FCLD's January Jumpstart Seminars
The Faculty Center for Learning Development (FCLD) offers ongoing seminars and instruction on a variety of instructional technology, including Blackboard, the University's learning management system (LMS). FCLD will be offering the following seminars during the month of January. Unless otherwise indicated, all seminars are held in the Woods Classroom in Harrison University Libraries. Faculty interested in attending should register by emailing fcld@hartford.edu or calling (860) 768-4661.
Getting Started with Blackboard/Blackboard Drop-in
Tuesdays, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. - Woods Classroom or FCLD Lab
Every Tuesday, we offer an orientation and drop-in clinic for Blackboard, the application used to put courses online. If you’re new to Blackboard, you’ll learn strategies for organizing your Blackboard course, review the many tools and features available in Blackboard, and start adding course content items like your syllabus and web links to your course. Be sure to bring a digital version of your syllabus and/or other course materials; this is designed as a hands-on seminar. If you’re using Blackboard already, feel free to drop by with a question or for troubleshooting.
Getting Started with Ensemble, the Campus’ “In-House YouTube”
Thursday, January 16, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Ensemble works like an in-house YouTube, allowing faculty to quickly and easily upload videos, then link to them from Blackboard and other websites. Faculty who are flipping the classroom, teaching online, using video clips in instruction, or working with student video projects, should plan to attend this special information session about Ensemble. Pre-registration is helpful for this session so that an Ensemble account can be created for you in advance.
Creating Video ‘Lecturettes’ with Ensemble Anthem
Thursday, January 16, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Wednesday, January 29, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Anthem (Ensemble Personal Capture) is a simple, convenient tool that can capture your voice, the action on your computer screen, and web cam video to create lecturettes. You can use it to record audio podcasts, video lectures, or narrated presentations and demonstrations. This session will guide you through the process of recording a narrated screen capture, editing it, and publishing it to Blackboard. Pre-registration is helpful for this session, so that an Ensemble Anthem account can be created for you in advance.
PowerPoint Bootcamp & Design a Banner for Blackboard
Wednesday, January 22, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Learn how to spice up your PowerPoints in this seminar, creating visually stimulating PowerPoint slides that appeal to the reader and incorporate media in its various forms. Learn how to embed images, manipulate them, and also add graphics, transitions, animations and other tools to create interactivity within your presentations. We will also design a banner for your Blackboard Course.
One Drive and Cloud Storage Basics
Thursday, January 23, 12:15 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.
In this session, we will briefly describe the basics on Cloud storage and then guide faculty and staff on how to sign into cloud storage to upload files. We will also discuss how to manage the various cloud storage options available, including the University’s own One Drive storage solution, which provides faculty and staff with 1 TB free storage space. Additionally, Instructors now have the ability to easily and quickly upload files to Blackboard courses right from their cloud storage, such as OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox or Box. Students will now be able to upload documents from cloud storage when they submit Blackboard assignments.
Ally to the Rescue! Making Course Content Accessible
Friday, January 24, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
In this hands-on session, faculty will learn practical tricks to quickly develop and remediate course content and make them accessible with just-in-time help from the Blackboard Ally tool. We will be using tools readily available to Faculty in Microsoft and Adobe Acrobat Pro, discussing best practices and easy tips for getting started. This workshop will primarily focus on Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, as well as giving some quick tips for PDFs and scanned documents. Faculty are encouraged to bring their syllabi, a Word document, PowerPoint and PDF files to work with.
Skype for Business
Monday, January 27, 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Included in Office365 for all faculty, staff, and students, is the application Skype for Business. Skype is an easy-to-use collaboration tool that provides instant messaging and the ability to do person-to-person and person-to-group calls with audio and/or video free of charge. Instructors and students can connect with others around the world for office hours, collaborative projects, presentations, or to practice speaking foreign languages. In this session, we will show you how to get started with Skype for Business, how to add people, create groups and how to start a conference call.