June 29

Study Skills Courses for Students

Future Learn, an open digital education platform offering free online courses from universities around the world, has a collection of courses on improving student study skills.

The topics range from improving students’ writing skills, English as a second language, online learning, to career prep and advice.

This can be a really neat collection to recommend to your students this summer – majority of courses do not require more than 1-2 hours a week but hold valuable information and resources.

list of seevral study skills courses like prepare for college and studying online

 

 

Category: Open Educational Resources | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 18

Recorded SIG Webinars

The Minnesota Online Quality Initiative team has updated their list of video resources from the past webinars hosted by the Special Interest Group.

You will find the recording link along with the presenter and webinar description. This is a great opportunity in case you have missed a live webinar but are still interested in the topic. Here are some of the archived recordings:

  • Self-Assessment of Discussions
  • Ten Steps Closer to an Accessible Course
  • Time-Saving Tips for Stressed Out Instructors
  • Just-in-Time Teaching

Just click on the link provided above and choose the title of your interest. Majority of the recordings are about 45 minutes long.

Don’t forget, there is also a Google drive folder with various resources (in Word, PDF, or PPT).

Finally, you can always register for the upcoming webinars here.

Image credit: minnesota.qualitymatters.org

SIG Learning Spaces and Instructional Technology

Category: Accessibility in Online Learning, Online and Distance Education, Open Educational Resources | LEAVE A COMMENT
September 22

D2L Brightspace eLearning Webinars

Mark your calendars! Every Tuesday, starting next week, D2L Brighspace experts and users will share their stories on various topics, ranging from accessibility, to gamifying your course, to Quality Matters.

Below is the list of upcoming webinars (click here to register):

  • Sep 27, 3:00 PM ET : York Technical College and Accessibility: The How and the Why of It
  • Oct 4, 3:00 PM ET : Jazzing Up Online Assessments
  • Oct 11, 3:00 PM ET : Maximizing Brightspace Tools to Create a Gamified Online Learning Environment
  • Oct 18, 3:00 PM ET : What’s Your Story(line)? Developing Engaging Learning Experiences by Extending the Content Tool
  • Oct 25, 1:00 PM ET : Setting The Tone In A Brightspace Course With QM Standard One

 

However, you can always explore past webinars as well, since there is pool of recorded webinars on D2L Brighspace Resources page.
d2l-resource-library
Category: Accessibility in Online Learning, D2L Tip of the Month, Open Educational Resources, Quality Matters | LEAVE A COMMENT
August 29

Smarthinking: Online Tutoring Service Renewed for Another Year at SCSU

Minnesota State System provides all the affiliated institutions with an online tutoring service called Smarthinking. It is readily available to all of our SCSU students and each student gets 15 hours free per semester. Once students log in to their D2L Brightspace home page, they can access Smarthinking in two ways. One, it is directly under Resources tab on the home page. The other way is to click on View and select a resource under Tutoring Services window, which lists all the on campus and online tutoring offerings.

To learn more about Smarthinking in general, click here.

Smarthinking on D2L

Category: D2L Tip of the Month, Online and Distance Education, Smarthinking | LEAVE A COMMENT
August 2

Managing Online Learning: Free Online Courses

IMG_2802FutureLearn and The Open University with partnerships from universities across continents offer a selection of free online courses (with possibilities of gaining certificates too). Here are the five courses listed that can help you understand online learning better – you can recommend it to your students or take a look yourself if interested. Click on each link below to learn more/enroll in the course.

Get Started with Online Learning: This free online course will explain how you can study online without putting the rest of your life on hold.

Learning Online: Learning and Collaborating:Become an effective online learner and develop your online communication skills when working with others.

Learning Online: Managing Your Identity: Reflect on how you want to present yourself online and take positive steps towards these goals.

Learning Online: Reflecting and Sharing: Get the most out of online learning by reflecting and sharing your learning with others.

Learning Online: Searching and Researching: Improve your online research skills and your ability to critically analyze sources of information.

Category: How Does It Work?, Online and Distance Education, Open Educational Resources | LEAVE A COMMENT
June 8

ATT Summer Workshops: Updated Schedule

Summer Sessions Online Teaching Support

The Academic Technologies Team continues their series of workshops on How to get your course ready for online. Based on the attendance and input of attendees we have decided to exclude 2:30 pm sessions and to hold longer workshops that will focus on specific topics of faculty interest. Here is the full schedule with new time, room, and session details:

Date Session Description Time Place
Wednesday, June 8 Building Rubrics and Giving Feedback 11 am – 12 pm CH 455
Thursday, June 9 Essential D2L Plus Q & A Session 11 am – 12 pm CH 455
Wednesday, June 15 Intelligent Agents and Release Conditions 11 am – 12 pm CH 455
Thursday, June 16 Essential D2L Plus Q & A Session 11 am – 12 pm CH 455
Wednesday, June 22 Mediaspace Kaltura CaptureSpace Lite 11:30 am – 1 pm MC 206
Thursday, June 23 Essential D2L Plus Q & A Session 11:30 am – 12:30 pm MC 206
Wednesday, June 29 Quality Course Design 11:30 am – 1 pm MC 206
Thursday, June 30 Essential D2L Plus Q & A Session 11:30 am – 12:30 pm MC 206

We always hold an open door policy so should you need anything regarding online teaching pedagogy, D2L tools, best practices, Quality Matters™, or anything related to online course design and digital media we are available in our office, Miller Center 118.

For any further questions email att@stcloudstate.edu or call 320-308-2302.

Also, you can click below to view some of the topics we will cover:

Your Academic Technologies Team

 

Category: Course Design, Online and Distance Education, Online Teaching Pedagogy, Open Educational Resources, Professional Development | LEAVE A COMMENT
April 26

Brightspace Minnesota Connection Follow-up

Photo credit: www.brightspace.com

Photo credit: www.brightspace.com

As promised, we are giving the highlights from the Brightspace Minnesota Connection conference two weeks ago.  You can find the links to presentations, photos, and videos from various breakout sessions here. Topics varied from D2L Brightspace tools and pedagogical applications, to flipped classrooms, widgets, accessibility, and many more! Enjoy!

Category: Accessibility in Online Learning, Course Design, D2L Tip of the Month, Future Trends, How Does It Work?, Online Teaching Pedagogy, Open Educational Resources, Professional Development | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 2

SCSU represented at the QM 7th Annual Conference

QM logoRoseann Wolak,  a member of our Academic Technologies Team, is presenting today in San Antonio, TX on the implementation and transition from a face-to-face to fully online program in Nursing, at St. Cloud State University.

SCSU Online and our team has been helping the Nursing department on a weekly basis to introduce online courses that meet the quality standards set by the QM Rubric. Roseann is representing St. Cloud State University at a major conference, describing the steps and challenges of this transition. Her presentation “From the Ground Up: RN to BSN Completion” can be found here.

In last week’s post,  I have announced that the presentation materials from the Quality Matters 7th Annual conference are available. Now, take a look at Roseann’s as she is presenting today.

We hope to help many more departments at our university with quality assurance and online courses/programs transitions.

cropped-cropped-SCSU_logotype_primary-1c5npdt-e1438886420887.png

Category: Course Design, Online and Distance Education, Quality Matters | 1 Comment on SCSU represented at the QM 7th Annual Conference
September 1

Academic Support Services at SCSU introduce online tutoring service Smarthinking

Attention instructors!

Please refer your students to their D2L/Brightspace home page that will show the academic support services for them or Tutoring Services/Options.

This leads our students to the listing of all SCSU on-campus tutoring services and Smarthinking.

Smarthinking is a 24/7 online and on-demand tutoring service, available at no charge to all enrolled students (each student is assigned 15 hours per semester by default).  They can use Smarthinking to schedule live tutoring appointments, participate in drop-in live sessions, ask questions, or submit writing assignments for feedback.

Students are able to access the Smarthinking website via a link on their D2L/Brightspace main page.

Finally, just below this new resource, remind them that there is a list of free self-registration offerings as well as student help documents and student overview videos for navigating D2L.

D2L help and tutring screenshot

 

Category: D2L Tip of the Month, Future Trends, How Does It Work?, Online and Distance Education, Online Collaborative Learning, Online Teaching Pedagogy, Open Educational Resources, Smarthinking | LEAVE A COMMENT