Five Easy Technologies to Enhance Your Courses Dr. Mark Morton Centre for Teaching Excellence University of Waterloo

Learning Outcomes for this Workshop After this workshop you will be able….  to explain the basic functionality of each of these tools  to identify which technologies are most relevant to your teaching practice  to describe how you might use a given technology to enhance your students’ learning experience  to locate additional resources for those technologies that you want to learn more about.

What this workshop won’t do  Get into the specifics of how to use these tools (e.g. how to set up a clicker receiver, how to adjust audio in Camtasia, etc., how to install CmapTools, etc.)  CTE has other resources to learn those details

What you’ll be doing in this workshop  Listening (to learn about the functionality of the tools)  Thinking (about how those tools can be used effectively)  Sharing (your ideas)

A Warm-Up Exercise

Question Facilitation Tools: Google Moderator What does it do? (Mark’s verbal description – participants should take notes here!)

Question Facilitation Tools: Google Moderator

How can Google Moderator enhance your students’ learning experience?  Encourages “shy” students to ask questions in class  You can see which questions are of most interest to the greatest number of students  You can “vet” the questions before responding to them  You have a record of students question which, if you want, you can respond to outside of class time (e.g. in the Learning Management System)

Classroom Engagement Tools: Clickers What does it do?What does it do? (Mark’s verbal description – participants should take notes here!)

Classroom Engagement Tools: Clickers

How can Clickers enhance your students’ learning experience?  Clickers can make your class time more engaging: sustains student interest  Leverages Peer Instruction  The best way to learn something is to teach someone else  Overcomes “expertise bias”  Use clickers to get a sense of whether students are “getting it”  Use them to ensure that students come to class fully prepared.

Social Bookmarking Tools: Diigo What does it do? (Mark’s verbal description – participants should take notes here!)

Social Bookmarking Tools: Diigo

How can you use Diigo to enhance your students’ learning experience?  Create a Diigo group for your students at the beginning of a term, and have them collaborate over the term on populating it with annotated resources  Students can individually use Diigo to help organize and track web resources  Diigo can support Learning Communities

Screencasting Tools: Camtasia What does it do? (Mark’s verbal description – participants should take notes here!)

Screencasting Tools: Camtasia

How can Camtasia (Screencasting) enhance your students’ learning experience?  Create screencasts with remedial content for students who lack prerequisite knowledge  Use screencasts to “flip” your classroom: deliver content via screencasts outside of class, so that in- class time can be reserved for active learning and peer instruction activities  Students can view screencasts as many times as they need to  Screencasts are beneficial for students whose first language isn’t the language of instruction (repeated viewings and captioning)

Concept Mapping Tools: CmapTools What does it do? (Mark’s verbal description – participants should take notes here!)

Concept Mapping Tools: CmapTools

How could you have your students use concept mapping in your course?  For a given lecture or unit, give them a list of terms, and have them create a concept map from them.  For a given lecture or unit, give them an unfinished concept map (lines and nodes with no labels) and have them determine what labels to add  For a given lecture or unit, have them collaborate on creating a concept map  Have them create a concept map over the course of a whole term that charts their growing knowledge of the discipline  Give them an “incorrect” concept map, and have them identify the errors.

Resources  Google Moderator  CTE Teaching Tip on Google ModeratorTeaching Tip  Resources and tutorials from Google Resources and tutorials  Piazza  Resources and tutorials from Piazza Resources and tutorials  A YouTube video on PiazzaYouTube video  Clickers  CTE Teaching Tip on ClickersTeaching Tip  CTE Teaching Tip on Peer InstructionTeaching Tip  Top Hat  A YouTube video on Top HatYouTube video  Resources and tutorials from Top Hat Resources and tutorials  Diigo  A CTE Teaching Tip on DiigoTeaching Tip  A YouTube video on DiigoYouTube video  Camtasia  CTE Teaching Tip on CamtasiaTeaching Tip  CTE Teaching Tip on ScreencastingTeaching Tip  CmapTools  CTE Teaching Tip on Concept Mapping ToolsTeaching Tip  A YouTube video on CmapToolsYouTube video

Five Easy Technologies to Enhance Your Courses Dr. Mark Morton Centre for Teaching Excellence University of Waterloo

Question Facilitation Tools: Piazza What does it do? (Mark’s verbal description – participants should take notes here!)

Question Facilitation Tools: Piazza

How can Piazza enhance your students learning experience?  It empowers students: they collaborate on developing answers to their own questions  It leverages peer instruction:  The best way to learn something is to teach someone else  Overcomes “expertise bias”  Students get just-in-time responses to their questions, usually within a few minutes.

Question Facilitation Tools: Top Hat What does it do? (Mark’s verbal description – participants should take notes here!)

Question Facilitation Tools: Top Hat

What are the relative merits of Top Hat versus Clickers?  Clickers have one purpose: to collect responses (they don’t have other “distractions” built into them)  Clickers are cheap (not all students can afford a mobile device, which is needed to use Piazza)  Students never forget their smartphones but they might forget to bring their clickers  Top Hat allows you to ask a wider variety of questions  Top Hat seems more “hip” than clickers  With Top Hat, each student can interact with simulations and animations  Top Hat facilitates students asking their own questions