Below, you’ll find announcements and events to assist you with teaching and learning needs. As always, email cit@ua.edu, call 205-348-3532, or stop by A203 Gordon Palmer Hall for assistance with UA’s instructional tech tools.
Instructional Tech Resources and Reminders
The CIT Knowledge Base is your clearinghouse for tutorials, known issues, and best practices. The Blackboard Browser Checker and CIT’s How-To Articles can help you use instructional technology with fewer headaches and hiccoughs.
New Zoom cloud recordings will also be saved to Panopto
Beginning Oct. 27, 2023, a copy of all new Zoom sessions recorded to the cloud will automatically be saved to Panopto, UA’s media manager and lecture capture tool. Users will experience no changes to their Zoom account and will continue to have the options to store recordings on their computer or in the cloud. Sessions recorded to Zoom Cloud prior to Oct. 27 will not be affected.
- New Sessions Only: This automatic process only applies to new sessions recorded to Zoom Cloud.
- Zoom meeting hosts who save recordings to the cloud will continue to receive a view link email notification from Zoom once the session has ended.
- A copy of new Zoom sessions recorded to the cloud will be saved to a “Meetings Recordings” folder within a user’s “My Folder” in Panopto.
- Zoom cloud recordings are only saved to the Zoom cloud for a limited amount of time. Saving a copy of recordings to Panopto will ensure long term storage.
Anthology Community & Idea Exchange
We’re highlighting two opportunities to share Blackboard Learn best practices and ideas: The Anthology Community and the Anthology Idea Exchange. Anthology is the company that owns Blackboard Learn.
Join the Anthology Community to ask and answer questions, connect with other Blackboard Learn users, engage in user groups and programs, and submit product feedback. We encourage you to create a Community account and participate in Teaching & Learning discussions, join product or user groups, and subscribe to blogs.
The Anthology Idea Exchange allows you to submit an idea and share, like, vote, and comment on ideas shared by other Anthology clients. Are you seeking solutions for attendance in larger courses? Would you like to print tests or filter and search course messages? Perhaps you have an idea of your own! Join the Teaching & Learning Idea Exchange to make your voice heard.
Blackboard Learn Ultra Course Pilot
UA instructors can now explore Blackboard Learn Ultra Course View, a simpler and more modern course experience. Learn more and request a practice or developmental course: Blackboard Learn Ultra Course Pilot
Workflows and tools are easy to find and use in Ultra Course View. You can quickly add content to your course, check the course calendar, drop in on class discussions, access the course gradebook, send a message, take a look at your course analytics, and more. We also like Ultra’s responsive design, continuous updates, Flexible Grading, Course Activity Report, and course content search, and so much more.
See Ultra in action: Introduction to Blackboard Learn (Ultra Course view starts at 1:00).
Tech Highlight – Hypothesis for Social Annotations
Hypothesis is a relatively new tool to UA that can turn any piece of digital content into a collaborative learning experience. Online annotation helps to improve reading proficiency and critical thinking skills. Plus, it easily integrates into Blackboard courses assignments. Check out the great learning resources by Hypothesis and add a social annotation assignment to your course!
Upcoming Learning Opportunities
New to one of our instructional tech tools? We would love to guide you step-by-step or provide tips and ideas for using it in your class. Just let us know how we can help!
A few workshops are highlighted below. Keep up to date on all the training sessions at https://cit.ua.edu/workshops/
Teaching with Blackboard Sessions
These CIT-led workshops and webinars aim to help you get started with and get the most out of Blackboard Learn, UA’s learning management system. Upcoming sessions include:
- Teaching with Blackboard: Blackboard Learn Basics
- Wednesday, November 1, 10:00 – 11:00am – Meets online via Microsoft Teams
- Thursday, November 9, 3:00 to 4:00pm – Meets in A232 Gordon Palmer Hall
- Teaching with Blackboard: Creating Accessible Course Content
- Thursday, November 16, 11:00am – 12:00pm
- Teaching with Blackboard: Grading and Managing the Gradebook in Learn Original
- Wednesday, November 1, 2:00 – 3:00pm
- Thursday, November 30, 3:00 – 4:00pm
- Teaching with Blackboard: Creating Assessments in Learn Original
- Thursday, November 2, 3:00 – 4:00pm
- Teaching with Blackboard: Fostering Student Engagement in Learn Original
- Wednesday, November 8, 2:00 – 3:00pm
- Teaching with Blackboard: Using Groups in Learn Original
- Wednesday, November 15, 10:00 – 11:00am
Register for CIT-led Teaching with Blackboard workshops and webinars.
Teaching with Turnitin Sessions
Turnitin provides tools for grading and peer review and helps deter and prevent plagiarism by checking student-submitted work against an extensive online database. Learn more in these upcoming sessions:
- Teaching with Turnitin: Turnitin Basics
- Thursday, November 2, 11:00am – 12:00pm
- Teaching with Turnitin: Understanding Similarity Reports and Scores
- Thursday, November 9, 11:00am – 12:00pm
- Wednesday, November 29, 2:00 – 3:00pm
Register for CIT-led Teaching with Turnitin workshops and webinars.
Hypothesis – Social Annotation
Hypothesis is a social annotation tool installed directly in Blackboard. Adding Hypothesis to readings in your course supports student success by placing active discussion right on top of readings, enabling students and teachers to add comments and start conversations in the margins of texts.
To learn more about making reading active, visible, and social using Hypothesis, please join us in one of our upcoming workshops. Click on each link to learn more and register.
Capture your Classes: Classroom Recording with Panopto
OIT’s Audio/Visual Solutions (AVS) team for a special Panopto workshop on how to easily record lectures in the classroom using Panopto.
- Thursday, November 2, 3:30 -4:30pm – College of Arts & Sciences
- Monday, November 6, 1:00pm – 2:00pm – College of Education
- Monday, November 6, 3:30 – 4:30pm – College of Communication and Information Sciences
- Friday, November 10, 2:00 – 3:00pm – College of Engineering
Register for CIT-led Capture your Classroom Recording with Panopto
Zoom Basics
Tuesday, November 21 10:00 – 11:00 am
Learn the basic features for conducting a zoom meeting including an overview of Zoom’s web portal and desktop client, how to schedule a meeting and invite others, and we’ll review the in-meeting host and participant controls.
Register for Zoom Basics
Zoom Advanced
Wednesday, November 22 10:00 – 11:00 am
This webinar session builds on the Zoom Basics workshop. We’ll explore how to set up recurring meetings, breakout rooms, polls, and reports.
Register for Zoom Advanced
Flip Basics
Monday, November 13 11:00pm to 12:00am
Explore the features inside Flip and learn how to level up the ways your scholars communicate and share their learning.
Flip is a free app from Microsoft where educators create safe, online groups for students to express their ideas asynchronously in short video, text, and audio messages.
Register for Flip Basics
Creating and Editing Videos in Rush Webinar
Tuesday, November 21 2:00 – 3:00pm
Learn the essentials of creating movie presentations using images, video and audio in Adobe Rush. Develop your storytelling skills whether it be for a class project, department presentation or personal story. Register for Creating and Editing Videos in RushRegister for Creating and Editing Videos in Rush
Check out more instructional technology workshops at https://cit.ua.edu/workshops/
As always, we are available Monday-Friday, 8:00-4:45 to help you. We look forward to working with you soon.
Email – cit@ua.edu Phone – 205-348-3532 Website and Knowledge Base
