How digital tools are enhancing campus wayfinding

Written by

Every day, wayfinding tools for higher education are becoming more high-tech. The best campus wayfinding tools accomplish two primary goals: Helping the user orient themselves with their surroundings, and helping them get from one location to their desired location.

There are many wayfinding tools that effectively provide one of these two needs. A bird’s-eye map, for example, can be great for orientation, but challenging for a user to know the optimal route to their end point.

Related content: Real-time info makes campus maps more high-tech than ever

The biggest advantage of digital wayfinding tools is their ability to adapt to changes on campus, quickly or even in real-time. The prevalence of digital signage, maps, and point-to-point wayfinding means higher education professionals can rapidly support their stakeholders with up-to-date information.

tags

10 tips for student-generated flipped classroom lectures

Written by

Since September 2014, I have produced numerous flipped classroom lectures for accounting and financial spreadsheet courses in my flipped classroom. Five semesters later – during the spring semester in 2017 – it was time for a change.

Instead of me, my students generated their own flipped classroom lectures for the financial spreadsheet courses. Students producing their videos required a new set of thinking for both the teacher and students. To this end, over 150 videos – generated by me and my students – were originally posted in a YouTube channel operated by Google. All of these videos are then downloaded to my university-wide course management system.

To maximize use of those videos and for assessment purposes, I incorporated a one-point assessment quiz for each video in the course management system. For each semester-long course, my students completed 100 online video quizzes both in and outside of the classroom. Examples of Microsoft Excel topics explained by my students included: auto-fitting, conditional formatting, headings, cell styles, borders, zooming, and date formats. Check out my YouTube channel at mekntid1983.

Related content: How to create accessible video content

Below are 10 tips that will help you, as online educators, develop guidelines for students producing their videos for the benefit of their classmates.

IT: Help is on its way

Develop a relationship with your college’s online learning, information systems, or engineering services department. Introduce yourself in person or in an email to a director of one of those departments. Attend their informational sessions. Become familiar with their websites, if any.

tags

Open webinars on delivering remote assessments

Written by

Gradescope for Remote Assessments are introducing Gradescope, to help you set up a course, build an assignment, grade work and provide feedback, and share tips on how to conduct assessments remotely.

To avoid shortcutting your students, provide assignments, exams, and quizzes, but how on earth will you do it in the context of remote learning? Gradescope can help.

Gradescope enables the following assessment workflows:

  • The ability to conduct fully online assessments, no paper required
  • The ability to support student-uploaded and paper-based assessments
  • The ability to deliver bubble-sheet (multiple choice) assessments

Gradescope supports you with the functionality you need to conduct assessments in online learning and bridge any data gaps from being remote. We are providing free access to Gradescope Complete for new courses created through June 30, 2020. We have also upgraded all existing 2020 courses.

More Information

Gradescope Website

 

tags

Free computer programming courses

Written by

DataCamp for the Classroom offers free access to data science and analytics educators across the globe to all DataCamp content. This includes a growing library of 325+ courses in Python, R, SQL, and other technologies.

To date, DataCamp has helped over 200,000 students and teachers from 180 countries build data skills. This delivers on its mission for democratizing data science and analytics education around the world.

For more information visit DataCamp for the Classroom

tags

How autonomous vehicles could transform the college experience

Written by

It’s no secret that parking seems to be a pain point among college students on several campuses across the United States.

According to the New York Times, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has one parking space to every five people, and approximately 65,000 students. The campus plans to add an additional 2,200 parking spaces over the next twenty to forty years, which seems like a long time for a campus and student body that is continuously growing. In fact, the application rate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison increased from 2017 to 2018 by 20 percent.

Related content: Tech enables real-time campus maps

Transportation and parking remain an ongoing issue among campuses everywhere. A college student at Florida Atlantic University recently highlighted her frustrations with campus parking. “I was rushing to class for a Monday morning lecture that began at 8 a.m. At 7:59, I was nowhere near the building for my course because I had to park so far away. I awkwardly walked in at 8:17 and interrupted the professor’s lecture. On top of that, I needed to arrive early to put finishing touches on a paper that was due at the beginning of class. If I had access to better, more reliable modes of transportation, I would take it.”

tags

Online Career Fair Keeps College Recruiting on Track 

Written by

Turazo, the platform that builds careers through virtual coaching, today announced that in response to the Covid-19 outbreak it has launched free virtual career fair programs leveraging Turazo’s 1-on-1 video coaching sessions as the foundation of a relevant recruiting approach.

“Campus recruiting has been turned upside down and students and companies are struggling to navigate what’s next. Turazo’s free Online Career Fairs can keep career and summer internship opportunities alive,” said Peter Cipollone, Turazo’s CEO. “When professionals provide guidance to eager students in Turazo’s 20-minute virtual coaching sessions students grow and companies can quickly evaluate talent with better results.”

The initial fair is hosted by The Women’s Network, an organization committed to empowering and inspiring women to act on their own ambitions and begins April 1st, 2020. Any professional working at a company intending to hire at least 20 entry-level and/or intern positions over the next 12 months is eligible to participate, even if no roles are currently open.

There are no fees for companies or students. More information about the initial Online Career Fair is available for coaches here.

 

 

tags

Online professional learning facilitated by Dell

Written by

Dell Technologies is providing support to those affected by school closures and the move to distance learning by facilitating online professional learning on Teaching and Learning Remotely, facilitated by Dell’s K-12 and Higher Education Strategy Teams.

These webinar sessions are designed to address top of mind issues that teachers, professors, education leaders, and IT professionals are facing. The webinar sessions are organized around the following themes:

  • Learning Remotely
  • Leading Remotely
  • Family and Community
  • CIO Chats

Please visit Teaching and Learning Remotely for more information and to register to attend.

tags

Higher-ed tech adoption is more stressful than you might realize

Written by

A survey of university professors released in mid-2019 reveals higher-ed tech adoption is one of their biggest sources of stress–a majority say they’ve experienced anxiety and both personal and professional tension.

The survey points to the alarming notion that college and university faculty aren’t ready for technologically savvy students who have never known a world without the internet or smartphones.

Related: The secret to edtech adoption? Make it easy

Male professors believe they are ahead of the curve when it comes to higher-ed tech adoption in the classroom, but they actually lag behind their female counterparts.

Overall, less than one-third of surveyed professors say they are prepared to equip Generation Z students for the modern-day workplace.

tags

Screen recording and asynchronous collaboration tools

Written by

TechSmith is helping organizations and academic institutions who are preparing for prolonged absences and/or campus closures due to COVID-19. TechSmith is offering free access and expanded usage of tools that help enable business and educational continuity.

Their screen recording tool, TechSmith Snagit, and their asynchronous collaboration platform, TechSmith Video Review, will be free to use through the end of June 2020 to any organization that needs it.

In addition, for existing customers using their digital learning platform, TechSmith Relay, or their online video collaboration environment, Video Review, they will support increased usage with no charge. Existing Relay customers will be provided an expanded site license with campus-wide access through the end of June 2020.

https://discover.techsmith.com/remote-techsmith/

tags

Test Grading Cloud available to all instructors for free

Written by

Remark Test Grading Cloud available to all instructors for free, including electronic bubble sheets for distributing and grading assessments.

In an effort to assist higher education instructors during the COVID-19 crisis with the transition from on-site to remote education, Gravic, Inc. is offering instructors a free 60-day subscription to its popular Remark Test Grading Cloud application.

Remark Test Grading Cloud is a hosted application for grading tests, quizzes and assessments. The application is typically used to create and print bubble sheets, which can be scanned and graded with any image scanner. As many educators are now working remotely, the application can still be used to assist with your grading tasks using our Electronic Bubble Sheet technology.

Using electronic bubble sheets, you can create a customized answer sheet that can include multiple choice questions, math grids, or open response items such as short answers or essays. Test forms can either be created as traditional answer sheets or the instructor can include question text and answer areas on the same form. Remark Test Grading Cloud can be used to email your students the test answer sheet as a fillable PDF file. Students can put their answers right in the PDF file, and then email the sheet back to the cloud for processing. Instructors will see the multiple-choice questions automatically graded, and can review and grade any open response items easily on screen.

Remark Test Grading Cloud includes powerful reports on student, class and item performance on the test, and is great for diagnostic and formative assessment tasks as well as for regular assessment.

Gravic is offering all instructors with a valid email address from an institution of higher education in the US or Canada the ability to use this tool for free through the end of May. Contact sales@gravic.com or call 1-800-858-0860 to get your free account. This offer is for individual instructors only. Schools looking for school accounts that would include connectors to Canvas, D2L and Blackboard should contact Gravic as above.

tags