Faculty Workshops - Spring 2021
Workshops from Spring 2021
A series of one-hour “how-to” workshops to get you started with some basic online activities. This series covers everything from giving live or recorded lectures, using various discussion board tools, giving an online test, and providing a platform for asynchronous student presentations.
Feel free to register for the ones that are most relevant to your teaching needs. Register for each topic using the links below.
Blackboard Basics
This workshop is for Blackboard beginners. Learn the basics of setting up a course in Blackboard. This session will cover how to add and move content, how to use Announcements and Email for communication, how to manage the left-hand menu, and how to add basic tools to your course and review the grade center. It will not cover settings and options for the various tools or grade center.
Date: Monday, January 11, 12noon
How-to Record and Deliver Video Lectures to your Students
Learn how to use Zoom to record a video lecture that includes PowerPoint slides, desktop software, or just video input. Best practices for creating recording lectures will be examined. Tips for creating effective lectures, including tips for fixing mistakes. Provide streaming access for that video to the students in your course via Blackboard and Panopto access controls. Panopto edit features, as well as captioning options, viewing statistics, and adding quiz questions to videos will also be reviewed. The Lightboard will also be discussed.
Dates: Wednesday, January 13, 12noon
Gradescope
Learn how to use Gradescope with your Blackboard course.
Dates: Friday, January 15, 12noon
How to Facilitate a Live Zoom Class Session
Learn how to use Zoom to facilitate a live class session. Learn some tips for maintaining your classroom securely, as well as how to share your screen, annotate on your screen, use the whiteboard, create breakout rooms, and use the polling feature.
Dates: Wednesday, January 20, 12 noon
Learn how to Copy Materials from a Previous Course into your Upcoming Course
Learn how to make the best use of your time in copying materials from a previous course into the new template. We will cover how to copy individual items, individual tests, and full course materials.
Note: This workshop will cover how to copy from an existing course into the template used by Arts, Sciences, and Engineering, Warner School of Education, SMD Graduate programs, Eastman School of Music, and Eastman Institute of Oral Health. The process will work for other school templates, but will be demonstrated with this template.
Dates: Thursday, January 21, 12 noon
Blackboard has a new Zoom connection tool – the Zoom Meeting Manager.
Learn more about the new Zoom Meeting Manager in Blackboard, as well as the new security settings being implemented by Zoom and how that will affect your existing Zoom meetings.
Note: This tool within Blackboard only works for users with a NetID-based (rochester.zoom.us) account.
Dates: Friday, January 22, 12 noon
Supporting Academic Honesty
With students taking courses remotely this semester, many instructors will need to learn new techniques for preventing and detecting cheating during exams. This session will share techniques instructors can use to support student integrity in remotely administered exams, including key choices in the design of exams and remote proctoring using Zoom.
Dates: Friday, March 5, 12noon
How to Facilitate an Online Exam
Learn how to create and set up a Blackboard Test. The various options available for testing will be discussed including when and how to use each option. Additional testing software will be mentioned.
Dates: Friday, March 12, 12noon
How to Add Interactivity into your Zoom Sessions
Learn how to use different tools to add interactivity into your Zoom sessions. We will cover breakout rooms, polling, and use of Padlet in this session.
Dates: Friday, March 19, 12noon
How to Add Collaboration Tools into your Course
Learn how to use Blackboard Wiki, Padlet, Perusall and Google docs/Box Note to add online collaboration tools into your course.
Dates: Friday, March 26, 12noon
How to Use Different Discussion Tools in your Course
Learn how to use Blackboard discussion boards, Yellowdig, Voicethread and Piazza for discussions.
Dates: Friday, April 2, 12noon
Learn more about Padlet
Padlet is an electronic bulletin board. Learn about different use cases for Padlet in your course. See examples of different ways Padlet can be used to engage students and support collaboration. Learn how to get a UR Account and connect Padlet to Blackboard so that students have accounts associated with their contributions.
Dates: Friday, April 9, 12noon
Using the Blackboard Course Template to Organize your Course
Having a well-organized course in Blackboard provides students and faculty the opportunity to focus on the essential coursework, meet course goals and achieve student learning outcomes. Come learn more about how to use “Learning Modules” to effectively organize your course materials in an effective, efficient and relevant structure that can be used for traditional, online, or hybrid classes.
This applies specifically to the template used by ASE, Eastman Music, Warner, Eastman Dental, and School of Medicine and Dentistry graduate courses, but can be applied to any Blackboard course.
Dates: Tuesday, April 13, 12noon
Learn more about Perusall
Perusall is a social annotation tool. Learn different use cases for Perusall in your course. See examples of ways Perusall can be used to engage students around your content. Learn more about how connect Perusall to Blackboard.
Dates: Friday, April 16, 12noon
Voicethread Assignment Feature Changes
Voicethread is changing how Assignments work.Learn more about the new Assignment features at this workshop.These features will be in place for the star to summer classes.
Dates: Friday, April 30, 12noon
Gradescope
Join us for a special session led by Gradescope specialists. Gain knowledge to reduce your grading time by more than 50% while increasing consistency, accuracy, flexibility at the same time. Understand how to apply the power of Gradescope for quizzes, homework assignments, and exams. Evaluate your assessments to see if they are a good fit for the Gradescope platform.
Dates: Friday, May 7, 12noon
Information Guides
- Planning and Preparing for Disruption
- How do I Communicate with my Students?
- How do I Share Content with my Students?
- How do I Offer Live Lectures and Class Meetings via Zoom?
- How do I Pre-Record Lectures for my Students using Zoom and Panopto?
- How do I Facilitate Discussions with my Students?
- How do I Collect Assignments?
- How do I Facilitate Exams or Tests?
- How do I Share Student Grades Confidentially?
- What Options do my Students have for Software Access?
- University Guidance on Privacy in Zoom
Video Tutorials
- Using Voicethread for Assessment