The end is almost here! And it's the Final Countdown! We all know it's coming quickly. The end of the semester, and the pile of grading immediately afterwards is daunting and overwhelming. In our webinar this month, Jason Neenos and Paul Stoll talked through a number of great tips to keep in mind when finishing up your grades for ASU. They covered tips for pushing content from Blackboard, importing files, and manually entering grades. They answered questions about how to drop the lowest grade for students, and shared some terrific resources at https://students.asu.edu/facultycenter. Below are the resources that were shared during the webinar: Video recording of Webinar Slides from Webinar (PDF) Here are a couple of other resources that might be helpful as you approach the end of the semester: Things to think about at the end of the semester handout   End of semester evaluations article Blackboard article: Sending your grades from Bb to ASU Roster  

Friday, April 14, 2017 from 3-5pm The ASU School of Life Sciences faculty and grad students had an opportunity to experience virtual reality and new technologies last week at the Innovative Tech Show. There were talks, demonstrations, and discussions about how these technologies could be used to increase learning in their classes. Some of the activities included: The keynote talk on "Virtual Reality in Higher Education" with Digital Bodies Experiencing zSpace and Labster online materials Learning about 3D printing at the ASU MakerSpace Creating virtual fieldtrips For more information, photos, videos and the links shared, please take a minute to browse here: http://solsstemtechday.weebly.com/

On Tuesday, March 21, we hosted a TeachT@lk Webinar on creating and managing online assessments. There were 3 main topics: Structure: Planning rigorous assessments that are aligned with objectives Tools: Effectively using Multiple choice, and tutorials for setting up Blackboard exams Integrity: Encouraging students to make good choices through pedagogical, technological and community pressures. Peter van Leusen lead the discussion on using Quality Matters standards to align content, and how RPNow can be set up to record students. Amy Pate shared "cheathouse" websites and what they do. The discussions among the participants was active and collaborative. Below are the links to resources and the recording of the session. Slides Recording Links Handout

Today's blog comes from Rene Tanner , subject matter librarian at ASU. Evaluating information in the digital age is a critical skill. In the classroom, as in life, we need to agree on basic facts to advance human knowledge and our understanding of the world. Fake news refers to sources that fabricate information, purposefully deceive, or grossly distort factual news reports (Novotny, 2017). Social media is an important source of information. A recent Pew Research Center study found that 62% of U.S. adults receive news through social media with Facebook (44%) as the lead outlet, followed by YouTube (10%) and Twitter (9%) (Pew Research Center, 2016a). Distinguishing real information from distorted information online can more difficult than we may imagine. A recent study by Stanford University found that most students, from middle school through college, had trouble identifying false or biased information online. For example, students often had difficulty distinguishing be...

The speakers for the TeachT@lk Webinar on February 21, 2017 were Matthew Robinson , Senior Instructional Designer, and Jennifer Stanley , Instructional Designer, for the ASU School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies. Tuesday's webinar focused on how to create "Instructor Presence" in an online or face-to-face course. Although we can't be everywhere at all times, there are some strategies and tips you can use to create an environment that builds connections between students and instructors. Instructor presence can take form in 3 ways: Persona - instructor personality, interests, etc. Social - instructor connections and student-to-student connections to create community Instructional - instructor guidance of students through the learning The webinar went through a number of strategies to create presence, including: introduction videos that share personality and interests different forms of contact information setting clear expectatio...