Part of the Segue from Segue project involves analyzing how faculty and students at Middlebury have used technology for teaching, learning and research. Last week, I published an overview of Segue Usage. This week I have compiled notes on my review of curricular resources that the Language Schools and departments have developed with Segue and other tools, see:
Jason Mittell (Film & Media Culture), James Morrison (Political Science) and myself lead a workshop for faculty on taking notes and grading digital documents yesterday that was well attended (see: Moving Away from Paper: Useful Practices for Electronic Note-taking and Grading Assignments).
Jason and James described how they assigned and collected students papers. Both used email as the primary means of collecting assignments from students for the following reasons:
James and Jason differed in the format they required their students to submit assignments and the tool they used to annotate and grade these assignments. Read more about their annotation and grading workflow on the Teaching with Technology blog (see: Moving Away from Paper: Annotating and Grading Digital Documents – Jason Mittell & James Morrison)
Both James and Jason have also had their student use Google Docs for collaborative projects. Unfortunately Google Docs does not support footnotes so that is cannot be used as a tools for writing scholarly papers. That said, Google Docs may be a good tool for creative writing classes or for language classes.
The Curricular Technology team, in consultation with the Faculty LIS Advisory Committee (FLAC) and the Area Directors, is defining topics and questions for curricular technology focus group sessions which will be scheduled over the next month.
To better understand how faculty and students use technology for teaching, learning and research, I’ve been reviewing the many course sites and curricular resources that have been developed over the years at Middlebury in Segue and other platforms. I’ve posted to the Segue from Segue blog an overview of Segue usage, see: Segue from Segue > Segue Usage Analysis. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be posting more usage analyses.
The Faculty LIS Advisory Committee (FLAC) is sponsoring a workshop for faculty on taking notes and grading digital documents. This workshop will be taught by Jason Mittell (Film & Media Culture), James Morrison (Political Science) and myself and will present some common tools and practices for inserting comments and notes into Word and PDF documents as well as Google Docs. Here are details:
Moving Away from Paper: Useful Practices for Electronic Note-taking and Grading Assignments
4:30 – 5:30 pm, Feb 22nd
Axinn 219
This workshop coincides with the introduction of printing quotas (see: Notice to students about new printing system) and has the objective of outlining the benefits and limitations of a completely digital workflow as well as getting a sense of what kinds of tools faculty need to provide feedback and evaluate student assignments.
An email announcement about the workshop has been sent out to all faculty. Faculty interested in participating in this workshop are encouraged to fill out a workshop form that will help us gauge interest and provide the opportunity to request specific topics.
New WordPress themes have been added to WordPress at Middlebury. This blog has been updated to use Translucence, an interpretation of theme designs drafted by White Whale as part of the Web Redo project.
Translucence, like ShadowBox, is a theme series that includes a number of variations and options for layout. This blog is currently configured to use a flexible width such that the width of the blog will vary with the size of your browser window. As well, it is configured to include 2 right sidebars (instead of a single left and right sidebar).
Feedback/comments/suggestions welcome.
WHAT
During Sunday morning downtime on the 17th, we will be adding WordPress, sites.middlebury.edu, to our list of platforms that use our single sign-on system.
WHY
We have been slowly been moving our web applications in this direction, allowing members of our community to have access to our online programs with only one login. Currently, MIDDMedia, Mediawiki, and the (soon to be) new college web site all use this single sign-on system.
WHY NOW
Normally we would wait until the time between the semesters. Some of our users have had problems logging onto their blogs however, and we believe this will clear up many of the issues they are experiencing.
WHAT TO EXPECT
We do not anticipate a change in experience for people who visit and read your blogs.
The biggest change will occur when you log into your blog. When you click on a link to log in, you will be brought to the single sign-on page. Those of you who have used MIDDMedia, Mediawiki and Drupal will be familiar with this page.
There will also be changes to the way you add Users to your blog. On the ADD USER page in your dashboard, you will be able to search for any individual by NAME or USERNAME. Start typing, and a list of options will appear for you to select from.
Also, you will be able to import groups of people into your blog by searching for the group name. This can be a class, email or web data group.
**NOTE – Using the group feature WILL NOT SYNC YOUR BLOG WITH THE GROUP MEMBERSHIP! Changing the membership of the class or web data group, for example, will not change the users in your blog. You must add new group members as individuals or by importing the group again.
Also, please be careful when importing large groups. There is no UNDO feature, you will have to remove people a few at a time.
Thank you for your patience and understanding, and we look forward to assisting you with the upgraded WordPress platform.
The members of the Curricular Technology team would like to get some feedback from the rest of LIS on our new website, if you are so inclined. The basis for the information architecture is a three-pronged approach: what you can do (Uses), what you need to do it (Tools), and how are other people doing it (Stories). Not everything is fleshed-out yet, but for examples, see: Uses>Audio>Music notation or Tools>Voice recorders or Buzzwords> Blog. Here are some of the points on which we are waffling:
– The labels / descriptions under the various Uses. Are they too wordy? Can a user find what they are looking for?
– The left-hand menu under Uses – should it appear at all?
We welcome your comments, thoughts, suggestions, accolades, applause, donations, etc.