Training Sessions for SPS Faculty

OFDIT offers ongoing scheduled training sessions and one-on-one consultations with our staff. All SPS faculty are welcome to register for any session.

Fall 2023 Training Schedule

The Pedagogy of Social Annotations

Social annotations can radically change the way your students engage with your course materials, each other, and you, combining the benefits of annotation, dialogue, accessibility, and digital accountability. In this one-hour workshop, we’ll look at social annotations across a range of disciplines, platforms, and assignment types, and discuss how this practice can build students’ skills, foster community, and promote intellectual growth.

Introducing CUNY Pressbooks

Have you been meaning to adopt, adapt, or create OER for your courses? Do you wish that an OER you use were more inclusive, accessible, or customized for your students? Do you dream of having self-check questions or social annotation built into course readings? CUNY’s Pressbooks Network might be the right tool for you.

The CUNY Pressbooks Network is an elegant publishing platform that offers the opportunity to find, adapt, or create openly licensed course materials. With pedagogical features ranging from glossaries and built-in social annotations to interactive questions and LMS grading functionality, CUNY Pressbooks is a great option for presenting customized course readings. In this hands-on, one-hour training, we’ll preview some of these features, see them in action in resources just waiting to be adopted, and then dive in to get familiar with the platform and its robust tools.

Anthology Ally: An Introduction

Learn how Anthology Ally can increase access and improve the overall learning experience in your course by providing choice and flexibility for how students consume content and access media. We will cover both alternative file formats and the accessibility gauge features that are now available to all in your courses and the support Anthology Ally provides in addressing any areas where accessibility can be improved, often very quickly! 

ePortfolio for SPS Faculty: An Introduction

If this is the first time you are using Digication’s ePortfolio in your course or you need a quick refresher, this workshop will help both new and existing faculty get acquainted with ePortfolio. We will discuss the current practice of using ePortfolio at CUNY SPS, navigate through the tool in a course site, review the responsibilities of instructors when using ePortfolio, and showcase the various support resources available for both students and instructors. There will also be time to answer any questions you might have about ePortfolios at CUNY SPS.

A Cut Above: Making Your Videos More Professional

Learn simple steps to present yourself on video to enhance your connection with your students by looking more professional.  Nowadays, we have multiple opportunities to be on camera for synchronous virtual meetings or recording content for our classes. Having your students see and hear you builds rapport and sparks excitement for learning.  No matter if you’re trying this for the first time or have been creating media for a while, this session we’ll give you a set of guides to make your videos look more professional.

Panopto for SPS Faculty

Creating video content just got a whole lot easier! Whether you need to record a welcome message, a lecture, or a recorded announcement for your class, Panopto, the SPS video platform integrated into Blackboard, can make it happen in a few clicks. Participants will learn how to access Panopto and its features through Blackboard, focusing on a workflow to create, organize, and publish your video content.  Special attention will be paid to viewing permissions, sharing content between courses, and captioning. Join us to boost your video skills!

Personalizing Your Panopto Video

As many of us have learned, using Panopto to create a video is a simple process. But many of us have yet to unlock the powerful features inside Panopto that can transform video to maximize its impact.  In this session, participants will look inside the Panopto video editor to discover tools for trimming or cutting video, adding additional content (ex. YouTube videos), or challenging students with in-video quizzes.  Finally, we’ll review Panopto’s robust viewer analytics that tells us who has watched the video and for how long. Join us to make your next video go from good to great!

VoiceThread for SPS Faculty

This training will introduce VoiceThread, an asynchronous video discussion board.  VoiceThread allows faculty and students to create multimedia presentations that creates a classroom community through threaded audio and video discussions. You and your students can add commentary to a presentation by means of microphone, webcam, keyboard, or phone. The ensuing conversation feels like a live classroom, but in an online environment. In this session, SPS faculty will learn how to create a VoiceThread and integrate it into their Blackboard course.

 

One-on-One Training Sessions

SPS faculty may sign up using this form for one-on-one training sessions, offered weekdays from 9am to 7pm, covering the following topics:

Personalizing Your Panopto Video

As many of us have learned, using Panopto to create a video is a simple process. But many of us have yet to unlock the powerful features inside Panopto that can transform video to maximize its impact.  In this session, participants will look inside the Panopto video editor to discover tools for trimming or cutting video, adding additional content (ex. YouTube videos), or challenging students with in-video quizzes.  Finally, we’ll review Panopto’s robust viewer analytics that tells us who has watched the video and for how long. Join us to make your next video go from good to great!

  • Email us to schedule a one-on-one session.

VoiceThread for SPS Faculty

This training will introduce VoiceThread, an asynchronous video discussion board.  VoiceThread allows faculty and students to create multimedia presentations that creates a classroom community through threaded audio and video discussions. You and your students can add commentary to a presentation by means of microphone, webcam, keyboard, or phone. The ensuing conversation feels like a live classroom, but in an online environment. In this session, SPS faculty will learn how to create a VoiceThread and integrate it into their Blackboard course.

  • Email us to schedule a one-on-one session.

Making Your Course Content Accessible with Ally

Want to make your documents and Blackboard course content accessible but don’t know where to start? Join us for a training session to learn how! We will cover accessibility principles and provide practical tips on how to use Blackboard Ally to make your course files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and Blackboard content (such as font, headers, images, charts, graphs, hyperlinks) more accessible to all your students.

  • Email us to schedule a one-on-one session.

ePortfolio for SPS Faculty: An Introduction

If this is the first time you are using Digication’s ePortfolio in your course or you need a quick refresher, this workshop will help both new and existing faculty get acquainted with ePortfolio. We will discuss the current practice of using ePortfolio at CUNY SPS, navigate through the tool in a course site, review the responsibilities of instructors when using ePortfolio, and showcase the various support resources available for both students and instructors. There will also be time to answer any questions you might have about ePortfolios at CUNY SPS. Click here to register for this workshop.
  • Email us to schedule a one-on-one session.

OpenLab Information Session

Planning your future collaborative projects? Curious about what digital tools will be available at CUNY SPS in the near future? Thinking about what open digital pedagogy tools are best to collaborate, create, and explore? In this one-hour informational session, we’ll introduce the CUNY OpenLab. We’ll explore projects on other CUNY-based OpenLabs and take an informational tour to explore the possibilities of a new, open-source platform coming soon to CUNY SPS. At the end of this interactive info session, we’ll share upcoming opportunities to participate in other workshops geared toward open digital pedagogy.
  • Email us to schedule a one-on-one session.

From Open Educational Resources (OER) to Open Pedagogy

Whether you’re looking to lower course costs for your students, update or customize instructional materials to make them more relevant and engaging, or empower your students to become active contributors to your field, Open Educational Resources (OER) and open pedagogy may be just what you’re looking for. In this one-hour session, we’ll introduce the why and how of OER—materials that are free and openly licensed for you or your students to reuse, retain, revise, remix, and redistribute. We’ll also explore how student-created or student-remixed OER can fulfill the goals of open pedagogy—an approach that invites students to create knowledge rather than to merely consume it. At the end of this interactive training, we’ll share upcoming opportunities to participate in workshops geared toward using OER and open pedagogy to improve learning outcomes, to create interactive multimedia content, and to increase representation, inclusion, accessibility, and student voice and choice in online courses.

Screencast-O-Matic: Effective Editing Techniques

Screencast-O-Matic (SCOM), a powerful video creating and editing tool, is available to SPS Faculty.  In this session, participants will learn effective editing techniques that will direct your audience’s attention to what’s important.  Used in conjunction with Panopto, the SPS video hosting platform, SCOM makes advanced editing features simple. The result, you can produce a polished video with a few simple steps.  

  • Email us to schedule a one-on-one session.

Getting Started with Blackboard Mobile

In this session, we will explore the Blackboard Mobile application and gain an understanding of how students experience learning on the go. We will also discuss the major interface differences between Blackboard Mobile and Blackboard for Desktop and best practices for online course design for mobile devices.

  • Email us to schedule a one-on-one session.

Introduction to Blackboard Ally

Learn how our new tool, Blackboard Ally, can increase access and improve the overall learning experience in your course by providing choice and flexibility for how students consume content and access media. We will cover both alternative file formats and the accessibility gauge features that are now available to all in your courses and the support Ally provides in addressing any areas where accessibility can be improved, often very quickly!

  • Email us to schedule a one-on-one session.

Panopto for SPS Faculty (facilitated by OFDIT)

Creating video content just got a whole lot easier! Whether you need to record a welcome message, a lecture, or a recorded announcement for your class, Panopto, the SPS video platform integrated into Blackboard, can make it happen in a few clicks. Participants will learn how to access Panopto and its features through Blackboard, focusing on a workflow to create, organize, and publish your video content.  Special attention will be paid to viewing permissions, sharing content between courses, and captioning. Join us to boost your video skills!

  • Email us to schedule a one-on-one session.

A Cut Above: Making Your Videos More Professional 

Learn simple steps to present yourself on video to enhance your connection with your students by looking more professional.  Nowadays, we have multiple opportunities to be on camera for synchronous virtual meetings or recording content for our classes. Having your students see and hear you builds rapport and sparks excitement for learning.  No matter if you’re trying this for the first time or have been creating media for a while, this session we’ll give you a set of guides to make your videos look more professional.

  • Email us to schedule a one-on-one session.

Student Engagement in Online Learning. Join us for a discussion of best practices for generating and sustaining student engagement in the virtual classroom. This training will review approaches to enhance student engagement and instructor feedback in online courses, including different ways to present content and provide feedback, activities to promote student interaction, active learning approaches, and connecting your course content to the real world. You’ll have an opportunity to discuss challenges and successes you’ve experienced and share strategies with colleagues.

Student-to-Student Interaction in Online Courses. Student-to-student interaction as an important part of learning, but how do we enhance and facilitate it in an online course? In this short lunchtime training we will discuss online group work (with and without using Blackboard’s Groups tool), and peer evaluation.

Accessible Multimedia
In this session, we will discuss tools for multimedia such as Collaborate and Zoom. We will cover tips such as how to add captioning and transcription for audio and video as well as how to write alt-text for images.