Category: Announcements

Welcome to the fall semester at CUNY SPS!

Dear SPS faculty,

We hope your fall semester is off to a smooth start. During the month of September and October, OFDIT is offering a different online training almost every day of the week to help you put new skills in your online teaching toolbox. There is something for everyone, whatever your schedule so please review our training calendar and read more about some of the sessions below.

We are excited to be running trainings on Turnitin, a new CUNY-wide writing assignment tool with a plagiarism checker, an easy-to-use grading interface, and a user-friendly peer-review function that students can use to review their own and their peers’ writing.

We have also added two new training topics to our growing list of one-hour online sessions: Facilitating Group Work and Monitoring Student Progress in Blackboard. Student group work encourages active engagement with course material and develops interpersonal skills that will be vital on the job market. Our group work training covers the technical details of Blackboard’s Groups tool as well as strategies for how to facilitate group work in an online environment. Monitoring student progress can be difficult in an online class. Our training on this topic introduces the tools that Blackboard provides to help you keep abreast of who is doing well in your course, who needs a little encouragement, and who might need more support.

In addition to these new topics, we have several sessions of oldies-but-goodies on offer, such as creating videos for your courses, using VoiceThread as a multimedia discussion tool, and using Blackboard to its fullest potential to make your course more effective and your life easier. Last but not least, Creating Accessible Documents for Your Course covers how to create Word, Excel and PDF files that are accessible to screen reader users and more easily understood by everyone. One of the biggest advances of the online education revolution is the potential for higher ed to be inclusive of all students; this training gives you a couple tools for following through on that promise.

To read about all of our upcoming training sessions, click here. To sign up for scheduled training sessions, fill out this form.

Wishing you a wonderful fall, and looking forward to working with you,
Antonia, Krystyna, and Sarah

Join us for Summer Bootcamp adventure!

We are offering another Video & VoiceThread Bootcamp in which you can either gain new skills or sharpen old ones when creating engaging media for your teaching. If you’ve previously created course videos, maybe you’d like to integrate VoiceThread into your teaching as well? Or you let us help you sharpen your video editing skills in Screencastomatic Pro?

This bootcamp is learner-focused and we will tailor instruction to your skill level, so novices and masters alike are welcome. Whether you are a perennial or budding video-creator and VoiceThread user, this week-long workshop will plant the essentials of creating dynamic videos and cultivating vibrant content.

The bootcamp will run from Monday, July 11 to Sunday, July 17. There will be some activity required every day during that week, and by the end of it you will have:

  •         The technical skills to create multimedia artifacts for your courses.
  •         Knowledge of what makes a pedagogically effective multimedia artifact.
  •         A multimedia creation ready to include in your current or future courses.
  •         A plan for a second multimedia artifact to create for your courses.

Here is what previous bootcamp participants have said about their experience:

Course Video Bootcamp is well worth the time I spent doing it. I learned so much and I know that it will help me assist my students by giving them visual aids that work much better than reading a book or powerpoint. I also learned where to go should I have questions about what I learned. Great class.

This experience provided me with the tools that I needed to work with VoiceThread without being intimidated by it. It was a challenging experience but there was a great amount of support and guidance.

Video Bootcamp was a great experience! Within a week, they took me from technically-inexperienced to being able to produce my own video for use in my course! The support from the staff was great and really enabled me to learn a lot in a short period of time!

If you’d like to join us for this summer adventure, please use this form to sign up for the bootcamp.

We are looking forward to working with you in July,

Sarah & Krystyna

bootcamp banner

A Bootcamp For More Interactive Teaching

Have you ever wondered how the use of multimedia tools in teaching impacts your students’ learning? A 2015 survey of educators by Kaltura shows that instructional video content improves the learning experience of students, and can particularly engage visual and auditory learners. When captioned, it has the capacity to engage “all cognitive learning styles” (p. 20).

Graph Illustrating the Impact of Video on Learning Experience
Source: “The State of Video in Education 2015. A Kaltura Report” (p. 20)

But, even if interactive multimedia has the capacity to engage students in new and exciting ways, it might seem difficult to get started, or to get acquainted with a new tool. To that end, we are offering a special spring-break Video & VoiceThread Bootcamp from April 25 through May 1.

This hands-on workshop is learner-focused and adapted to suit the needs of individual participants: If you have never made a video or created a VoiceThread before we will get you started. If you have some experience, we will show you how to sharpen your work. By the end of our week-long session all participants will develop the skills to create VoiceThread, screencasts, or webcam videos for course introductions, lectures, and discussions.

If you’d like to join us on this spring break adventure, please sign up here.

Looking forward!
Antonia, Dominique, and Sarah

What Do OFDIT and Stevie Wonder Have in Common?

Besides our outstanding musical ability? Our goal of promoting accessibility!

If you tuned into the Grammy’s last month then you may have noticed musician Stevie Wonder’s call for greater Disability Rights. His appeal is part of a broader movement of people across the country and around the globe working to make institutions, including universities, more accessible to all people.

Locally, instructors here at CUNY SPS are joining the ranks of other educators to make their schools, classes, and course materials accessible to people with disabilities.

word cloud accessibilityKeeping in mind the diversity of our students, faculty, and staff, including individuals with disabilities, OFDIT collaborates with instructors and administrators to make all of our online learning environments accessible and inclusive, and to contribute to a richer learning environment. In order to fulfill this goal we created an Accessibility Resources Site listing materials on Universal Design in Learning (UDL), as well as how-to guides for creating accessible course documents.

This month we continue our efforts through the introduction of a new Accessibility Training Series covering how to use the tools already at your disposal to make your online courses accessible to all students. Sign up for our short lunchtime training sessions on accessibility features in Microsoft Word, captioning course videos, and more. We look forward to continuing our work with faculty to ensure that we serve all of our diverse students!

Antonia, Dominique & Sarah

PS: Check out our latest UD Nosh post on the third UDL principle, featuring your colleague Prof. Julie Maybee from the Disabilities Studies Program as our co-author! (Thank you, Julie!)

February Updates: Faculty Training, VoiceThread Workshops, and a Blackboard Issue

Welcome back! We hope your spring semester is off to a great start. OFDIT is welcoming the term with new trainings, workshops offered by VoiceThread, and an announcement about Blackboard’s discussion board.

February Faculty Training. We’ve added new topics to our successful half our lunch-time training series: BrownBagBytes. This month’s sessions spotlight features that help make courses more accessible and discussions more dynamic. Our captioning training shows you how to use YouTube to add accurate captions to your videos in a few simple steps. Captions aid language learners and students with hearing impairments or organizational issues. Our training on Blackboard’s student view explains how to use the tool to streamline and simplify your course site.  In addition to our lunch series, we are also offering a full hour-long training: Introduction to VoiceThread. These show how the VoiceThread tool integrates audio and video commentary in your course discussions.

Sign up here to register for our February trainings, or use this form to schedule a one-on-one session that works around your schedule.

VoiceThread-IconWorkshops by VoiceThread. If you can’t join OFDIT, there are still opportunities to learn from workshops offered by VoiceThread this month, including sessions on incorporating VoiceThread discussions into your Language and STEM curriculum.

DB list view tree viewIssue with “Tree View” on Blackboard discussion board. You might have noticed that since January, your view of the Discussion Board keeps reverting back to List View automatically after setting it to Tree View. Blackboard is working to find a solution to this issue, but in the meantime, we’d like to pass on a helpful note one of your colleagues had drafted (thank you!) to explain the situation to his students. Please feel free to use this to make your students aware of the issue as well.

This course relies on the Blackboard Discussion Board for our class discussions. However, there is currently an issue with how we are able to view the discussion forum. Each time you enter the forum the posts appear in what is called “List View.” We need to see them in “Tree View,” however, in order to follow the threaded discussions and for you to see who has commented on your posts and for you to participate in ongoing exchanges with your classmates.  What to do? — For now each and every time you enter any forum you need to look at the upper right and click on the “Tree View” button. I do hope this will be resolved soon and that the tree view will be the default and remain the setting for all forums. Until then, thank you for your patience and understanding.

If you have questions about these or any other instructional technology please do not hesitate to reach out to us. We look forward to working with you this spring!

Antonia, Sarah, and Dominique

Fall: Sweaters, Pumpkins, and Video Bootcamp!

It’s that time of year again, SPS Faculty: warm layers, the return of all-things-pumpkin, and the Office of Faculty Development and Instructional Technology helping you to bring tech innovation to your teaching.

Sarah Kresh & Dominique Nisperos, our new ITAsAs we enter the fall season we are also happy to welcome our two newest Instructional Technology Assistants, the indomitable Sarah Kresh and Dominique Nisperos who are joining us from the CUNY Graduate Center programs in Linguistics and Sociology respectively. They look forward to sharing their knowledge and helping you to create the best possible experience to your students.

We begin October with new sessions on how to make your course content accessible and dynamic. If you are new to video-lectures, fear not! If you’re a seasoned video vet, you can take your skills up a notch. Sign up for our Course Video Bootcamp (Oct. 26 – Nov. 2), and in just over a week we will get you on track to produce hauntingly engaging videos that your students will scream over! This bootcamp is learner-focused and will be adapted to beginners and experienced video-makers alike.

We are also kicking off a new endeavor this fall semester: In our training Making Your Course Accessible to All, we will introduce the principles of Universal Design in Learning and explain how a few considerations help ensure that all students can understand, navigate, and contribute to your online courses. Register today!

And don’t forget our weekly online TechHelp Drop-In Hour on Wednesdays from 6-7pm EST in case you’d like some immediate one-on-one support.

Join us! We are looking forward to working with you in trainings that are all treats, no tricks.