faculty SPOTLIGHT



Clicker Technology

Instructor: Greg Ryan (greg.ryan@cna.nl.ca)
Program: Heavy Equipment Service Technician, BSG Campus

How many students fully understand what's going on in the classroom? Would you like the ability to get instantaneous, anonymous, and unbiased feedback from your entire class? The ability to embed an automatic, informal education and assessment tool into your powerpoints/slideshows is possible with clicker technology.

"Clickers," also known as "wireless student response systems," offer a variety of assessment tools, as well as feedback, tracking and more. Most importantly, they offer "easy to use" copy/paste functions that allow you to assess students on the fly. By inserting questions into your slides, interactive "polling" is created, and begins automatically when a slide with a question is presented. A chart pops up when all responses have been received (or you decide to close the "poll") and will tell you how many people selected each response. Students can then start to debate, allowing them to defend their responses if they wish (although it's anonymous), taking the conversation and learning to a whole new level. The quiet, reserved students are given the chance to provide their honest thoughts on questions, without being persuaded by vocal responses from other students. This tool also allows you to assess how well you're delivering new information to a class. If the majority of students are getting it wrong, you are able to reconsider the delivery of class materials.

Quite often in class, I work with images on the board instead of text. This allows students to spend less time highlighting and taking notes and more time listening, engaging, conversing, debating, and questioning the content. This way, a single slide can also be used to cover many objectives. However, while using this technique, it is critical that I assess my students before I move on to more complex objectives, and ensure they understand the basic fundamentals of the content being presented. During course development, I also take time to develop questions that require students to apply their new knowledge at certain points during a slide show. Giving them performing assessments as a group has proven to be an extremely powerful tool when employed as a method of review. I have also turned "chapter end questions" from their textbooks into "clicker responses" on the board for us to complete. This provides me with an opportunity to teach my students multiple-choice exam strategies. For example, trades students specifically have to endure multiple-choice exams in every form of formative and summative assessment (block exams/Red Seal Endorsement exams, etc.). Using questions on the board, we can educate students on how to properly read and understand a question before advancing to the three distractors, using process of elimination, or making an educated guess (there is such a thing).

Extra Resource: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/clickers/






Carpentry - Photo Feedback

Instructor: Peter Troke (peter.troke@cna.nl.ca)
Products: D2L Gradebook, iPad tablet with Adobe Sketch app
Program: Carpenter, Clarenville Campus

Feedback has a powerful influence on student learning and achievement. Research suggests feedback is most effective when instructors provide learners with specific information on what exactly they did well, and what may still need improvement.

Carpenter instructor, Peter Troke, has been trying for years to improve on a process to document evaluation for practical carpentry projects: "Manual recordings through a paper rubric were fine for a student's file, but lacked the ability to really provide effective feedback."

Peter has recently started using D2L Brightspace tools and other technologies to provide detailed feedback on practical projects built by his on-campus carpentry students. Peter takes a photo of each student's work with an iPad and uses the Adobe Sketch app to hand write feedback on each photo.

To make these photos available to students, Peter uploads them to the feedback area in the D2L Grades tool where students can individually access their feedback at any time. He uses the D2L Rubrics tool to provide further details on student performance, which is also easily accessible from the gradebook.

"Within the gradebook, I can quickly record an electronic rubric and provide a visual assessment. This ensures hard documentation of the project and offers constructive feedback to students. Students absolutely love this feature. It provides the opportunity to visually reflect on their work and view areas of potential improvement through an archived account for subsequent reference."




Storify

Instructor: Kelly Taylor-Hulan (Kelly.Taylorhulan@cna.nl.ca)
Product: https://storify.com
Course: PS2340 Organizational Behaviour

As both an online student and an online instructor, I know required discussion postings are sometimes viewed as "busy work". To get students to move beyond just textbook answers and thinking about the material as it relates to their own lives, I have started using Storify to highlight their work. I also believe that students want to know that you, as their instructor, have actually read their work.

The intent is to move students beyond regurgitation of the textbook material to applying their own thoughts, experiences, and ideas. As I grade their postings, I look for examples from their own lives. I simply copy and paste these into a Storify page. No student names are used and there is no right or wrong answer.

Students have reported that they aim to get a "mention" on Storify and anxiously await to see if the next Storify contains an excerpt of their work. To further enhance learning I also like to post a YouTube video, usually a funny one, about the discussion topic.

Storify is going to be discontinued in the spring of 2018, so I will be moving to WordPress (www.wordpress.com). There are many, many tools available to accomplish a similar outcome.

PS2340 Example: https://storify.com/khulan/getting-started





Video Assignments

Instructor: Adrienne Goodman (Adrienne.goodman@cna.nl.ca)
Product: Desire2Learn (D2L) Video Assignments
Course: CM2200 Oral Communications

Teaching communications by distance can pose some unique challenges as well as some interesting opportunities. When our students graduate and enter the workforce, more often than not, they will be communicating with colleagues by distance and working as part of dispersed teams. Many of our college courses contain a presentation component, so this tool can be used for a lot more than strictly communication courses.

To help provide better feedback to my online students, I have started using D2L's new Video Assignments tool, which is currently built into all CNA current course shells. This tool enables instructors (either online or classroom-based) to deliver structured, video-based assessments that evaluate learners on speeches, presentations, and more. Instructors can easily grade video assessments and add time-stamped feedback, showing learners exactly where they need to improve.

In my CM2200 course, I use the video assignments tool for required individual presentations throughout the semester. Each presentation builds in terms of time and subject matter and this allows my students to get comfortable with presenting and recording themselves.

This tool is also valuable because it provides a setting that is similar to a live classroom. I can provide feedback instantly to the student(s) either though a video or text message. It also allows for others in the class to view and post comments on the presentations. I appreciate the fact that it is available in D2L, which eliminates the need to use external platforms or technology. In addition to helping students develop competent speaking skills, they are also learning a new technology that can be transferred into a work setting. It's a great tool, and one that I look forward to using more.

Feedback from students has been very favourable. It is not intimidating and it allows them to gain confidence and to improve on their presentation techniques. Oral communications is the one course that most students dread completing, but the Video Assignments tool removes this sense of dread and allows for very rewarding experiences. One student last semester wasn't sure if she would continue with the course because of her social anxiety, but through using Video Assignments she gained confidence and felt secure with the environment and successfully completed CM2200.

It's easy to use, and help is available at Distributed Learning Services to get you started using this tool/platform for either your online or on-campus course.

Learn More about Video Assignments: https://www.d2l.com

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