anchor_menu

CIRT News is published 
four times a year by  the 
Center for Instruction 
and Research Technology 
at  the  University of North  Florida. 

To view past 
newsletters, 
current events,  and more, visit  

Visit CIRT online at:




anchor1
 Supporting a Flipped Instructional Model with Program-wide Clicker Adoption
Brooks College of Health, School of Nursing
William Ahrens, Kathaleen Bloom, Linda Connelly, Cindy Cummings

Although student handheld response systems, aka "clickers," are used at UNF in a variety of disciplines each semester, no one has committed to this teaching tool quite like the School of Nursing faculty. In a bold move that has paid off for both faculty and students, they are the first on campus to adopt clickers program-wide. Their faculty voted for this program-wide adoption in order to implement interactive lecture techniques, provide students and instructors with more timely feedback, facilitate discussion of difficult topics, and better manage routine classroom tasks.

 

"
A lot of us are flipping the classroom, so our classes are now filled with case studies, discussions and highlights of the most important portions of the material, rather than just lecture, and clickers are helping us do that more effectively," says Cindy Cummings, Associate Professor of Nursing at UNF.   

In today's world, the financial burden of course materials weighs heavily on college students across the nation, and a key benefit of program-wide adoption is cost. When nursing students purchase a clicker, they know that there will be a high return on their investment because they will use the device in numerous classes throughout their program. 
 
Upon admittance to a cohort, nursing students purchase a bundle of all of the materials they will need during nursing program - including a clicker. Nursing students use their clickers in their very first semester. It only takes a few classes for students to become adept at using the device and to get in the habit of always bringing it to lecture; there are often penalties for forgetting!

Both Cummings and Nursing Professor Kathaleen Bloom use clickers heavily in their undergraduate and graduate-level courses. As strong supporters of clickers in the classroom, they argue that regular use of clickers motivates students to be more prepared for class. Following flipped-classroom pedagogy, Bloom and Cummings require students to complete readings or other work prior to class so that they are able to engage in meaningful discussions and other content-related activities during class time, rather than simply passively listening to their professor lecture.

A lot of us are flipping the classroom, so our classes are now filled with case studies, discussions and highlights of the most important portions of the material, rather than just lecture, and clickers are helping us do that more effectively.

B loom's students know they will be quizzed with clickers at the beginning of class. She says that it serves as a good pre-test to ensure they are ready to engage in discussion and application of the lecture material for that day. Cummings echoes Bloom's sentiments, adding that they've noticed better test scores on major assessments when instructors administer frequent low-stakes clicker quizzes; even short and simple assessments make a difference. Clickers provide an easy and environmentally friendly mechanism for Bloom and Cummings to facilitate their quizzes, record attendance each semester, keep track of the scores, and upload directly to Blackboard's grade center.

The immediate feedback on clicker quizzes gives students either a boost in confidence or an indication that they should review that subject matter again. Bloom, Cummings, and Assistant Professor, Linda Connelly, say that the clicker quizzes help their students form better study habits, which leads to better performance in their courses.

Another benefit of program-wide adoption is student familiarity with the technology. This provides nursing faculty with the ability to explore innovative ways [MD1]  to use the devices in class since their students are already adept users of the device. Clickers are frequently used for iterative, yet necessary, tasks such as recording attendance or pop quizzes. In addition to these functions, nursing students are using clickers to complete other class activities, such as working through case studies, or Connelly's newest clicker endeavor - development of an in-class group activity in which students place a series of tasks on a timeline for a mock medical patient case. This activity has been facilitated with index cards in the past, but Connelly is now able take advantage of  clicker technology to complete this exercise digitally, which allows her to easily record and score results.

Senior Instructor Bill Ahrens uses clickers to facilitate critical class dialogue about sensitive issues that students tend to be uncomfortable discussing without the anonymity that clickers can provide. When presented with a delicate question, students do not always feel comfortable contributing or even raising their hand. Clicker opinion polls provide Ahrens' students the freedom to express their opinions on delicate subjects without fear of judgment by their peers, even when their view is in the minority. Ahrens says that this freedom allows him to challenge his students with the difficult or taboo topics that nursing professionals need to  be comfortable discussing.

Bloom, Cummings, Connelly, and Ahrens all stress the importance of clickers in the development of their student's decision-making skills - an integral part of nursing in the real world.
 
"In nursing, it's not just memorization. You look at your patient, and you have to make a decision, right or wrong, you have to decide what to do and you don't have hours to figure it out," says Connelly. "The use of clickers helps the students get used to making decisions and builds critical thinking skills. There is no going back once you've made your decision, and that's how it is in nursing."
 
Connelly sees applications for clicker integration in all areas of study.

"18- and 19-year-olds love technology. One of the best things about this technology is that it gives immediate feedback. Students know right away if they've "got this" or if they need to go back and review the material again. Whether it's English, Sociology, Biology, Religion, or Chemistry, all classes can benefit from that type of immediate feedback."
 
One of the best things about this technology is that it gives immediate feedback. Students know right away if they've "got this" or if they need to go back and review the material again. Whether it's English, Sociology, Biology, Religion, or Chemistry, all classes can benefit from that type of immediate feedback.

Ahrens knows that not all programs are structured like his. Nursing faculty have the benefit of knowing the course progression of their students' studies over the five-semester program. However, even without that established track, he would recommend clickers to other faculty members.
 
"I know there are people doing pop-quizzing and faculty teaching issues-related courses," he says. "Clickers would definitely supplement the experience for the professors and their students."
 
If you think that your program could benefit from the use of this teaching tool and are interested in learning more, please contact CIRT for further information by emailing  clickers@unf.edu. We can also facilitate a clicker demonstration for you or your department to help answer any questions. 
 

anchor2
 Director's Message: Open Educational Resources (OER)
Deb Miller, Director

Rising textbook prices are frequently reported as a challenge for higher education students. The adoption of open textbooks and other types of Open Educational Resources (OER) has long been touted as a solution, albeit one that has seen limited implementation.  These rising costs have also been framed as a social justice issue.   


A 2012 survey of higher education students in Florida (n=22,129) found that 64% of students sometimes do not purchase a required text because of its cost, and that 23% frequently do not purchase their texts because of cost. A concurrent study of Florida faculty and administrators (n=2593) found that while 75% of faculty and staff were familiar with open textbooks, less than 10% had used open textbooks in their courses. However, that trend may be changing. A recent story in the Chronicle reported that campus technology leaders are focusing efforts on encouraging faculty adoption of these materials. In addition to being lower cost, OER materials have the potential to improve student learning when they are used to provide practice opportunities and targeted feedback to students. 
 
There are several aspects to the use of online resources with low-cost, open, "free" access, and increasing textbook-affordability. Libraries are actively involved in this trend.  At UNF, the Thomas G. Carpenter Library is partnering with the Office of Faculty Enhancement and the Center for Instruction & Research Technology to develop mechanisms that support the adoption of these materials by faculty.

The goals of this collaboration are to:
  1. Increase awareness of the e-resources provided by the library and how those resources can be used. Many resources licensed by the library can be used by faculty in support of the curriculum. For instance, faculty can create links to articles in library databases using DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) to create custom coursepacks at no cost to students.
     
  2. Increase awareness of Open Educational Resources trends in publishing, and sources of these resources. For instance, Carnegie Mellon's  Open Learning Initiative provides open courseware on topics from Chemistry to Statistical Reasoning, including courseware specific to STEM Foundations and Readiness.   
     
  3. Work together to encourage and support faculty interested in creating and/or providing open access, free or low cost textbooks/course material, which may require course redesign/reorganization. Professional development opportunities and other support strategies for faculty are being developed, and we are interested in identifying early adopters at UNF who could share their experiences with other faculty. 
The first UNF workshop to support this effort will be held in late November and is described below. To learn more about the OER movement, I recommend visiting the Library's LibGuide for OER, the  OER Commons, or Florida's Open Access Textbook site. 

Using Library Resources & Services in Online and Blended Courses
Tuesday, November 24, 2015, 2 - 3 pm, Registration is required for this event.
Interested in exploring free options to replace your expensive textbook or simply augmenting your current text? This session presents the wealth of open educational resources (OER) at your fingertips through the online collections of the Thomas G. Carpenter Library. Linking and embedding library resources into Blackboard is a quick and easy way to make the most of your time while ensuring that you are following educational fair use guidelines. It's also possible to embed other open resources such as TED Talks with a little bit of code. It's so easy, you don't even need coding experience. 

anchor3
 Annual Giving - Please Consider CIRT
 
The University of North Florida's 26-in-26 Campaign is an annual fundraising  initiative that allows  employees of UNF the opportunity to make a gift to an area on campus that is close to their heart. 

If you are planning an annual gift this year, please consider CIRT. The CIRT Foundation account enables our dedicated staff to enhance faculty development efforts. The funds support several important CIRT activities, including UNF's annual Academic Technology Innovation Symposium, a platform for spotlighting the innovative practices of UNF's faculty. The Symposium also facilitates thought-provoking discussion on the current and potential use for academic technology to support teaching, learning, and research - the core of CIRT's mission. Foundation funds support CIRT's annual staff retreat, when we take time to pause from our normal, busy days to reflect, evaluate, brainstorm, plan, and recharge. These funds also support faculty lunch-and-learn events and special treats at other workshops.
 
You can designate all or part of your annual gift to CIRT by using fund number 0841-5604-00/CIRT when completing your payroll deduction or paper contribution form, available at the   Annual Giving website

Thank you in advance for your consideration of support.


anchor4
 Upcoming Events
Thursday, November 19, 2015
*Registration is required for this event.
This session examines student attitudes toward cheating and its prevalence in higher education. During the session, faculty members are exposed to short term and long term strategies that can curb cheating. These strategies include communicating expectations, using Blackboard tools and settings to your advantage, and the use of Remote Proctor NOW for objective testing.
 
Friday, November 20, 2015
*Registration is required for this event.
In this interactive session, participants receive an instructor kit and become familiar with the features and functionality of TurningPoint. Topics include Anywhere Polling, PowerPoint Polling, and Self-Paced Polling.  Participant management, reporting, grading, and Blackboard integration are also covered, and best practices are addressed throughout the session.
 
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
*Registration is required for this event.
Interested in exploring free options to replace your expensive textbook or simply augmenting your current text?  This session presents the wealth of open educational resources (OER) at your fingertips through the online collections of the Thomas G. Carpenter Library.  Linking and embedding library resources into Blackboard is a quick and easy way to make the most of your time while ensuring that you are following educational fair use guidelines.  It's also possible to embed other open resources such as TED Talks with a little bit of code.  It's so easy, you don't even need coding experience. This session also covers how you can integrate library services such as search boxes, a class librarian, research guides, tutorials, or an information literacy module into your online and blended courses.
 
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
*Registration is required for this event.
In this interactive session, participants receive an instructor kit and become familiar with the features and functionality of TurningPoint. Topics include Anywhere Polling, PowerPoint Polling, and Self-Paced Polling.  Participant management, reporting, grading, and Blackboard integration are also covered, and best practices are addressed throughout the session.

anchor5
 Digital Humanities Initiative Announcement

How Does Computer Science Intersect the Humanities
How Does Computer Science Intersect the Humanities
If you missed the announcement at the Academic Technology Innovation Symposium, a digital
humanities initiative is underway at UNF. What is digital humanities, you might ask? Because this field is still emerging and defining itself, many answers exist. Jeffrey Schnapp has co-authored a book on this topic and offers a broad definition in this YouTube video. 

The University of North Florida Digital Humanities Initiative (DHI) seeks to promote collaboration on interdisciplinary projects that employ technology in Humanities, Fine Arts, and Social Science research and teaching. The DHI will coordinate events exploring the theory and practice of Digital Humanities scholarship, and will provide a forum in which faculty can work together on the design and implementation of digital projects. The DHI will help faculty to engage students directly in hands-on Digital Humanities research, within and beyond the classroom, and will promote opportunities for UNF faculty to collaborate on digital projects with cultural institutions in Northeast Florida. In doing the above, the DHI will encourage an ongoing conversation regarding the future of Digital Humanities endeavors at UNF.

The DHI is an informal association of faculty from across campus working in partnership with The Center for Instruction and Research Technology (CIRT), the Office of Faculty Enhancement (OFE), Information Technology Services (ITS), the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP), and the Thomas G. Carpenter Library. The DHI is managed by an interim director, Dr. Clayton McCarl, who seeks the input of an internal advisory committee, as well as an external advisory board.

The DHI is currently defining its organizational structure, developing a web presence, and planning events for Spring 2016 and beyond. If you are interested in getting involved, please contact Dr. Clayton McCarl, Languages Literatures and Cultures.


anchor6
 CIRT's Blackboard Knowledgebase
Justin Lerman, Coordinator of Distance Learning Training

CIRT's new Blackboard knowledgebase has several exciting
features that make finding Blackboard documentation fast and easy. Browse by category, or through the built-in intelligent search function. If you want to learn more about Blackboard, but don't know where to start, check out the Interactive Blackboard Module. This allows you to discover how-to's for every tool directly in the Blackboard interface.

Stay up-to date with time-sensitive and popular Bb content right from the knowledgebase homepage, including Blackboard news, scheduled training sessions, known issues, and new features. The Blackboard Knowledgebase is available at http://www.unfbb.org/  and is linked from the CIRT website under the Blackboard support area


anchor4
 Digital Thinking: Hot Air Balloons Help Keep Students Engaged During Class
Beauty Kolenc, Coordinator of Educational Media 

Engaging students in a classroom setting with clickers is not a new concept at UNF. Faculty members across disciplines currently employ the University's TurningPoint handheld student response system in their courses. While often used for administering quizzes, recording attendance, or polling student opinions, TurningPoint has additional features that can aid in the ongoing battle to keep students engaged during lecture.

At the beginning of October, CIRT hosted an advanced clicker workshop for UNF faculty who had already adopted clickers in previous semesters. Led by TurningPoint trainer, Steve Sheely, workshop participants learned about additional features and tips for advanced data analysis. The full workshop recording is available online at
CIRT's YouTube page.

A highlight of the session came in an unexpected form - small hot air balloons. Sheely demonstrated the clicker competition tool that allows instructors to group students into teams and set up in-class competitions as a way to shake up traditional one-way lecture paradigms and facilitate interaction between students. Little hot air balloons represent each team on screen and will rise or lower on the leaderboard depending on the team's score. Groups answer questions and are awarded points based on a combination of answer accuracy and timeliness of response.
 
Amy Keagy, Teaching Laboratory Manager in the Department of Biology, attended the advanced clicker  workshop and has already begun to see a positive response to the implementation of clicker competitions in her class. Keagy used competitions as a vehicle to facilitate an exam review class in her lecture of 130 students.
 
"This was one of the rowdiest days of lecture," Keagy said. "The competition became very exciting for the students and they enjoyed the gaming aspect of the experience. They were receptive to learning from their mistakes and really got into it when I gave them the option to wager points on certain questions."
 
Keagy incentivized the competition further by awarding  extra credit to the winning team. She explained that over the course of the semester, some of her students had become lackadaisical about participating with clickers in regular lectures, but during the competition, she noted a marked increase in the students' engagement. Thanks to Keagy's overwhelming success and positive student response, she plans to use the competition feature for future review sessions.

If you are interested in adopting clickers or including clicker competitions in your lectures, please contact CIRT at
clickers@unf.edu for support. For more information about clickers at UNF and the adoption process, visit the CIRT clicker website.



anchor6
 Best Practices Online: The Benefits of Providing Feedback to Students 
Julie Fuller, Instructional Designer
*This article appears here in an abridged form. To read the article in it's entirety, please click here.

One of the most important elements in any course is providing students with formative and summative feedback about their performance and progress. Consistent, ongoing and detailed feedback can have a positive effect on student success in online courses, specifically with regard to increasing student self-confidence, self-efficacy, and self-esteem. Self-confidence refers to a student's belief in him or herself, while self-efficacy refers to a student's estimation that they can succeed at a specific task or tasks within a given domain. According to Tina Stavredes in Effective Online Teaching: Foundations and Strategies for Student Success, "self-efficacy influences the effort that learners put forth, how long they persist at a task when confronted with obstacles, and how they feel about the task" (p. 63). Both self-confidence and self-efficacy directly contribute to a student's overall self-esteem: "If students can relate their effort with their success, their self-esteem is positively affected" (Chakraborty & Nafukho, 2014).

When creating feedback for students individually and as a class, you can build student confidence by stressing effort over ability, as effort is something within the students' control (Stavredes, 2011, p. 160). This is an important concept in providing supportive feedback and direction, as the feedback that is communicated to students can be either a key motivator or discouragement (Stavredes, 2011, p. 160). Specific, concise, and actionable feedback goes beyond simply posting a grade or level of achievement, and instead offers students personalized strategies for activating prior knowledge, improving performance, and/or maintaining success.

While online learning can have many advantages, including improvements in students' computer skills and extended time for students to think critically in order to apply knowledge to practical scenarios, online learning also comes with challenges (Chakraborty & Nafukho, 2014). One potential challenge of online learning is the reduced interaction between and among the students and course facilitators (Chakraborty & Nafukho, 2014). There are typically four types of interactions that take place in both online and face-to-face courses, including: student to instructor interaction, student to student interaction, student to content interaction, and student to technology interaction. Strategies for facilitating these types of interactions vary within online and face-to-face courses; regardless, these types of interactions have a significant impact on students' engagement in the course and with the course content. Chakraborty and Nafukho (2014) note that the "content and level of interactions [influence] learning climate positively."

Students typically value constructive feedback from their instructors, as the feedback can be perceived as a means of establishing interpersonal and social relationships within the course.

One of the many benefits of providing personal and detailed feedback to students in online classes is the ability to enhance and strengthen the student to instructor interaction and relationship. Students typically value constructive feedback from their instructors, as the feedback can be perceived as a means of establishing interpersonal and social relationships within the course. This is especially beneficial for students who may be reluctant or uncomfortable with approaching academic staff
or who may feel isolated in the online environment.

...To read the rest of this article, please click here.

anchor7
 Blackboard News
Ross Bell, Assistant Director of Online Learning Support
Taylor Kennedy, Coordinator of Online Learning Support 

As the end of the semester approaches we are still experiencing intermittent issues in Blackboard. These events have typically impacted a small subset of users, and center around instructors working with Rubrics, editing Tests, editing Content Items, and launching Blackboard Collaborate. ITS has been working closely with the vendor to identify the cause of these errors and identify a permanent solution; thus far, none of the suggested fixes have proven sound. They have also been working to monitor the system closely and are developing tools that will allow server restarts with minimal impact to tests in progress. As a reminder, the best source for information on any current Blackboard issues and other system news is UNF's Bb News site: http://unfbb.blogspot.com/

SEMESTER TASKS
As the Fall 2015 semester comes to an end, we start thinking of the holidays, vacation, and next Spring's courses. To help ensure the start of your winter break is relaxing, we've created these lists for those Blackboard tasks that only come around a few times a year.

End of Fall
  • Final Exams: Among CIRT's services is Scantron grading with the option of uploading the grades to Blackboard and generating exam reports.  We are here to help, so please call or email us to make an appointment!  You can also book a Scantron appointment on our website.
     
  • Final Grades: Did you know that you can transfer your grades from Blackboard directly into myWings? With the Grade Transfer Tool it has never been easier to swiftly transfer your grades from Blackboard to myWings.
     
  • Course Retention: This is a friendly reminder that Fall 2013 courses will be permanently deleted from the system on Dec. 16th - 18th.  If you wish to retain a copy of the course content for yourself, you will need to either course copy it into a DEV shell or export it to a ZIP file.
For a comprehensive end-of-semester task list read our KB article, What should I do at the end of the semester once my course is over?

Start of Spring 
  • Course Request: 2016 Spring courses are available for request now!  It never hurts to get an early jump on the next semester. Click here to review the steps for requesting Spring courses in BbCAR.

The new Blackboard Knowledge Base contains many more articles on end- and start-of semester 

Blackboard Maintenance - December 16th - 18th
The December maintenance will be focused on system patches and building blocks updates. No new features will be added to the system.

Items included in this maintenance are:

*  2013 Fall courses will be permanently removed from Blackboard

*  2015 Fall courses will be made unavailable to your students

*  Installation of updates and patches to improve the overall functionality and integrity of Blackboard

anchor8
 TOL 6100/7100 Applications Available Now

TOL6100 is designed for full-time faculty who will be developing distance learning courses. The seminar covers pedagogy, course design, instructional strategies, communication strategies, and online assessment.  The application for 2015/2016 Teaching Online Seminar (TOL6100) is now available. The deadline for applications for the spring cohort is Friday, December 4, 2015. You may also apply at this time for the summer cohort. The deadline for those applications is Friday, April 22.



Faculty who have received TOL6100 certification are eligible to apply for TOL7100. The TOL7100 seminar is a self-paced online seminar course designed to assist faculty with their development of a high-quality distance learning course. Faculty may apply at any time for entry into TOL7100. A maximum of 50 applicants will be accepted in each fiscal year. Chair support to offer the course in a distance learning format is required.

For additional details about each seminar and to apply, visit
Teaching Online Seminars (TOL6100 & TOL7100).
anchor11
 Instructional Design Website & Liaison Program

CIRT's Instructional Design team is excited to announce two big initiatives this term: release of a redesigned instructional design website and a new department/program-centric liaison program.
 
CIRT's  Instructional Design services website has been completely remodeled to easily provide faculty with access to information about the services we provide. This includes faculty consultations, course development, and our new instructional design liaison program. In addition, the new site summarizes online course development through the instructional design process and contains a collection of articles on instructional design best practices written by members of the Instructional Design team.
The Instructional Design Liaison Program (IDLP) is a new service that is rolling out this term. The primary goal of the IDLP is to provide communication channels, develop relationships, and promote dialog between instructional design professionals and the academic communities they serve. Each of the instructional designers has been designated as a liaison contact for one or more departments. In some cases, a single liaison contact may be assigned to an entire college. Liaison contacts for each College/Department are listed on the   IDLP page.
 
While the instructional designers already provide extensive services to faculty through consultations, program transitions, and the Teaching Online (TOL) seminars, the role of the liaison will be to provide department/program-centric services by attending departmental meetings upon request and delivering online workshops to support the specific needs of departments transitioning course materials online.
 
For more information about the IDLP or other services provided by the Instructional Design team, please visit the   Instructional Design website.
anchor9
 New in CIRT

Please join us in welcoming new staff members! Andy Rush joins us as Coordinator of Online Course Media. Andy has been working with educational technology for more than 20 years, most recently at the University of Mary Washington. Andy will be working with UNF faculty to create videos and to maximize the effectiveness of their online media. When not watching YouTube videos, Andy provides tech (and other) support for his family, and spends his spare time cycling the roads and trails of North Florida.

Rabena Johnson is the new Coordinator of Administrative Services in Academic Technology & Innovation. Rabena has 14 years of experience working in higher education, primarily in the areas of finance and office administration, and was most recently UNF's PCARD manager.

You can see all of CIRT's smiling faces on our  People page.


This is a publication of the
at the University of North Florida.

Deb Miller, Editor

Please direct any comments, or questions to  cirtlab@unf.edu.