Author Archives: Macie Hall

VoiceThread – “Conversations in the Cloud”

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VoiceThread is web-based presentation application that allows users to create and share interactive multimedia slideshows. VoiceThread presentations are used to showcase audio, video, images, and documents while allowing users to comment on them in a variety of different ways. Comments can be made using a microphone, a webcam, uploading a prerecorded audio file, using a phone, or by simply typing text. There is also a “doodle” tool which can be used to annotate presentations with digital overlay while leaving a comment.  The result is an ongoing, asynchronous, digital conversation that can be easily shared with individuals, groups, and/or embedded into different websites, including Blackboard.

Image for VoiceThread application. Conversations in the Cloud.

Originally developed at the University of North Carolina, VoiceThread has been used at  the Johns Hopkins Schools of Nursing and Public Health for several years. IT@JH recently obtained a university-wide license for all members of the Hopkins community; instructors and students from all JHU schools now have the ability to access VoiceThread free of charge.

At JHU and other institutions, instructors and students have been very creative in the ways they are using VoiceThread. Here are some examples of how this tool is being used:

  • Student presentation tool – Students can use VoiceThread to create individual or group presentations on any number of topics, which can then be shared with the class.  An added advantage – students can watch and comment on each other’s presentations outside of class, freeing up valuable class time.
  • Online lecture tool – Instructors can use VoiceThread to create online lectures for fully online classes or as a supplement to face-to-face classes.
  • Peer assessment – Students can use VoiceThread to share assignments (papers, images, audio, video clips, etc.) with their peers for comments and critique.
  • Foreign language assessment – VoiceThread is especially useful to foreign language instructors who would like to hear their students speak. Instructors can create a presentation (upload an audio recording, image, video clip, etc.) which students then have to translate, describe, or narrate, for example.
  •  Brainstorming session – Students and instructors can use VoiceThread to brainstorm ideas for project topics, group presentation strategies, etc.
  • Digital storytelling – In groups or independently, students can use VoiceThread to create interactive digital stories using various media artifacts (audio, images, etc.).
  • Review Session – Students can use VoiceThread to record a content review session in preparation for a test or exam.
  • Facilitate Discussions – Students can present a topic and then facilitate a class discussion in VoiceThread about the topic.
  • Student Introductions – Especially helpful in a fully online environment, students and instructors can use VoiceThread to introduce themselves, helping to build a sense of community.

JHU instructors and students can go to http://jhu.voicethread.com and login with their JHED ID and password.  All users are automatically set up with a ‘Basic’ account that they can begin using immediately. There is no software to download as all VoiceThread presentations are created and stored in the “cloud.”

Additional Resources
VoiceThread Overview: https://www.voicethread.com/about/features/
VoiceThread ‘How-To’ Basics: https://www.voicethread.com/support/howto/Basics/
JHSPH VT Site: https://sites.google.com/site/ctltteachingtoolkit/resources/voicethread

Amy Brusini, Course Management Training Specialist
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: VoiceThread image [http://d25wzyo6b5ic8t.cloudfront.net/rev/c32981bd/media/custom/www/banner_cloud.jpg] edited by Macie Hall

Quick Tips: Using Case Studies

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Sometimes we see a link to a resource or hear of a teaching solution that we want to share. The Innovative Instructor provides the perfect place for this. In our Quick Tips you’ll be getting “Just the facts, ma’am.” Or sir, as the case may be.

Students in discussionOne of our CER colleagues, Mike Reese came across a link to a great online resource for case studies (also called case reports), the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science (NCCSTS).

From the NCCSTS website. “[Case studies] can be used not only to teach scientific concepts and content, but also process skills and critical thinking.  And since many of the best cases are based on contemporary, and often contentious, science problems that students encounter in the news, the use of cases in the classroom makes science relevant.” (http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/about/)

If you want to know more about case studies and the value they can provide in your teaching, the Colorado State University Writing Guide to Case Studies is a good place to start.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Microsoft Clip Art

What’s New with Clickers?

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There’s a new clicker on the quad this fall.  Clicker is the popular term for the devices used for in-class voting systems. The Homewood campus is now using the i>Clicker Classroom Response System; students can use the same clicker device in multiple courses. One of the benefits of the i>Clicker system is that it is integrated with the Blackboard course management system.

Faculty need a computer, either their own laptop or the podium computer in a smart classroom, to use clickers during class. Students simply purchase and register an i>Clicker voting unit. For the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences and the Whiting School of Engineering, the Center for Educational Resources (CER) will provide the i>Clicker software and an RF receiver if needed. Interested faculty can borrow a loaner i>Clicker system to try out in a class up to 50 students. For other JHU schools, contact your divisional instructional support center for information.

Photograph of an i>clicker2

In-class voting technologies were first piloted in classes on the Homewood campus in spring 2003. Since then in-class voting has become ubiquitous in large enrollment classes at Homewood; over 2500 students per semester use the system. Clickers are used in courses such as biology, chemistry, civil engineering, earth and planetary sciences, history of science and technology, materials science, physics, and psychological and brain sciences.

Clickers allow faculty to engage students quickly and easily. They enable faculty to:

  • Give and grade objective pop quizzes on readings or other assignments
  • Conduct in-class polls in real time
  • Stimulate class discussion by posing subjective questions, using either ad-hoc or previously developed questions
  • Manage, record and run reports on all aspects of students’ performance using the system
  • Take attendance

In a typical example, an instructor poses a question, often multiple-choice, to the class. Then students think about the question and submit their responses using their handheld wireless transmitters (clickers). Responses are beamed to a receiver plugged into the instructor’s computer. Software on the computer processes the information quickly and displays a bar chart showing the distribution of student responses. Instructors can then use these responses to decide how to proceed in the class.

Opinions vary on whether or not to use clickers for grading class attendance. Some instructors simply use clicker votes to count as participation points, just as they might grade students in discussions. For instructors who would like to monitor attendance over time, clickers can record attendance.

Instructors have found that using clickers has dramatically increased attendance in class, enhanced just-in-time teaching capabilities, increased classroom participation and simplified the deployment and grading of quizzes and exams. Data collected over several years in several courses show a direct correlation between clicker participation and final grades. Clickers are generally considered to be one of the foundations of an active learning classroom.

Faculty who are interested in learning more about the in-class voting system should
contact Brian Cole (bcole@jhu.edu, 410-516-5418) or drop in to the Center for Educational Resources on Q Level in the Milton S.Eisenhower Library.

Clicker Resources

Richard Shingles, Lecturer, Department of Biology
Direcctor of the TA Training Institute, Center for Educational Resources

Image source: Photograph © Brian Cole

 

These are a few of our favorite… apps!

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Faculty often ask CER staff about our favorite smart phone apps. There are many categories of apps including entertainment, games, books, lifestyle, productivity, communication, collaboration, news, shopping, social, and education. This post will focus on apps that can enrich the teaching experience or help instructors with their daily work flow.

Control
Apps like “Gmote” for Android and “Touch Mouse” for iOS allow you to control a computer’s cursor from across the room using your smart phone. This can un-tether instructors or presenters from podiums and allow them to walk about freely while controlling their presentations. The “Crestron Mobile for iOS”  and “Crestron Mobile for Android” apps allow these devices to control lights, media, climate and projector controls remotely in any of the “smart” classrooms at JHU. Contact IT@JH for information on using this app in specific classrooms on the JHU Homewood campus.

File Management
Android has a convenient app for managing the files on your device: “ES File Explorer.” With it you can move, copy, rename, make folders, and even unzip compressed packages. It also comes with a simple text/image viewer to give you a better sense of the content of a file.

File Transfer
When you need to make files available for multiple people to view later or on a different computer, “Dropbox” for iOS and Android lets you store your files “in the cloud” for sharing. Using “SkyDrive” with your Windows Phone affords a similar ever-present file repository.

Note Taking
“Simplenote” and “Evernote” are very popular, easy to use programs that let you
take notes, tag them, and sync them with your computer from an iOS device. The
latter has more features, such as storing audio, images, and maps, and it is available
for both Android and WP7.5. WP7.5 also comes with “OneNote Mobile,” which
gives you more features than the basic note taking app.

 Photography
One of the most useful aspects of a smart phone is the ability to take photos. Each
device comes with basic camera functionality, but apps like “Camera Zoom FX” for Android and “Camera+” for iOS will give you control of the camera’s settings, increase the chances you’ll take a good photo, and support post-production editing/enhancing of the photos. “Thumba Photo Editor” for WP7.5 also allows you to extend your post-production editing options and edit GPS data. If a single photo doesn’t do your location justice, apps like “360 Panorama” and “PhotoSynth” for iOS and WP7.5 can stitch photos together for a panoramic experience.

Reader
The portability of a smart phone makes it easier to bring your normally heavy
reading material with you wherever you go. Apps like “Instapaper” and “Pocket” (formerly Read It Later) for iOS and Android allow you to save, sort, and share webpages with or
without images for reading anytime, even if you don’t have a cellphone signal or
wireless internet connection. The “GoodReader” app for iOS is a robust reader
that allows you to render just about any file, annotate PDFs, view videos and share
what you’ve read with others. The “Kindle” app is available for every device; it
allows you to sync and read all your purchased Amazon e-books.

Reference
With information at your fingertips anytime, reference apps like “Merriam-
Webster’s Dictionary” for iOS and Android will ensure you are never at a loss for
words. And when your reference material needs to be translated to different languages,
“Google Translate,” also for iOS and Android, allows you to write or speak words
for translation to over 20 different languages. “Wolfram Alpha,” another great reference
app available for iOS and Android, gives you robust answers to technical questions.

Task Management
Everyday tasks can be managed through your smart phone using apps like
“Remember the Milk” on an iOS or Android device; Windows Phone has a task
manager built in. Staying on schedule is made easier by the app’s ability to sort,
send notifications, and sync with your computer.

Where to get apps
Online app stores are available for each device operating system:

Reid Sczerba, Multimedia Developer
Center for Educational Resources

Image source: © Reid Sczerba

Tips for Regulating the Use of Mobile Devices in the Classroom

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If what we are hearing in the CER is any indication, student use of laptops (and increasingly, tablets and smartphones) in the classroom for non-academic purposes has become a widespread problem at Homewood. Faculty we have talked to have done everything from banning all computer use in their classes (potentially a problem for students with disabilities) to having TAs roam the lecture hall to discourage inappropriate web surfing. Are there better solutions?

no cell phones icon

One option is to have a clear statement of policy about mobile device use in your course syllabus. This combined with a discussion of “digital etiquette” during the first class meeting can be an effective solution. Even better, consider creating a contract with your students at the beginning of the semester. The contract is a two-way street. By engaging your students in the process, you increase the likelihood of their compliance. The scope of your contract may go beyond the use of mobile devices and should include your obligations as a professor as well as your expectations of student behavior. For a more in detailed discussion of this method see the CER’s Innovative Instructor article Creating a Convenant with Your Students by JHU Professor P. M. Forni. An alternative option might be to encourage students to use their mobile devices to record class information – see  a posting by Stanford faculty member Rick Reis from his Tomorrow’s Professor mailing list.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image source: Microsoft Clip Art

Using a Rubric for Grading Assignments

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Rubric comes from the Latin word rubrica meaning red chalk. In early medieval manuscripts the first letter of an important paragraph was often enlarged, painted in red, and called a rubric, leading to definitions of the term denoting the authority of what was written “under the rubric.” In the academic world the term has come to mean an authoritative rule or guide for assessment.

Instructor grading using a rubric

Most faculty, when preparing a graded assignment or exam, have expectations about how it should be completed, what will constitute a correct answer, or what will make the difference between an A and a C on a paper. Formalizing those thoughts into a written rubric – a template or checklist where those expectations are specified – has real advantages. First, it can save time when it comes to grading the assignment or test. Second, if you have Teaching Assistants, they will have a clear understanding of how to grade, and grading will be consistent across the sections. Third, it will make it easy to explain to students why they didn’t get that A they thought they deserved.

For a graded paper or project, it can be very helpful to share the rubric with the students when you give them the assignment. Seeing the rubric will help them to focus on what you feel is important. They will have a better understanding of the assignment and you will not only see better results, but have an easier time with the grading.

For more about creating rubrics see the CER’s Innovative Instructor print series article on Calibrating Multiple Graders: http://www.cer.jhu.edu/ii/InnovInstruct-BP_CalibratingGraders.pdf. For more on the reasons to use rubrics see: http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/is-it-too-early-to-think-about-grading/22660.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image source: Microsoft Clip Art, edited by Macie Hall

Teaching Tips: Classroom Assessment

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Increasing emphasis is being placed on assessment, and many faculty are looking for evaluation practices that extend beyond giving a mid-term and final exam. In particular the concept of non-graded classroom assessment is gaining traction. In their book Classroom Assessment Techniques, Thomas Angelo and Patricia Cross (Jossey-Bass, 1993) stress the importance of student evaluation that is “learner-centered, teacher-directed, mutually beneficial, formative, context-specific, ongoing, and firmly rooted in good practice.”

Students in a classroom.

While the authors describe in detail numerous techniques for ascertaining in a timely manner whether or not students are learning what is being taught, here are several quick and easy to implement methods:

 

The Minute Paper: At an appropriate break, ask students to answer on paper a specific question pertaining to what has just been taught. After a minute or two, collect the papers for review after class, or, to promote class interaction, ask students to pair off and discuss their responses. After a few minutes, call on a few students to report their answers and results of discussion. If papers are turned in, there is value to both the anonymous and the signed approach. Grading, however, is not the point; this is a way to gather information about the effectiveness of teaching and learning.

In Class Survey: Think of this as a short, non-graded pop quiz. Pass out a prepared set of questions, or have students provide answers on their own paper to questions on a PowerPoint/Keynote slide. Focus on a few key concepts. Again, the idea is to assess whether students understand what is being taught.

Exit Ticket: Select one of the following items and near the end of class ask your students to write on a sheet of paper 1) a question they have that didn’t get answered, 2) a concept or problem that they didn’t understand, 3) a bullet list of the major points covered in class, or 4) a specific question to access their learning. Students must hand in the paper to exit class. Allow anonymous response so that students will answer honestly. If you do this regularly, you may want to put the exit ticket question on your final PowerPoint/Keynote slide.

Tools that can help with assessment

Classroom polling devices (a.k.a. clickers) offer an excellent means of obtaining evidence of student learning. See http://www.cer.jhu.edu/clickers.html for information about the in-class voting system used at JHU. Faculty who are interested in learning more should contact Brian Cole in the CER.

Faculty at the JHU School of Nursing have been piloting an online application called Course Canary to obtain student assessment data. Formative course evaluation surveys allow faculty to collect student feedback quickly and anonymously. A free account is available (offering two online surveys and two exit ticket surveys) at: https://coursecanary.com/.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image source: Microsoft Clip Art

 

Welcome to The Innovative Instructor

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After the Provost’s Gateway Sciences Initiative Symposium on Teaching Excellence in January 2012, faculty expressed interest in having an online space where ideas about innovative teaching could be collected and archived. As a resource for those teaching in any discipline, The Innovative Instructor blog will offer a variety of ideas about teaching excellence, instructional technology, and teaching as research.

The Innovative Instructor blog builds on a successful print series of the same name, which focuses on Pedagogy, Best Practices, and Technology. Blog posts will cover topics such as active learning, assessment, use of case studies in instruction, classroom management, instructional design, how to engage students, grading and feedback, collaborative learning, leading discussions, hybrid instruction, and teaching methods.

While initial posts will be written by staff members in the Center for Educational Resources (CER) and other Johns Hopkins teaching and learning centers, faculty, post docs, and graduate and undergraduate students are invited to serve as guest editors. If you have a teaching-related topic that you would like to share, please contact Macie Hall at macie.hall@jhu.edu. Or contact her if you have an issue or subject you’d like to see covered in a future post.

The CER is just one of the teaching support centers at Johns Hopkins University. Find a complete list under the Contact tab. The CER provides a variety of services for faculty in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Whiting School of Engineering. CER staff members meet with instructors to discuss digital course enhancements, manage the Technology Fellowship Program, collaborate with faculty on grant projects, and offer structured opportunities for faculty to learn about cutting edge educational innovations. The CER is also the home for the TA Training Institute and the institutional affiliation with the Center for Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL). We offer a number of opportunities to prepare future faculty for teaching.

Whether you are faculty, future faculty, student, or staff interested in pedagogy, teaching with technology, or educational best practices, welcome to The Innovative Instructor.