December's Session

Representatives from the IT staff took the stage at the well attended December 4th session.  Presenters focused on the changes to Blackboard coming in January as SMU moves to the newest version. Of most interest to the group were Blackboard's enhancements which were broken down in terms of social media, mobility, and accessibility.  Participants were able to get hands on experience with  the new version on laptops set up in the McEnery Lounge.

IT staff concluded with information about the new phone system coming in the next semester and updates on improvements to campus wide wireless access.

Missed the session? View it here on Tegrity.

November Session Re-scheduled

November's session, "Oh Brave New World, that Has Such People in It" which was to highlight new social media technology, will be re-scheduled for sometime during the Spring semester.  Dates for Spring programming will be be announced soon. 

"Open locks, whoever knocks"

In observation of Disability Awareness Month, this session featured Karen Hemker, Director of Disability Services, and two of her student guests demonstrating how they use technology to ensure that educational resources and opportunities are open to all students at Saint Mary's regardless of ability or disability. 

Graduate, Eric Qualey, talked about his experience with dyslexia and described what technologies he used to succeed in the classroom, as well as those he uses in his current job.  He also gave the audience (mostly faculty) tips about what they could do to make their classrooms friendlier to students with dyslexia.

Kelsey Waters, a current SMU student who is blind, demonstrated the technologies she has mastered that enable her to translate text into audio and into a braille keyboard device and to generally navigate successfully in academia.

Both presenters held the audience rapt with their inspiring success stories. 

To see what was an amazing presentation go to Tegrity for the entire performance.

September 2013 Session

"Summer's lease hath all too short a date"
This was especially true for the dedicated faculty who taught online classes this summer.  Dr. Elizabeth Seebach (Psychology), Josh Lallaman (Biology), Dr. Valerie Edwards (Sociology), and Blake Pickart (Business) shared their experiences with this developing Saint Mary's initiative. All four stressed the importance of the initial face to face meeting that took place before the online sessions began.  These meetings were good places to get a sense of who the students would be (some instructors even took pictures of each student), what some of the student issues might be (working full time for example) and to make sure all students had access to appropriate technology. All agreed that these meetings ought to be held earlier in the Spring semester and that they should include some sort of engaging activity.

Course design discussion centered around time span difficulties--how to have enough time for discussion and yet keep on track with the introduction of each new topic.  As Dr. Seebach said she had to be "behind and ahead at the same time."  All agreed on the need to keep synchronicity requirements low, as group discussions were hard to schedule.

Panel members shared their attempts to engage their classes as a community using Google, Facebook, and Blackboard.  Lallaman said it was harder to do this with a big class size.

Office hours and time management were also discussed.  Surprisingly most students didn't use the posted office hours which included opportunities for texting, using Skype, etc. preferring instead to use the old fashioned email for most of their communication.

 Panel members all said they would do online teaching again, but some said they much preferred face to face style teaching for their discipline. 

Missed the session?  View it on Tegrity.

April's Session

 In response to the growing academic interest in MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), the Chat Chow team brought in educators from the University of Wisconsin, Lacrosse to talk about their experiences creating a MOOC for that institution.   Mathematics professors Dr. Maggie McHugh and Dr. Robert Hoar, along with several others, developed a course designed to bring participants up to college level proficiency in math. 

The course grew out of a UWL program called the Fast Track that worked specifically with incoming freshmen who were not at college level in terms of math skills.  These students took a 6-week online math course before coming on campus and then were able to re-take the math placement test.  The course was so successful that the instruction team, with the help of a Gates grant, decided to take it to the MOOC level and offer it for free to the world at large. And indeed, participation was world-wide and the course attracted a wide variety of age and interest groups--not just college students. 


Because the MOOC is funded by a Gates grant, the developers needed to track a wide array of data about the project. McHugh and Hoar shared much of this with the group and then took questions.  They concluded with an offer to collaborate with math educators at SMU in the future. 

Missed the session?  View it here on Tegrity.  

From EDUCAUSE: What Campus Leaders Need to Know about MOOCs

From Inside Higher Education: The World is not Flat

March Session

The new Manager of Technology Support Services, Tianna Johnson, and Scott Cowdrey, CIO, were first on the bill. Cowdrey introduced Johnson to the group, and then they described several Technology Department initiatives including a new telephone system which will entail improvements to the network structure, a new version of Astra that will put both campuses in sync, and improvements to the help desk response time. 

The next presentation came from Dr. Lori Charron, from the Communication Department who described the new testing technology--Respondus.   Respondus works from within Blackboard to provide a locked down testing environment enabling students to take quizzes on their own time and not during valuable class time. 

Charron  and her department were looking for a way to ensure that their students did the reading assignments before they came to class.  Respondus provides them with a fairly reliable vehicle for quiz taking--once the  a test bank of quizzes is developed it goes into the Respondus browser.  When students log into the browser to take a quiz, they are unable to leave the site, print, get e-mail, get downloads, or copy anything.  They must stay in the browser until they complete the quiz.  While the software does not totally eliminate any means of cheating it is so far working very well for Charron and members of her department. 

The software is available to all faculty and staff at SMU.  Jason Spartz from the Instructional Technolgy Department can get you started.

Missed the session?  View it here on Tegrity.


 Respondus website

February 2013 Session

The Chat Chow & Web 2.0 series opened its second semester sessions with a program on the "flipped classroom" presented by Dr. Janelle Schultz and Dr. Kristen Selke from the Mathematics Department.  According to Educause, a flipped classroom is a "pedagogical model in which the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed" so that prerecorded lectures are viewed by the students before the class session and class time is devoted to projects, discussion, group work, etc. The goal here is to make face to face time more valuable.

Each presenter began using two sections.  Students watched lectures using Tegrity  and were required to come to class with their notes.  Lectures often ended with a question section, and instructors used the answers to decide what to do in class the next day.  During class time students worked problems, often in groups, with the instructors circulating to answer questions.

Schultz and Selke both were very enthusiastic about the flipping experiment.  Students were more engaged during class time--the student to teacher and student to student interaction greatly increased. The absentee rate went down and the instructors felt that they knew more about their students then before and could tell more effectively where they needed help.

Students also responded positively giving the experiment a 90% approval rating.  They said they got more out of the taped lectures since the pause and rewind features enabled them to take better notes, and they could repeat the whole lecture if they needed to.

Some of the challenges included just finding an empty room in which to make the recordings, lecturing to an empty room, keeping the recordings short enough to be manageable, and making sure students watched the lectures.

Over all, however, Schultz and Selke were extremely pleased with the results of their flipped classrooms and will certainly continue using the pedagogy.


Missed the session?  Watch it here on Tegrity.

See a video on getting started from EdTech