Things are busy, but calm for now. Next week we set sail.

Monday was a half day for me. This is the last week of the randomized work weeks.

Most of the morning was taken up with instructor meetings. One was a course walk through and checking up on settings the rest was general Blackboard help.  I also dis the prep for Tuesday’s BB Learn session., getting people in the studio course, creating folders, clean up etc. I still couldn’t get the new in line grading tool to work properly. I have to minimize the window and then maximize for the tools to show up. I want to do a quick video but I’d like to know it’s stable – something to talk with Mike about. Instructors want to know more about grade center and marking but I’m  not sure how much of that will stick trying to learn it right now with no practical application for it until the first assignments start coming in.

Tuesday Margaret and I did a BB Learn hands on studio. It was well attended. Some instructors aren’t new to Blackboard and they have their own ways of doing things that didn’t follow the studio practices. Interesting how some are keen to try a new/different way and some, not so much.  After our staff meeting, I booked time for some help desk tickets back to back in BlueJeans meetings.  One instructor had the wrong day so I spent my waiting time doing prep for the two Kaltura sessions coming on Wednesday. Some of hte features still aren’t working properly but shouldn’t affect the studios.

Albert and I did two Kaltura sessions on Wednesday followed by a couple more instructor meetings. These were the youtube and express capture sessions. If the studios carry on I want to look at the two different Kaltura sessions and maybe juggle the content between them a bit. I had a couple of instructor meetings again in the afternoon. I remember feeling really tired after the first one but the second one was actually quite energizing. I think I am picking up on the energy of the people I’m working with. Some of the fear and trepidation is coming through and it can be wearing. But then sometimes I can sense the excitement about new opportunities and exploring new ways of teaching and that is invigorating.

I think some of the instructors that are requesting time are really just looking for some supportive assurance that they’re going to be okay. And they will be.  I think they’re a bit punchy right now with all the changes and just need a calm presence to tell them they’ve got this.

Ready! Le’ts go! Got right back into workshops on Tuesday morning. That was a good way to start. I spent some time on Monday getting ready and catching up on last week’s email. Monday wasn’t an official work day but I needed to make up some time and I wanted to feel ready to go on Tuesday.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were all Blackboard studio sessions in the mornings. It was almost like we had a cohort going through them which was nice. most of the same people came for all three days. Some had to leave early because they were also enrolled in course re-design sprint but they told me they came back to the studio course to practice so that was good to know.

I had been meaning to ask Mike about an upgrade to our Blackboard assignment feedback tool (Blackboard Annotate).  We’ve both been on varying stages of vacation and haven’t connected as much as usual.  We were expecting to have Annotate back in June. Well, it’s here now. I discovered it during a studio session on assignments.  It looks much more robust than the older version and I will spend some time exploring it and will probably create a screen cast for it as part of my Kaltura practice. I’ll also see if there is a hand out that needs updating.

It turns out that there is a pretty good hand out from Blackboard showing the tools and features, and a short video. I had some time Thursday afternoon to look over the features while I was waiting for an instructor to show up in BlueJeans. I made one screen cast of Blackboard Annotate – it’s not great, but the point was to practice and it was good for that. I lost my Kaltura controls – that’s never happened to me before – and I couldn’t end it.  I’ll keep experimenting until it’s smooth.

We have a Kalutra upgrade coming Monday so next week will be getting familiar with that before the studios on Wednesday. I’m going to get familiar with it by creating as many screen casts and videos as I can (between other things) until it starts to feel easy.

Welcome back, but again, not quite a full week. I had two work days and half a vacation day so my work week technically ended on Tuesday.

I spent most of my time working through a couple of help desk tickets and catching up on all the new resources for faculty and students that are available.  I’ll be looking for places where there are hand outs or screencasts that I could create for support. I also started preparing for getting back into workshop mode next week. I need to clean up some of the course shells I used for studio sessions and make sure they’re ready for some new users.

I have some priorities that I’ll work on next week, in particular getting familiar with what’s coming for the Kaltura upgrade and doing some practicing with screen cast/video production.

Outside of NIC I was invited to facilitate a Facilitating Learning Online (FLO) bootcamp session for BCcampus this week.  I really enjoyed it. We worked with instructors from across the province on course re-design. It was interesting  to get a peek at what’s happening at other institutions. They covered a lot of material in four days. In fact I used to facilitate a similar course that ran for five weeks…

Back to three days a week for the rest of the month. Lots of emails to follow up with on Monday.

This bell is in the garden of the Villa Ganz in Guadalajara. Just ring if you need me. Feels for this week.

The best laid plans… it was a strange week for productivity. There were comings and goings, dog sitting, people we needed to be there for. Fortunately I didn’t have a lot of meetings and could be a little flexible with my time. Part of the strangeness, I think, is that a lot of people are on vacation, there are no workshops and the energy is kind of low. Even working remotely there is a lot of interaction when we’re busy. I do appreciate the time to actually get to work on some of the other things there hasn’t been much time for.

I had intended to be finished with the student training course by end of day Monday.  See above re: productivity… I did finish it (Thursday) at least in the sense that the information I wanted in there is in there. I made a few changes in how content was presented and I like it. It makes me want to tweak more though and at some point you just have to stop.

I also met with an instructor about BlueJeans so she could do some hands on and she now feels more confident about using it.

I sat in on a couple of BCcampus  sessions to get a feel for how the synchronous sessions in the  FLO bootcamp course were run. I’ll be co-facilitating the third iteration in a couple of weeks. It was interesting to hear the perspectives and experiences of instructors from other institutions who have had to make drastic changes to their teaching. Some instructors don’t even know what tools are available to them at their institutions.

I picked up a few links from these sessions (in no curated order).

• Article on remote proctoring – creepy.
• Nice resource that Josie Gray shared on accessibility and complex images. This was something I really struggled with trying to convert Power Point slides to html for a course in agricultural economics.  I think I’m going to get it printed in colour.
• Someone shared this link for making infographics:  piktochart
• The “impromtu gauntlet” technique for student presentations

Mike fixed the self-enroll option for the student training course and we tested it out as students. There is an ugly red error message that shows at the top but the option to enroll is in the course menu. I think I am going to add a little context to the existing Student resources tab about how to enroll.

I am off again for a little while. Using up some more vacation time. I’ll have a couple of days to brush up on studios and see where I can improve sessions and clean up the practice courses I use. I think we’ll be very busy again after the 17th. A little break before will be good.

I have September’s schedule figured out. I am going to try doing mornings four days a week and see how that goes.

Back again in a couple of weeks.

It was another good week of learning. More hands-on studios for Blackboard Learn and Kaltura.  The studio course spaces that I created seem to work well. I can make everyone an instructor and they can create things, then, they can use the student preview to create a student user and experiment with the tools from that perspective.  It’s useful to see how the tools work from both sides – that way we can remember how to create really clear instructions when things aren’t intuitive. The preview user allows them to add to each other’s discussions and submit assignments and they can see how that looks in grade center as an instructor. It’s good practice for me too because I can talk about the tools, how and why to use them but I don’t use them in a class type setting and see the functionality (or lack of) first hand. 

I feel pretty comfortable with the Blackboard studios and depending on who shows up things can take different turns but we always manage to cover all the material. Friday we spent a lot of time talking about discussions and had to rush through a couple of other things but we managed to build forums, create threads, and comment on them, as well as create an assignment and upload something for grading. I wanted to have everyone do an audio/video feedback in their assignment but we ran out of time. They know how, they just didn’t get to practice. I encourage everyone to go back to the course and look through and play with grading etc. anytime. 

The Kaltura sessions went well. In my head, I was expecting a repeat of last week where we did a novice and an intermediate even though, I knew they were going to be novice sessions. So, our second session was one we hadn’t done before and it felt a bit out of sequence – just because I was expecting the first time to be next week. We were ready but I didn’t have as much confidence going in because I haven’t used the quiz very much. Albert was a great help with that. We had fun and everyone was able to get a You Tube video into their folder in the course and then add some quiz questions to it. Some had been to the previous session where we created a video with Kaltura Capture so they had other video to work with. Everyone seems to enjoy it.  

We did a special session with the Department of Accessible Learning (DALS) around assessments and accommodations for students in Blackboard. I’ve built a course for them where we will add some tests and other items so they can see how things look, test out some assistive technologies and just generally get a feel for the platform and what’s possible for their students. 

Most of the helping  this week seemed to be related to checking settings for people. They aren’t sure how tests and assignments work, or will work,if they have a release date on them.  They are a little nervous but it’s not outright panic at this stage. 

I had good energy this week – the studio participants helped with that. The pace is much nicer lately but by Friday, and the last one of the week, I was tired.  Margaret and I figured out a calendar for August and left some room for the inevitable unforeseen things that will come up. We’re starting to get the Health and Safety information on returning to work in the fall. Turn, turn, turn…