webinar will look at

On Friday, October 24, we held a Concept Map Workshop for faculty and grad students. In this workshop we discussed what concept maps were, and how to use them in our classrooms. Some of the key takeaways were that concept maps can be used in a variety of ways, should be continually revised and updated, and that technology is great, but white boards and post-it notes can work just as well depending on your objectives.  We modeled some different tactics for concept maps, including: Using them as a discussion starter by having students silently build one based on the homework reading before talking about it in class. Continually going back to the class concept map and asking students if they need to revise or add more content to the concept map to build their knowledge Using Peer reviews to help students see what connections they might have missed, and build a a more thorough study guide Integrating a module within Blackboard that has tutorials and technology information to hel

When I started working in distance education, most people were adamant that students that took online courses would not feel connected to each other. My experiences proved that it was a challenge, but by no means impossible. Student-to-student interactions have been shown to increase deeper learning for students, and create better connections between content and application. (Swan, 2004) The key to successful student teams is to get people to connect to each other through common goals and interests, and develop strong lines of communication. I used these 3 tips to guide students to successful teams: FORMING TEAMS: In my classes, I didn’t let students choose their own teams. I told them that networking and learning how to work with different people were part of the learning objectives of the course, and group work would develop those skills. I had them blindly choose teams based on their interests in specific topics in the class.  Once those teams were determined, I gave team

This week our "Guest Blogger" is David L. Pearson, PhD, Researcher Professor and Senior Lecturer for the School of Life Sciences. Dr. Pearson's research is focused on using the interaction of ecology, conservation, ecotourism and education to develop methods that promote sustainable use of biodiversity. He shares an active learning technique from his class that helped students create value for the content. David L. Pearson, PhD Bio 100 tries to make biology pertinent to non-majors. We do this by introducing current and often controversial topics in the Active Learning Class that distill video lecture and online labs into an applied situation. Getting them to discuss and appreciate biology in terms of “What is beauty?”, “Are you medically illiterate?”, “To vaccinate or not to vaccinate?” and “Are we all really experts on sex?” was not a problem. But when it came to diffusion and osmosis, the students just couldn’t make a connection of why these ungainly mechani

Thank you to all those who attended our second TeachT@lk Webinar! For our second TeachT@lk webinar, held on Tuesday, Oct. 7, 3-4pm, we turned our attention to Peer Learning . In addition to supporting student learning outcomes, peer learning can develop crucial skills such as problem solving, communication, teamwork, and critical thinking. During the webinar, we discussed best practices, research, and reviewed strategies and tools on how to engage students. Additionally, we highlighted the need to get student buy-in and establish protocols/guidelines to for successful outcomes (e.g., RISE model by Emily Wray ) Below are some of the resources mentioned during the webinar, along with the slides and recording.  If you h ave questions, or are interested in integrating peer learning in your class, please contact Amy Pate ( amy.pate@asu.edu) . Webinar Recording & Slides(58 min.): https://connect.asu.edu/p2v5fri1pb9/   presentation slides Helpful Resources:   RISE Model

Faculty, instructors, graduate students, and staff from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) recently met for the 3rd CLAS Demofest to showcase innovative teaching practices across diverse content areas. For this semester's event, eight presenters from seven different departments and schools in CLAS shared and discussed their teaching, spanning a variety of course formats (face-to-face, blended, online) and different student enrollments (large lecture courses, small undergraduate and graduate seminars, etc.). Hosted by ASU's funniest professor, Dr. Mike Angilletta, in the School of Life Sciences' Active Learning Classroom (LSC 180), presenters and attendees exchanged ideas ranging from service-based and case-based learning, using Virtual Field Trips and Augmented Reality to making teaching student-centered through social media, videos, humorous case studies, and meaningful course design. The following summary below lists presentations and resources from the

If you missed the ePortfolio Workshop on September 18, here are some tips and resources that were shared. ePortfolios aren't just about a collection of work students can show during job interviews. There are different types that include presentation, personal and learning portfolios Learning ePortfolios allow students to do Peer Reviews, Personal Reflections, Dynamic Lab Notebooks, Collaborative projects and even Poster Presentations Any faculty, staff or student at ASU can create an ePortfolio through MyASU and Digication. These portfolios remain available for students when they graduate, or staff and faculty can download the content to be viewable offline. Resources: Slides: http://www.powtoon.com/show/bBiF6hDEBgn/eportfolios Faculty Perspective Video: http://youtu.be/6B3tujXlbdk Student Perspective Video: http://youtu.be/TFb0u6dI3u4 Questions to get students to reflect: http://metroacademies.myefolio.com/efolio/reflect Website for Dr. Helen Barrett's e

This week I asked Dr. Ron Rutowski to address this question about keeping students involved specifically in a lab room. Dr. Rutowski has been a faculty member in SOLS for over 35 years doing research on animal behavior and coloration and teaching courses with laboratory components such as Comparative Invertebrate Zoology and Research Techniques in Animal Behavior. Ron Rutowski, PhD In a lab, how do you engage a student that isn't actively participating? There are at least two circumstances where this can happen.  One is that in whole-class discussion students can check out.  Here are some ways to deal with that. Especially if they are near the back of the classroom, move so you are standing close to them.  This is especially easy in lab rooms where the front may be less clearly defined, and also when student lab groups are presenting.   Call on the inattentive person by name.  This could be preceded with having all students briefly discuss an issue with their group and

This week, Peter van Leusen, PhD, addresses a question from our Grad TA Mike Holter, on what to do when things aren't working. Peter is an instructional designer in CLAS, and former Assistant Director in the Office of Instructional Consulting in the School of Education at Indiana University. He teaches both face-to-face and online classes. Peter van Leusen, PhD What a mess! The blank stare in my students‘ eyes told me that the lesson that I meticulously prepared all weekend long did not have the desired learning outcomes for which I had hoped! What should I change? From my own teaching and observing other instructors, I quickly learned that there is not a “perfect way” to teach. I found that each class has different characteristics due to students (e.g., personalities, number) or contexts (e.g., online, time of the day). To make learning experiences meaningful despite these variables, I like to reflect on my own teaching regularly and make changes, if nece