Wrapping Up the Term and Giving Thanks
As we prepare to wrap up our term and hopefully take some time off to celebrate Thanksgiving, it is a great time to reflect, give thanks, and celebrate our victories, even during this challenging year. The OTL is thankful for the hard work that all of the faculty have done this year and continue to do moving forward. We are eager to keep working together to help our students learn and grow.
Congratulations to Christine Hood and Nicole Perez of the OTL on their recent presentation at the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network in Higher Education virtual conference! In their presentation, Dual Perspectives: Engaging Graduate Assistants in a Community of Practice, they discussed their perspectives as graduate assistants working within the OTL and how the Community of Practice (CoP) model helped them evolve in their roles and work.
The OTL would love to hear about the experiences of faculty who have worked with us. If you have a testimonial that you would like to provide, please fill out our OTL Testimonial form. This feedback will help us tell our OTL story to the broader DU community!
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New Blog Post: Inclusive Use of Proctoring Technology: LockDown Browser & Respondus Monitor
In the new blog post Inclusive Use of Proctoring Technology: LockDown Browser & Respondus Monitor, the OTL's Valentina Iturbe-LaGrave, Director of Inclusive Teaching Practices, and Amelia Gentile-Mathew, Instructional Designer explore the equity and inclusion issues that can arise when using LockDown Browser and Respondus Monitor for online exams. They also provide tips for using these tools along with resources to explore.
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Join us for the Teaching Online - Advanced Practice Short Course!
We are excited to announce Teaching Online - Advanced Practice, launching December 9!
The Teaching Online - Advanced Practice Short Course is an online, asynchronous course designed to help faculty fine-tune their teaching strategies, student engagement, and Canvas skills. This self-paced course includes robust assessment strategies and active learning techniques such as multimedia, measuring individual and group learning outcomes, technology integration, games and apps that promote social and cognitive engagement, and advanced Canvas applications, visuals, and templates. This course will most likely take 15-20 hours and is a great follow-up if you have taken the Teaching Online Short Course. Faculty who complete the course requirements by January 10 will be eligible for a stipend.
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Hyflex Course Design Self-Study
The Hyflex Course Design Self-Study is a set of online, asynchronous activities and materials that guide faculty members through the process of designing a hyflex course that results in significant learning. While the primary focus of this self-study is on designing hyflex courses (that is, courses in which students can choose between face-to-face and online modes of participation), it will also be supportive to faculty members who are designing hybrid courses, as well as those who are designing “pivot ready” face-to-face courses in the coming academic year. This is a self-paced experience (meaning participants can spend as little or as much time as they would like), though it will likely take about 20 hours total to complete all course activities. Upon completion of this self-study, participants will have developed a high-level plan for their course (in the form of an alignment map) that can be used as a blueprint for the more detailed course design/building.
This self-study will become available on December 7th; faculty are welcome to begin any time after that and complete it at their own pace over the winter break. There is a stipend available for faculty who complete and submit their alignment map by January 8th.
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Congratulations to the NCFDD 14-Day Writing Challenge Winners!
We are happy to announce the winners of the October 2020 NCFDD 14-day Writing Challenge:
Dr. Sarah Magnatta, Assistant Professor of Art History, used the 14-day Writing Challenge to complete and submit an article manuscript for review and to begin a paper she is presenting at a conference in February.
Dr. Shannon Murphy, Associate Professor of Biology, used the 14-day writing challenge to keep journal articles moving through her publication pipeline including revising papers for resubmission as well as writing methods, results, and discussion sections for several different papers.
We hope you will consider participating in the next NCFDD 14-Day Writing Challenge online from March 22 – April 4, 2021. You can find more details and register at the NCFDD website. Congratulations to Dr. Magnatta and Dr. Murphy!
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Writing Accountability Group (WAG) Winter Sign Up
Faculty in the Writing Accountability Group range from a variety of disciplines and stages in their academic careers. Across these differences, participants have discovered new ways of balancing their research agendas with other demands, while building supportive accountability structures for themselves and each other. Even for advanced-career faculty, the WAG has provided new ways of scaffolding the relationship between day-to-day writing, weekly time management, and long-term career goals.
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Upcoming Events
Heart of Higher Education
The Heart of Higher Education (HOHE) is an opportunity to gather as a DU community to share the challenges and opportunities of transcending the institutional, professional and personal choices that tend to separate core identity/integrity from day to day actions. The meetings are open to all faculty (of any rank) and staff (of any title). The Conversations are facilitated by Dr. Paul Michalec, OTL Faculty Teaching Fellow, and Clinical Professor in the Morgridge College of Education. The Heart of Higher Education Conversations create a positive and constructive space where staff and faculty can explore ways of re-connecting calling with professional responsibilities. In this academic year we will investigate the themes of uncertainty, impermanence, and resilience in academia. We will have sessions each month of this term, so if you are unable to join us this month, keep your eye out for future sessions.
Canvas Coaching: Canvas Clean-Up
Now that Fall Quarter has come to an end, join the OTL for a Canvas Clean-Up session. During this session, Instructional Designers will be available to support you in breakout rooms on course specific requests. We can help you save course material, manage your gradebook, move content into a sandbox course, and get a new course set-up for Winter Quarter with a course template.
Please visit our OTL Events Calendar for all of our upcoming events!
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How to Write a Winning Book Proposal
For many academics, a book manuscript is key to earning tenure and establishing a scholarly identity. However, the path to academic book publishing can often be confusing, nebulous, and filled with scary myths and misperceptions. You may have a completed dissertation, a few rough book chapters, or even journal articles you’d like to transform into a coherent book project but you don’t know where to start to get your unfinished project into print.
The first, and most important, step to getting your academic manuscript published is crafting a compelling book proposal. This workshop will address many common questions about the book proposal process including (but not limited to):
- When should I start writing the proposal?
- What is the best way for me to contact an editor?
- How do I pick the best press for my project?
- And, importantly, what does a “winning” book proposal look like and how do I write one?
Each participant will leave the workshop with a working draft of the book proposal, a concrete plan to complete it within 4 weeks of the workshop date, and a post-proposal publication plan that will focus on how to query editors, writing the cover letter, etc.
Facilitated by:
Badia Ahad, PhD
Associate Professor & Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs
Loyola University
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Faculty Learning Community
Coming this winter: Internationalization Faculty Learning Community
Co-facilitated by RSECS Associate Dean for Undergraduate studies and Teaching Associate Professor Breigh Roszelle and Executive Director for Internationalization Casey Dinger, this collaborative Faculty Learning Community is structured around book chapters. Participants will take turns leading the discussion using key theoretical and applied materials supplied by the facilitators to provide a grounding in the approach and tools to implement.
This FLC is organized around exploring the practice, development, and implementation of a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)-based course. This can take numerous forms, but in essence COIL is a type of virtual mobility, where students from DU and a partner institution abroad are given the tools and space to engage in purposeful interaction in a course. Students from both classes may interact synchronously or asynchronously for a few weeks or an entire term through whichever technologies are most relevant and useful. Often students work together on a project, class discussions, or similar group work. COIL is a powerful opportunity to help students engage in cross-cultural learning and global education on DU’s home campus.
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Teaching Resources
This tool kit provides practical steps for readying your courses, no matter the modality. From Canvas basics to hyflex considerations, and complete with worksheets to guide you, this toolkit is a great starting point for course planning.
Getting overwhelmed by all of the different terms you hear related to online teaching and learning? Visit OTL’s glossary for definitions of key terms.
Visit this OTL web page for helpful links to resources such as Canvas guides and Knowledge Base articles organized by task, as well as a video walking you through setting up your Canvas course. These resources can be helpful no matter how you offer your courses this term.
This Knowledge Base article provides helpful tips and tricks you can use as you create pre-recorded videos, lectures, and demonstrations to enhance the asynchronous components of your course. You can also learn more about the various tools you can use to create your videos, such as Zoom and Kaltura.
Visit our Sample Syllabus Statements webpage for optional statements to help you communicate with students your policies around wearing masks in class, social distancing, attendance and participation, and more. Be sure to reach out to your Dean, Chair, or Director with any questions or for clarification around the use of these statements in your syllabus.
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