Articles about Teaching Online
Faculty to Faculty: Skype
I am not in the habit of promoting specific products, but once in a while I find something so useful that I can’t help spreading the word. Such is the case with Skype.
If you’ve been using the Internet for a significant period of time, you’ll recall that from the very start applications emerged that would allow individuals to talk to each other from computer to computer across the network. Over time, Voice over IP (VoIP) applications have evolved into what I think of as a Swiss knife of voice communications (although it will also do video). I can now not only talk computer to computer, but also computer to phone (landline) and vice versa, hold multi conferences, forward calls and more. Basically, you can think of this tool as bridging computers and landlines for voice communication. More »
UF Resources Available to Ensure Teaching Continuity
Resources are available here at UF to ensure course continuity for faculty, teaching assistants and students. Are you prepared to continue teaching your course in the event face-to-face classes are not viable? What about if the H1N1 flu pandemic or a major weather event were to affect UF? Under these conditions you may have large numbers of student absences occurring over a period of months. Instructors and teaching assistants may also be absent for several days.
Instructors must be adequately prepared in advance. The three key components to ensure that the education process continues are planning, communication with students, and using available tools and services for course delivery. More »
UF Adopts Sakai to be New E-Learning System
After an 8-month evaluation process, the University of Florida has selected the open source Sakai course management system to be the new course management system. By choosing an open source system, UF joins a growing trend among colleges and universities. More »
Faculty to Faculty: Mediasite
Have you ever thought how much money your department spends for keeping multiple lecturers in a large course whose job is to deliver the same lectures year after year in overcrowded lecture halls where the students cannot see, and cannot hear, and simply cannot catch up with the lecturer?
Have you been trying to teach an online course with all modern tools and software available and, yet, share with your students your own experience which they cannot receive anywhere else except from you? If you have answered “yes” for either of the questions, then you may be interested in what the AT folks offer to the Instructors called Mediasite video lectures.
Faculty to Faculty: Elluminate
Teaching online is great, but how do you get that one-on-one, classroom feel when you and your students are scattered around the campus, state, or even globe? Elluminate offers a great solution.
Lauren Hertel, faculty from the Department of Telecommunication, has used it extensively for virtual classroom interaction and online office hours in three of her multimedia skills courses. What follows is her best advice for using Elluminate Live! Virtual Classroom
Elluminate in Action
Faculty are finding ways to make Internet tools fulfill their teaching needs. Dr. Velvet Yates and Dr. Kristin Joos discuss how they used Elluminate in courses developed as part of the Provost’s E-Learning Initiative. This presentation was part of the Teaching Excellence Workshop that was held in February 2009.
Watch Presentation (Silverlight required)
Faculty to Faculty – Tips For Teaching Online
This new segment features online teaching tips from some of the UF’s finest faculty. This edition of “Faculty to Faculty” features tips from Dr. Rusti Brandman, Professor Emeritus from the College of Fine Arts. Dr. Brandman has just finished teaching the online pilot of Dance Appreciation for the 21st Century which was re-designed through the Provost’s E-learning Initiative. More »
Teaching Excellence Workshop in Review
The Teaching Excellence Workshop sponsored by The Center for Instructional Technology and Training & Academic Technology was held February 3rd. In attendance were more than 50 faculty members representing various colleges from the University of Florida. Both faculty and instructional designers shared creative solutions on how to fully engage students with course material. Watch video of the workshop More »
Are You Legal? Copyright and Fair Use in the Classroom
Making use of other’s works for classroom use can raise questions regarding copyright and fair use. The most common questions usually surround copying articles from journals, images from the web, and excerpts from books. Copyright law gives legal protection to mostly all text, graphics, recordings, and other materials that might be desirable to use in class, even when the works do not include a statement regarding copyright. More »
iTunes U @ UF
The Office of Academic Technology along with the Colleges of Business, Pharmacy, Education, and IFAS, is conducting a pilot test of Apple’s iTunes U service. iTunes U is a designated section of Apple’s online iTunes Store which distributes audio and video media files, along with PDF files, over the Internet for viewing on computers and portable media players. More »
In the CITT Tools & Techniques Toolbox: Second Life
Second Life is an online, 3D virtual world in which participants interact with each other and the software-created environment. Increasingly, educators are using Second Life to provide a richer and more interactive environment for teaching. Second Life is a rich resource for simulation and role-playing activities, as well as fostering collaboration amongst students. It’s also highly customizable, making creation of educational activities and environments relatively easy.
Would you like to learn more about Second Life and how it is being used here at the University of Florida? Check out the CITT Training schedule for two Second Life workshops being offered in January!
More information on Second Life
In the CITT Tools & Techniques Toolbox: Peer Review
Peer Grading is a feature of E-learning that allows students to peer-evaluate discussion posts. While only discussion posts can be evaluated, the content in the discussion posts are not limited. They can contain reports, journals, articles, reflections, and so on.
More information on Peer Review
Teaching Online: Tips and Tricks Part 2
Developing content for online classes can be a daunting, time-consuming task. This second part of Tips and Tricks will look at ways to save time and resources for faculty in developing their content for online courses while increasing student participation and learning.
Mapping Mashups
Mapping Mashups refer to the use of mapping tools such as Yahoo or Google maps to compile data onto a map with markers, text, pictures, audio, video, and online resources. More »
Crop View Web Modules Win Second Award
The Crop View project has recently received a second Educational Materials Award from the American Society of Agronomy. In May of 2007, Crop View received a Gold Image Award for Educational Materials from UF/IFAS External and Media Relations. In Crop View, students learn how to identify seeds, plants and their climate requirements through the web-based tutorials consisting of interactive games and explanatory modules. More »
Introducing Elluminate!
Elluminate is a service that provides online chat/conversation using text and voice. Video interaction can also be integrated. As such, it creates a synchronous, interactive “virtual classroom” for lectures, discussions, and collaboration. More »
In the CITT Tools & Techniques Toolbox – Discussion Boards
A discussion board is a virtual forum in E-Learning for holding discussions and posting content. Most discussion boards are asynchronous forums that resemble bulletin boards and blogs. Instructors and/or students can create topics called “threads” and can then post comments, media, and information under the thread and in response to other users.
Teaching Online: Tips and Tricks Part 1
There are many ways to reach teaching success in an online class. This series of articles will look at some tips and tricks to help you engage your students, increase learning, and reduce instructor stress.
In the CITT Tools & Techniques Toolbox – Mapping Mashups
Mapping Mashups refer to the use of mapping tools such as Yahoo or Google maps to compile data onto a map with markers, text, pictures, audio, video, and online resources. For example, a Mapping Mashup could be constructed to show the location of every earthquake in the past ten days with an image, link, video clip, and text for each location on the map.
Create Quick Interactive Study Tools
Templates can help to quickly create study aids to assist students in review and test preparation. Respondus and Study Mate create interactions that are uploaded to an E-Learning course shell. The Adobe Flash quiz template creates a customizable self-test for use in a regular website or within E-Learning.
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