Five Easy Technologies to Enhance Your Courses Dr. Mark Morton Centre for Teaching Excellence University of Waterloo [email protected] .

Five Easy Technologies to Enhance Your Courses

Dr. Mark Morton

Centre for Teaching Excellence

University of Waterloo

[email protected]

www.markmorton.ca

Learning Outcomes for this Workshop

After this workshop you will be able….

to explain the basic functionality of each of these tools

to identify which technologies are most relevant to your teaching practice

to describe how you might use a given technology to enhance your students’ learning experience

to locate additional resources for those technologies that you want to learn more about.

What this workshop won’t do

Get into the specifics of how to use these tools (e.g. how to set up a clicker receiver, how to adjust audio in Camtasia, etc., how to install CmapTools, etc.)

CTE has other resources to learn those details

What you’ll be doing in this workshop

Listening (to learn about the functionality of the tools) Thinking (about how those tools can be used effectively) Sharing (your ideas)

A Warm-Up Exercise

Question Facilitation Tools: Google Moderator

What does it do? (Mark’s verbal description – participants should take notes here!)

Question Facilitation Tools: Google Moderator

Question Facilitation Tools: Google Moderator

Question Facilitation Tools: Google Moderator

How can Google Moderator enhance your students’ learning experience?

Encourages “shy” students to ask questions in class

You can see which questions are of most interest to the greatest number of students

You can “vet” the questions before responding to them

You have a record of students question which, if you want, you can respond to outside of class time (e.g. in the Learning Management System)

Classroom Engagement Tools: Clickers

What does it do? What does it do? (Mark’s verbal description – participants should take notes here!)

Classroom Engagement Tools: Clickers

Classroom Engagement Tools: Clickers

How can Clickers enhance your students’ learning experience?

Clickers can make your class time more engaging: sustains student interest

Leverages Peer Instruction The best way to learn something is to teach someone else

Overcomes “expertise bias”

Use clickers to get a sense of whether students are “getting it”

Use them to ensure that students come to class fully prepared.

Social Bookmarking Tools: Diigo

What does it do? (Mark’s verbal description – participants should take notes here!)

Social Bookmarking Tools: Diigo

Social Bookmarking Tools: Diigo

Social Bookmarking Tools: Diigo

Social Bookmarking Tools: Diigo

Social Bookmarking Tools: Diigo

Social Bookmarking Tools: Diigo

How can you use Diigo to enhance your students’ learning experience?

Create a Diigo group for your students at the beginning of a term, and have them collaborate over the term on populating it with annotated resources

Students can individually use Diigo to help organize and track web resources

Diigo can support Learning Communities

Screencasting Tools: Camtasia

What does it do? (Mark’s verbal description – participants should take notes here!)

Screencasting Tools: Camtasia

Screencasting Tools: Camtasia

How can Camtasia (Screencasting) enhance your students’ learning experience?

Create screencasts with remedial content for students who lack prerequisite knowledge

Use screencasts to “flip” your classroom: deliver content via screencasts outside of class, so that in-class time can be reserved for active learning and peer instruction activities

Students can view screencasts as many times as they need to

Screencasts are beneficial for students whose first language isn’t the language of instruction (repeated viewings and captioning)

Concept Mapping Tools: CmapTools

What does it do? (Mark’s verbal description – participants should take notes here!)

Concept Mapping Tools: CmapTools

Concept Mapping Tools: CmapTools

Concept Mapping Tools: CmapTools

Concept Mapping Tools: CmapTools

Concept Mapping Tools: CmapTools

How could you have your students use concept mapping in your course?

For a given lecture or unit, give them a list of terms, and have them create a concept map from them.

For a given lecture or unit, give them an unfinished concept map (lines and nodes with no labels) and have them determine what labels to add

For a given lecture or unit, have them collaborate on creating a concept map

Have them create a concept map over the course of a whole term that charts their growing knowledge of the discipline

Give them an “incorrect” concept map, and have them identify the errors.

Resources Google Moderator

CTE Teaching Tip on Google Moderator

Resources and tutorials from Google

Piazza Resources and tutorials from Piazza

A YouTube video on Piazza

Clickers CTE Teaching Tip on Clickers

CTE Teaching Tip on Peer Instruction

Top Hat A YouTube video on Top Hat

Resources and tutorials from Top Hat

Diigo A CTE Teaching Tip on Diigo

A YouTube video on Diigo

Camtasia CTE Teaching Tip on Camtasia

CTE Teaching Tip on Screencasting

CmapTools CTE Teaching Tip on Concept Mapping

Tools

A YouTube video on CmapTools

Five Easy Technologies to Enhance Your Courses

Dr. Mark Morton

Centre for Teaching Excellence

University of Waterloo

[email protected]

www.markmorton.ca

Question Facilitation Tools: Piazza

What does it do? (Mark’s verbal description – participants should take notes here!)

Question Facilitation Tools: Piazza

Question Facilitation Tools: Piazza

How can Piazza enhance your students learning experience?

It empowers students: they collaborate on developing answers to their own questions

It leverages peer instruction: The best way to learn something is to teach someone else

Overcomes “expertise bias”

Students get just-in-time responses to their questions, usually within a few minutes.

Question Facilitation Tools: Top Hat

What does it do? (Mark’s verbal description – participants should take notes here!)

Question Facilitation Tools: Top Hat

Question Facilitation Tools: Top Hat

What are the relative merits of Top Hat versus Clickers?

Clickers have one purpose: to collect responses (they don’t have other “distractions” built into them)

Clickers are cheap (not all students can afford a mobile device, which is needed to use Piazza)

Students never forget their smartphones but they might forget to bring their clickers

Top Hat allows you to ask a wider variety of questions

Top Hat seems more “hip” than clickers

With Top Hat, each student can interact with simulations and animations

Top Hat facilitates students asking their own questions