FCLDs Fall 2021 Workshops

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 fall. Most of these sessions will have two opportunities: Face-to-Face (F2F) in the Woods Classroom, in Mortensen Library or WebEx Webinars. Faculty or staff interested in attending should register by emailing fcld@hartford.edu or calling 860.768.4661.

A Note about the Webinars:

In order to attend a webinar, click on the link at the date/time of the session and join.  The meeting password for all WebEx sessions is s3minars2021. 

Directions for accessing WebEx Webinars

Getting Started with Blackboard/Blackboard Drop-in

Tuesdays, noon - 1 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. 

Blackboard Orientation for Support Staff

Wednesday, Sept. 1, noon – 1 p.m. (F2F)
Thursday, Sept. 2, 11 a.m. – noon. (Webinar) < Click to attend.  Password is: s3minars2021

This session is geared to campus staff who are using Blackboard non-academic courses for organizations, search committees, communications, etc. In this session, you will learn Blackboard basics, such as how to manually add and remove users, create announcements, email users, attach documents and organize items in Blackboard.

Getting Started with Ensemble & Creating Video ‘Lecturettes’ With Anthem

Thursday, Sept. 9, 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. (Webinar) < Click to attend. Password is: s3minars2021
Monday, Sept. 13, 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. (F2F)

Ensemble works like an in-house YouTube, allowing faculty to upload videos to a media library quickly and easily, then link to them from Blackboard and other websites. Video and audio files should never be added directly to Blackboard, and should instead be added to Ensemble and then linked into Blackboard for streaming. 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. Anthem (Ensemble Personal Capture) is a simple, convenient tool that can capture your voice, the action on your computer screen, and webcam 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.

If you do not have an Ensemble account, please sign up here.

Creating Folders and Sharing Content in OneDrive

Thursday, Sept. 23, 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. (Webinar) < Click to attend.  Password is: s3minars2021
Friday, Sept. 24, 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. (F2F)

In this session, we will discuss the University of Hartford’s OneDrive for Business and how instructors can use it for instruction.  Instructors, staff and students all get a free 1TB worth of file storage space on One Drive.  We will cover:

• Creating a course folder.
• Inviting students to your shared folder.
• Uploading and organizing documents and/or other files.
• Sharing files with students so they can access them.
• Collaboratively editing documents in the Shared OneDrive folder with colleagues or others.

There will be time for Q&A throughout the session.

We encourage participants to log into https://portal.office.com (use your UHart email and password) in order to become familiar with One Drive and explore the many other Office 365 applications available before attending this workshop.

Designing Banners for Blackboard

Wednesday, Oct. 6, 3 p.m. – 4 p.m. (F2F)
Thursday, Oct. 6, 3 p.m. – 4 p.m. (Webinar) < Click to attend.  Password is: s3minars2021
In this hands-on session, we will show you how to use PowerPoint to create beautiful and impactful banners for your Blackboard Course. Learn how to search for and embed fair use images, manipulate them, add graphics and text to your banners, and finally, how make them accessible.

Creating SharePoint Sites for Committees & Groups on Campus

Wednesday, Oct. 13, noon – 1 p.m. (F2F)
Thursday, Oct. 14, noon – 1 p.m. (Webinar) < Click to attend. Password is: s3minars2021

Microsoft SharePoint is a suite of tools, included with Office 365, that allow online collaboration between groups on campus. The SharePoint site gives groups access to features such as file sharing, data storage and retrieval, and communication via chat or live via Teams. In this workshop, we will show you how to start setting up your own SharePoint site for your campus group.

Once your site has been created, faculty, staff, and students may collaborate virtually. Some of SharePoint’s features include:

• Document storage and sharing with your group
• Shared tasks, contacts, calendars, announcements, and link lists
• Online discussion forums, including the integration with Teams for meetings online
• Subsites for teams, departments, or collaboration around meetings and documents
• OneNote for meeting minutes

Blackboard Collaborate for Remote Classroom Instruction

Monday, Oct.18, 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. (F2F)
Thursday, Oct. 21, 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. (Webinar) < Click to attend.

Blackboard Collaborate is a free tool available to faculty and students and used to host live, synchronous webinars – right from their Blackboard courses.  Collaborate makes it easy to facilitate live sessions with students without all the headaches of setting up, scheduling, and managing a remote session.  In this session, we will cover some basic setup and housekeeping tips, as well as share some best practices in facilitating live, remote synchronous class sessions with your students.

Excel Basics (for PC)

Wednesday, Nov. 3, noon – 1 p.m.

Prerequisites: None, this session is for new or beginning users of Excel
Equipment: Bring your PC laptop if you have one

In this continuing professional development series, we will hold an interactive session on Excel Basics for PC users. Most jobs today require at least basic Excel skills which include familiarity with the Excel ribbons and the display screen, the ability to enter and format data, calculate totals and do basic formulas, and conduct some basic shortcuts and productivity tricks. Faculty and Staff are invited to join us for this Excel SIG session in the Woods Classroom in Mortensen Library.  Space is limited, so please RSVP as soon as possible to fcld@hartford.edu.  Please bring your lunch!  Please also bring your PC laptop if you have one as there are only 15 PC stations for participants in this session.

Excel Pivot Tables (for PC)

Wednesday, Dec. 1, noon – 1 p.m.

Prerequisites: This session is for intermediate users of Excel
Equipment: Bring your PC laptop if you have one

In this continuing professional development series, we will hold an interactive session on pivot tables. Pivot Tables are one of Excel’s most powerful features; a tool that allows you to extract and organize data from a large, detailed data set. Faculty and Staff are invited to join us for this Excel SIG session in the Woods Classroom, Mortensen Library. Space is limited, so please RSVP as soon as possible to fcld@hartford.edu. Please bring your lunch.