P🐾ws for TLC

October 2023

Need a Little TLC?

We will be sending out several newsletters each year. The hope is to pass along some pertinent information that will facilitate your teaching and student learning. Please reach out if you have any questions, needs, or ideas for future trainings.

TLC

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Education Technology

Please stop by or reach out if you have any questions, needs, or just want to say hi.

Rob Lucas - Education Technology Specialist

H1036

3367

Alicia Farris - Education Technology Coordinator

H1035

3276

October is time to recognize and celebrate

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National Learning and Development Month, held each October, encourages us to keep learning throughout your life. Gaining knowledge doesn't have an expiration date.

October is College Changes Everything Month® In Illinois.

Trainings in the TLC

TLC Registration

Event Information

Making Accessible Documents

When?

Friday, Nov 3, 2023, 12:00 PM

Where?

TLC

TLC Registration

SmartEvals

We are deep into the semester, which means course evaluations are approaching. Shawnee Community College uses SmartEvals (smartevals.com) for its course evaluations.

The evaluation period takes place during the last two weeks of your course. Once this period begins, your students will start to receive emails from SmartEvals reminding them to complete their evaluations. Each email contains links to complete their evaluations, which can also be accessed through Moodle.

The more students that complete your evaluations, the more information you will have to determine what areas of your course are working and which areas need further development. SmartEvals offers many tools to maximize your response rates, but here are a couple of suggestions.

You have the option to send additional personalized emails to your students. Before the evaluation period begins login to SmartEvals and create customized emails. Messages coming from you can go a long way to encourage students to complete the evaluations.

In addition, you can add some of your own questions to the standard questions. Those additional questions are just for you and can be used to gather feedback on elements of your courses that you are particularly interested in.

QR codes are a great way to improve response rates in your face-to-face classes. Just log in to SmartEvals and go to a class that is being evaluated and get a printable QR code. Bring this handout to class and give it to your students to scan or share it with your online students.

Once the semester is over, your course evaluations will be made available to you. At that time, you will be able to review your students’ responses and comments. You can compare your results with those of other instructors and with your own historical results.

SmartEvals has created a demonstration page where you can review some of the steps to have a successful evaluation experience. Visit https://demo.smartevals.com/training/instructors.aspx for more information. There is more information and tips in your “MyEvalCenter” pages within SmartEvals. You can access your past results, customize your student emails, review and download your reports, and add questions.

VR in the classroom

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History in a headset

On October 12th History faculty Mike McNally and the Ed Tech department visited Fort Massac. They recorded 360 video of areas visited by Lewis and Clark during their 1803 expedition. The video will be edited and blended with audio descriptions into a VR experience for Mike's class. We hope to create additional VR experiences to enhance curriculum throughout SCC course offerings. Please contact the Ed Tech staff if you would like to create a 360 experience for your course.

SCC Faculty Knowledge Base

SCC Faculty Knowledge BaseVirtual Reality

shawccfaculty.screenstepslive.com

Tech Treats or Tips

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Google Calendar

Here are some tips to help you easily navigate and get more out of your Google Calendar.

New event: If you are already signed into your Google account you can quickly create a new event by type cal.new in the URL bar.

Type the time: Rather than typing Training in the TLC and adding the time; type Training in the TLC @ (or at) 3 and Google calendar will automatically set the correct time once the event is saved.

Search the calendar: click on the search icon to bring up the search bar. In the search bar type in what you are looking for within the calendar. The results will be in agenda format.

Move an event: If a calendar event was rescheduled for a different day or time, drag the calendar event to the new time or date.

Calendar shortcuts: Using these shortcuts you can adjust the view of your calendar.