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DLiT Guides and Resources

DLiT provides a wide variety of resources, tutorials, and guides for various online learning, technology-enhanced teaching, and learning supports. Explore the following tabs and sections. If you don't find what you need, please make suggestions to dlit@andrews.edu.

LearningHub

LearningHub is Andrews University's learning management system and is powered by Moodle. If you need additional assistance, email dlit@andrews.edu.

A First Step for Teachers

This tutorial page is for teachers who are opening their LearningHub course page for the first time

Now that you are into your course you can go to the next section below and learn how to add assignments or to the next tab to the right and learn how to add Zoom for face-to-face classes.

A Primer for Setting Up LearningHub

Assignments and TurnItIn

Discussion and Interaction

The following quick guides will assist you in setting up online discussion and interaction in your course site.

Exams and Quizzes

The following resources will assist you with using LearningHub for exams or quizzes.

Q: How do I get help getting my quiz/exam into LearningHub?
DLiT is willing to put your quiz/exam into LearningHub. Please email it to dlit@andrews.edu along with the quiz/exam and the answers (at least the answers for autograded items such as T/F, multiple choice, and matching).

Grading and Gradebook

The following resources will assist you with grading and setting up your gradebook. If you feel there are issues with your gradebook, please email dlit@andrews.edu and we can provide a gradebook audit to ensure the settings match your syllabus.

Gradebook

Grading

Granting Access to LearningHub

Layout Tricks

There are several different Formats to choose from.  To see and choose the options click on the Gear Icon and choose "Edit settings".  From there click on "Course format".
1.  "Buttons format" displays the sections as buttons that appear in a row after the first "General" section; 
2.  "Grid format" displays the sections as boxes in a grid pattern after the "General" section;
3.   "Onetopic format" displays the sections as tabs across the top of the page;
4.  "Single activity format" displays only one item per page, and all navigation is done with the arrows in the lower corners;
5.  "Social format" limits the entire page to the Forum discussion activity;
6.  "Collapsed topics" displays the sections as bars with only the topic title visible until it is clicked open;
7.  "Topics format" is the default setting, displaying all content in each section on the entire page, to scroll through;
8.  "Weekly format" looks similar to Topics format except that each section is titled "Week 1: (the date)", etc.
Section clean up: Eliminate unused sections (topics) in your course by clicking on the Gear Icon and then choosing ‘Edit settings’, and click on ‘Course format’, select the ‘Number of sections’ that you need. Click ‘Save changes’

Student Progress Tracking

The following tools can be used to assist students and faculty in tracking progress and completion in LearningHub.

Video, Audio, and Conferencing

Zoom for distance instruction and videoconferencing

Panopto for Video and Media in LearningHub

Want to record a mini-lecture, or post a recorded meeting in LearningHub, for your students? These tools will assist you.

Using some basic audio and video concepts and a few environment adjustments, your recordings can look natural and professional.

Conference/Meeting Scheduling

Need to meet with students live? The following tools help you with scheduling.

Embedding Media in LearningHub

Using media in your course site? These guides will help you be more effective.
  • Embedding Media
  • Videos on LearningHub - MP3 and MP4
  • Converting Media files
  • Videoant Easy way to annotate/index YouTube videos for your classes. It allows your students to save time by going directly to pre-determined sections in a video. Your annotated videos are archived within your account and can be easily embedded in your LearningHub course. Videoant also allows your students to post comments related to every annotation in the video, this feature can be done only via their website.

Other tools for cool video and audio

The following is the beginning of a collection of fund and cool tools for recording audio & video.

Teaching Resources

Alignment and Assessment

Alignment means that we want to create continuity between the learning objectives, the course activities, the learning materials, and the assessments.

Assessment is how we improve our instruction and measure student performance.

Alternative Assessments

What is the Purpose of Assessment?

The primary function of assessment is to measure student learning. There are two types of assessment, formative and summative. Formative occurs while the instruction is in process, while summative is a final overall determination.

It is quite common in higher education to see a very heavy focus on summative assessment, with very little formative assessment opportunities. This is contrary to effectively designed instruction due to the lack of opportunities for the learner to practice and receive feedback. In an online course, this approach is especially problematic.

Formative assessment provides feedback to learners as they are learning content. Opportunities for practice and feedback are CRUCIAL to the effectiveness of instruction, especially online instruction.

Beyond the Textbook and Lecture

Below are some ideas for utilizing online resources to enhance your course, moving beyond the read a chapter or watch a lecture and take a quiz.

Videos

How to Use Online Video in Classrooms

Images

How to Cite Images and Media (This is a great resource for a challenging topic.)

Audio Files

Learning Objects and Lessons

  • OER (Open Educational Resources that may be used freely. Searchable by subject, primary source, education level, material type, etc.)
  • Merlot (Program of the California State University system)

How to Add Apps to Your Course

Embed interactive content using https://www.edu-apps.org/.

  • Titan Pad offers free, public collaborative documents. Every placement of a TitanPad in your content will result in a new pad being created. Students can also chat while working together on a pad. Great for group work.
  • Flat World Knowledge offers free, open-licensed textbooks that can be used in class material. Link to any of these textbooks from within your class.
  • Storifylets users organize events from across the web into a single cohesive "story". Adding this app allows you to search through and link to social stories from within your course material.

Cheating and Student Identity Verification

Student Identity Verification

Andrews University uses multiple methods to verify the identity of online students. All online students have a secure login to the online course materials. Assignments such as papers and projects are submitted through Turn-It-In, a plagiarism checker which allows us reduce the possibility that the student is handing in work that is not their own. Most courses have proctored exams where the student must show their ID before they are allowed to take the exam. Some courses have live sessions where the student shown on the webcam is verified against the photo in our student information system to verify the student identity. The combination of these methods verifies that the student taking the online class is the same person who is participating in the class.

Cheating and Plagiarism

Copyright

Just because you can download or copy/paste content from the web does not make it legal. Browse these resources to learn. DLiT and library staff can assist you in ensuring that your use of resources is legal.

How To:

Critical Thinking

Andrews Standard for Teaching Online: Target: The course includes opportunities for students to think critically by requiring them to do most or all of the following: define and describe a relevant issue from multiple angles, evaluate sources of information, identify and question others and one’s own assumptions, acknowledge different sides of an issue, share a conclusion logically tied to a range of information including opposing viewpoints, and/or identify consequences

Background and Overview Resources

Critical Thinking Activities

Designing Content for All Students

Content should be presented and designed in ways that all students can access equitably.

Discussion Forums

Using the Forum for More Than “Discussion”

The discussion forum is great for interaction, but what else can you do with it besides “discuss”?! Here are some ideas to bring in some variety:

Course Housekeeping Forums

  • Create an introductions forum for students to get to know each other personally and professionally. Have students share prior knowledge and experience on the content.
  • Create general forums to support the class. Some examples to choose from include:
    • Watercooler
    • General Quesetions
    • Technical Questions
    • Learning Process Comments
    • Housekeeping Issues
    • Online Chapel

Assessment of Discussions

Exams and Quizzes

Exams

Well constructed tests motivate students and reinforce learning. Well constructed tests enable teachers to assess the students mastery of course objectives. Tests also provide feedback on teaching, often showing what was or was not communicated clearly. While always demanding, test writing may be made easier by considering the following suggestions for general test construction.

Quizzes

A quiz is a form of student assessment that measures knowledge, skills, and abilities. A quiz is generally a frequent and short assessment that can gauge a student’s retention and comprehension of a small amount of information. A quiz can function throughout a course as an informative feedback device allowing both the instructor and the students to see where they are excelling or need more focus. In order to effectively create quizzes, it is important to establish and understand the learning objectives that are being measured.

Faith Integration / Biblical Foundations for Teaching

Andrews Standard for Teaching Online: Target: The course includes appropriate worship opportunities connected to the course content, appropriate connections to the Adventist faith throughout the content presentations, assignments that encourage growth in students’ understanding of life, learning and civic responsibility from a Christian point of view. The teacher’s interaction with the students exhibit care for the student.

What could this look like in an online course? The evidence may come in instructor-student interaction, in discussion on how the Christian worldview intersects with the content knowledge, in how students are viewed and treated as whole persons made in the image of God, in the instructor’s teaching presence. Here are some examples:

Instructor Presence

  • Hosting and encouraging student participation in an online chapel
  • Tone of your interactions with students
  • Ways that you show students you care - praying for them, helping struggling students, etc.

Writing Assignments

Biblical Foundations

Are there any natural connections between Biblical perspectives and your course content? Here are a few examples to challenge your thinking:

Teaching Civic Responsibility

Global Engagement and Collaboration

7 Steps to Flatten Your Classroom

Presented by Vicki Davis to Andrews Univeristy Faculty Institute, Fall 2015

Inspired by Thomas Friedman in “The World is Flat,“ Vicki has been leading global collaborative projects for many years. Global collaboration is not a choice between current pedagogies or global collaboration. Rather, it is an “and“ proposition. We should use current teaching pedagogies and effective global collaboration pedagogies as part of the complete, healthy classroom ecosystem. You can get there one step at a time.

Group Work

Learning Community

Andrews Standard for Teaching Online: Target: The participants and instructor are engaged and present in facilitating social and cognitive (learning) opportunities for interaction among the students.

One of the biggest concerns of faculty and students new to online learning is the feeling of disconnection and distance. Creating an interactive learning community can make all the difference for student satisfaction in an online course. In addition, the learning community is a great way to encourage students to think critically about your academic content, to reflect on their learning, and to consider connections between a Christian worldview and the core content to be learned.

The Community of Inquiry model of online learning includes the Teaching Presence, Social Presence and the Cognitive Presence. We will use these concepts as a framework for organizing these resources.

Social Presence
Social Presence is “the ability of participants to identify with the community (e.g., course of study), communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and develop inter-personal relationships by way of projecting their individual personalities” (Garrison, 2009). In a face to face class, how do students and the professor get to know each other? They see each other’s faces and body language. They share their ideas in classroom discussion. They may meet each other outside of class to work on additional learning. Online, we need to deliberately set up spaces for students to get to know each other and for you to get to know them. In high quality online programs, students even feel a bond of solidarity and friendship and are excited to meet each other later face to face.

Here are some ideas to enhance the social presence of your online classroom:

  • Create an introductions forum for students to get to know each other personally and professionally. Have students share prior knowledge and experience on the content.
  • Create general forums to support the class. Some examples to choose from include:
    • Watercooler
    • General Questions
    • Technical Questions
    • Learning Process Comments
    • Housekeeping Issues
    • Online Chapel
  • If you have a live synchronous time, always include icebreaker times at each session. Have students share the weather where they are, or something interesting from their location.
  • Encourage students to share personal experiences to connect with the content, where appropriate.

Cognitive Presence

Cognitive Presence is the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001).

Faculty Presence

While you focus on building your online course, keep in mind how you will be “present” in your online course. How will students feel that you are “there” in the course? Creating a sense of instructor presence is an important aspect to student satisfaction in online courses.So what are some ways to be “present” and visible to students?

See Faith Integration and Critical Thinking for additional ideas.

Offline Activities

Just because a course is online doesn’t mean that the student has to stare at a screen the whole time. Here are some ideas for learning activities outside of the online classroom:

Out of the Box Activities

What are some different types of learning activities that you could include in your class? How can you engage your students in more interesting ways? Here are some ideas to get you thinking.

Provide Choices:

Consider how you can provide choices for students to meet your learning outcomes.

Integrate Gaming Principles

Collaborative Knowledge Creation via Wiki Tools

More Ideas

Rubrics

Learning increases when learners have a sense of what they are setting out to learn, a statement of explicit standards they must meet and a way of seeing what they have learned." Loaker, Cromwell and O'Brien (1986) pg.47. Rubrics are written criteria that details expectations of what students will need to know and be able to do in order to receive a given grade. Rubrics help instructors to develop clear learning objectives for their students and if provided to students prior to the activity, serve to guide their efforts..One of the timeless verities of student psychology is that students will focus on learning material that will impact their grade.

Student Reflection

Andrews Standard for Teaching Online: Target: Substantive guidance and opportunities are provided to students for them to reflect personally and professionally on the course content and its application. Instructor feedback is provided on these reflections.

Student reflection is designed to assist students in thinking about their learning processes, their learning experiences, and their metacognition. Reflection is a critical component for teaching students to be self-directed learners. Students should reflect on the course content and it’s application to their personal and professional lives.

Dee Fink’s Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning includes a series of questions for including reflection in course design (p 19-20).

Social Presence

  • Students reflect with:
    • oneself through journaling or learning portfolios
    • others through class discussion or others outside of class
  • Students reflect about:
    • the subject of the course: what is an appropriate and full understanding of this topic?
    • the learning process:
      • What am I learning?
      • Of what value is this?
      • How did I learn?
      • What else do I need to learn?
  • Students reflect via:
    • one-minute papers
      • i.e. What is the most important thing you learned in this module?
      • What was the “muddiest point” from this module?
    • weekly journal writing
    • learning portfolios

Need more ideas for designing reflection?

Teaching Online and Faculty Presence

Andrews Standard for Teaching Online: Target: The instructor’s teaching presence is evident in the course design and organization, the facilitation of discourse, and direct instruction. The instructor’s immediacy is evident through consistent interaction, accessibility, prompt feedback, and selfdisclosure, humor, and personal interaction.

Writing Assignments

These writing assignment examples can be submitted directly to the teacher via the Assignment tool or TurnItIn, or shared with the class to stimulate further discussion.

ePortfolios

Mahara is the electronic portfolio system supported by Andrews University's Center for Digital Learning and Instructional Technology. Mahara is best for personal portfolios, quick setup, and visual design. If used for accreditation, we recommend rubrics and outcomes set up in Anthology (contact Laura at assessment@andrews.edu).

Mahara integrates with LearningHub, has flexibility for visually appealing design; and we are exploring it's ability to meet other non-course related learning community/social networked learning needs.

  • Mahara website (login with your Andrews account)
  • Mahara tutorial - play the video on the front page
  • Mahara allows for user-created collaborative spaces (as opposed to institutionally created - like LearningHub). You could:
    • Create a course space that extends across multiple class sections or sessions
    • Create collaborative work spaces for cohorts within degrees

Cool Tools

iPad Apps

Other Cool Tools

This list is the beginning of some cool tools we have found to enhance learning and engagement.

Polling: iClickers and Poll Everywhere

DLiT provides support for two tools for classroom polling and response systems.

Social Media

Using Twitter as an academic professional

Blogging as an academic professional

Tools to Organize Content

These tools can provide an effective way to organize content for students.
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