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Interested in creating an Online or Hybrid Course?
Request for Proposals due November 9
Funds are available to support faculty in the development of an online or hybrid course. Selected faculty members participate in a 3-week online workshop and develop and teach an approved course before Winter 2014. Find out more.
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20k Grants Program
Request for Proposals due November 9
The OTL requests proposals from faculty that describe innovative projects for the improvement of student engagement and learning.
Find out more.
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Upcoming Book About College Teaching
Former DU Dean and Professor Jim Davis and the OTL's Bridget Arend recently co-authored a book about college teaching.
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Regional Teacher-Scholar Forum
Call for Proposals
Have you conducted scholarly inquiry into a teaching or learning issue in your classroom? Want to learn more about the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL)?
The Metropolitan State University of Denver is hosting a regional conference, the Teacher-Scholar Forum, for faculty throughout the Front Range region on February 22nd.
Consider submitting a proposal, becoming a conference proposal reviewer (contact Bridget Arend), or attending this regional event.
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Feedback Made Easy in VideoManagerIn the required Social Work Skills Across Client Systems course, potential social workers learn the skills needed to interview clients about sensitive topics. To practice these skills, students engage in role play by interviewing each other and then analyzing their performance. This was difficult to do in a live setting, and cumbersome using video tapes. But now, with the new groups functionality in VideoManager (a program developed by the OTL), students can easily upload videos so that a specific group of students and instructors can watch the videos and make comments. 
"Because targeted feedback is so important in the development of skills, the ability to make comments at select spots in the video allows students to really learn from these role play exercises," says Associate Professor Nicole Nicotera, one of the instructors of the course. "I can tell students exactly where and why a particular line of questioning was very effective, or where they might need to work on their body language during an interview." Students also peer review and provide feedback on each others interviews. "VideoManager has revolutionized the way we can now teach social work skills!" explains Nicole. VideoManager is already used by DU instructors to upload their own weekly video messages, showcase course tutorials, and post confidential research videos. But with the new group functionality, students can now easily upload videos themselves. Lamont School of Music piano recitals and public speech classes at The Women's College are just some of the other programs already utilizing this new functionality.
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Fall Workshops
Secrets of Effective Presentations
Friday, November 2, 10:00 - 11:30am
Every faculty member is tasked with presenting information, from informal presentations to in-class lectures and larger formal addresses. When is it appropriate to use presentations? What makes for a truly effective presentation? In this interactive session, we will explore the elements of successful presentations by analyzing popular online talks and exploring lessons from the fields of cognitive psychology and human communication. Participants have the option of staying until noon to practice applying these lessons to their own presentations.
Facilitators:
Carol Zak-Dance, The Women's College
Bridget Arend, Office of Teaching & Learning
Please register at otl.du.edu.
Faculty Panel Discussion
*For new faculty members at DU
Friday, October 19, 10:00 - 11:30am
What strategies can I use to create a successful career here at DU? How do I balance all the various duties and responsibilities I have as a new faculty member? In this informal session, a panel of current faculty members from across campus will share their experiences, strategies for time management, and answer questions from the audience.
Panelists:
Leslie Hasche, Graduate School of Social Work
Devin Joshi, Josef Korbel School of International Studies
Nathan Sturtevant, Department of Computer Science
Rachel Walsh, Department of Languages and Literatures
Please register at otl.du.edu
Workshops for faculty from The Writing Program
The Writing Lunch: Quick Advice for Busy Profs.
This Autumn, the Writing Program will offer informal workshops about topics related to teaching writing.
Workshops for faculty from Penrose Library Fall 2012 Library WorkshopsEach quarter the reference librarians at Penrose offer a number of free, general workshops on a variety of resources.
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Teaching Tip:
The Multitasking Student
College instructors are under increasing pressure to capture the attention of students during class, competing with the distractable nature of laptops and mobile devices.
Many students believe they can multitask - pay attention in class while surfing the Internet, sending a message, or checking the status of something online. Faculty members themselves are often tempted by these same distractions in meetings and at conferences. However multitasking is not only a very inefficient process, as a concept it is a myth...
Read more about the limits of multitasking, studies about multitasking, and suggestions for managing multitasking in class.
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Technology Tip:
Clickers Have Gone Mobile!
 Nearly five years ago DU adopted Turning Technologies as its standardized clicker provider, and currently over 100 instructors across disciplines use clickers regularly in their classes. Clickers are small handheld voting devices used to engage students and create a more interactive classroom.
In most courses, students are required to buy a ResponseCard (clicker) for $49. However, instructors can now give their students the option of using ResponseWare instead of the traditional clicker.
ResponseWare turns any web-enabled device into a virtual clicker, so students can use their laptops, smartphones, and tablets to answer polling questions. If the ResponseWare option is offered, students can participate in polls using either ResponseWare or ResponseCards. At this time, ResponseWare costs $10 for 3 months, or $19 per year.
For more information, contact Jenn Light.
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Technology Tip:
Pasting from Word into Blackboard
Have you had trouble when coping text from Microsoft Word into Blackboard? There is a new solution. The Blackboard text editor now has a Paste from Word option, found within the textbox editor's toolbar under Add Mashup (along with the YouTube Video, Add NBC Content, and Flickr Photo tools).
The Paste from Word option will preserve the formatting of text when copied from Word, but will strip out extraneous code that can cause formatting problems in Blackboard. Paste from Word is available in the content areas of Blackboard, but is not yet available within the email text editor. When sending emails within Blackboard, we still recommend typing directly into Blackboard's text editor, or copying and pasting any emails composed in Word into Notepad (Windows) or Text Edit (Macintosh) before pasting the text into Blackboard.
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