CLEAR Website                                 CLEAR Training Calendar

Students registered for the Fall 2014 semester are being uploaded to Blackboard Learn at http://learn.unt.edu. Regular student uploads will run twice a day until the 20^th class day. Don't forget these important tasks:

 

¨  Copy Content - Copy your content over from a previous semester or create it from scratch.

¨  Clean up - Get rid of any old announcements, assignments, tests, discussion forums, or content you won't need this semester.  Delete unnecessary grade columns, too!

¨  Update - Update all of your existing content  (incl. syllabus and calendar), announcements, assignments, and tests  and create new release dates and due dates. Check out the Date Management tool to make this easier!

¨  Make Course Available - Be sure to make your course available to students on or before the first day of the semester. Remember that Qwickly  (a tool located on the UNT Helpdesk tab in Learn) can speed up this process!!

 

*Note* Changing your course's availability does not mean students can immediately access the course or content; the restriction dates control when the students can access the course.

Students will not be able to access their classes until the fall semester begins unless you specifically requested a different opening date. Please email clearhelp@unt.edu if you have questions, want to combine your sections, or wish to verify access restriction dates.

No Registration Required!  Feel free to come by our open labs every Friday from 1pm-4pm to receive some one-on-one Blackboard assistance from our instructional support team.

For faculty or teaching assistants who are new to Blackboard Learn, we recommend scheduling an appointment with an instructional consultant ( http://clear.unt.edu/consulting).

Check out our self-help guides and tips on the Blackboard Faculty Support Site or view our training sessions on the CLEAR calendar (Blackboard Open Labs Dates)

Panopto is a lecture capture tool that allows for an enhanced student learning experience and increased instructional efficiency.  Record your screen, audio, and video content in the classroom or from your desktop, laptop, or iOS device.  Content is easily uploaded to your Blackboard course.  Students can pause, search, review, and add notes to lectures based on their individual learning needs.   
Panopto Presentation and Q&A Recording

 

Strong alignment leads to a quality course that provides clear objectives and measurable results.  In this presentation, you will learn the basics for creating measurable objectives, supporting them with materials, activities, and technology, and ensuring that they are measured by your assessments.   

Link to Webinar Recording  

clear.unt.edu/gstep 

 

The Graduate Student Teaching Excellence Program (GSTEP), provided by the Center for Learning Enhancement, Assessment, and Redesign (CLEAR) with support from the Office of the Provost, is a free program for graduate students at the University of North Texas.  The goal of the program is to prepare graduate students for teaching roles in higher education by equipping them with teaching skills, knowledge about teaching strategies, and peer support.  Activities include classroom teaching experiences, online training modules, and peer mentoring.  Upon completion of the program, students will receive a letter of recommendation for future faculty interviews.

 

Why should graduate students participate?

• Improve their teaching skills
• Jump start their teaching career
• Empower their careers as future faculty members

Click here to enroll in GSTEP's Introductory program for Fall 2014 right now!

 

Want to maximize your impact on student learning?  Do you look for ways to connect with other committed educators?  Are you looking for ways to document your efforts to improve your teaching?  If so, the Teaching Resources for Engaged Educators (TREE) initiative, developed by CLEAR, is for you.  TREE leverages online training modules focused on 10 important teaching proficiencies (e.g., engaged learning, assessment, course design) that allow you to move at your own pace through three levels of proficiency (introductory, intermediate, and advanced). The TREE program will appear in your list of Blackboard courses and is available for everyone who teaches at UNT.  To participate, simply select the course and then the modules you would like to complete.  You will receive badges for completing each module and a Certificate of Teaching Distinction when successfully completing all three levels of a proficiency.  For more information, please refer to the CLEAR website:
http: clear.unt.edu/tree. 

CLEAR provides Free Access (through a group subscription) to Online Learning Consortium (formerly Sloan-C) http://onlinelearningconsortium.org.  

 

The University of North Texas is a member of the Online Learning Consortium.  As a member, you will receive OLC's workshop, conference and publications discounts, research, and interaction with other members.  To receive account set-up and login instructions, please contact  Amber Bryant at Amber.Bryant@unt.edu.

 

Membership includes workshop membership pricing.  Visit http://onlinelearningconsortium.org/institute/workshops/2014/upcoming-by-date for the list of 2014 workshops. Additional workshops are added throughout the year, so please make sure to check the schedule often. The member price for a workshop is $169. Non-member pricing is $269. If you and your faculty have set up your accounts or affiliated your existing accounts properly, you will automatically see the member price.

 

 OLC Membership Resources include:

• Webinars
• Conference Discounts  
• Publications Discounts  
• Website Resources 
• Monthly Newsletters

CLEAR Group Subscriptions

CLEAR provides Free Access (through a group subscription) to The Teaching Professor and Online Classroom.  These electronic newsletters provide the information faculty, deans, chairs, and other academic decision-makers use for effective leadership within their colleges or departments as they fulfill their institution's mission of teaching and scholarship. 

  
To subscribe, go to www.magnapubs.com/group and select the publication of choice. If logging in from an on-campus computer, you will not need to enter a password.   

If you wish to access these publications from off campus or if you would like to receive an email message each time a new issue is posted, you will need to register and enter a campus voucher code and pin number. Please email  Amber Bryant to obtain this information.  

CLEAR Group Subscriptions

 

 

Robby Petros, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, told Clifford Morrison that if his research didn't go the way he thought it would, he could learn from it. In fact, they may have stumbled on a molecule that could help develop other drugs.

 

"We just opened the door for something new and exciting," says Morrison, a senior majoring in chemistry and biochemistry.

 

Morrison and Petros were investigating a process for synthesizing a prodrug form of the molecule Sunitinib, which can keep pancreatic cancer tumors from easily bringing in new blood vessels to support their growth. Prodrugs are inactive compounds that, when introduced to the body, can turn into medicinal drugs.  But along the way, the researchers found a better way to synthesize another type of molecule, medium-ring diaza heterocycles, than had previously been reported.   Read More

 

Junior Psychology and Biology  major Alexandra Ruuska's thesis began with an email that "proved to be a golden ticket." Cox sent out a list of research opportunities that included a project with Victor Prybutok , Regents Professor of Decision Sciences, about how effective three videos with varying presentation styles - comic, serious and informational - were in persuading students not to engage in binge drinking. Ruuska was eager to work on a study from inception to publication."We don't just collect data," she says. "We participate in every step of the research process." 

 

The study, conducted under the guidance of Prybutok and his wife, Gayle Prybutok, a doctoral student in the College of Information, examined how likely students were to change their drinking behavior or share a particular video with friends. Read More 

 

CLEAR's Videoconference Team was recognized by the UNT System's IT Shared Services with the ITSS Partnership Award in appreciation for the stellar service provided by Brenda Ritz, Michael Washington, and all of the student employees who support videoconferencing (along with Scott Windham at the System).   Information about ITSS

CLEAR was awarded the "On-campus Friend of Student Affairs" Award (out of seven nominees) due to extensive video production work Vishal and his team did for the Division of Student Affairs including finding a solution to stream their Distinguished Lecture Series (Rainn Wilson and Lt. Dan Choi).
 More Information On Student Affairs Awards

CLEAR's fearless leader, Patrick Pluscht, was the recipient of the UNT Staff Contribution Award presented at the Presiden't Sack Lunch on March 26th.  This award recognizes UNT staff members who have made outstanding contributions in helping the university fulfill its four bold goals.  Under Patrick's leadership, CLEAR has worked individually and collaboratively with faculty to support curricular innovation whether that is teeing up new pedagogical frames or exploring innovative learning technologies.  View The Full Award List 

Dr. Ron Carriveau recently presented a national webinar related to Outcomes Based Assessment that was attended by over 250 folks around the country. Presenting the three-level outcomes-based model within Connecting The Dots: Writing Student Learning Outcomes & Outcome Based Assessments (Carriveau, 2010), it was shown how the model is used in the NextGen Course Redesign Program at UNT and how data reports produced by Examsoft for the NextGen program provide all the learning outcome attainment-values and item statistics needed for making instructional course design decisions. 

Recently Ron also presented on Outcome Bassed Assessment and The NextGen Program to four colleges in the Dallas County Community College District, Hill College, and Parker University.  Attendance ranged from 30-110 participants and included two keynote speeches.  DCCD and Hill College have formally begun implementing the outcome based model within Ron's book.  Congratulations to a very busy Ron! 

Dr. Mike Simmons was co-author with Dr. Julie Glass on a poster presentation "Everything but the Kitchen Sink: Assessing General Education at UNT" for the spring AAC&U Academic Meeting in Portland, Oregon.

Dr. Mike Simmons and Brett Kellerstedt of CLEAR joined NextGen faculty fellows Dr. Rob Petros and Dr. April Fehler in presenting a session at the UNT Student Portraits Symposium "Giving Students and Faculty Real-Time Assessment Information to Improve Instruction: ExamSoft and Other Tools for Outcomes Based Instruction"

Dr. Nancy Fire was an invited presenter at the University of Central Oklahoma Transformative Learning Conference.