Poll: What are you thinking?

We would know that if I asked you to respond digitally, in real time, and I displayed the results. We can do that in the class now - "Quick, students...pull out one of your mobile devices!"

Image courtesy of Duke University Digital Initiative

If you haven't seen it yet, we're (semi)-supporting Poll Everywhere at UWT. You use the Web-based software from Any/Everywhere to create a poll. T/F, multiple choice or short answers. Save the poll, and students participate by visiting a fast mobile-friendly (phone, laptop, tablet) Web site, displayed for that poll. 

They choose how to answer your question based on the technology they carry: Web page, via txt, or Twitter. Instructions are displayed on-screen for each type of response. And then the poll updates and displays summary results in real time. Wow.

Instructors who have used clickers before understand the value of polling, and those now using cloud-based polling understand the great leap in not having students purchase (and lose or let the battery run down on) costly clickers.  We also get back the lost time in passing out, explaining, dealing with dead batteries and collecting clickers brought to the classroom, when supplied by IT. 

Polling offers instructors a new set of possibilities when it moves to the Web. Colleagues are using it to anonymously to test understanding, to do end-of-class 2-minute assessments, to take attendance and more. Give it a try.

Active learning, collecting group work, engaging reticent learners. You can do that in moments with cloud-based polling software. 

Well, you can if you have less that 40 students in your class. That's the semi-support. Forty responses is where Poll Everywhere cuts off the free license. Larger classes means you'll need to poll in groups. Sorry.

So I'll end with the good news. There's rumor that Canvas is building polling software into their LMS. Colleagues at UW-IT say they've actually seen a demo of the pilot and it should be in production within a year. Till then, there's free, easy, fast polling software in the cloud. Check it out.

Panopt Who?

Panopto! UW’s new lecture capture system is flexible and easy to use! Record your class, your students’ presentations, or create videos for your flipped classroom and then provide direct access to those recordings inside of your Canvas course. You may have heard about or used Tegrity in the past, but after conducting a needs assessment and pilot in autumn and winter quarter 2013, UW announced that Panopto would replace two of their systems, Tegrity and UW Coursecasting over the summer! 

Why record lectures? What is Flipping the Classroom? Lecture Capture can enhance learning by adding more focus – students can review lectures as often as they want from anywhere and review difficult or complex topics, annotate key concepts, search for terms, and post questions throughout the recorded lecture. It also allows for more flexibility – affording students who have busy schedules to re-visit content on the bus, in the middle of the night or whenever they set aside time for coursework. By flipping your classroom, recording material for students to view prior to class frees up precious in-person class time for active learning strategies.  The main goal in flipping a class is to cultivate deeper, richer active learning experiences for students when the instructor is present to coach and guide them.

So, Panopto is here and we are ready and excited to get you up and running on the new system! There are some really great features within Panopto. Check out the 8 Ways for Universities to Use Panopto or visit our About Panopto page to learn more!

A New Tool for Online Instructors: ProctorU!

Wow! At last count, 480 students were taking fully online courses at the University of Washington Tacoma this summer. The challenge, besides the fast pace of summer and our unrequited desire to be at the beach, is assessment. A number of courses demand in-place exams and in the past, these needed to be scheduled and accommodated no matter where our learners were traveling.

Thanks to ever-improving technologies and UWT's fast adaptation to changing times, instructors now have the option of allowing students to check in from anywhere at the time of their exam. Hello ProctorU! Using a webcam and high-speed internet connection, students can now pay a small fee to take their exam distantly in a number of online courses. 

Based on UWT's collaboration with ProctorU, the student makes an appointment for the time of the exam, and ProctorU works with the participating professor to deliver a digital copy of the exam, opening up new options for courses that require verification of student presence.

How it Works 
The proctor connects via webcam with the student during the allowed time, verifies identity, and collects the finished exam.  No matter where the student connects from physically, the live proctor will monitor progress during the exam. They will first determine that the student is in fact the right test taker. To begin, the proctor will ask the student to show a photo ID. The proctor will then snap a web photo for the session profile and ensure that the student has the exam and is not using any materials the instructor did not approve or provide. 

Another new option for emerging use in connecting our learners anytime/anywhere/many ways.