Student Engagement Trainings and Opportunity to Use Teams to Teach Remotely

Student Engagement Trainings and Opportunity to Use Teams to Teach Remotely

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you for all you have done to ensure that your instruction is engaging, relevant, and accessible to your students during this pandemic. Our goal is to continue to bring you the tools and techniques you need to deliver remote and online instruction well.

The purpose of this email is to alert you to (a) workshops that will provide strategies to enhance your student engagement and (b) the opportunity to teach remotely using Microsoft Teams.

WORKSHOPS

Dual/Hybrid/Hyflex Instruction Workshops

The Center for Teaching and Learning is offering workshops for faculty to learn effective strategies for courses that are offered through simultaneous face-to-face and remote instruction, with particular emphasis on equitable student engagement. During the first two hours of the workshop, facilitators will provide specific strategies (attendance required). The last hour of the workshop will provide the opportunity for collaboration with each other and consultation with facilitators (attendance suggested but optional). At the end of the workshop, faculty will be expected to identify at least three specific strategies they will use in their courses. All sessions will be delivered synchronously using Blackboard Collaborate Ultra.

Participants meeting all requirements of the workshop (attendance, participation in workshop activities and submission of their action plan) will receive a $250 stipend upon completion. All instructors who are teaching dual instruction courses (those that are offered simultaneously to face-to-face and remote students) are eligible to apply.

Seats are limited so apply as soon as possible at Dual/Hybrid/Hyflex Instruction Application.

Workshop Information:

• Session 1: Jan. 21, 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Session 2: Jan. 22, noon-3 p.m.
• Session 3: Jan. 27, 4-7 p.m.

Remote Instruction Workshops

The Center for Teaching and Learning is again offering workshops for faculty to learn effective strategies for remote instruction, with particular emphasis on student engagement. During the first two hours of the workshop, facilitators will provide specific strategies (attendance required). The last hour of the workshop will provide the opportunity for collaboration with each other and consultation with facilitators (attendance suggested but optional). At the end of the workshop, faculty will be expected to identify at least three specific strategies they will use in their courses. All sessions will be delivered synchronously, with some sessions occurring in Blackboard Collaborate Ultra and others using Microsoft Teams (identified below).

Participants meeting all requirements of the workshop (attendance, participation in workshop activities and submission of their action plan) will receive a $250 stipend upon completion. All instructors who did not participate in the CTL/OCDE Remote Instruction workshops this summer are eligible to apply. Seats are limited so apply as soon as possible at Remote Instruction Workshop Application.

Workshop Information:

• Session 1: Jan. 14, 1-4 p.m., hosted in Blackboard Collaborate Ultra
• Session 2: Jan. 15, 1-4 p.m., hosted in Blackboard Collaborate Ultra
• Session 3: Jan. 19, 1-4 p.m., hosted in Blackboard Collaborate Ultra
• Session 4: Jan. 25, 9 a.m.-noon, hosted in Microsoft Teams
• Session 5: Jan. 27, 4-7 p.m., hosted in Microsoft Teams

TEAMS

Last October, the university launched Microsoft Teams as an option to engage with your students in real-time class sessions. Teams provides a number of benefits for conducting remote-live class sessions, including:

• See more students: The ability to see up to 49 students on your screen at once (Collaborate Ultra is limited to 4).
• Live close captions: Make your virtual classrooms more inclusive, giving students another way to follow along with class discussions AND addresses the needs of participants who have accessibility concerns.
• More phone participants: With Teams, all students have the ability to call into the live class session, which may benefit those with slower Internet connections or other technical challenges connecting to the live class.

Using Teams in your Remote Class

There are two options for leveraging Teams with your students:

• The Blackboard Learn Integrated Experience – this option creates a straightforward video conferencing room, similar to Blackboard Collaborate Ultra.
• The Full Teams Experience – this option creates a Teams group for your class and provides additional functionality, including asynchronous chat and document collaboration. There is a little bit of work needed to set this up, but it provides more features.

If you need assistance establishing Teams for your class, please contact keeponteaching@kent.edu.

How Students Access Teams

Let your students know that you're using Teams for live class sessions and share the link to teams.microsoft.com. Students will visit this URL, and login with the FlashLine credentials during scheduled class times to attend live/remote classes in Teams. Students can choose to access Teams via their web browser or download/install Teams on their computer.

Training and Resources Please visit Teams for Classrooms for steps to get started, helpful tips, and additional resources. The Division of Information Technology has a number of live training offerings available through training.kent.edu. If you or your students need any assistance at all, the help desk is available for support anytime through support.kent.edu or 330-672-HELP (4357).

Thank you to the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Office of Continuing and Distance Education, and Informational Technology for their support in helping us Keep on Teaching!

Melody

Senior Vice President and Provost