Author: terrib (Page 8 of 8)

Just a chicken, sitting in a tree, because, why not?  A busy week with getting ready for upcoming faculty training.

Monday BlueJeans meetings, matrix editing, faculty support

Tuesday BlueJeans meetings, planning for spring, faculty support – tried to sneak into the Trades session that BCcampus was holding a bit late and was informed that the room was full!  I think it’s great that they’re doing these sessions and the fact they filled 100 online seats shows there is a need/want for this kind of training and learning together.

Wednesday, more teaching and learning, planning for those of us who do training sessions to be trained up on all, or some of our new offerings.  I spent the afternoon on phone calls helping instructors. Particularly with metal jewelry instructor who I worked with years ago but has been out of Blackboard for a while. We looked for creative ways for her to share files in her courses. There are four courses and some had up to 18 files. Linking to them one by one seemed pretty onerous so to save time we made an item and put links to the files in there. Not my preferred method, but at least they were all nicely named so students could find what they need.

Thursday and Friday involved working on an outline for our upcoming BlueJeans sessions with Margaret, getting my vpn set up to access the Web Helpdesk and continuing to support instructors. Mike and I did a couple of sessions on Blackboard with the team. It helped to test out what we’ll do with faculty. Of course it was a completely different audience but it was a good sharing time. It’s great to have the BB student supporters coming to our sessions. Margaret and I had a couple of short BlueJeans chats to draft our sessions and I said  that on Monday I would take on the draft outline that Margaret started and combine it with a hand out Liesel used so we’d have something to work from.

I’m late posting this and have learned that if I don’t keep notes during the week and just get it done on Fridays, it’s hard to back track and remember what went on.  I also learned that I very nearly deleted an important folder when switching laptops. It had gone into my recycle bin rather than the folder I was preparing for one drive. Crisis averted, but just.

How now?

We hit the ground running Monday morning sitting in on LIesel’s daily faculty get together in BlueJeans. I think these are important. There are a lot of repeat attendees and we learn something new each day. I sat in on another session with people from Student Services who are going to need to change the way they do things.

After those, I had a few faculty support phone calls and the rest of the day was spent trying to finish up the BlueJeans handouts and spending a few minutes catching up with Margaret and helping with some edits to her hand out.

Tuesday started much the same – same things, different people, different sort of trouble shooting.. The morning felt a little stressful – just wondering  how there would be enough time to respond to everyone and get actual work done.  I had back to back conversations with faculty – first was in Skype for Business, then one by phone, another with email exchanges and then one more in BlueJeans. Awesome that we have so many ways to communicate. This came following the 9 am BlueJeans session for faculty and there went the morning.

I managed a draft of the participant user handout for BlueJeans  and I have an outline and screenshots for the moderator one. That one has a lot of moving parts but will hopefully come together without too much trouble (it didn’t).

I Had a nice chat with LIesel from my home office window and got outside to walk some documents over to the college. It was very, very quiet over there. Signs on all the doors ’employees only’.  Finished the afternoon on that draft I mentioned and was able to jump into a faculty support call with Margaret and an instructor before stopping for the day.

I am going to start building in breaks. It’s something I used to be good at. These days, not so much.

Wednesday was a lot more of the same. The  9 am session followed by faculty support, followed by working on a moderator hand out for BlueJeans – just the basics – but still a lot of ground to cover and in and out of my meeting room for screen shots.  Had a brief meeting with the SCETUG leadership team and it was nice to see everyone and touch base. We’re going to arrange for an after work happy hour with the whole committee to check in and there’s been some activity on the slack site. We’re all feeling the effects.

There has been a little humour – for example: This acting teacher working out how to teach online

and a great McSweeney article “welcome to your hastily prepared online college course”

I took some time off creating hand outs Thursday morning to source some things for future handouts.  Open University has a nice post for students. Advice from Open University Students

I spent time, again, with faculty in the morning and I learned more things about BlueJeans and how people access it. Things are different on  computer, tablet and phone. The options change. On an ipad or Android tablet there is no browser option, for example. I managed a draft of a handout for recording essentials in BlueJeans.

Friday… after our 9 am session I attended a BCcampus supported session and it was great to hear what’s going on with educators in general. Lots of faculty, including a couple from NIC, and lots of people working at institutions in the same boat as we are. Later, I  was able to clean up the document on Recording Essentials.

The SCETUG  happy hour was a rousing success for those of us who could attend. What a supportive group and so nice to see everyone and share our stories of this past couple of weeks. I needed that.

Well that was a different sort of week wasn’t it? Every time I hear the news it sounds like the background track to a sci-fi movie – without action scenes.

I’ve been putting in extra hours as the college helps instructors to compress the term.  I spent most of my time preparing documents to help instructors add content and assessment tools to their courses.

Emails began to steadily roll in by Wednesday as more face to face interactions were cancelled.

I helped out in the Office of Global Engagement ( OGE) Wednesday morning as they tried their first  BlueJeans conference for 20 with colleagues across the province. Everything went pretty well and they were  happy to have someone there for moral support as much tech support.

I’m learning more about Blackboard from the instructor perspective as I help people with their courses. Finding out more about BlueJeans too and how the recordings work. Speaking of BlueJeans, account requests (and creations) were fast and furious. There were hundreds this week.

I spent Friday on starting some BlueJeans help files. I have the participant one almost ready and screen shots and some text for moderators. I takes me back to teaching  instructors how to use Collaborate except then, there was time for actual scheduled training. This is full court press. I like the daily sessions with instructors that Liesel is doing. I get to see where the gaps are and it’s supportive place where instructors are helping each other. Also nice to stay connected while we work from home.

No crystal ball for what happens next.

This was an interesting week for the world in general and the microcosms that intersect in mine.

I started on Tuesday helping a frustrated instructor and then updating and prioritizing my goals for the week and then the goalposts moved. Things I prioritized working on were our Open Educational Resources sessions, the Learning Experience Inquiry Group, and more familiarity with WordPress and BlueJeans.

We held our first session on Open Educational Resources with the subject of Open Textbooks. I spent some time planning for my part in that as well as working on the PowerPoint that we used.  Liesel, Jason and I hosted the session and had 4 people in the room and one who came in by BlueJeans.  It went really well. There was enthusiasm for the topic and one participant is now an Open convert. We shared why and how one would adopt an open text, how it works specifically at NIC if you want to use one and then we hit them with some stats on impact that expensive textbooks have on students. We shared some stories from the #textbookbroke, and #textbookbrokebc hashtags. It was a fun session.

My original plans for the rest of my time this week revolved around preparing for meetings and sessions, and then the cancellations started rolling in. We’ve postponed a lot of things as the college works out plans for dealing with the Corona virus.  So far, NIC is staying the course and instructors are working on compressing the semester rather than moving online.

The Chronicle of Higher Ed held an online session on ‘Colleges and Caronavirus’ this morning.  I attended for a while thinking there might be some useful content.  They had some technical difficulties in getting most of the moderators in. Some of the questions and observations were similar to what I’m hearing in my network – technical solutions that can disadvantage some students, visas and travel issues for International students, the cost of operating an institution that can’t stay open.

The message that is coming through from the people I follow is to not so much try and move everything online but to use the online pieces for checking in, communication, the caring aspects of teaching and learning. Another common theme was that there is a lot that can be done online that doesn’t need to be synchronous, and adding extra levels of tech can add extra barriers for students. This in response to lots of requests for video conferencing software.

My original plans for today were: a session with the Experience Inquiry Group followed by another Open Resources session, followed by an Education Council meeting. I also had some preparation to work on for my session next week on assessing student assignments in BB Learn.  Both morning sessions were cancelled/put on hold, but EdCo was a go. There was a lot of reading prep for today.  At EdCo we saw a new program in Indigenous languages go through and that was pretty cool.  We’ve postponed my session for next Friday but I will still prioritize the prep for it as instructors are asking how to accept student assignments online and I want to have some ready resources for them.

Where my worlds collide, I had plans to attend the Festival of Learning in Vancouver in May, and the week before that I had some personal travel plans. Both of those are off the table now, and that’s fine. Disappointing, for sure but I really feel for the event organizers. There are a lot of moving parts to planning that conference.

So far, my priorities for next week are to continue working on the resources for my assessment session and reading through more of the Experience Inquiry documents. I need to come up with a couple of Digital Pedagogy bullet points for what we want to see in an Educational Developer. Liesel has come up with a nice template set of instructions for using BlueJeans and I imagine there will be more account creation in my future. If there are Continuity of Learning sessions going on next week I will attend when I can.  Hopefully I can spend a little time on this site, and, as always, I’ll be  responding to instructors who need help or have questions.

A few previous priorities have shifted in these tumultuous days.  There are a lot of changes both due to, and completely unrelated to the current pandemic.  I expect a fair bit of re-calibration, it’s all adaptable and adjustable.  Tonight there is a  college event in support of our Tourism students.  This could be my last public social event for a while. Who knows what next week will bring?

March? Really?

Tuesday afternoon I met with Mags and Laurie to talk about Work/PD planning. It’s helpful to talk through what other people are doing to get my own in order. Had a good chat with Liesel about what is PD planning vs. what’s just work?  I think I got stuck trying to put things in a grid and my ID mind wanted to make the content fit the boxes but conceptual mind had other ideas. Either way my mind works there hasn’t been a lot of spare time to put in more detail. Now that I’ve seen the other plan styles and got some context, I think I can come up with something that works for me. I did a similar thing with some financial planning the other day – spreadsheet to notepad, to Word doc… so out of a grid and into another sort of grid by a circular route.

Tuesday  I also  learned how to set up BlueJeans accounts and sent out my first welcome letter. I think I have a handle on the account creation but I’ll have to do it a few times. I also need to practice with scheduling meetings.  It’s pretty straightforward but I had a moment where I wondered if I scheduled a specific time, would I (and participants) be able to access the room before that time. I’ve since clued in that it’s my room so I can get in any time. I think it’s the lingering effects of last week’s cold making me fuzzy.

Had an ed-tech nerd moment this week when I realized I was trying to read Martin Weller’s 25 Years of EdTech  on one screen and Jesse Stommel on my phone – at the same time… I really liked Martin’s acknowledgement of the women in ed-tech and I thought it was cool that I know, or have at least met so many of them. They inspire me. I follow the #femedtech twitter conversations, and I even have a #femedtech pin but I don’t contribute much.  I should have done a quilt block.  There are just so many interesting people doing cool things. I want to make more time for reading the content they share.

Wednesday Liesel, Laurie,  and I met with the Department Chair for HCA to talk about BlueJeans. She was suitably impressed with how easy it was to join  a meeting.  I also spent a little volunteer time with the Ed-Tech users group We’re working on plans for the fall conference at Douglas College.  I enjoy that kind of planning because interesting conversations happen when people from different institutions, doing similar work, get together to try and build a common theme for participants. I’m going to be transitioning out of my leadership role on the etug stewardship committee (SCETUG) this summer. I’ve done a year as chair and a year as co-chair and it’s time for someone else to step in to the leadership triad.

Today I had my third session in BlueJeans: Tidying Up: Organizing Content and Files in your Blackboard Course. There were less people in attendance this time, but still about 7.  If I did this one again I would look for more opportunities for interaction.  With a short time frame and a lot of material to cover,  I ended up doing all the talking.  The people who did respond to prompts used the chat more than the microphone. I had a lot of browser windows open with courses as examples and part way through, it seemed like some had gone missing and did what felt like a little bit of a free-fall but I think I got it back.  I will follow up with participants next week and send them a hand out with some screen shots of ‘how-to’ do some of the organizational things we talked about. I got a couple of positive comments in the chat that some of the content was new to them.  One more to go in this series – all about Feedback and Grading in BB.

There are things buzzing around with regards to ‘the virus’. My professional network and conversations at work indicate that more people are going to be looking for ways to communicate by distance. I anticipate a busy week next week, and an opportunity to think about how to create and share resources for the future.

Today’s post

will likely be on the brief side. I’ve had a progressively worsening cold this week and am not at full brain capacity. Hence the lemons. I will go and get some vitamin C.

Last Friday’s presentation went well. I think I already shared that. I like it when participants are also contributors. I sent out a follow up email including the slides I used because there were a lot of links on them. No one, so far has answered my feedback question. Last time there were immediate responses. I think I will come up with a new question for next time.

I attended a meeting about Open textbooks and we are planning sessions to recruit interested faculty.  I contacted BCcampus to see if they can share some existing resources and lend us some print copies of Open textbooks. They will send us some printed books and have shared their slides (a lot of slides!) here. I will have a look through to see if I can find some stats on students saving money. I can find the stats but if someone has already created a great slide I will use it. It’s another way to demonstrate Open. I think it will be important for us to share as well (when we have some content).

We had our weekly Teaching and Learning Centre meeting to plan for our future as a centre and our roles within it.

Liesel and I are working with some Early Childhood Education faculty around using BlueJeans to support students in remote areas. We met and had a chat with them about their needs and what, or if, BlueJeans will be the right tool for the job. I’ll be digging in next week and creating accounts and having them try it out.

i was invited to a meeting with like minded video conferencers from OK college, Yukon College and Coast Mountain to talk about Video conferencing at our respective institutions. We’ll get together monthly as a “Video Conferencing Professional Learning Community”. It’s great to hear what’s happening at these institutions and what they’re trying out to support distance learners.

I came in for the Planning and Standards meeting this morning because I know a number of people couldn’t attend.  We made it through three policies.  I put a couple of planned vacations in the calendar for next year and had a quick meeting with an instructor this morning – again for grade centre questions. It’s a good thing we’ll be talking about assessments in the final webinar of my inagural series.

Priorities for next week are:

Plan for next Friday’s session. I’m going to be talking about organization in BB Learn. We’re going to spark some joy through the art of tidying up. I want to share what the content collection is, and does, as well as how to use folders to keep things organized. I try to walk people through the student experience in finding things but it’s also important in the back end that things are easier for instructors. It’s not the sexiest topic but it’s SOOOOO important.

BlueJeans admin.  I need a quick walk through of the admin area to get instructors signed up with accounts and to get comfortable with the settings for my own BlueJeans account.

Laurie, Margaret and I are going to get together to go over our PD plans.  Since we work different days we don’t get to see each other much despite being in the same office space. I find it easier to understand what their plans are like when they can explain it to me. Mine needs some work and some more firm dates.

I’m not feeling very reflective today but I am looking forward to things happening around Open resources and BlueJeans, as well as seeing what happens at my next BB session.

This week flew by. On Tuesday afternoon (which in reality is my Monday morning) I felt like I was never going to catch up. By Thursday afternoon, things were much better. I spent a lot of time this week getting ready for my second session in BlueJeans called “Extending Learning Beyond Blackboard: Enriching the Student Experience”. I had 13 participants sign up and 11 attended. I thought i was a great turn out for a reading-break Friday. We talked about the Open ETC and WordPress and I asked them to contribute to the FacDev SPLOT that I set up. I’m not sure anyone has yet but I’ll keep an eye on it.  If you’re reading this, please feel free to contribute by clicking on ‘write’ in the top navigation bar.  This one is also still a work in progress as I figure out how to make the posts stick where I want them to. To see any existing posts (not much to see yet) click ‘random’ a few times.

Other things from today’s session included looking at BCCampus and open textbooks, Indigenization guides, toolkits, etc. I shared the textbookbroke hashtag and some stats about student savings with the use of Open textbooks. Here at NIC in only 2- 3 years with about 10 faculty adopting Open texts, students have saved around 220,000.00. In the province since 2012, that figure is over 14 million dollars! source

The last piece from today’s session included online tools for collaboration and feedback. Participants seemed excited about padlet and I had them creating pins on a padlet map that I had set up in real-time. It was fun to watch. I learned about a few other tools from some of the attendees. It was good to hear their experiences using mind-mapping and quiz/polling apps. I will see if I can figure out how share my PPT with all the  links here but I’m already running out of time for this post.

As well as today’s session I had a couple of faculty help sessions on organization and adding tools to BB Learn. I also attended CTLI and PD planning meetings. I’m working on firming up some dates for my PD plan. I also put some time into a PD application for the Festival of Learning in May.

Next week we’re meeting to start conversations about Open Textbooks and I’m excited about that. I also have a planning and standards meeting and the regular PD and CTLI meetings. In between those, I’m going to work more on my WP blogs and get ready for my next session on March 6: Tidying Up: Organizing Content and Files in BB Learn – we’re going to spark some joy! I will also follow up with participants and elicit a little feedback from today’s session.

’til next week…

Following in the footsteps of an increasing number of friends and colleagues I’ve decided to post my weekly reflections on work here.  At half time the weeks seem to fly by and it’s hard to believe that I actually get anything done. I’ve taken to making notes  through the work days rather than just consulting my calendar to help me remember what went on. I think having the blog space will help as I can keep a draft post going all week.

Last Friday I held a session for faculty called “Supporting Students in Blackboard: Good Practices for Face-to-Face, Blended and Online Classes”.  We talked about sharing files, using the tools in BB Learn for student created content, collaboration, accessibility, reflective practice, etc. We did the session at lunch time using BlueJeans and 7 people showed up. I’ve mostly been a participant in BlueJeans sessions so moderating was a little different but I had a couple of practice sessions early in the week. I’ve had a lot of experience with Collaborate so that helped. I did the usual starter slide with ‘how to find things’ and a quick ice-breaker that had participants check in so I could see that everything was working. No tech glitches to speak of and no wasted time on ‘can you hear me?’. The follow up feedback on takeaways was positive. They like the idea of using a discussion forum to support class activities (especially for sick days and snow days) and the idea of letting students take some control of learning activities.

This week I’ve spent some time preparing for my next session “Extending Learning Beyond Blackboard: Enriching the Student Experience” where I plan to share free resources for faculty and students. Part of this prep was setting up this blog. I felt fairly comfortable with WordPress but starting from scratch took me longer than I expected.  I want to share the Open ETC as a resource and my intent is to set up a SPLOT where participants in my session can contribute. I’ve wanted to do this for a while since hearing about the SPLOT tool from Alan Levine and now I have an application for it. I also want to talk about BCcampus and open texts as well as the Indigenization Guides and the Accessibility Toolkit.  That’s already a lot but I plan to include things like padlet, doodle polls, and other free things I can think of. I’m working on a handout and getting some more content on this blog so i can use it as an example. So far ten people are signed up. I’ve had such great support from Liesel in promoting the sessions, getting emails and calendar invites out and generally keeping things on track so all I have to worry about is being prepared and running the webinars.

Outside of blog building and session planning, I attended a Plan 20-25 sub-committee meeting. I’m on the ‘mission, vision, and values’ sub-committee.  I like being part of the strategic planning process and it’s a place where I can advocate for distance and online learning.  I also attended a mercifully short Education Council meeting and our weekly Centre for Teaching and Learning Innovation (CTLI) planning session. It’s exciting to be part of a team again and to be planning events that support teaching and learning. People here are thirsty for it. We have some great plans for a teaching and learning advisory group.

Of course there was some of the usual supporting faculty in Blackboard via phone calls and email. That’s a part of my job that I really enjoy.  One on one isn’t the most efficient method but it’s a way to build trust and some problems are unique – like one I had this week.  Soon we’ll have a friendlier (read – not sharepoint) space to share resources and that will help by being able to point people to it for the easy stuff.

For next week: I’ll add a portfolio section to the blog soon so I can start adding things there. I’m starting to create some BlueJeans user resources in anticipation of a site license. I’ll host my session on Friday and most of my non-meeting time next week will probably revolve around handouts and preparation.

Until next Friday…