Goodbye and good riddance, 2020! And maybe, after the tragic events at the Capitol yesterday, today is an opportunity for us to reinvest in our ideals for 2021. What do we care most about? How can we focus at least some of our time and energy on manifesting those ideals in positive ways? And how can we make 2021 splendid for ourselves, our students, and our colleagues?

As you've likely noticed by now, Laulima was upgraded over winter break. While most features and functionality remain unchanged and your class sites should work as expected, there are some notable improvements that come with the upgrade.

Here’s an overview of What’s New at a Glance

Here’s a detailed document with screenshots: Laulima v19 Upgrade Features

UH OIC hosted a Laulima v19 Upgrade & Tips for Instruction webinar on Jan. 5, 10-11:30am. If you missed the webinar, the recording and a compiled list of Q&As will be available here.

Looking for fun, engaging ways to break the ice and make connections in your first Zoom classes of the new semester?

We’ve developed a custom resource to help you do exactly that!

These activities are more than just a fun way to start a class...they help everyone get to know each other, to understand our unique perspectives, connect over similarities and appreciate differences, build trust, increase involvement and engagement, and cultivate a community of learners that encourages active learning. This resource offers 30+ ideas for easy, engaging activities organized by the following categories:

1. Getting To Know You
2. Team Building
3. We Like To Move It, Move It
4. Game On

These activities will quickly break down barriers and prime your class for a participatory learning experience. Check out the whole list and get ready to kick off your synchronous class sessions with a bang!

The Kapi‘olani CC syllabus template has been updated to align with the new Kapi‘olani CC Brand Guide - get your copy of the syllabus template here! As a reminder, use of this template is not required - you are free to use and adapt this resource as little or as extensively as you like, but it’s ADA accessible as is, and you can embed it directly into your Laulima course site to make updating your syllabus a breeze (watch this quick 2-minute video tutorial to find out how)!

When teaching in an asynchronous environment, maintaining instructor presence is essential. There are a number of ways to do so including posting videos of your lectures, maintaining online office hours, and facilitating forum discussions just to name a few, but have you considered using your “voice” to connect with students?

Vocaroo makes it simple to create and share voice recordings. You can easily record and share your messages to individual students or to the class. You can link to your message or embed in any Laulima lesson page. Students can also access your recording through a QR code. Don’t forget to include a transcript to ensure accessibility.

Click below (or use the QR code above) to hear Kawehi's voice recording.

One of the most rewarding aspects of TOPP To Go! was our diverse community of practice - colleagues from various disciplines and campuses coming together to support each other and learn together. This resonated not only with us personally but throughout the feedback we received from participants. We want to continue to foster the opportunity for such exchanges. Thus, coming in Spring 2021 is UH FLOC!

What is UH FLOC?

The Faculty Learning (Online) Community will be a space for all of us to connect, communicate, and collaborate - to share questions, ideas, struggles and strategies about teaching and learning. It’s a place to find resources, tutorials, and current info about professional development opportunities. This will be a safe, brave space where we acknowledge we are all works in progress and where we all strive for continuous improvement through reflection and connection - a supportive space for all educators to learn from one another and move forward...together.

Critical Friends

One (optional) aspect of UH FLOC will be critical friend groups. The term critical friend may initially sound a bit...off-putting - who needs more criticism in their life?! But critical friends are crucial friends - they’re critical to our growth and development and they provide vital support, encouragement, feedback and helpful insights! We had requests for Distance Education mentorship opportunities, but what we found was that everyone was requesting a mentor and far fewer faculty were indicating they are experts in online or hybrid teaching and learning. Our philosophy - and what we’ve experienced in TOPP To Go! - is that reflective practitioners have valuable insights to offer. You don’t have to know everything before you can step up and offer something to your fellow colleagues. Just share what you know about one subject or even what’s not working for you. Critical friends can afford a more reciprocal opportunity to grow as professionals.

Join the FLOC!

Regardless of whether you’d like to participate in the critical friend flocks, we hope you’ll join the UH FLOC community and invite your UH colleagues to join us as well. We will launch in early Spring semester, but the site will continue to expand and evolve with the needs of our community. Pupukahi i holomua...Unite to move forward!

Sign up to be added to the UH FLOC site and/or a critical friend flock here!

Got questions or interested in joining the FLOC? Contact Jamie Sickel (jsickel@hawaii.edu), Nadine Wolff (nwolff@hawaii.edu), and/or Youxin Zhang (youxin@hawaii.edu)

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 whet your appetite:

Upcoming live webinars:

• Online Classroom Management: Course Design Strategies To Minimize Problems & Promote Learning (Friday 1/22, 8:00 - 9:00 am HST)

• 20 Emerging Best Practices For Remote Teaching & Learning (Tuesday 1/26, 8:00 - 9:30 am HST)

• COVID-19 Stopout Recovery Plan: 8 Evidence-Based Strategies For Keeping Students (Wednesday 1/27, 8:00 - 9:30 am HST)

• Improving Online Student Success Rates: Using A Holistic Approach To Assess Course Quality (Tuesday 2/9, 8:00 - 9:30 am HST)

Recently-added on demand webinars:

• Active Learning in the Online Classroom: Strategies & Teaching Techniques to Foster Student Engagement

• 20 Innovative Strategies & Activities to Engage Students In Synchronous & Asynchronous Remote Learning

• 5 Strategies for Managing Instructional Workload in the Online Classroom
  

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

Are you managing multiple Laulima sites for your multiple sections of the same course? Sending the same announcement multiple times or copying the lessons page as you are developing them each week?

As you get ready for Spring, consider grouping/merging your multiple sections into one Laulima site! Here’s how:

1. Before importing content into your Spring sites, ask ITS to group your sites: click “Request Site” at the bottom of any Laulima page or go to https://www.hawaii.edu/itunesu/laulima/ and specify which sites need to be merged. (If you’ve already imported into your Spring sites, you can still ask ITS to merge sites. Just let them know which one will be your MASTER -- the site whose content will be kept in the grouped site. Beware that content in non-master sites will be wiped out.)

2. Your new site will probably be named “Group…” but it will include student groups for each section. Assignments, Email, and Forums can be published for different section(s) as needed. Even most of the lessons page items can be made available to a specific section. Gradebook can be viewed for the entire site or by selecting a section at a time.

For more information, contact ITS at help@hawaii.edu or your friendly Instructional Designer.

Have you heard of the UH Zoom Recording Service? You can now record your Zoom meetings on a UH server, and the ITS Zoom Team will send you a link to the recording along with an audio transcript and closed captioning so you can share those with your students. You will not have to worry about downloading an MP4, uploading to Youtube, generating closed captions, and all that! We encourage you to read about the service and request an account today.

Name: Trixy ʻIwalani Koide

Department: LLL, Hawaiian Language

What courses do you teach online? Elementary and Intermediate Hawaiian 101-202

How long have you been teaching online and what made you decide to teach online? Nearly 20 years ago, I began teaching a distance learning Hawaiian course on ʻŌlelo TV. Hawaiian 101 was the first Hawaiian language distance learning class offered by the University of Hawaiʻi system. Kapiʻolani Community College also offered a few courses via live community television.

At the start of my career as a Hawaiian Language Kumu at Kapiʻolani, I began teaching both face-to-face and distance learning courses. With an amazing team of experts we created original curriculum and video lessons to broadcast on ʻŌlelo TV, now known as ʻŌlelo Community Media. This was the start of teaching online.

What is your favorite part about online teaching? My favorite part of online teaching and learning is the collaboration with experts in their respective fields. I am constantly working with fellow Kumu, community members, instructional designers, webmasters, videographers, audio experts, administrators, and more. As the content expert and instructional designer, I organize and manage each member to create a polished professional product. I enjoy the challenge of creating all materials using multimedia tools to be delivered online. Another favorite of mine is keeping current with the changing modes of online delivery.

What are your biggest challenges during COVID-19 remote/online teaching and how are you overcoming them? Facing the challenges of COVID-19 as a whole put all things into perspective. We all managed to prioritize and discover our core values of living. COVID-19 helped all of us work together and share our talents. I was able to share my strengths with colleagues, but also request support for things that were challenging and out of my expertise. I have learned flexibility and acceptance of what is. During these times, my above average expectations of myself and my students have lessened to accepting what is. And if we put our best efforts and intentions forth then the best of outcomes presents itself.

What surprised you about teaching online? The bridge and reach to a larger community came to my surprise with online teaching of my class. At first, Kumu are focused on the student class list and those registered in the class who come to a physical classroom. Then online delivery opened the classroom to a broader community of learners who were as far as the internet could go. Now, that changed my methods of teaching to include and incorporate the environment and cultures of these students. I quickly adjusted to be all inclusive and applicable to each student. For example, one of my haʻawina or assignments includes going beach and writing about the activities at the beach including vocabulary terms at the beach. Well, I had an online student who told me I have no beach to go to, but can I write about my work on my farm (she looked up all the vocabulary words herself). So today, my haʻawina are more open-ended and applicable to the student's environment.

What is your favorite web tool/technology? Technology changes so rapidly and the reliability is unpredictable, so as for favorite tools, any tool that doesn’t change or disappear on me during a class. Today, Padlet* works well as a digital repository to house and showcase student’s personal recordings. Students are able to post text, audio, video, presentations and more using Hawaiian Language in their daily lives. Padlet also allows for all other students in the class to view and listen to each student’s post similar to what would occur in a physical classroom.

BUT, my favorite favorite thing of all teaching online is the perpetuation of our native language in Hawaiʻi to all who want to learn. I only wish our lāhui (community) as a whole could have access to learning ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi and bridge all Kumu and Haumāna together.

E ola mau ka ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi

*note: If you are interested in a Padlet account, contact one of our amazing Instructional Designers. They can add you to our institutional Padlet account, which will give you premium access to the tool. Yoyo: youxin@hawaii.edu, Jamie: jsickel@hawaii.edu, Helen: htorigoe@hawaii.edu.

Are you looking for all your institutional data in one place? Check out the Office for Institutional Effectiveness (OFIE) campus page. We’ve just added the 2020 research reports, but you can explore research all the way back to 2015.

Go on your own information adventure at the OFIE webpage.

• Recommended Digital Bookmarking Tool: Raindrop.io, Teaching in Higher Ed (blog post)

Raindrop.io is a new bookmarking app/extension with a useful and helpful user interface. It also excels at facilitating collaborative bookmarking.

• Video: Recommended Zoom Settings, by Teddy Svornos (video)

This video recommends Zoom settings that work well for synchronous classroom teaching.

• The Happiness Lab (audio podcast)

This podcast focuses on how what we think will make us happy isn't always what actually makes us happy. It explores the science of various aspects of happiness. Don't we all want to be happier in 2021? The latest episode (17) focuses on getting rid of your inner drill sergeant and finding more productive (according to science) ways to improve ourselves.

• 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

• DE Newsletter - March 2020

• DE Newsletter - February 2020

• DE Newsletter - January 2020