FCLD Workshops – August Jumpstarts

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 August. 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, noon – 1 p.m., or by appointment (online 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.

Faculty interested in attending should register by emailing fcld@hartford.edu or calling 860.768.4661.

GETTING STARTED WITH KALTURA

Monday, Aug. 7, 10 a.m. – 11 a.m. (Virtual)
Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. (Virtual)
Thursday, Aug. 24, 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. (Virtual)

Video and audio files should never be added directly to Blackboard; instead, instructors should be using Kaltura (the new replacement for Ensemble). Kaltura 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. 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 Kaltura. Kaltura 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.

MICROSOFT TEAMS FOR REMOTE INSTRUCTION, OFFICE HOURS, AND COLLABORATION

Wednesday, Aug. 9, 10 a.m. – 11 a.m. (Virtual)
Thursday, Aug. 17, 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. (Virtual)
Monday, Aug. 21, 11 a.m. – noon (Virtual)

Microsoft Teams is a video-conferencing application that now integrates with Blackboard. It is a platform that can be employed for remote instruction, office hours, or collaborative group work in your courses. Microsoft Teams can be accessed via a desktop application or a browser and is available on mobile devices as well. In this session, we will show you how to set up a Teams Meeting in your Blackboard course, how to navigate the Teams interface, how to share files or documents with students, and how to share screens. We will also show you how to set up groups so your students can work on collaborative activities together.

CREATING FOLDERS AND SHARING CONTENT IN ONEDRIVE

Wednesday, Aug. 23, 10 a.m. – 11 a.m. (Virtual)

Monday, Aug. 28, 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. (In-person, Woods Classroom)

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

CREATING SHAREPOINT SITES FOR COMMITTEES AND GROUPS ON CAMPUS

Wednesday, Aug. 23, 3 p.m. – 4 p.m. (Virtual)

Microsoft SharePoint is a suite of tools, included with Office 365, that allow online collaboration between groups on campus. A SharePoint site gives groups access to features such as file sharing, data storage and retrieval, and communication via chat or virtually via Teams. In this workshop, we will demonstrate 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 collaborations on meetings and documents
• OneNote for meeting minutes

CREATING BASIC BLACKBOARD TESTS

Thursday, Aug. 10, 10 a.m. – 11 a.m. (Virtual)

In this session, FCLD will introduce faculty to the basics of creating and deploying multiple choice and true/false tests in Blackboard.  Participants will also learn best practices for providing feedback and providing accommodations for students with letters. This is a 30-minute webinar with time for Q&A after.

BLACKBOARD TESTS AND POOLS: USING PUBLISHER TEST BANKS

Friday, Aug. 18, 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. (Virtual)

ome textbook publishers have test banks available to instructors, but sometimes they are not formatted correctly for use in Blackboard.  In this session, we will cover how to convert the test banks (if needed) and how to import and deploy them in our Blackboard courses. This is a 30-minute webinar with time for Q&A after.

BLACKBOARD ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING WITH BB ANNOTATE

Tuesday, Aug. 29, 10 a.m. – 11 a.m. (In-person, Woods Classroom)

In this session, instructors will learn the basics of setting up Blackboard assignments and using SafeAssign, Blackboard’s plagiarism detection tool.  Additionally, we will explore the new Blackboard Annotate tool for grading and marking up assignments. This is a 30-minute webinar with time for Q&A after.