FRIT

Congratulations, Giorgio Corda!

Anonymous — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 20:28:11 +0000

Congratulations, Giorgio Corda! Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/24/2017 - 14:28

Each year ASSETT recognizes a faculty member with exceptional teaching qualities with an Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award. This year’s award winner, Giorgio Corda, was nominated by his peers for excelling in classroom instruction with technology.

ASSETT recognized Giorgio, an Instructor in French and Italian, as this year’s winner at our recent Teaching with Technology Symposium. Giorgio has worked tirelessly to improve his students’ learning experiences. Giorgio has been instrumental in furthering hybrid and online instruction in his department. He has participated in several ASSETT seminars and workshops, mostly recently he was selected as a Faculty Fellow. He also received an ASSETT development grant award for implementing animations in his class. In the wider campus context, Giorgio has been a collaborator with OIT, Athletics and Advising on the Kubi project. Kubi is an interactive way for students to attend class, when they can’t physically be in class due to illness or other extenuating circumstances. If that isn’t enough, he is one of OIT’s Universal Design Fellows, working to advance accessibility and universal design adoption on campus. And these are just a few examples of Giorgio’s investment and commitment to improving teaching and learning in French and Italian, the College of Arts and Sciences, and across campus.

Finally, Giorgio's students’ words speak the loudest. His students wrote that he is “committed to our success,” “very supportive of struggling students,” and “his availability is incomparable to any other �� professor I have ever had.” Another student appreciated the fact that “he made the class more of a community and an open environment where there are no wrong or stupid questions.” Even students who were initially reluctant to take a language class, said, “This was a class I did not have an interest in taking but was required to meet the language requirement…Giorgio not only made this an educational experience for me but an enjoyable one.”

Giorgio continually seeks to improve his teaching practice, is always willing to help, encourages others to do the same and is ready to lend a hand when it comes to sharing his knowledge and experience gained as a teacher. He has consistently demonstrated a commitment and leadership in furthering ASSETT's mission of advancing teaching and learning through technology, and the university’s goal of inclusive excellence. If you see him around campus, please join us in congratulating him for his tireless efforts and receiving the Excellence in Teaching with Technology award!

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Hybrid French Language Course Development

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 18:02:00 +0000

Hybrid French Language Course Development Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/10/2015 - 12:02

�� Boulder French language Graduate Part Time Instructors (GPTIs) taught hybrid French language courses this past spring thanks to ASSETT-funded training. The combination of online and in-classroom teaching methods can benefit undergraduate students who are enrolled in foreign language courses. The Associate Dean of the Arts and Humanities and Professor of Italian Valerio Ferme received an ASSETT Development Award last year to fund the graduate students' time in training in hybrid teaching methods.

Learning to Teach with Hybrid Methods

In Fall 2014, graduate students Erik Nesse and Cecile Rebolledo prepared to teach introductory hybrid French language classes for the Spring 2015 semesters. They met with �� Boulder's ALTEC (Anderson Language and Technology Center) and ASSETT staff over several months to brainstorm hybrid teaching methods and plan lessons and activities. Nesse explained:

Edwige [Simon, Language Technology Coordinator of ALTEC] and Nisha [Azimova, former Teaching and Learning Consultant of ASSETT] helped with technical aspects and pedagogical theory and brainstorming. [They] were great and very available. And they would set up meetings immediately ... We gained a lot of knowledge about how to structure things and feedback about what worked.

Nesse and Rebolledo said that they learned more about D2L's capabilities for foreign language learning, like voice recordings, as well as implementing other online learning activities.

Rebolledo agreed that the time spent learning new technologies and planning activities was essential: "At the beginning, we really needed that help [from ALTEC and ASSETT]. We didn’t know where to start. It’s a tall order." Nesse says that learning the new programs, planning how to teach students how to use the new programs, planning activities for students, troubleshooting technical difficulties with the new programs, and grading activities takes more time for the instructor than does planning for and teaching a traditional, in-person class, especially considering that most instructors have learned through traditional classes, themselves. Despite the challenges, Nesse explained how ALTEC and ASSETT challenged him to think more about how to improve undergraduate teaching: "It was a good experience pedagogically, figuring out, 'How would I get someone to learn this online and not in person?' You start thinking about what are the key things to help someone learn these things."

Implementation of Hybrid Teaching Methods in Undergraduate French Language Courses

This past spring, Rebolledo and Nesse taught beginning French language courses French 1010 and French 1020, respectively. They each taught three days each week in person and two days each week online. During their days of online instruction, the undergraduate students enrolled in hybrid French language courses are expected to record themselves speaking online so that their instructor can listen to their recordings. Other programs, like Voicethread, allow students to listen to one another's recordings, and 'respond' to one another in their own time. Then, after the days of online instruction, students are expected to come back to class ready to use what they had taught themselves in their own time through the online activities. This way, students may actually receive more individual feedback than they would in a traditional classroom setting. Also, since some classwork is conducted online, students have greater flexibility in managing their time. In this vein, Rebolledo and Nesse both emphasized that succeeding in a hybrid course requires autonomous study habits on the parts of the students. Rebolledo explained that to succeed in a hybrid course, "Students should be independent and not need to be guided every step of the way."

Consistency Among Traditional, Hybrid, and Online French Language Courses

Ferme and Rebolledo explained how important it was for the French Department that undergraduate students receive consistent instruction, and succeed in standard assessments as they progress along the introductory French language courses, whether those courses are taught with hybrid, online, or traditional, in-person methods. To make this goal a reality, Rebolledo said that she and Nesse continued to collaborate in planning to ensure that they were on the same page: "Erik and I also compared notes and shared ideas ... We have the same goals."

Ferme says that the Department of French and Italian plans to continue to train graduate student instructors in hybrid methods:

... the reason I asked [GPTIs] Erik and Cecile to participate in this course development was to begin the practice of training our graduate students in online/hybrid education ... and so we are instituting a practice by which our hybrid/online graduate students are going to be shadowed by other students in the summer, so as to prepare them to teach those same courses.
We currently have a cadre of 3 GPTIs who have taught or are teaching hybrid/online (Cecile [Rebolledo] and Erik [Nesse] are two of them), and two more who have been shadowing this summer, and will be able to move in the classroom in the near future.

ASSETT supports excellence in teaching and learning with technology in the �� Boulder College of Arts and Sciences. ASSETT Development Awards are granted to �� Boulder College of Arts and Sciences faculty and graduate students each Spring and Fall semester. More information about ASSETT Development Awards can be found on the Development Awards page.

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GoAnimate4school: Corda's Students Practice Speaking Italian After Class

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 16:45:00 +0000

GoAnimate4school: Corda's Students Practice Speaking Italian After Class Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/05/2015 - 10:45

Italian Instructor Giorgio Corda Presents at the ASSETT 2015 Teaching Symposium

Giorgio Corda, �� Boulder Italian Language Instructor, enrolled in the �� ASSETT Teaching with Technology Seminar in Fall 2014. With the support of the ASSETT Seminar, Corda made a plan to incorporate GoAnimate4school virtual conversation activities into several Italian language instruction courses at �� Boulder. GoAnimate allows students to conduct conversations with one another online via animated characters of their choice.

[video:https://youtu.be/GOmrKflhZp0]

Teaching and Learning Challenge

Studying and consolidating vocabulary and idioms in a language class can be a daunting task for many students. They use flashcards, lists of words, recordings, but this is often a long and boring task.

To make it more real, I often suggests beginner students to keep a small journal of what they do daily in Italian. On one occasion in a class, I have used Twitter to create an online version of such journal that was then shared with the class via a Google document. The idea behind this is that using vocabulary in meaningful situations can improve its learning/memorization. Time constraints in class however did not allow the repetition of the activity on a regular basis.

Teaching a fully online version of Beginning Italian 1, I faced the challenge of creating meaningful and regular (asynchronous) interaction among my students. D2L Discussion Fora and VoiceThread became useful tools for many of these activities, which provided a positive feedback from students. However, some students reported difficulties in visualizing the interactions during some audio conversational activities.

When starting this seminar I hypothesized that GoAnimate4school might offer a solution for the above issues. Students could create short solo animations, dialogues with one another or more complex interactions online. I thought that such work should positively impact students’ motivation and, hopefully, their satisfaction levels while learning.

Plans for Implementation

I created the following activities for three different levels:

ITAL1010 (traditional, hybrid and online) Beginning Italian 1 (5 credits)

Traditional class capped to 22 students; hybrid capped to 18, fully online capped at 15.

First activity: Week 1-6 - Create a visual diary with a few actions that each students do throughout the weeks. This activity should help students to exercise vocabulary in a meaningful environment.
Second activity: Week 7-10 - My typical day. Create an animation that visualizes the typical day of the student’s life. Each week this will be enriched with the new actions available while learning vocabulary.
Third activity: Week 11-14 - Let’s meet! Group of two to four students merge their “typical day” adding interaction moments (like a lesson/conversation in class, one at the café, or in other environment that they use in real life, like the gym, a restaurant and so on).
Final (only for the fully online) Should all activity be completed successfully, the final oral exam (usually undertaken via VoiceThread) might be turned into an ad hoc animated interaction that tests students' reactions in a simulated real life situation.

ITAL1020 (traditional and hybrid) Beginning Italian 2 (5 credits)

Traditional class capped to 22 students; hybrid capped to 18.

Individual portfolio/diary: throughout the semester. Each student could create a short weekly visual diary of the most significant sentence learnt. A non technological assignment could follow this one in the final two or three weeks of class, in which each students is randomly given one of the diaries and needs to recreate situations in which these sentences are used.
Group activity → assign a number of 2 to 3 students to each of the 7 chapters covered.

When each chapter is covered, the assigned group will create a complete interactive animation in the environment attached to the chapter (e.g. hospital and pharmacy; shops and flea markets; opera and theater and so on).

Debate activity Last two/three weeks. In the traditional class the final oral exam is a debate in which groups of students present a topic from different perspective and then debate supporting each of the perspective. This is sometimes done via VoiceThread. An alternative choice could be for the students to create animations for this purpose.

ITAL2110 (traditional) Intermediate Italian 1 (3 credits)

Group activity, The “News”: since the focus of the vocabulary/topic covered in this semester is mostly on the outside word, in their animations the students could recreate one or two items of news that are happening in the weeks of class.
Individual activity “Io e il mondo” (The world and I), in which each students create a significant interaction in an animation on topics such as, recycling and pollution; multiculturalism, politics and elections and so on.

All of the above activities are thought to offer students a way to exercise the language they are learning in more meaningful environments/situations. This should increase their motivation and memorization of vocabulary and grammatical structures.

Indicators of Success

A number of indicators should be involved when assessing this pedagogical intervention:

a questionnaire on how students experienced the activities, easiness of use, whether this affects their motivation, suggestions for changes and so on.
each activity should have a pretest in class (create a written diary of your day for example) and a similar test following the activity.
Vocabulary testing in class Chapter tests should be compared to the same testing in classes where the activities are not offered. This should be repeated for short term memory retention (chapter tests) and long term memory retention (final exams).
More interactive activities should help the students’ ability to respond to an input. Recording of role play interaction should be used to assess both the quality of the responses but also whether the “thinking time” between one sentence and another or one sentence and a response to it become shorter for the people who participates to the activities.
In the online class initial retention could also be an indicator of success.
For the final exams I would let the students choose the method of delivery of their presentations/activities. The number of students who might choose GoAnimate might also be an indicator of the students’ preferred learning environment.

Reflection

Whereas I was reluctant to add the above activities to the students’ workload, their feedback was overwhelming it positive. In the questionnaire administered, students stressed the easiness of use of the program and how their motivation to complete the tasks increased. A student wrote “I wish I could take this class again to do more”.

Vocabulary testing after the activity showed a significant improvement in vocabulary retention both in the short and in the long term. Compositions in the classes where GoAnimate4school nearly doubled the number of words they used at all levels.

Interactive roleplay in class was more welcome, students felt less shy and produced better improvisations.

I have not had the chance to teach a fully online class using GoAnimate4School, but it will happen in Summer 2015.

Apart from the initial success that the above described activities had, it is important to keep it real to students and to tailor them for each class and for each student’s abilities. Acknowledging different learning styles must keep our awareness that these activities might not work for everyone, and discussing the different options with our classes and students should help identifying the individual needs of every student within larger groups.

Furthermore, this work had me thinking of other ways to use it for reviewing and testing. For example, I could create animations with an avatar asking a number of questions, to which the students will need to add their own character with the answers. Similar ad hoc animations might be use for the oral component of their final exam.

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Alina Van Nelson's French Students Upload Presentations to VoiceThread

Anonymous — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Alina Van Nelson's French Students Upload Presentations to VoiceThread Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/17/2015 - 00:00

French Instructor Alina Van Nelson completed the Fall 2014 ASSETT Teaching with Technology seminar. Van Nelson implemented a new assessment approach to give students more opportunities to show what they learned. She created a Google Site for her class to upload written work. She also asked her students to record their presentations in VoiceThread.

[soundcloud width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/298660705&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false"][/soundcloud]

Teaching and Learning Challenge

The big idea for my technology project is to better integrate instruction and assessment in French beginner classes. As pedagogy has evolved quite a bit in the past decade, we took steps in changing instruction so it matches our students’ needs and interests, in flipping grammar instruction so class time is spent essentially on practice of the language. Assessments, however, remain too traditional at this point and don’t allow students to fully show what they can do with what they learned.

Plans for Implementation

As this will impact about a dozen graduate instructors, I decided to take small steps. Initially, I was planning to apply this to our second semester of French class, and only in the section I would teach. Lately however, due to fluctuating enrollment, I was not able to secure such a section. Given that we only have one section of accelerated French review this semester, I considered trying my project in this section, which turned out to be too small - only 6 students currently enrolled, which would mean very little student feedback on this project. Ultimately, I have to ask the three TA’s currently teaching the second semester of French to try this out, and I will depend completely on their approval. I will see them this Friday January 23, and I will see how many are willing to replace the first exam after their midterm with this project.

Instead of taking a paper and pencil exam, students will work throughout a chapter on one individual task (interpretive communication) and two collaborative ones (a dialogue and a written report). For modeling and assessment purposes, I will rely on specific activities in class and on clear rubrics, which will both allow students to focus on specific goals, and allow TAs to appropriately assess them and give them pertinent feedback.

I am currently working on a Google site that will host all their work and would allow them to react to their peers’ work. They will all have to leave specific comments on each part of the project. I am planning to develop the rubrics with the TA’s to ensure that everyone sees the value of such a project and has a say in the way assessment is tailored. They will use VoiceThread to record their individual presentation as well as the dialog with their partner, and Google Docs for the written piece. For properly recording their feedback, we’ll probably use Desire to Learn surveys.

Indicators of Success

I hope to see student involvement in the project, and have positive reactions about how learning merges with assessment in a non threatening way. Although this will be new to our TA’s, I think they will see that matching instruction and assessment enhances classroom experiences and has a positive impact on students’ motivation and attitude toward language learning.

In the surveys, if more than 50% of students prefer this type of assessment, we’ll probably move to the next level and start replacing more exams by similar real-world tasks, refining both tasks and rubrics as we go.

Reflection

Part of my reticence to experiment with this project came from the difficulty of relying on others to administer a type of assessment that I created.

Although I’ve had the idea for a couple of years now, this reticence held me back. Being in this seminar and hearing other faculty’s struggles, on one hand, and having Amanda and Caroline next to us as both a resource and support, helped me finally making things more concrete and taking steps toward making it happen. I am extremely grateful for everything I have learned and for all the people I met during this seminar. I also immensely appreciated the gentle reminders that these two ladies had to send us. It is always hard for me to teach two or three different things and at the same time work on a completely different project.

The design process is not over for me yet. After meeting with the TA’s and deciding how we will go further, I will share the page with them and decide how to integrate the rubrics in the site, how to scaffold it so students find it easy to manage, and how to encourage them to collaborate. Working with technology definitely makes all these aspects compelling and worth exploring.

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�� Boulder Grad Students Teach with Technology

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 07:00:00 +0000

�� Boulder Grad Students Teach with Technology Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 12/10/2014 - 00:00

Three �� Boulder Grad Students Talk to ASSETT about Teaching with Technology

Graduate students at �� Boulder have gone above and beyond to incorporate technology into their teaching. Josh LePree of the Sociology Department uses Twitter and Voicethread to encourage students to share their thoughts about class topics outside of class. Students nominated LePree for an ASSETT Outstanding Teaching with Technology Award in the Fall of 2013. Leah Holz in the French and Italian Department uses Yabla.com resources to expose her students to spoken French language. Holz went out of her way to improve her teaching when she participated in ASSETT's Flipped Classroom Workshop in the Summer of 2014. Suzie Wright in the Spanish Department uses Prezi in her teaching as a non-linear approach to presenting. Students nominated Wright for an ASSETT Outstanding Teaching with Technology Award in the Fall of 2013.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwIrVKJFoEM]

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Students Nominate Michela Ardizzoni for ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 06:00:00 +0000

Students Nominate Michela Ardizzoni for ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/16/2014 - 00:00

"Seeing is believing, and Professoressa Ardizzoni is able to express this succinctly through the use of documentaries and visual aids." Students nominated Dr. Michela Ardizzoni for a Fall 2013 ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award for her teaching of Italian 4990: Multiculturalism in Italy. A student also wrote in Ardizzoni's nomination that, "The use of videos and powerpoint presentations in class have really conveyed the message of this class (Multiculturalism in Italy) ..."

Ardizzoni shared her thoughts about teaching with technology with us.

What do you like best about teaching?
Trying to make students as enthusiastic as I am about the topics of my courses. It's always very rewarding when that happens!

What videos do you play in class?

Depending on the type of course I teach, I can include documentaries, feature films, music videos, news stories, TV programs, interviews, etc.

Why did you play those videos in class?

The overall goal is to help students see a connection between the theoretical framework of our discussions and readings and the cultural artifacts produced by various societies.

What visual aids did you show in class?

Again, it depends on the class. I can use PowerPoint, clips of different kinds, Padlet, Prezi, word cloud and others.

Why did you show those visual aids in class?

I use them to clarify some points made in the assigned readings, to create a conversation around a particular topic, or to provide an example which we discuss as a group.

What are some challenges that you have encountered in teaching with technology?

I would say the only challenge is really some students' resistance to technology - at least, at first. Some students are still cautious about engaging with tools they are not familiar with, and they require very detailed instructions on what to do with technology.

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Michela Ardizzoni Encourages Students to Create Websites Instead of Research Papers

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 06:00:00 +0000

Michela Ardizzoni Encourages Students to Create Websites Instead of Research Papers Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/10/2014 - 00:00

Dr. Michela Ardizzoni of the Department of French and Italian encouraged her students to create websites to share information with local schools. See her padlet of her students' work here.

[soundcloud width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/298660681&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false"][/soundcloud]

Teaching and Learning Challenge

In the Spring of 2014, I taught a new course on documentary and social change in the Mediterranean region. This was a cross-listed course in Italian and Journalism and included 16 students with very different academic backgrounds (communication, anthropology, broadcast, film, astronomy, history, international affairs). This course focused on socially engaged and activist documentaries whose aim is to address and potentially change salient social issues in countries like Italy, Greece, Egypt, Morocco, Bosnia, etc. Students in this course watched a documentary every week and completed readings related to the film, the issues (homosexuality, Balkan war, migration, citizenship rights, to name but a few), and the creative use of documentary filmmaking. In this course, I included a variety of assignments to ensure that students kept up with the readings and watched the assigned film every week: a weekly reading response to the articles/chapters; a documentary journal; a short paper; a midterm and a final project.

Given the topic of this course, I wanted my students to work on a final project that was engaging and that connected their new understanding of mediated social change to their own experiences. I realize that the content of this course is based on cultures that are widely different from the reality/experience of each student. Yet, I was hoping to use technological tools to create an assignment that could reflect and expand on the course materials, while, at the same time, engaging the students as actors of social change. My goal was to use technology to encourage students to connect what they learned in this course with their role as engaged citizens in their communities and online.

I regularly use technology in my teaching and, regardless of the kind of course I teach (whether it’s a media class, an Italian writing seminar, or a multiculturalism course), I’m often perplexed by some students’ resistance to technology and aversion to experiment with new learning tools. Hence, one of the challenges I expected to find in creating (and implementing) this assignment was precisely the students’ inclination to stick with what they know and resist the adoption of new formats. Therefore, it was crucial to provide a learning environment that eased the anxiety some students might feel towards new technologies, while emphasizing the enriching potential of this assignment and the relevance of this project beyond the classroom (and their grades!).

Plans for Implementation

While the geographic focus of this course was not directly connected to the students’ lives and experiences, I believe that many of the issues covered in the documentaries we watched are relevant also to young generations in the United States. The idea of social change is central to societies worldwide nowadays, and it is important for undergraduate students to understand the role they can play in effecting meaningful changes in their own communities. Hence, one of the goals in this course was for students to work on a project that would connect the class’ topics with their lives in Boulder.

To reach this goal, and ideally connect the issues we discussed in class with the larger Boulder community, I decided to give my students two options for their final project: the first option was a traditional research paper, while the second option was the creation of a website. Since this was the first time I included a website as a final project, I wanted to give my students the option of a more traditional assignment too. Some students still seem to be very resistant to new project ideas and I didn’t want the technical component of creating a website to distract the students from the content of their research. Thus, only those students who felt comfortable with this worked on the website project.

Creating a website on social change and documentary can be a daunting and even fruitless task given the large amount of online resources on this topic. To obviate the risk of a project whose reach would not go beyond the course, I included a specific target audience for the students’ websites: high-school students in Boulder. Having a very clear group in mind helped my students think about more concrete linguistic and visual choices, devise more useful tools for that target population, and ultimately create a repository of information and critical analyses that high-school students can engage with. In this sense, one of the requirements of the website was a ‘Take Action’ page, where students included various ways in which young people can become actively engaged in implementing change in specific Mediterranean societies as well as in their own Boulder communities. Some of these suggestions included links to petitions and NGOs, tools to organize screenings and/or discussion groups, emails of directors and/or activists, etc. The ultimate goal of this project was to create a series of focused, in-depth websites on documentary and social change which could be shared with social science teachers at the local high schools.

Indicators of Success

The first indicator of success in my ‘intervention’ was whether students did choose to create a website. At the end of the semester, two thirds of the class (10 out 15) chose the website option for their project. After the midterm exam, I met with each student individually to discuss their ideas, and I revised their project outlines. In the future, I am planning on focusing only on the website as the final project for the course. Next time I teach the course, I will have more detailed information and materials on the website project, and I will therefore be able to provide students with more guidance from the beginning of the semester.

The second indicator of success would be the students’ integration of a ‘take action’ page on their websites. I encouraged students to include specific, creative, and viable suggestions on how to learn more about a certain topic (such as LGBT rights, environmental issues, animal rights, migrant detention centers, women’s rights, etc.) both locally and internationally. A comprehensive and therefore successful ‘take action’ section would include three ideas on the local context and three on the Mediterranean. While I wanted students to be creative and resourceful in thinking about this section, I also reminded them that these ideas could include, among others, links to documentaries/trailers/clips, list of discussion questions, links to petitions or activist resources. Most websites provided very thorough and creative ‘take action’ sections with specific activities that could clearly generate enthusiasm among high-school students.

The third and last indicator of success for this assignment was the level of critical thinking and organized planning that went into the creation of this project. I gave students a detailed grading rubric, which focused on the following elements: overall impression, socio-historical and political background on the issue, use of evidence, take action section, number and quality of sources, links, images and videos, overall layout, and clarity and style (appropriate for the target audience). I adapted this rubric from a couple of online resources and, while it took some time to think carefully about this document, it proved to be extremely helpful for me as a teacher, as well as for the students. Working on this rubric forced me to think more thoroughly and concretely about this assignment and the learning outcome I want for my students.

Reflection

Overall, the website option worked well for this class, and I was pleased to see that most students chose this option to engage with the course materials. Although many students acknowledged the website option would require more work as they had to reflect carefully on the content as well as the delivery mode, they embraced it with enthusiasm. During our individual meetings, many students said they were particularly excited about the target audience for their websites: having a specific public in mind was especially important in this project, as it aided the students in their linguistic, visual, and resource choices, while also giving them a more concrete task to create a ‘digital repository’ that would later be used by local youth. I believe this was the strongest aspect of this assignment as it combined the content of the course with the element of social engagement that I wanted students to achieve.

Having said this, there are, however, a couple of elements that I will modify next time I teach this course. First, I would assign the website as the only final project option. Since I have had the opportunity to reflect on the specific requirements for this assignment, I feel confident I will be able to guide students through this task from the very beginning of the semester. This would give students more time to reflect on the focus of their project and conduct more in-depth research. Second, I will provide more clear guidelines on the kind of research that I would like to see in each website. While several students conducted in-depth and pertinent research, similar to what they would include in a research paper, there were a few students who seemed to focus more on the visual component of the website. This clearly impacted the quality of their projects, and I’ve realized that this is an aspect that should be emphasized further (and more emphatically) in the assignment description and the rubric.

During the summer of 2014, I will contact social science teachers at the local high school, and I will share with them the websites that I curated using Padlet.

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Faculty Learn from Teaching with Technology Seminar

Anonymous — Tue, 20 May 2014 06:00:00 +0000

Faculty Learn from Teaching with Technology Seminar Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/20/2014 - 00:00

Faculty members Giorgio Corda, Dave Rickels, Holly Gayley, Janet Casagrand, Elena Kostoglodova, and Jen Lewon participated in both the Teaching with Technology Faculty Seminar and the Hybrid and Online Course Design Seminars this past 2013-2014 academic year. These faculty presented at the Second Annual ASSETT Teaching with Technology Symposium at the UMC Glenn Miller Ballroom in May. Audience members at the Symposium were invited to browse their demonstrations of use of technology in teaching.

Giorgio Corda of the Italian Language Department presented his hybrid and online foreign language course models. He said that he feels that teaching online provides a more fulfilling language learning experience than just in-the-classroom. Corda ascribes to a cooperative learning pedagogy and uses VoiceThread and other programs so that students can comment throughout a video while they watch it. Students' comments on videos are visible to the entire class so that students can help each other. Corda stressed the flexibility that online learning provides makes a more equitable playing field for more students with outside responsibilities to participate. He provides a weekly fifteen minute one-on-one session with students to assess their progress and allow time to answer questions.

Dave Rickels, PhD, uses the Coach's Eye Tablet app that is traditionally used in sports coaching to coach future music teachers with synchronized video feedback. With the app, he can record his own voice over a video of a student giving a sample lesson. He said, "It's very real to the students because they have to watch themselves."

Janet Casagrand, PhD, of the Integrated Physiology Department presented her use of "Screencasts for Student Review."

Elena Kostoglodova, PhD, of the German and Slavic Languages and Literatures presented, "Integrated Camtasian and Voicethreads Tutorials for the Hybrid Language Classroom."

Jen Lewon of the Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences Department presented how she encouraged a student community through social media.

Holly Gayley, PhD of the Religious Studies Department presented, "Documentary Storytelling in the Humanities."

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French Again!: Review French at your own pace

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 06:00:00 +0000

French Again!: Review French at your own pace Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/08/2010 - 00:00

Learning French can require a lot of time and effort. For many students, proceeding to a higher level requires build on the knowledge that they have already acquired. Juliette Bourdier, a doctoral candidate at �� Boulder and Carmen Grace, a faculty member of French and Italian Department at ��, hope they can help solve this problem with the help of technology. Taking into consideration that some students need to learn in a combination of French and English, they have adopted the ‘French Again’ program, with the help of an ASSETT Development Grant. “The French Again program is an online tutor designed to help students review the materials they need to in English, taking as much time as they need,” they explained.

The tools that are being used in this program are Hot Potatoes, Jing, Ning and Voicethread. According to Bourdier and Grace, French Again is organized into modules with 4 segments. The first segment requires students to note the grammatical point being used in a natural context by native speakers. The second segment explains the grammar and the third segment shows the difference between written and spoken versions of the grammar. Finally, the fourth segment allows students to practice and help in understanding grammar.

They said, “We will use Jing to record the video presentations that illustrates and explain each grammar point. Our students like it, and it is very simple for students and instructors to use.”

They see Voicethread as flexible software that helps students develop their spoken French. Students record an activity, and instructors recorded individualized feedback for each student. Bourdier and Grace believe that doing this prevents classroom embarrassment that can take place while giving students their phonetic feedback in front of their classmates.

Hot potatoes, used for segment 4, can be used to create a variety of practice exercise and online quizzes necessary for students to review their progress. And they used Ning as the best course management tool for this project. [Editor's note: Ning is no longer available as a free service]

The goal of using French Again is to help students review when and where they prefer, “For some students, textbook presentation and the instructor’s explanations are not sufficient to help them grasp important concepts.” They continued, “This program will assist students who want to see where their knowledge breaks down in order to build a bridge to a better understanding of the concept in question.”

French Again seems to be an effective tool to apply in teaching French. Because the students can review grammar at their own pace, students may control the rhythm of their daily activities and prevent the pressure of answering on the spot in a classroom. French Again can help build a safety net for students based on a better understanding of how grammar works and lots of extra practice and feedback.

Written By: Manaslu Bista, ��’11, ASSETT Reporter

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