Workshops Offered by the Alt I Group from October 2006 Through the 2007 Fall Semester

Workshops offered by the alt^I group from October 2006 through the 2007 Fall semester

Caveats:

Some of the numbers are guesstimates
Individuals and their affiliations vary depending on the data we have. Some we have College info, for others we have Area info.
The numbers we have are for enrollment, not attendance. Attendance varies from 30% - 100% so I’d say average is around 70%. Attendance data is poor as we were not maintaining attendance records. Actuals vary based on the course. Pedagogy classes seem to take the greatest hit. We are going to start taking note of attendance.
West noticed a clear drop when Manny’s department, which shepherded the workshops, was dissolved. Manny’s group would follow up with individuals and provide top down support and encouragement to attend.

Alt^I workshops are primarily offered on the Tempe and West campuses. These are the only two campuses on which we have staff. We offer several workshops at Poly each semester, and have trained some of Gary K’s staff (James Thomas and Rex Clark) to offer workshops during times when we cannot spare anyone (start of semester).

Downtown has hired Rich Iovino who is an excellent instructor (former Best Buy trainer if I understand correctly) and he offers a wide variety of workshop (not included in this list, but I’d love to have Rich working for us)

Due to lack of staff, we miss out on a critical need – a high number of workshops during the two weeks prior to the start of the semester, and the first 3 weeks of each semester. Ideally, there should be several intro and intermediate Bb workshops, along with workshops on other critical learning technologies offered at this time.

Alt^I instructors include:

Jeff Austin
Meredith Irvin
Genny Smith (GA)
Mellissa Versage and Donvan Palmer (LTLab students)
Ruvi Wijesuriya
Ryan Clemens
Guy? Ken? Andrew?

Included are the following:

1. Workshop Titles and Descriptions

2. Summary numbers by department, college or area

3. List of names and the affiliations we have for each person.

1. Workshops Titles and Descriptions

ASU 101 Blackboard Training

A hands-on workshop that will cover Blackboard tasks specific to teaching the ASU 101 course. Topics to be covered include adding announcements, modifying the syllabus, hiding or showing content, adding new content from the ASU 101 training site, managing online discussions, viewing test or survey results, downloading and grading written assignments, and entering student grades.

myASUCourses/Blackboard Hands-on I

A two hour hands-on workshop designed for instructors interested in learning about the Blackboard course management system. The workshop is conducted in a computer lab where each participant has a workstation and works through examples in a practice Blackboard course shell.

Topics include requesting Blackboard course shells, adding course announcements, adding a course syllabus and other course materials, creating folders, copying or moving content, customizing course settings, and sending e-mail through Blackboard.

myASUCourses/Blackboard Hands-on II

A two hour hands-on workshop designed for instructors with some online course management experience. Topics include packaged uploads, adaptive release, Wimba, Safe Assignment, advanced course settings, advanced gradebook usage, collaboration and communication, etc.

myASUCourses/Blackboard Hands-on Series - Creating Online Quizzes/ Surveys

In this workshop we'll use the Test Manager, Survey Manager, and Pool Manager features of myASU/Blackboard to create assessment devices. Topics to be covered include creating a test canvas, adding and modifying test questions, deploying a test, reviewing and grading student answers, and strategies for designing longer online exams and minimizing cheating.

This is a hands-on workshop designed for instructors already familiar with the Blackboard course management system. Blackboard Hands-on I is recommended as a prerequisite. The workshop is conducted in a computer lab where each participant has a workstation and works through examples in a practice Blackboard course shell.

Blackboard Hands-on Series - Designing and Managing Online Discussions

How can you use the discussion board in Blackboard to promote lively and informed discussions? Using examples from classes being taught at ASU, we'll discuss, demonstrate and practice various techniques for designing, managing, and assessing online discussions. Topics to be covered include adding discussion forums, adding new discussion threads, replying to discussion posts, and techniques for managing and grading the discussion forums.

This is a hands-on workshop designed for instructors already familiar with the Blackboard course management system. Blackboard Hands-on I is recommended as a prerequisite. The workshop is conducted in a computer lab but will be largely discussion based and participants are encouraged to bring or share materials.

myASUCourses/Blackboard - Assignment Submission

This workshop goes over various ways that students can submit work to instructors. Instructors will learn how to manage assignments, submit feedback, use ASU's anti plagiarism software, and maintain their grade book.

myASUCourses/Blackboard: Grade Book

Are your students asking you to make grades available online, but you are not sure where to start? New features available in Blackboard make it very easy to add and manage grade book items. We will discuss and practice strategies for setting up a grade book, whether you use a straight point system or weight grades. Topics include adding, modifying and deleting gradebook items, weighting grades, changing the grading scale, and changing the grade display options.

Designing and Teaching Online Courses

Conducted entirely online over a four-week period, this facilitated course is designed to teach you how to create dynamic and engaging online learning environments. Taught using one of ASU's content management systems, myASU (Blackboard), the course discusses and uses asynchronous and synchronous communication and collaboration strategies. By participating in the course, instructors have an opportunity to experience an online course from a student perspective and evaluate various online teaching and learning methodologies. The course features weekly readings, interactive activities, and online discussions.

The focus of the course will be effective online pedagogy rather than the development of technology skills. For this reason, course participants should already be somewhat comfortable using the myASU/Blackboard content management system.

myASUCourses/Blackboard: Reusing Course Shells

Not sure how to most easily and efficiently reuse your Blackboard course shell next semester? During this workshop we will discuss tips and tricks for reusing an existing Blackboard course shell from semester to semester. Topics include copying content from previous course shells, copying specific content items from one shell to another, hiding course content, and creating a folder of materials available only to the instructor.

Adobe Acrobat Professional

The workshop will cover the basic functions of Adobe Acrobat Professional 8. Attendees will learn how to convert files from Word, PowerPoint, and Excel into PDF format. The workshop will cover using Acrobat Professional 8 to share and collaborate documents. The workshop will also cover how to package PDF's, create links and bookmarks in PDF documents along with some basic security features
Adobe Ilustrator:The Basics This workshop will review the basics of Adobe Illustrator including color modes, file formats (opening, saving and exporting), working with layers, selecting and grouping objects, working with shapes and lines, editing and manipulating shapes, knowledge of tools, basic transformation functions, selection tools, working with text, and working with color. When you complete this workshop, you should be able to open an image, change the color mode, change its size, add text and export it or save it as a different file type.

Adobe Photoshop: The Basics

This workshop will review the basics of Adobe Photoshop including color modes, file formats (opening, saving and exporting), working with layers, sizing and resampling images, knowledge of tools, basic transformation functions, selection tools, working with text, and working with color. When you complete this workshop, you should be able to open an image, change the color mode, change its size, add text and export it or save it as a different file type.
Advanced Adobe Photoshop This workshop requires participants to have previous experience using Photoshop or have attended the Basic Photoshop workshop. This workshop introduces advanced features of Photoshop.
Advanced Dreamweaver This workshop requires participants to have previous experience using Dreamweaver. This workshop introduces advanced features of Dreamweaver.
Advanced Excel Advanced Excel will cover advanced functions which will include inserting graphics, modifying a worksheet, formatting cells and sorting. Previous knowledge of Excel is recommended

Adobe Dreamweaver - Basics

Dreamweaver is the industry standard for WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Web editors. This workshop explores the basic functions of Dreamweaver including:

- An introduction to the GUI (graphical user interface) and tool bars
- Creating new Web pages
- Text formatting
- Inserting graphics
- Inserting server-side includes
- Creating hyperlinks and email links
- Inserting tables
- Publishing content to a Web server

By the completion of this workshop, participants will have each created and published an ADA compliant Web site. This workshop is designed specifically for participants who design and maintain university Web sites."
Blackboard - Adaptive Release "Provides the ability for an instructor to create custom learning paths through course content and activities. Content items, discussions, assessments, assignments, or other activities can be released to students based on a set of criteria including: date/time, username, group membership, institution role, grade on a particular test or assignment, or whether the user has previously reviewed another
piece of content.

Microsoft Excel: Introduction

This workshop will introduce the basics of Microsoft Excel. This will include the following: basics of a spreadsheet, how to create basic formulas, how to insert rows and columns, formatting cells, copying and sorting data

Microsoft Excel: Intermediate
Intermediate Excel will act as a continuation of the topics discussed in the Intro to Excel course. Intermediate Excel will discuss features such as creating Macros, customizing menus, working with graphics, printing and making various formulas.

Microsoft PowerPoint: The Fundamentals

This workshop will give you an understanding of what this powerful tool can do, and will arm you with the necessary skills to produce a professional presentation. You will learn the basics including working with slide layouts, templates, views, rearranging and modifying slides, and understanding various print options. This workshop will be working with PowerPoint 2003 in a PC environment.

Microsoft PowerPoint: Intermediate

This workshop is an intermediate workshop that will build on your basic knowledge of PowerPoint, and is a continuation of Microsoft PowerPoint: The Fundamentals. You will learn how to modify master slide/title, how to add/modify charts, graphs and tables, how to add media files (video and audio) and graphics, work with animation and create hyperlinks. This workshop is slightly advanced and will require basic PowerPoint skills. Please consider taking Microsoft PowerPoint: The Fundamentals prior to attending this workshop.

Microsoft Word: Beyond the Basics

This workshop will cover various formatting functions in Microsoft Word.Other areas that will be taught will include useful features for instructors such as tables, styles, image manipulation and security.

Horizon Wimba Voice Tools

Give your online classes a voice! Wimba's web-based voice tools facilitate and promote vocal instruction, collaboration, coaching, and assessment. Increase the interaction and student engagement level of any online class by allowing faculty and students to easily embed vocal interactions into the page level of their myASUCourses/Blackboard sites.

Introduction to SafeAssignment

During this hands-on workshop participants will use SafeAssignment, ASU’s plagiarism detection tool, to create assignments in Blackboard and view originality reports that identify material in the submitted paper that appears to come from other sources. In addition, we will discuss academic integrity and plagiarism issues in higher education, present strategies for developing student understanding of academic integrity principles, and provide recommendations for designing plagiarism-resistant assignments

Introduction to Wikis

ASU is providing all students, faculty and staff the ability to create their own wiki. In fact, you can create as many as you wish! You may recognize the wiki software ASU is offering (MediaWiki) because it is used by Wikipedia and by the University Technology Officer for his Tech Plan.

We think it is important to promote the use of wikis (see Academic Uses of Wikis) because it can facilitate the mission of research and learning at ASU, so we want to make it as easy as possible for ASU to get started using it. The ASU Wiki Service is starting up by using the industry leading wiki software (MediaWiki) and adding value by integrating into the ASU environment.

This two hour workshop will introduce you to wikis and help you create your first site.

Narrating PowerPoint with Macromedia Breeze

Narrating a short PowerPoint presentation can be an effective method for communicating information to your students or for supplementing the material you present during class. During this hands-on workshop we will use Macromedia Breeze to add audio to an existing PowerPoint presentation, convert the presentation to Flash and upload it into Blackboard.

Please bring a PowerPoint presentation of your own to narrate. Headsets with microphones will be provided for use during the workshop. (Note: PC's will be used for this workshop and the tool we will use is not currently available for Macintosh computers.)

Plagiarism and SafeAssignment

Podcasting and ASU on iTunes U

This is a hands-on workshop designed for those interested in using multimedia files, podcasting, and iTunes U in support of teaching, learning, and research at ASU. Topics to be covered include ways to use audio and video files in your classes, how to record and edit a short audio file using the free Audacity software, and how to upload a file to ASU on iTunes U. (Note: PCs will be used for this workshop; iPods are not required.)

Respondus/Studymate

Respondus is a powerful tool for creating and managing exams that can be printed to paper or published directly to a Blackboard course. Exams can be created offline using a familiar Windows environment or they can be imported into Respondus. Whether you are a veteran of online testing or relatively new to it,

StudyMate lets you create ten Flash-based activities and games using three simple templates. The Flash activities can be used with any web server or published directly to a Blackboard course.

The workshop will cover creating, importing and publishing assessments from within Respondus and StudyMate.

Technology for Effective Instruction Series - Macromedia Breeze

Macromedia Breeze converts your existing PowerPoint presentations into a rich Multimedia experience and allows you to reach your audience anytime, anywhere.

Using Google Documents for Collaborative Writing

Looking for a better way to share and edit documents or spreadsheets with colleagues or students? Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a free web-based word processing and spreadsheet program that keeps documents current and lets the people you choose update files from their own computers. Topics to be covered include ways to use Google Documents to coordinate group homework assignments and collaborate with colleagues at ASU and other institutions, and how to create, edit and share online documents.