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