Concrete Applications to Teaching

Enhanced Gradebook

• Load rosters into Gradebook automatically
• Be able to weight grades and grade categories
• Upload/download spreadsheets
• Be able to tell which grades have been altered by whom
• Be able to annotate grades
• Graph grade statistics visually (primarily for students to view)
• Wider variety of roles: e.g., Head TA
• Seamless communication between Excel and Gradebook!
• Be able to copy Gradebook settings between quarters and classes
• Ability to drop lowest score
• Ability to add extra credit
• Handle numbers above 100% + (for extra credit)
• Toggling between percentage and points
• Flexible cut-offs for final grades
• Accessing dropped students' data
• Use the same wiki in several classes over the course of a few years to build one huge learning resource.
• Provide students with their grades

Enhanced Quizbuilder

• Provide feedback on incorrect answers
• Add images to quizzes

Student Pre-Labs

Online Course Evaluations

Wiki

• Working with grad student seminar on "collective journaling" in Sakai wiki
• Wiki as a way for students to teach and learn from one another without our having to monitor it.
• Develop comprehensive wikis full of useful information by continuing them from one quarter to the next, having students build on the previous class.
• Nutrition and Aging course: students collectively write the history of caloric ______. Point them in the right direction, make sure they are hitting the high points, and then turn it over to the second group, who will continue the history.

Create and organize class web pages

• Track student Web site use.

Online Discussion Groups

Chat rooms

Online Course Calendars

Teaching people how to use new software

Breeze

• Virtual office hours.
• Virtual meetings between TAs and Instructors
• Lesson/Lecture Models that can be shared/re-used
• An attempt at 170 VetMed students online at the same time during class was held. As of 3/17 bandwidth issues still persist. Another attempt with 1/2 wireless connections and 2/3 wireless connections will be attempted soon. Hardware upgrades will be assessed.

Podcasting

• Record conversations during office hours between the professor and his smartest students, then podcast these discussions.
• Stage dialogue arguments and different perspectives.
• ESL Students appeared to enjoy the podcasts and still came to class.

Pedagogy

• Encourage academic excellence by encouraging departments and instructors to embrace a new and revolutionary technology each year.
• Converting course functions (a.k.a grading papers) to the computer can save time and prevent the waste of paper.
• Embracing technology in the classroom effectively "Ups Your Cool Factor"
• Instead of teaching taking a distinctive path from left to right, online collaboration allows for a web or netting structure that is far more inclusive. This change in the way things are done promotes progress in academia.
• There are technological complications in the classroom with the current system. By joining in on this system at the start, you'll have a say as to how the backbone will work.
• It's a lot easier to get up to date with technology when you start at the very beginning of a technological movement. Even if you can't do everything you want to do with the new system as it exists today, becoming accustomed to it will allow you to acclimatize to the desired tools when they roll out.
• When many students come to your class with different backgrounds, you can use Sakai tools (modules/lessons/wiki/discussion board/breeze) to assign the appropriate tutorials to the appropriate students, thus bringing everyone up to the same level of expertise.
• Sakai allows instructors to add "modules" to their course Web site that students can then access. Modules allow professors to connect their students to other various worksites view the buttons on the left.
  • Andy Jones is developing a module off the Academic Integrity Project (cai.ucdavis.edu/aip.html) as a means to inform students about plagiarism.