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TECHBYTES


Southern's Online Campus
Southern's Online Campus strives to stay up-to-date on technology offerings geared toward higher education. On the third Wednesday of each month during TechBytes, we share technology solutions during the noon professional development meeting time. The most effective ideas for sharing are those already being used by faculty here at Southern; thus, faculty who are currently using technology to effectively meet student needs and achieve learning goals are often invited to present for TechBytes.

TechBytes 2018-2019

September 19

Head in the Clouds

Ryan Harrell

Have you ever had a computer crash and lost something important? There is a solution! Come discover Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, the cloud storage options provided to Southern Adventist University faculty and staff with your University log-in.
 

Cyber Warfare: Is Southern Affected?

Doru Mihaescu

Doru Mihaescu will discuss the latest trends and the implications for you and the university.
January 16

Have You been Slacking? If not, you should be!

Ryan Harrell

Slack is an excellent tool for connecting with students outside of class-time. Come hear from Ryan Harrell, who will discuss the many (free!) features of Slack and explain how he uses them in his online classes to extend teaching and learning.
 

Information Literacy and New Research Tools

Jessica Spears, Katie McGrath

Information literacy (IL) is an essential element of critical thinking and problem solving. Even though our students are "digital natives," when faced with a college research assignment, many students do not know where to begin. In this session we will discuss some of the ways that librarians and teaching faculty can work together to create research assignments that develop necessary IL skills, such as advanced information discovery techniques and source material evaluation. We will also spend some time demonstrating how to accomplish specific research tasks using the new tools on the library website.
February 20

Student Planner

Michelle Younkin

Are you looking for creative new ways to help students succeed as they plan their coursework over the course of their career at Southern? Join us to view a live demonstration of Student Planning, the new system that provides student degree audits, as well as other valuable advising tools.
 
March 20

VoiceThread

Beth Scott
 
VoiceThread is a collaborative communication media tool that holds images, PPT, documents, and videos for the purpose of permitting people to use achromous audio and annotation feedback. VoiceThread has the capability for displaying work for feedback, discussing techniques, approaches, readings, interacting with classmates, homework, quizzes, or answering questions from a prompt. In the CTE March 20th presentation, Beth Scott will demonstrate how she uses VoiceThread for eClass online book review presentation. The presentation will also include barriers and best practices!
 

Gradescope

Patti Anderson, Chris Hansen, Blake Laing
 
Using Gradescope.com to grade with rich feedback and efficient work flow, and also as an alternative to Scantron. Would you like to spend more of your grading time providing meaningful feedback and less on bean-counting? Would you like your multiple-choice questions to be graded automatically and with enhanced feedback and partial credit? How often do you get halfway through grading tests and feel the need to backtrack to be sure that your grading is consistent? Can you see the advantage of developing your rubrics as you grade? Come hear how three professors use Gradescope.com to grade tests, homework, and computer code.
April 17

"Wolf Clickers"

Rick Norskov, Joelle Wolf

Not many Southern faculty utilize Classroom response clickers anymore. Joelle Wolf discovered an alternative way for classroom engagement. Her students affectionately call them "Wolf Clickers." Rick Norskov stole the idea when a nursing student worker brought the Wolf Clicker to the biology department. The rest is history. Come engage in this fun and interactive simple demonstration. Get your very own Wolf Clicker while they last!"
 

Dramatically Increasing Student Engagement with Reading *Before* Class with Perusall.com

Blake Laing

If we want students to acquire basic knowledge from the reading before class, so we can engage in higher learning in class, we must explicitly acknowledge and reward their efforts. Imagine if students had access to your annotations of their reading, as well as those of other students, so that reading the text before class has a sense of togetherness. Imagine how your course would change if students participated in threaded discussions on annotations they make in their electronic textbooks before class.

Techbytes 2017-2018

September 20
 

September 20

Jessica Spears

If you use PowerPoints to teach, you won't want to miss this presentation. Jessica Spears, representing McKee Library, will discuss how to craft an exceptional visual presentation while improving audience retention. Topics to be covered include incorporating images, elimination of bullet points, and general slide design. Those of you who already feel comfortable using this enduring technology will be able to immediately capitalize on what you learn in this session.
 

Using Google Forms as Lead Measures

Dennis Steele

Would you like to know more about what your students are thinking about your course before end-of-semester course evaluations? Would you be interested in knowing how to facilitate student learning, improving their outcomes and better meeting their needs? Dennis Steele will be with us to describe how he recently used Google Forms to assess how his class is going. Dennis will demonstrate some of the options of Google Forms that he found helpful and will share some of the things he was able to learn about how to better assist his students.
October 18
 

Plickers!

Faith Laughlin
 
Plickers! Where old school and digital technology meet. This tool allows the professor to utilize the advantages of digital clickers with students without the high-price cost of purchasing clickers.

Moodle Mobile & Pages/Books

Greg Merchant, Ryan Harrell

Join us on Wednesday as Greg Merchant demonstrates newly released features in Moodle's mobile app allowing students to access and submit assignments, take quizzes, and receive push notifications keeping them in the loop and up to date with forum announcements and personal messages. Learn how you can utilize the new Book activity in eClass to simplify long or complex content into easily navigated and consumed materials.