FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

Do you know a faculty member who has taken strides to improve their online courses? Nominate them for our next Faculty Spotlight!

INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNER UPDATE

Distance Education's Sr. Instructional Designer Anna Loftus is relocating to Massachusetts. Anna has accepted an Instructional Designer position at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts. We are excited for her new journey and wish her the best of luck in the future!

A note from Anna:

“I am so grateful for all the faculty, students, and staff I have worked with over the last few years. I have truly loved working at APSU on the Distance Ed. team and I will miss each and every one of you! Keep being innovative in your online, hybrid, and face-to-face learning environments!”

If you need instructional design assistance, please contact our other Sr. Instructional Designer Pari Bhatt ( [email protected] ).

LMS EVALUATION UPDATES

APSU will proceed with the TBR D2L contract in 2019. Distance Education will be premiering D2L’s new Daylight user interface in August 2018. The majority of tools and features will continue to have the same workflows. The new user interface will include a more responsive and mobile-friendly design.

Please be advised, in Fall 2018 Distance Education will continue talks with institutional stakeholders to develop and implement updated data retention and migration guidelines. Implementing D2L Daylight will not require users to migrate data at this time.

Distance Education will make available our D2L Daylight test environment very soon so faculty can log in and navigate the new D2L user interface. This will allow faculty to see how current courses will appear using the new user interface. Distance Education will send out more information on how to access the test environment by May 18, 2018. Lastly, you will also receive information on how to access Daylight training materials.

Please direct any questions or concerns to [email protected] .

APSU faculty and students submitted 57, 017 written submissions to Turnitin (July 1, 2017 to April 1, 2018). Faculty generated 102,399 individualized grade marks, and feedback on Turnitin written submissions this academic year.

FACULTY SATISFACTION SURVEY

It is the end of the 2017-18 academic year and we would love to know how we did and what we can do better for you! Please take our Satisfaction with DE Support Services questionnaire based on your experiences with the DE team in Fall 2017 & Spring 2018.

We appreciate and look forward to your feedback and to improving our support services for you. Thank you!

Faculty and student logins totaled 3,080,712 for D2L Brightspace (August 1, 2017 to April 1, 2018). Although we still have 3 months remaining in this academic year, D2L Brightspace faculty and student logins have exceeded the total number of logins from last year (3,631,542 logins from August 1, 2016 to July 1, 2017).  

DISTANCE EDUCATION

SERVICE REQUEST S

In collaboration with the Office of Information technology, the Service Request Catalog is now live. This catalog provides the campus community with a list of services that the Distance Education Support Desk can assist them with. Faculty, staff, and students are now able to submit their own request for service using the following directions.

By using the Service Request Catalog, users may easily track and monitor their service request.

SMARTER MEASURE YEAR ONE

Through a partnership between the Center for Teaching and Learning and Distance Education, the curriculum for APSU 1000 – Freshmen Seminar was updated to address online learning readiness. This is an important topic for APSU students due to the increase use of technology in face-to-face courses as well as students’ participation in hybrid and online course offerings.

The online learning readiness curriculum includes the SmarterMeasure Learning Readiness Indicator (SMLRI), SMLRI student readiness report, a reflective discussion assignment, and a feedback survey. The SMLRI assesses key areas for online student success such as life factors (support, reason, etc.), individual attributes (motivation, procrastination, time management, etc.), learning preferences, technical knowledge (usage, access, vocabulary, etc.), technical competency (computer and internet), typing speed and accuracy, and reading rate and recall.

Fall 2017 through Spring 2018 was the first year of full deployment using the SMLRI in APSU 1000. The SMLRI was administered in 124 sections with 2,385 student enrollments. A total of 2,103 students started the SMLRI assessment and 1,875 completed it in full for an 89% completion rate from start to finish and a 79% completion rate across total students. APSU has signed a five year contract for the SMLRI and 2018-2019 will be the second year of full deployment in APSU 1000.

APSU instructors have proctored 2,181 exams through Examity at a total cost of $41,891.75 (July 2017 to April 2018). On-demand proctoring fees totaled $1,115.00. To avoid on-demand fees we strongly encourage students to register and cancel at least 24 hours in advance to avoid being charged additional fees. Last academic year from (July 2016 to May 2017) approximately 3,126 exams were proctored at a total cost of $58,522.50.

Congratulations to Dr. Tara Alvey, College of Education, Dept. of Teaching & Learning, on successfully completing Quality Matters “Peer Reviewer Course (PRC)” in Mar-Apr 2018. Check out the list of APSU QM Peer Reviewers, you may find a colleague there!

Congratulations to the following faculty on successfully completing “Applying the QM Rubric (APPQMR)” in Mar-Apr 2018: Sara Demetrides, Deborah Ellison, Carmen Grissom, Bing Xiao, and Shondell Hickson.

QM Rubric Update:

The QM Higher Education Rubric, Sixth Edition, will be available in July 2018. A free, online, self-paced Rubric Update session (completion time 3 hours) will be available from June 1, 2018 to December 31, 2018 (a fee will be charged in 2019). If you have taken the APPQMR, DE will enroll you for the Rubric Update session, so you have plenty of time to complete it.

ZOOM WEB CONFERENCING AVAILABLE

Distance Education is excited to announce that we now have a university wide license for Zoom web-conferencing for all faculty, students, and staff. Please visit the APSU Zoom Login page and click “sign in to my account.” Enter your APSU enterprise username and password (your email login information) to log in. Please contact [email protected] if you would like training.

APSU instructors, faculty, and staff have added 203 gigabytes of video/audio instructional content to our Kaltura, MyMedia repository from September 1, 2017 to May 1, 2018. Roughly 123 hours of instructional content uploaded during this time have been human captioned.

Lastly, students have viewed 2,209 minutes (37 hours) of uploaded instructional content. By comparison, last year (September 1, 2016 to May 1, 2017) during this time faculty and staff had uploaded 175 gigabytes of video/audio instructional content, 17 hours were human captioned, 25 hours mechanically captioned, and students viewed 3,334 minutes (56 hours) of uploaded instructional content.

SAVE THE DATE: WINTER TERM 2019!

Now is the time to start planning for Winter Term 2019. If you are interested in teaching a Winter Term course, please contact your department chair to discuss teaching requirements.

If you would like to learn more about the faculty resources that are available through Distance Education, visit us on the web or email [email protected] and put in the subject line: Attention Winter Term Help.

Save the Date: Winter Term 2019 classes begin on December 15, 2018!

NEW "GETTING STARTED MODULE"

If you teach an online/hybrid course, we have an updated “Getting Started” module for you which is specially designed to meet 14 of the total 43 Quality Matters standards for a quality online/hybrid course.

Contact us to import the “Getting Started” module in YOUR course/s by emailing [email protected] today! Don’t forget to include your full course name for convenience. Your students will thank you and your course will be on its way to meet Quality Matters standards. It’s a win-win for everyone!

New this year, Lynda offers faculty, staff and students access to over 9,000 online courses. Presently, Lynda has 512 active users (116 new users since April 2018). Faculty and staff account for 336 active users and students account for 176. Lynda users have viewed 13,053 videos and completed 349 certificates.

LYNDA.COM AVAILABLE TO STUDENTS

APSU LyndaCampus is now available to ALL faculty, staff, and students to enhance teaching and learning. Sign in with your APSU username and password and start exploring. A great place to start is by viewing How to Use Lynda.com course.

As a faculty member, you can use Lynda.com courses/videos in your courses by creating and assigning custom playlists to your students. Please contact Distance Education Support Desk at [email protected] if you need help with creating custom Lynda playlists. Happy teaching and learning with Lynda!

DISTANCE EDUCATION LAPTOP LOAN PROGRAM (DELLP)

Distance Education and the Felix G. Woodward Library partnered together to offer Distance Education Laptop Loan Program (DELLP). The DELLP program provides laptops to students who have difficulty engaging in their classes due to faulty equipment. Eligible students can check-out a laptop for up to one semester. The program is open students enrolled in online and hybrid courses.

For more information visit Distance Education on the web, or email [email protected].

DEPARTMENT WIDE TRAINING

As a reminder, Distance Education now offers department-wide training sessions! We can come to you, or you can come to us. We offer training in many different subjects including accessible syllabus, D2L, course design, and more. Request a department-wide training by emailing [email protected].