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Center for Distance Education

Please visit the Center for Distance Education Resource Center at http://www.uiu.edu/distance/resources/ for current UIU distance education information.

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Respondus Test Bank Network

The Respondus Test Bank Network contains thousands of test banks for the leading textbooks in higher education from more than 20 publishers. Respondus is available to all UIU faculty from your LearningStudio Course List in the course named UIU 100 Orientation to Teaching Online under the Doc Sharing tool in a Downloadable Software folder entitled Respondus.zip.

Access to the Test Bank Network is free for instructors who use Respondus 4.0 and use a participating textbook. For more information visit the Respondus Test Bank Network

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New Features for PLS Threaded Discussions

New features are coming to LearningStudio Threaded Discussions, and are tentatively scheduled for release Thursday, December 5th. By request from Pearson Educational Partners and instructors these new features are being implemented, which can be controlled through Course Admin:

·  Post First – Students must post their initial response to the discussion before they can view other student's posts. This ensures students post original content in their first post.

·  Hide Topics – Instructors have the ability to hide discussions; now they can also hide discussion topics. This allows instructors to prepare discussion topics ahead of time.

·  Reply Count for a Topic – Students and instructors will now see a reply counter indicating how many replies there are to a topic. This can indicate a must-read, popular content or a compelling debate worth their time to review.

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Upcoming Changes to Turnitin Submission Workflow

In mid-January 2014, Turnitin will be changing the assignment submission workflow for instructors and students. This change is specific to users submitting a single file to Turnitin from Turnitin.com, and the PLS Dropbox integration. With Turnitin's expansion of  accepted file types they to include files that may have little or no text, they want to show an immediate image preview of the file being submitted.

For detailed uploading instructions please visit the Turnitin Announcement.

To stay current on product updates to Turnitin, follow @TurnitinProduct on Twitter and visit the What’s New page on Turnitin.com.  To learn about more upcoming features and improvements, to suggest features, or view full release notes, log into Turnitin and click on the Feedback link.

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New Turnitin.com Login Page

In early January, Turnitin will be making a change to the Turnitin.com website, replacing the Sign In fields at the top of each webpage, with a Log In button. Clicking the Log In button will take users to a new login page where they can log in with their email address and password.

Users can bookmark this new login page which will load faster and provide quick links to helpful resources.

To stay current on product updates to Turnitin, follow @TurnitinProduct on Twitter and visit the What’s New page on Turnitin.com. To learn about more upcoming features and improvements, to suggest features, or view full release notes, log into Turnitin and click on the Feedback link.

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6 Best Practices for Using Zoom

Using Zoom video conferencing in our online classrooms is a valuable, and FREE!, tool that is allowing faculty, students and staff to connect personally in what, at times, can be an impersonal digital environment.

Check out this useful list that Zoom recently published to maximize the effectiveness and quality of your Zoom meetings.

If you are new to Zoom, click here to see the possibilities.

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Here's an interesting approach to grading student participation which puts students in control and holds them accountable for their level of participation throughout the course. What aspects might be adapted to an online course? 

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Phase 2 of Rubrics Rollout

Last month, the addition of Rubrics was announced as a new feature enhancement in LearningStudio. Today, the second of three phases went live. 

What can users do now, that they couldn't do before?

Instructors can now grade assignments using a rubric previously attached to a gradeable item in the gradebook setup. For now, however, keep in mind that if you grade an assignment using a rubric, students will only be able to see their score, not the rubric itself or the instructor comments entered within the rubric. The target date for phase 3 is the fourth quarter of 2013. 

Rubrics are rolling out in three phases:

Phase 1: Create Rubric

Instructors will be able to create Rubrics for their assignments

Phase 2: Assess Rubric

Instructors will be able to Assess assignments using their Rubric and see an improved Gradebook user experience

Phase 3: Student View (anticipated by end of 2013)

Students will be able to access their grade, view the Rubric, and read comments

For more information click the Help link in your Course Tools menu and search for Rubrics, or navigate through the Help menu to Course Tools > Gradebook and Rubrics > How to Setup Rubrics.

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Free professional development opportunities through Turnitin Academy Live webinars. Institutions can also take advantage of Turnitin's additional professional development modules and Train-the-Trainer programs.

Turnitin Academy Live is an online professional development course—available live and on-demand—geared toward taking instructors beyond plagiarism prevention and to a powerful pedagogy for 'writing to learn.' Each one-hour class explores practical methods for incorporating the use of Turnitin to encourage original writing, deliver more meaningful feedback, engage students, and streamline class activities.

Check out these and other free professional development opportunities available from the Turnitin Training Center. 

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It can be difficult to find the right balance between giving students the thoughtful feedback that their assignments deserve and spending too much time grading-which could lead to fatigue, stress, and inconsistency in grading.

The latest Turnitin Academy newsletter features free professional development opportunities to learn about using GradeMark, a powerful set of grading tools that UIUonline instructors can use along with the new Turnitin integration with LearningStudio. 

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After using the course copy tool, instructors need to edit the start date of all announcements copied from a previous term. Otherwise, the start date for announcements is set to the beginning of the term. Edit the start date of each announcement to avoid overwhelming students the first time they login to their online course.

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As an online instructor, it's my job to not only teach, but to create a learning environment that facilitates student engagement in the classroom

Good suggestions here for increasing student engagement in an online class and research findings indicating a correlation between the amount of time students spend in an online class and their final grade. 

Do you know where to view student activity logs in LearningStudio? Go to Gradebook > User Activity to see a summary of minutes logged in the course. You can also drill down by date or student to see what links were followed in the course and how many minutes were spent there. 

Sign-up for the Faculty Focus newsletter to get a daily dose of professional development delivered to your inbox. 

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By Nick English Learning hacks -- they're a thing, and while the college kids are heading back to school, it's a good time for all of us to rethink the ways we learn.

So many of these apply to pedagogy and the design of learning. Challenge yourself to apply these towards helping students learn better in your course! 

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If you’re unsure how to excite new students about your online course, here’s a simple solution to spark learners’ intrigue: create an engaging introduction video that makes students want to learn more.

Read more and view examples here, from Faculty eCommons. 

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LearningStudio Password Syncronization

Beginning August 12, Pearson LearningStudio passwords are synchronized with the myUIU portal more frequently.  Currently passwords are synchronized when enrollment or instructor assignments are updated every 6-8 weeks.  With the new process whenever a student or instructor changes their myUIU portal password, within one hour their LearningStudio password will be changed to the same value. 

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New Turnitin Integration

Access to the Turnitin plagiarism prevention service is now directly available within your online LearningStudio course for each Dropbox basket.

We have created this Instructor Guide to guide you in setting up.

You can get more information from the Help link in your Course Tools menu or view these Video Tutorials:

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Once you establish course objectives and an overall picture of how your course will flow throughout the semester, focus on creating module-level objectives. Module objectives help students focus on specific aspects of the overall subject and act as building blocks for students to achieve the course-level objectives.

Part of an ongoing series by Faculty e-Commons. Read more at http://facultyecommons.org/learning-analytics-aligning-course-and-module-objectives/