Are you looking for ways to mix up your video lectures or announcements? Do you want to streamline and enhance your step-by-step instructions? Loom is an asynchronous presentation and video tool that is easy to use and offers a variety of sharing options that can help enhance your presence and levels of instruction online. From demo GIFs to content lectures, there are many ways to “show it, say it, and send it” with Loom! What is Loom? Loom is a recording tool that can capture your desktop, camera, and microphone to create interactive videos and presentations. In addition to HD video and sound recording, other recording features include an emphasized mouse cursor to highlight areas of the screen, a drawing tool to emphasize content, pop-up buttons that call viewers to action, and emoji reactions to take your screencasting videos to the next level. You have the option to turn any of these features on or off to customize your preferred recording experience. There are multiple ways to get...

The number of best practices for technology implementation, the scaffolding of skills, practice opportunities, inclusivity, and collaboration can be overwhelming when considering adjustments to a course design. The list is long, but as always these ideas are meant to be part of a large interwoven tapestry rather than isolated practices. There are methods for integrating efforts across these best practices to get as much use out of a single course interaction as possible, thereby reducing the burden on you and your students (and bloating your assignment list or syllabus). One of my favorite areas of the course to apply this concept to is in the first week of school during course introductions. Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels Why Introductions? I’ve spoken about course introductions and first day of school activities before in the blog posts ““ Ice Breakers” and Community Makers: The Importance of the Introduction in Online and Face-to-Face Classrooms ” and “ More than “Syllabu...

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” The quote above sounds a lot like something you’d read on an Arizona State University website, #1 in innovation and consistently striving to propel ASU education into the realms of the future as the New American University, but it’s a quote from director and storyteller, Walt Disney . Most people have heard of the American theme park creator who continues to inspire children and adults around the world nearly 100 years later. This far-reaching effect flourishes as technology evolves, perpetuating Walt’s innovative mindset to “keep moving forward” into new and thrilling park experiences. Propelling the beloved franchise into technological achievements are Disney Imagineers, the creative and technical minds behind the success of Disney’s theme parks and legacy. Like the heartbeat of the Disney franchise, a spirit of innovation and imagination encompass...

Flipgrid as a discussion-based educational technology has taken the K-12 world by storm, but beyond its stickers, filters, and fancy fonts, the tool has a lot to offer to higher education as well. One such use is as an audio visual dictionary or demonstration tool. Think of it as Audio/Visual flashcards for important terms and concepts in class. What is Flipgrid? Flipgrid is a free, Microsoft-owned and powered educational tool for creating video-based discussions in the classroom. Instructors create “Groups” similar to a message board for their classes which can include one or more “Topic” threads. Typically, Instructors supply a prompt and students respond to the prompt and to each other within a “Topic”. It’s an asynchronous video discussion. Flipgrid allows instructors to link from several applications to support their prompts and responses including: Microsoft products, Google, YouTube, Vimeo, Kahoot!, Adobe Spark and more. But the system’s built-in audio and video editor should n...

The ability of students to think abstractly and formally is one of the major challenges instructors have faced over time. This is true across all disciplines but more so in the sciences. Concepts such as molecular bonding, biochemical pathways and cellular communication bring the biggest challenges to students as they require one to think outside of one’s normal schema. Arizona State University Emeritus Professor Anton Lawson , states, Concrete thinking is just regarding the facts. On the other hand, abstract thinking goes down below the facts. While some mental process is involved in abstract thinking, no such effort is evolved in concrete thinking. A person with concrete thinking does not think beyond the facts. They do not have the ability to think beyond a certain limit. Concrete thinkers only have a generalized concept for all things. On the other hand, abstract thinkers have a very specific concept of things. Is there a secret to teaching abstract thinking to learners? One of the...

Cheating is nothing new, and with internet access and the move to online learning, the opportunities to act without academic integrity have become more readily available. The discussion about academic integrity is often seen as a student-based issue, and thus tends to focus on dishonesty, cheating, and plagiarism and how we might reduce these behaviors by students.  As an instructor, you must decide how you choose to approach and address academic integrity in your classes. Research supports that instructors might increase academic integrity among their students by creating an environment that promotes honesty, responsibility, and fairness, instead of focusing on penalties.  Instructors are facilitators of their class and as such can work to create positive relationships and an atmosphere that supports academic integrity ( Boehm, 2009 ;  Stearns, 2001 ).  One of the first steps we can take is to ensure that students understand what academic integrity entails in g...

Combining the C.R.E.A.T.E .method with an online annotation and discussion tool like Perusall can empower students to confidently participate in conversations and amplify more voices in the classroom. Together they may lead to deeper knowledge building and synthesis among communities of learners. Reading primary research literature is an important skill for understanding the generation and evaluation of ideas in the Life and Social Sciences. Typically as students advance into their upper division coursework, interactions with primary literature outside of curated textbooks become more common. Analysis of these papers can help students understand “who does science, how and why” (Hoskins, Lapatto, and Stevens, 2011) . However, for many students reading primary literature can be intimidating and confusing. Scientific research may seem like a recipe to which some have access and others do not. They may also feel like they are unable to ask questions or criticize the work being done by ...

Have you discovered a cool feature that Canvas does well? Or have you found a neat work-around to "hack" your Canvas course page? Photo by  Taskin Ashiq  on  Unsplash We've recently done two Teach Talk webinars titled "Hacking Canvas" where we shared some interesting tips and tricks. Naturally we are progressing in our learning about Canvas, so our "hacks" are unveiling more hidden features each time. We define "hacks" as: making Canvas do something unintended unveiling hidden features workarounds for Canvas limitations In May 2019, we hosted a popular webinar about hacking Canvas (Part I). Being relatively new to Canvas at the time, we wanted to share what we had uncovered after the first semester of using the online learning environment fully.  We covered the following "hacks" during that session: formatting hacks autotext function autoscored attendance the elusive median collaborative pages custom dashbo...