Distance Education Newsletter

Spring is a time of emergence and growth, and while it's not quite time to unmask and sing together, it is time to think about what the future will hold for us and prepare. One great way to get ready for our sunny future is to learn a little something and grow our skills. Take a look at this month's newsletter--it's full of rich professional development opportunities, helpful tech tools and tips, illuminating data, and elucidating articles, podcasts, and websites that can water our roots and give us what we need to blossom.

As we mark five years since the launch of the Teaching Online Prep Program (TOPP) at Kapi‘olani CC, it’s time to roll out a revamped and redesigned TOPP to meet the growing online learning trends and evolving campus needs, especially post-pandemic. This summer, three new modules of TOPP will be offered to help prepare faculty to increase their technology skills, create a learning plan, and develop an online/hybrid class using the latest learning technologies.

All participants will receive a digital badge and Kapi‘olani CC participants will receive a $200 stipend for each completed module.

🖥 Pre-TOPP: TECH BASICS

May 17-21, 2020 (1 Week) | Online Synchronous

Recommended for anyone ready to build basic skills in Zoom, Google Suite, Laulima, and basic ADA.

🗺 Pre-TOPP: COURSE PLANNING FOR ACTIVE LEARNING

May 24-June 4, 2021 (2 Weeks) | Online Asynchronous

Create a detailed plan for active learning that aligns with the course learning outcomes. This module will prepare you for the next step of creating an online/hybrid class in TOPP: Building an Online Classroom.

🛠 TOPP: BUILDING AN ONLINE CLASSROOM

June 7-July 2, 2021 (4 Weeks) | Online Mostly Asynchronous

Build an online/hybrid classroom in Laulima with guidance from the facilitators and a small group of peers. Must have completed Pre-TOPP: Course Planning for Active Learning and/or completed a Course Map. Priority will be given to those who applied to both Pre-TOPP: Course Planning for Active Learning and this module.

📆 APPLICATION Deadline: Monday, April 12, 2021

NOTES:

❶ Eligibility for the stipends: Any 9-month Kapi‘olani faculty/lecturer, NOT teaching during Summer Session I.

❷ Total stipend amount for each person may not exceed $600.

❸ Each module has a limited number of seats. Although the program is open to faculty from any UH campus, priority will be given to Kapi‘olani CC faculty. Applicants will be notified of their status by April 26th.

For more details, see the TOPP Information Sheet. Email: kaptopp@hawaii.edu if you have questions.

At lunchtime (12:00 - 1:00 pm) every Friday this semester (except holidays/non-instructional days), please join your Kapi‘olani CC colleagues for a fun lunch-hour chat and tour of online classes. Each Friday, two teachers will give us a tour of one of their classes and share with us their sweetest ideas. These informal Zoom sessions will include time for Q&A and conversation. Watch the bulletin for information about specific tour guides and disciplines, but save these dates!

Fridays, 12:00 - 1:00 pm

• February 5, 12, 19, & 26
• March 12
• April 9, 16, 23, & 30

Zoom link: https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/96315187922

Meeting ID: 963 1518 7922
Passcode: sweet!

Contact Leigh Dooley (ldooley@hawaii.edu) for more information.

Currently, Kapi‘olani CC has a subscription with Go2Knowledge, which offers Kap‘olani CC faculty and staff free access to dozens of Innovative Educators webinars, both live and on demand (pre-recorded). Many of them are quite good! Here's a sampling to pique your interest:

Upcoming live webinars:

• The Butterfly Effect: Reimagining Online Student Engagement (Wednesday 4/7, 7:00 - 8:00 am HST)

• Alternative Online Assessment Practices: Empowering Students, Ensuring Equality & Maintaining Rigor (Tuesday 4/13, 7:00 - 8:30 am HST)

• How One School Increased Graduation Rates by 20% Using High-impact Practices (Thursday 4/15, 9:00 - 10:00 am HST)
  

Recently-added on demand webinars:

• Developing Multiple Choice Tests that Assess Higher Order Thinking Skills (60 min)

• Preparing for Flexible Course Delivery: Teaching Online or On Campus (60 min)

• Reduce Cheating in the Online Classroom: Shifting from Punishment to Prevention (60 min)

• 20 Emerging Best Practices for Remote Teaching & Learning (90 min)

And many, many more. Sign up at Kapi‘olani CC's G2K account page and browse through the offerings.

Looking for an easy and functional engagement tool? Consider checking out Flippity.net. Flippity turns Google Sheets into really cool online tools. It’s free and so easy to use. Students do not have to sign in/log in to “play” or use the tools. To set up, each tool includes a demo, instructions, and template. Awesome tools for synchronous learning include Quiz Show (Jeopardy-like), Scavenger Hunt and a Random Name Picker. Amazing tools for asynchronous learning include Flashcards, Timeline, Leaderboard, Manipulatives, and Certificate Quiz. You can even program some of the tools to email you individual student results.

Grackle Docs is a Google Doc add-on that provides accessibility checks (e.g., heading, image, table, etc.) to help fix accessibility issues. All Google@UH accounts are automatically subscribed once signed in properly, allowing access to full features at no cost (licensed by the UH system).

Here is a video tutorial (5:43) showcasing how to install Grackle Docs and launch it in Google Docs.

The UH system data wizards have given us a way to see what courses have been converted from online to face-to-face due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In spring 2021, 346 out of 798 Kapiʻolani CC courses were part of this group.That’s 43% of our offerings.

See which subjects had the most conversions below. Any surprises?

Storyset allows you to search, customize, and download free graphics for your course materials and Laulima site with no need for commercial editing software or skills. Choose from image sets with the same style or customize to fit your desired color scheme to bring visual consistency to your presentation or class site. You can even animate the images and download them as GIFs if you like - all within your browser! All images are free to use with attribution.

Here's a quick little video tour to show you around:

Looking for an interesting and more interactive way to deliver content visually? Or give visual instructions for an assignment or a project? Check out another Web 2.0 tool called Thinglink. You can augment an image or a diagram with text, video, audio, images, or web links. Here’s an example - click on the image to open up Thinglink with active links:

Each of the icons is a “hotspot” that reveals additional text, video, image, or a webpage when clicked. The interactive image can also be embedded into Laulima by extracting the Thinglink’s URL from the embed code then selecting “Embed content on page” on a Laulima lessons page.

Please let us know how you plan to use this cool tool in your classes! :)

• The Pandemic May Have Permanently Altered Campuses. Here’s How. (Article, The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Even the physical spaces on our campuses may change as the pandemic has accelerated trends. Flipped class approaches, group offices, and distributed shared spaces for students are some of the predicted alterations.

• How to Play in the College Classroom in a Pandemic, and Why You Should (Article, The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Play is an integral part of learning, and thus would be a useful tool for faculty members to employ in their classrooms at any time. But in the present moment, when so much about life feels uncertain and deadly serious, play may have special benefits.

• OneHE Community Building Activities (Website)

A repository of OER community building activities that can be easily adapted to your classes.

• How to bring art and science into online teaching (Podcast, Teaching in Higher Ed, Episode 353)

So many of the questions being debated right now in higher education involve dichotomous choices (e.g. synchronous vs. asynchronous, technology vs. social) but the choices can coexist to create the best online learning experiences.

• Alternative Assessments in Digital Learning in Higher Education (WCET Webinar recording)

This webinar explores the practice of using institutional portfolios to assess Gen Ed outcomes and the power and efficacy of peer review opportunities (in all disciplines).

• Why I Love Teaching on Zoom (Article, Forbes)

One professor, while acknowledging the drawbacks of Zoom teaching, sees real positives, including the way that Zoom minimizes classroom hierarchies. He shares an intriguing strategy: assigning students to co-teach with him.

• DE Newsletter - March 2021

• DE Newsletter - February 2021

• DE Newsletter - January 2021

• DE Newsletter - December 2020

• DE Newsletter - November 2020

• DE Newsletter - October 2020

• DE Newsletter - September 2020

• DE Newsletter - August 2020

• DE Newsletter - July 2020

• DE Newsletter - June 2020

• DE Newsletter - May 2020

• DE Newsletter - April 2020