What’s New in WordPress 3.9.1

Posted by & filed under CNDLS, New Features.

As of June 27th, Georgetown Commons blogs and ePortfolios run on the latest version of WordPress. This video outlines the major changes:

New WordPress 3.9 Smith from I for Ideas on Vimeo.

Aside from the usual bug fixes, WordPress 3.9 “Smith” features a few significant improvements in the incorporation of multimedia in blog posts. Photo galleries in the text editor now appear as a what-you-see-is-what-you-get preview, rather than a placeholder. Users can now include audio or video playlists in posts, and upload photos by dragging and dropping directly into the text editor. However, this feature requires uploading content to WordPress. We remind users that the Georgetown Commons system has limited storage capacity, so please continue to create playlists on services such as YouTube or SoundCloud, and embed them in your posts or pages.

When searching for a new theme, users can now edit the theme preview with custom headers and widgets without making any hard-to-reverse changes to their existing site. As with the added features in the post editor, these changes have moved WordPress toward more intuitive content management.

The Georgetown Commons team plans to add new themes and plugins in the coming weeks, so check back soon for those details.

As always, if you have questions about any of the Commons tools, see the Knowledge Base wiki, or email the commons team at [email protected].

 

Online-Only CCT Course Launches Fall 2014

Posted by & filed under CNDLS, Faculty Spotlight.

Professor Martin Irvine’s online-only CCT course, “Key Concepts in Technology and How to Use Them,” is slated for a fall 2014 launch. CNDLS is providing instructional design and other project development support.

Funded by the second round of the Provost’s ITEL grants, Professor Irvine’s course is the first online-only, for-credit course in the CCT program. In the spirit of the ITEL initiative, this online course extends Georgetown’s resources beyond its current community and into the public. In addition to CCT and other Georgetown students, any qualified student or working professional can enroll in this course and use the course credits for a degree program elsewhere or for professional development. The main goal of this project is to provide a high quality, virtual learning experience to more students and prospective leaders than a course taking place on Georgetown’s physical campus could serve.

To learn more about the course, you can access the promotional video produced at CCT. For more information about the development of this course, please read the Faculty Voice article on Professor Irvine from the most recent issue of The Prospect, CNDLS’ publication on teaching and learning.

Fostering Partnerships for Innovation

Posted by & filed under CNDLS, New Features, Uncategorized.

CNDLS has recently partnered with Remark to pilot video annotation in several technology-enhanced learning projects taking place at Georgetown. One such project is the use of video annotation in GeorgetownX courses and in particular in Globalization: Winners and Losers. Globalization: Winners and Losers will next be offered as a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on edx.org in October 2014.

Another annotation tool that CNDLS has been working with is Scrible. Scrible is a collaborative, online text annotation tool.

For more information on these emerging partnerships, please contact Yianna Vovides.

Stephen ITEL Project Develops Rubrics for Multimedia Projects

Posted by & filed under Announcements, Publications and Presentations.

In early February, Professor Betsi Stephen, Associate Professor of Demography in the School of Foreign Service and chair of the CNDLS Faculty Advisory Board, presented at the Workshop on Intercultural Skills Enhancement (WISE) and Conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Stephen and colleague Karen Wardzala, who is the Assistant Director of Overseas Living & Learning Communities through the Office of International Programs (OIP), shared “DIVE: A Four-Step Framework for Creating Meaningful Short-Term Experiences Abroad.”

In this workshop, Stephen and Wardzala used case studies as well as guided group and individualized exercises, to help an audience of faculty and study abroad professionals enhance learning experiences in short-term programs by developing learning goals, incorporating culture into the curriculum, viewing the host/home culture through reflection, and exploring student learning through assessment.

The workshop included rubrics for evaluating multimedia projects—based on the VALUE rubrics—that Stephen and Lisa Donatelli (OIP) developed last year as part of Stephen’s ITEL project, “Mind the Gap.” This project seeks to document the transformational aspect of study abroad programs by bridging students’ study abroad experiences with their on-campus academic careers in Washington, D.C. Specifically, the project was interested in measuring the following as expressed online: what students were learning abroad; how they were connecting with local populations and organizations; how they were connecting their study abroad experiences with their previous and future studies at Georgetown; and what lessons students were learning about their roles as global citizens.

To integrate students’ experiences abroad with their Georgetown studies, Stephen collaborated with Rob Pongsajapan and Yong Lee at CNDLS to implement blog assignments, Omeka museum projects, and ePortfolios into her courses. Alongside these technologies, Stephen developed three specific rubrics; her goal in creating assignments tied to rubrics was to improve student learning through reflection, integration, and visibility. Blogs allow students to reflect on and think critically about their experiences as they live them; the Omeka museum becomes a growing collection of past and present cohorts’ exhibits; and the ePortfolio serves as a platform for students to publicly integrate their abroad experiences with their field of study and on-campus learning.

Watch a video introduction to the Mind the Gap ITEL project:

Download the rubrics used in this project:
Rubric of Criteria for Blogs (126 KB PDF)
Rubric of Criteria for ePortfolios (120 KB PDF)
Rubric of Criteria for Virtual Museum (126 KB PDF)

New Site on Tools and Services for Teaching and Learning Now Available

Posted by & filed under CNDLS.

Earlier this month, CNDLS launched a new mini-site under the Teaching & Technology section of its website. This site provides an overview of all tools and services available at Georgetown University that support teaching, learning, and collaboration.

The creation of this site stemmed from a shared desire among several departments to have information about Georgetown’s teaching and learning resources housed in one place. In the past, faculty members have been overwhelmed by the challenges of finding, selecting, and getting support for tools and services in the classroom.

The Unified Classroom Services Working Group (UCSWG) was formed, in part, to address the lack of standardization and procedures surrounding access to, use of, and support for Georgetown’s abundant offering of tools and services. UCSWG worked with Brian Boston and Rob Pongsajapan to update an existing CNDLS tools page based on the group’s vision for a shared university resource.

The new site provides an overview of the tools (e.g., Blackboard and WordPress) and the services (e.g., course evaluations and multimedia services) available to the Georgetown community. Visitors can quickly scan a list of tools and services on the front page of the site and then see a more detailed description, models of use/faculty stories, and setup/contact information on each individual tool/service page. Supporting departments are listed on the sidebar of the site.

The site was announced on January 6 of this year and has quickly become one of the most-visited parts of the CNDLS site. There has been a lot of positive feedback on this standardization of university tools and services, and CNDLS has received more interest and inquiries related to the resources.

To view this updated page, please visit: https://commons.georgetown.edu/tools/.

Lubkin and Screen ITEL Project Explores a Flipped Model for the ESL Classroom

Posted by & filed under CNDLS, Featured Blogs.

Jennifer Lubkin and Andrew Screen have been busy implementing an ITEL project that explores the flipped classroom model in an ESL setting.  In the most recent issue of The Prospect, which can be viewed here, CNDLS highlighted Lubkin’s and Screen’s work; they received Level II funding from the first round of ITEL to flip their ESL classroom at the Center for Language Education and Development (CLED). They devoted last semester to a flipped model for their English grammar class.  Their reason for flipping the class stemmed from a full curriculum and the amount of class time that was devoted to grammar explanations; to increase time for conversational practice and grammar exercises and to provide immediate teacher feedback, Screen and Lubkin moved grammar explanations to an interactive online format using the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) platform.

Last month, before the end of classes, Screen and Lubkin had gone through two units with OLI.  At the mid-semester, students provided positive feedback on the use of OLI.  There was also more student participation in the second unit OLI flip as opposed to the first.  Going forward, Screen and Lubkin hope to develop further student “buy in” so that their students understand why a flipped model is beneficial to their learning.  Likewise, Screen and Lubkin hope to continue to navigate the challenge of teaching their students how to think about, rather than simply memorize, English grammar conventions.

Screen and Lubkin plan to devote this semester to analyzing data from the fall semester’s flipped model to see where improvements in design and instruction (e.g. guiding students’ self-pacing) can be made.

For more information about the CLED Flipped Grammar Project, visit: https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/itel-spring2013-jel72/.

Kaltman ITEL Project Creates Simulations for Patient Communication

Posted by & filed under CNDLS, Featured Blogs.

Professor Stacey Kaltman of the Psychiatry Department has been implementing a first-round ITEL project on Enhancing Teaching in Physician-Patient Communication to prepare students for the OSCE, a clinical examination that all medical students must take. After noticing the limitations in current traditional teaching approaches, Professor Kaltman identified online simulations as a strategy to teach both basic and complex communication skills to students.

As of right now, Professor Kaltman and her team, with the support of CNDLS, have nearly finished the first of three online simulations.  This first simulation uses Articulate software to teach students how to open an interview with a patient and gather medical history.  The screenshot below illustrates what the simulation looks like in practice.

Screen shot 2014-01-13 at 1.32.36 PM

Professor Kaltman cited the storyboarding as the primary challenge of this first simulation because it had to be transferrable to the branching software program.  In the late fall, the actress for the first simulation, Amanda Vacharat, filmed her parts; this simulation is now in the formative testing phase. 

The other two simulations will hopefully be completed by this spring or summer. Once students prepare for the OSCE by using the simulations, Professor Kaltman will compare their examination results against those of students who did not use the simulations; she hopes to discover a positive correlation between the online simulations and OSCE scores. The project promises to have exciting implications for the Georgetown Medical School and the larger Georgetown community.

For more information about Enhancing Teaching in Physician-Patient Communication, please visit Professor Kaltman’s ITEL blog: https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/itel-spring2013-sk279/.

What’s New in WordPress 3.8

Posted by & filed under Uncategorized.

As of January 7th, you may have noticed a few new things on your Georgetown blog’s dashboard. Most of the changes are visual: a new color scheme and simplified administration page offer a cleaner look. If you’ve never used WordPress on your smartphone or tablet, you’ll definitely want to try it out. This upgrade has made it easier than ever to manage your blogs from any device.

Also, please note that you now have a limited number of attempts to login to your blog. We have added this feature for increased security.

login-error

If you’d like to know more, see the WordPress team’s blog right here.

As always, please contact us at [email protected] if you have any questions!

 

Introducing the Latest CNDLS Innovation: SCORMie

Posted by & filed under Announcements, CNDLS, Featured Blogs, New Features, Uncategorized.

Over the course of the semester, CNDLS has been supporting the 28 faculty projects that were funded during the first funding round of the Initiative on Technology-Enhanced Learning (ITEL). As is often the case at CNDLS, one innovation engenders another.  For example, Linguistics Professor Jeffrey Connor-Linton’s Level II ITEL project inspired Assistant Director of Research and Development Bill Garr and Assistant Director for Web Projects Rob Pongsajapan to create an app, SCORMie, that has far-reaching potential for educators and students in the larger community.

Professor Connor-Linton’s first-round ITEL project for his Introduction to Language class relied on a flipped classroom model to move some knowledge-building activities outside of the classroom.  The Linguistics team used Adobe Captivate for outside lectures so that students could try out their learning and get feedback as they went through the material.  In theory, the data from students’ interaction with Adobe Captivate modules would be sent to the instructors to inform their teaching during the next class session; this strategy is known as Just-in-Time Teaching.  However, during early meetings with the Linguistics ITEL team, Bill noticed that Adobe Captivate was not supporting the team’s needs because the Blackboard Grade Center was not providing the kinds of data instructors needed.  Specifically, instructors received data regarding how students fared on an entire assignment, but they could not see which parts of an assignment were easy or difficult for students.

To troubleshoot, Bill contacted Blackboard to inquire about getting raw data dumps since he knew that Adobe Captivate files used SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference) to engage with Blackboard; this meant that a lot of data was made available through the Blackboard user interface. Long story short, Bill quickly realized that the solution to the Linguistic team’s needs would be more cost effective if he modified the javascript himself: “We kept trying to think of another way, when it occurred to me that the SCORM code was just some javascript that essentially we were providing, in that it got installed, along with the Captivate file, into the hosting Blackboard page. If we modified that javascript, we could also send the complete data to our own application on our own server, and then we could display it however the faculty needed it, for free.”

Creating this free solution initially proved challenging for Bill as he tried to ensure secure communication.  He likened the experience to writing a virus with one exception: “The hard part, getting the virus into a server’s code, was being done for me, every time one of our faculty uploaded a SCORM package with our modified javascript.”  After discovering a solution that delivered data to CNDLS’s server, Garr then asked Rob to make a Django Web app that would parse the data and convert it into manageable database tables. After collaborating on the database design, Rob created a beautiful interface, SCORMie, that is easy to understand.

SCORMie is currently a mature system that supports Adobe Captivate for the Linguistics ITEL project.  The Physics “Filling the Gaps” ITEL project also uses SCORMie with Articulate Storyline content.  SCORMie has streamlined data collection for both teams: instructors simply paste a script into their programs’ installation files and then publish and post as they normally would to Blackboard.  While the Physics project does not yet have enough content online to get data from faculty and students, the Linguistics team has enthusiastically noted the success of SCORMie, which has fostered better-informed teaching and supported student learning.

Bill notes that the next step for SCORMie involves the creation of a system whereby an interested faculty member can get his or her own SCORMie app, with a script that points the data to that app on the Web. Once support materials have been standardized in the near future, CNDLS hopes to announce SCORMie as a tool to facilitate Action Research about teaching methods and Just-in-Time Teaching.

Stay tuned for this exciting app launch!

For more information about the Linguistics and Physics projects, visit: https://cndls.georgetown.edu/projects/itel/, https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/itel-spring2013-connorlj/, https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/itel-spring2013-erv/2013/06/17/hello-world/.

 

Biology Professor Anne Rosenwald Awarded with Microbiology Residency

Posted by & filed under New Features.

CNDLS would like to congratulate Georgetown professor Anne Rosenwald (Biology) for a recent recognition she received for her dedication to teaching. In September 2013, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) selected Rosenwald as one of nineteen biologists nationwide to participate in a one-year residency supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

During her year in the ASM-NSF Biology Scholars Program Assessment Residency, Rosenwald will focus on how to improve undergraduate biology education. Dr. Rosenwald is already familiar with this mission, as evidenced by her work with the Genome Consortium for Active Teaching (GCAT) and the Genome Education Partnership (GEP).  Moreover, her work has been featured on the CNDLS Teaching Commons as a model for teaching and learning; Dr. Rosenwald successfully brings cutting-edge research techniques to undergraduates and fosters the development of her students’ communication skills. By engaging her students in a process of scientific learning that is both skills- and content-based, Dr. Rosenwald provides them with an enduring foundation in the sciences that is useful whether they pursue careers in the field or not.

Dr. Rosenwald views the residency as an opportunity to reflect on and refine her pedagogical approach; she is confident the program will assist her in enhancing classroom assessment tools and measurable learning outcomes.  In addition to attending an intensive Measuring Student Learning Institute in DC, she will have her own teacher—a mentor who was a former participant in the program.

Together, the experiences of the coming year will have a positive trickle-down effect for student learning on campus, for Dr. Rosenwald is an involved faculty member and integral part of Georgetown.  In addition to her role as a professor in the Biology Department, Dr. Rosenwald is Co-Director for Georgetown University’s Biology of Global Health major, an adjunct assistant professor at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, and an avid researcher of cell biology.

Once again, CNDLS wishes to congratulate Dr. Rosenwald on her residency, her exemplary teaching, and her service to her students and the larger community of Georgetown.