Converting Files from Students - Zamzar

When you accept papers from students via digital upload, email, or other electronic means instead of paper, you will inevitably come across a student file that you cannot open. The problem is that some students do not use Microsoft Word and have no knowledge of how to save in a Word-compatible or PDF format.

Ideally you would send the file back to the student with instructions on how to convert the file (it's a simple as clicking "File --> Save as..." then choosing from the list of options in the "format" section). Once the student knows how to do it, the probably goes away until the next student comes along.

But for expediency, Zamzar.com offers a free service that will convert files into useful formats. You give it a ".wps" or ".wpd" file, and it sends you back a Word ".doc" file - you don't even need to know what the original file is, Zamzar will figure it out for you. It works with word processing, spreadsheet, video, audio and other types of files.

There are some limits to the service, but for a monthly fee you can upgrade to their more extensive offerings.

Sakai secret "stealth" tools

Sakai has some hidden features that for one reason or another have been put into "stealth" mode. When a Sakai tool is in stealth mode, it does not appear in the list of tools that you can add to a site, however it remains available for use provided you get an administrator to add it to your site. Sometimes these are "beta" tools that still need some testing or minor bug fixes. Other times these tools duplicate existing features. Often, they may be useful to people who are trying to do something new in Sakai, or who do not like the way an existing tool works.

Some of the stealth tools that are worth looking at, if you want to try something different, are:

• Forums: An alternative to the "Discussion and Private Messages" tool, this is a discussion tool that allows you to structure the conversation into forums, topics and threads. People who used Sakai three years ago may recognize it as the original discussion tool that "Discussion and Private Messages" replaced. Back then it was not well liked, but it has seen major improvements since then and is worth a second look. It may be a more suitable tool if you intend to grade class participation based on student contributions to the discussion board.
  
• Messages: An alternative to the "Mailtool" for sending individual or group emails. However "Messages" works more like a traditional web mail system, where you can read messages within Sakai and choose whether messages you send go to the students' Sakai account or their external email address.
  
• Tasks, Tests & Surveys: An alternative to the "Tests & Quizzes" tool that was under consideration (and ultimately rejected) as a possible replacement. It is somewhat easier to use, however the original "Tests & Quizzes" tool has more features and flexibility, and has solved most of the problems that it had in the past. This tool may disappear from future versions of Sakai, but is still available for use in the time-being.
  
• Glossary: intended for use in the portfolio system that co-exists within Sakai, this tool has practical uses for course and project sites as well. It allows the construction of a glossary of terms and definitions.
  
• Presentations: a rudimentary tool for synchronized slideshows - you upload images, and can control which ones the students see in real time in remote locations. This has been part of Sakai from the start, but was "stealthed" because it was somewhat misleading and confusing to use.
  

To use any of the above tools, write to sakai@brokenmail.rutgers.edu please replace "brokenmail.rutgers.edu" with "rutgers.edu with the name of your Sakai site.

New Faculty Resources

Instructional Technology Resources at Rutgers

REGIS (Rosters and Electronic Grading Information System): The most important site for new faculty and instructors. REGIS allows you to view your roster, send academic warning notices, and submit final grades. Access to rosters in REGIS is also the key to using other web tools such as Sakai and RAMS. Your department chair or administrative assistant can provide you with access to REGIS. See the REGIS documentation for more information. https://sims.rutgers.edu/rosters/

Course Management Systems

The following systems provide an encompassing set of features to facilitate communication and coursework, while requiring very little technical knowledge. Features include:

• Online quizzes and assignments
• Gradebook for reporting individual assignment grades
• Announcements and mailing lists
• Document sharing for course materials
• Discussion board and chat room
• Automatic roster integration (requires access to REGIS)

Sakai: Available to all faculty on all campuses, Sakai is a highly flexible service that is useful for course web sites as well as committee work and other projects. Sakai has numerous options for enabling group work, including a built in "wiki" (collaborative writing space). Sakai is created and maintained by a consortium of universities and colleges. http://sakai.rutgers.edu/

eCollege: Available to all faculty on all campuses, eCollege is supported by the Office of Continuous Education and Outreach. eCollege has a much more structured approach to course sites than Sakai does, and is well suited for courses that are fully online. http://ecollege.rutgers.edu

Blackboard: Only available to faculty teaching on the Rutgers Newark campus, Blackboard is the most prevalent course management system in the United States. http://blackboard.rutgers.edu/

Single Purpose Tools

For faculty who do not need or want a full course site, the following provide specific services for communicating with students, or for supplementing existing course sites.

SAS Gradebook: An easy-to-use, simple site for recording assignment grades and feedback for students. Students who log in to the site can only see their own grades. The use of SAS Gradebook or a similar feature in one of the course management systems is the only acceptable method of posting course grades on the web or other public space. http://gradebook.rutgers.edu

RAMS (Rutgers Automated Mailing System): RAMS will create a mailing list of your students (based on roster access in REGIS), allowing faculty to send email to a single address that reaches all of their students. Faculty do not need to collect or maintain student addresses, RAMS automatically uses any address that the student lists in the Rutgers Directory. http://rams.rutgers.edu/

Refworks: a web-based bibliographic management tool, integrated with the Rutgers Library system so that searches in the catalog or indices can be saved and organized, with proper references and often links to the full text of articles. Refworks allows sharing of bibliographies; an instructor can create a bibliography for students to use, or use Refworks to review bibliographies created by students. Refworks includes a tool for use when writing papers that formats references and bibliographies appropriately according to several style guides. http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/refworks/refworks.shtml

iTunes U: Audio and video materials can be distributed to students by using iTunes U, a service that allows students to review the material on their computers or by automatically loading the material onto their iPods or other devices. Faculty can restrict the material to the students in their course, or optionally make anything on iTunes U available to the public at large, accessible to anyone who uses iTunes. http://itunes.rutgers.edu/ Rutgers also has a Youtube channel - http://www.youtube.com/user/Rutgers

IBM "Teaching With Sakai Innovation Award"

IBM is sponsoring a "Teaching With Sakai Innovation Award". The deadline for application is midnight, February 27, 2009. More information about applying for the award and previous winners can be found on the OpenEd Practices web site, http://openedpractices.org/twsia.
You can also find a rubric (PDF) for evaluating your Sakai-based course for the award.

DCEO - Hybrid and Online Course Development

The Division of Continuous Education and Outreach (DCEO) is holding a workshop in Hybrid and Online courses, specifically in how to use the eCollege/eCompanion system. For those not familiar with eCompanion, it is a tool similar to Sakai but uses a more structured approach that is particularly well suited to fully-online courses.

Here is the invitation to the workshop from Richard Novak:

Dear Colleagues,

In response to the increasing interest by faculty and departments in online and hybrid course development, the Division of Continuous Education and Outreach (DCEO) has scheduled additional workshop presentations on "An Introduction to Hybrid and Online Course Development". We will present an overview of issues related to hybrid and online courses, using the eCollege course management system, including course design and development, and online teaching strategies. Examples from some very successful existing courses will be demonstrated.

On the New Brunswick campus, there will be two sessions on Tuesday, December 16. The first will take place from 10 a.m. to 12:00 noon. The same session will be repeated again at 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Both sessions will take place in the Public Safety Building, Room 205B, at the Corner of George Street and Commercial Avenue, with parking in the adjacent deck (http://maps.rutgers.edu/building.aspx?id=1083).

The sessions are free. Lunch is provided at noon – stay after the morning session or come early for the afternoon session.

Reservations are required. Please send an email to elearning@brokenmail.rutgers.edu please replace "brokenmail" with dceo.rutgers.edu to sign up for one of these two sessions. Please feel free to contact me directly with questions.

-Richard Novak

--
Dr. Richard J. Novak
Associate Vice President for Continuous Education & Distance Learning
Rutgers University Continuous Education and Outreach
85 Somerset St Rm 300 (Geology Hall) New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1281
voice>(732)932.0613; FAX>(732)932.2588; (Rnovak@brokenmail.rutgers.edu please replace "brokenmail" witth rutgers.edu)
http://ce1766.rutgers.edu

May 19, Sakai Unavailable

If you are trying to connect to Sakai today, you will be unable to do so. OIRT is in the process of upgrading Sakai to the newest version, the process will likely take all day. Sakai will be available again tomorrow morning (May 20).

In addition to numerous bug fixes, the new version of Sakai will have many enhancements to existing features. The Sakai Project has an overview of the changes on their web site.

Presentation Software - Beyond Powerpoint

Powerpoint is fine for presenting visual enhancements to your lecture, however for the most part it locks you in to material that is prepared beforehand. If you know where to look, you can click Powerpoint's "pen" tool and add some hand-written annotations or even throw in a blank slide on the fly, but you are still limited to staying within your Powerpoint presentation.

The tools listed below are inexpensive or free utilities that allow you to either highlight or write on any part of your screen, at any time. You'll be able to open a web browser, go to a current news site or live image, and circle or underline important details. Or you can call up a word document and annotate it by hand on screen, for the benefit of the students watching.

These aren't perfect - you won't always be able to save your drawings - but they can be very useful in the classroom.

ZoomIt - For Windows, published by Microsoft. Free download. ZoomIt can magnify the portion of the screen that you are pointing at as well as allowing you to draw on the screen.

Desktastic - for Macintosh, $12.95. Desktastic allows free-hand drawing and "stamping" (arrows and such), but you can also save your and print your drawings. This is well-designed software and simple to use.

OmniDazzle - for Macintosh, $14.95. OmniDazzle lets you draw, and also allows you to "zoom in" or focus on areas of your screen using a variety of visual effects (some of them are more fun than useful). This is slightly more complex to use than Desktastic but can be more useful for certain purposes.

Firedoodle - for Mac and Windows, installs as a Firefox plugin. Free download. Firedoodle only works when viewing web pages in the Firefox web browser, however it gives you a variety of annotation tools that can be saved. You can draw freehand, add "post-it" notes, place markers, and focus boxes.

All of these tools work best with a graphics tablet although they can be used just fine with a mouse or trackpad. In addition, you have some built-in tools to zoom the screen (look for the accessibility options in your Windows control panel or Mac system preferences). Finally, when giving a powerpoint presentation, you can move your mouse to the lower-right corner of the screen to access a hidden menu which allows you to choose a "pen" tool for freehand drawing.

Free anti-plagiarism tool

Many people at the university use a service called "TurnItIn" for submitting student papers. TurnItIn scans the student papers and compares them to a large database of student papers, web sites, and published documents to detect possible plagiarism. However TurnItIn is a paid service that the university has periodically cancelled during tough budgeting times.

There is another site that offers a similar service, for free. "Doc Cop" allows you to submit all your student papers together, and will compare the papers to each other. This is a much more limited comparison and will only detect the possibility of students copying from each other. However if you include the text of articles or other sources that you believe students may have copied from in the documents that you submit, you can extend Doc Cop's scanning abilities somewhat.

These types of tools should be used with caution. It is important to recognize that the tools often cannot differentiate between properly referenced quotations and outright plagiarism, so they only report a probability of plagiarism. Furthermore, while they can be an effective deterrent, they can also set a tone that suggests plagiarism is OK as long as it cannot be detected, when the ideal that you want to instill in your students is that they will benefit by doing their own work - the negative versus positive atmosphere can make a telling difference in your classroom and in the students' education.

For more information about TurnItIn, contact the Division of Continuous Education and Outreach, http://ce1766.rutgers.edu/.

Doc Cop is available for free at http://www.doccop.com/ (some extended services require payment).

CTAAR maintains a list of additional resources for our Detecting Plagiarism and Cheating workshop.

RefWorks Training

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching is now offering monthly workshops in Basic RefWorks, a web-based bibliography and database manager that is free to the Rutgers community. The workshops are one and one half hours in length and will be held at the Kreeger Learning Resource Center on College Avenue. Please refer to the CAT Calendar of Workshops in order to register.

Further information about RefWorks, including; setting up an account, on and off-campus connection, bibliographic stylesheets, and using electronic resources, can be found at the RU Libraries RefWorks Information Page. An extremely useful publication for new users is the RefWorks Quick Start Guide.

Please contact Marcie Anszperger at (732) 932-7466 or mja@cat.rutgers.edu if you have any questions.

WebCT to Sakai Migration

OIRT has announced that the tool to automatically move content from WebCT to Sakai is ready to use now.

Please contact Joseph Delaney at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching (732) 932-7466 if you want to move your course. At them moment, either CAT or OIRT staff will work with you to ensure that the migration works correctly.

Within a few weeks you will be able to automatically migrate your course material using a web page, without assistance. Of course, assistance is available if you want, and OIRT has hired student staff to do some of the grunt work; just ask if you would like assistance.

See the CAT WebCT page for more information.

The 10¢ Computer

We are often asked why we don't install computers in the classroom podiums. With a computer in the classroom, an instructor could walk into the room with their presentation on a USB flash drive and be ready to go in seconds. Our answer comes down to three words: cost, maintenance, and reliability. Those can be argued, but they are also beside the point.

A large number of people use classroom computers for Powerpoint presentations. But it turns out that you don't actually need a computer for Powerpoint - or to be more precise, you don't need a computer for showing presentations. All you need is a dime and a couple of minutes to prepare.

Obviously you need a computer in your office or home to create the Powerpoint presentation, that much does not change. But here's a little trick - create your first slide, then insert nine blank slides and continue with the content of your presentation on slide ten. The reason for the nine blank slides will become clear later (it's not really necessary but it will ultimately save a little time). Save your presentation as usual.

Now the part that will cost you 2 minutes of time. Click the "File" menu, and "Save as...". Choose "JPEG" as the format. When it's done, go to the folder where you saved it, and delete slides 2 through 9 (these are the nine blank slides). Copy the images to a CD-R and "burn" the CD. The CD-R will cost you approximately 10¢.

When you go to the classroom, don't bring your laptop. Don't even bring your USB flash drive. Just bring the CD. Most of the DVD players in our classrooms will automatically display JPEG images, so you'll use the DVD player to make the presentation (some of the older DVD players may not work; you'll want to verify this in your classroom first). There are two problems: first, the DVD player will display the images in alphabetical order. Powerpoint names your slides "Slide1.jpg", "Slide2.jpg", etc., but alphabetically "2" comes after "19", so slides 2 through 9 will all show up in the wrong place. This is the reason for the blank slides that you delete - those are the ones that show up out of order. If these slides are not blank, you can rename them "Slide01.jpg", "Slide02.jpg", and so on through "Slide09.jpg", before copying them to the CD.

The second problem is that the DVD will automatically "play" your slides, only pausing for a few seconds on each one. To control the speed of your presentation, you must use the "pause" and "play" buttons. This is similar to the way you would click to show the next slide when using Powerpoint, although slightly more cumbersome since you also have to "pause" at each slide. You will need to try this out before class to become familiar with the controls - and don't just dive in - first time through do bring your laptop as a backup.

For the cost of a CD and a moment of extra preparation, most people have exactly what they need a computer for, but without the computer. The university saves a few hundred dollars per classroom (before taking into consideration the cost of maintenance and upgrades). Of course there are disadvantages, without Powerpoint you don't get the neat visual transitions and animations. That's the tradeoff for the convenience of not carrying a laptop. On the positive side, the JPEG images are ready to use on the web.

Ultimately, a CD is no substitute for a computer. It only substitutes for a presentation. People who need the computer for other reasons such as internet access or other software will still need to bring a laptop, or continue to wait until we solve the problems of cost and maintenance.

We are currently investigating other devices that will work better than DVD players. If you have an iPod that can display photos or videos, these work exceptionally well for presentations if you purchase the additional video cable. We are also planning to install Sandisk "Photo Albums" that will allow you to use a USB flash drive instead of a CD, and give you more control over the presentation than the DVD player does.

Textbook Commons - additional resources

Recently we pointed out Rice University's Connexions, a resources for obtaining and sharing course material.

There are several other similar resources, many of them discipline-specific. The Hewlett Foundation has compiled a list that is available as a PDF. More information about the Hewlett "Open Education Resources" program can be found on their web site, http://www.hewlett.org/Programs/Education/OER/.

The Textbook Commons

Every few years, the idea of a repository of freely distributed "learning modules" or "learning assets" rises up as a solution to the time spent developing course content for instructors, or the cost to students in purchasing text books filled with common knowledge. The most well-known of these efforts is perhaps MERLOT, but often the information shared is hobbled by the latest technology taking the focus away from the intellectual content.

Lately the idea has taken hold again, and this time seems to be gathering some steam. Rather than focusing on the technologies, the efforts now seem to be focusing more on the content itself. One example is from the creators of Wikipedia, called WikiBooks. The purpose of WikiBooks is to create free, public-domain text books through a collaborative writing effort, similar to the way Wikipedia works. It may have some of the same flaws as Wikipedia, since anyone can edit any page the information is suspect.

A more promising example is Connexions from Rice University:
http://www.cnx.org/
Connexions allows instructors at many institutions to create modules of content that can be mixed and matched or combined into useful complements to any course. All of the content in Connexions uses a Creative Commons license to retain some copyrights while opening the content to free use and redistribution. The idea is to approach textbooks as you would a playlist of music, and since authorship is clear the content is more reliable. You can see the list of authors at http://cnx.org/content/browse_course_authors.

Content from Connexions is easily used by linking to it in Sakai, eCompanion or Blackboard (and until it disappears next academic year, WebCT), or by downloading the PDFs and uploading them to your course site.

RefWorks - Research and Bibliography Tool

The university now has a license to use Refworks, a tool for collecting bibliographic references and properly formatting a bibliography and citations according to any of several hundred reference styles. People who already use Endnote or ProCite can send Refworks citations to those programs, and use both simultaneously.

To begin using Refworks, create an account by visiting this page:
Refworks Accounts for Rutgers - https://rulink.rutgers.edu/refworksacct.php.

When using RefWorks, it is best to log in through the "Connect" link at the library web site, this ensures full access to the Library databases and other resources, particularly if you do some of your work off-campus:
Library Refworks Information and Login - http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/refworks/refworks.shtml
It is possible to login directly by going to http://www.refworks.com, however if you do this when you are off campus then the links to the "full text" of articles may not work if they require a Library log-in.

The Library has already integrated many of their electronic resources to send reference information directly to RefWorks (look for an option for "bibliographic manager" when saving reference lists), and IRIS should be able to do the same in the near future.

In addition to using RefWorks for personal research and writing, it is possible to use it as a teaching resource. There are several possible methods to share RefWorks reference lists with students, the different methods have different purposes and individual faculty can choose whatever method best suits their needs.

• Using your own RefWorks account, create a folder and use the "RefShare" feature to share that folder with anyone in the world (no password required). Any reference that you place in the folder will be available to anyone who has the link to your folder, however they can only view the references and will not be able to alter them. You can mail the link to students or put it on a course web site. Students can copy the references into their own RefWorks account in order to use them as a source for citations.
  
• In your RefWorks account information, you can set a "Read Only" password. Providing this password to your students will allow them to view any references in any folder of that RefWorks account, but they cannot change anything. This is similar to RefShare but applies to the entire account (not just a folder), and requires a password.
  
• Create multiple RefWorks accounts (you can have as many as you like). For example create an "English_101" RefWorks account, and share the "English_101" username and password with your students. This gives anyone who has that username and password full access to the reference list, so students can add or modify references as needed. You can share this username and password with your students (remember to keep your own, personal RefWorks account private; create additional RefWorks accounts for sharing).
  

RefWorks integrates well with course management systems like Sakai, eCompanion and Blackboard. In particular, if you use "RefShare", you can paste the shared link into your course site (in Sakai, use a "web link" tool) to have the reference lists appear in the course site, without requiring a second login. "RefShare" also produces an "RSS Feed" that can be used with the Sakai "News" tool for a similar but more flexible result.

More information is available at the Library's RefWorks page, and the Center for the Advancement of Teaching will schedule training workshops, beginning in the Spring semester.

OIT Planned System Outage

OIT will be upgrading a central data storage device on Thursday, November 16, from 3:00 A.M. to 8:00 A.M.

As a result, the following systems will not be available during that time, since they depend on the device which is being upgraded:
- WebCT
- Sakai
- Eden (including student e-mail)
- RULink (calendar and e-mail)
- RAMS (mailing list for courses and official notices)
- Mailman (general mailing lists)

There will be additional service outages not listed here (please contact OIT for more specific information).

Please keep in mind that this will affect your ability to communicate with your students via e-mail or by web site, even after the upgrade is finished there will probably be a delay while backed-up e-mail is delivered.

A Problem with eBooks

Technology has introduced a problem into education. It's not a technical problem, but in an effort to overzealously protect copyright and intellectual property, publishers have created technical solutions that are later used inappropriately. The result is limiting student access to material that would otherwise be freely accessible.

Here's a concrete example: Homer's Iliad.

First, it should be established immediately that the Iliad is a public domain work. Homer is long dead and has no claim to royalties. Recent translations may be copyrighted, but there are enough older translations in the public domain to compensate, and many faculty choose to teach based on these older translations to ease the cost burden on students.

Second, we must recognize that a work in the public domain has no restrictions on copying. In fact, here is an online source for downloading the Samuel Butler translation of the Iliad from ManyBooks.net for free.

So far, so good. In fact, the same version is available from eFollett, the company that operates the Rutgers University bookstore. They charge $3.49, but that is perfectly reasonable to support the service and make a small profit. While it's interesting that the free site actually gives more options (large print, formatted for iPod, etc), that's still not where the problem lies. Notice the "Digital Rights Information" on the eFollett site:

Copy: not allowed

This is not a merely intellectual problem. Put yourself in the position of a student. You go to the computer lab. You check your course syllabus, see that some of the works are available online, pay your $3.49, and download your eBook of a public domain work, on the lab computer. And now, copy your downloaded file to a disk, so you can read it at home. Sorry, no, you cannot do that. Copy: not allowed. Neither is lending, although eFollett does allow you to print it twice a day for a year (almost).

It's an absurd situation, but unfortunately too common and becoming more frequent. Faculty and instructors can help by being more aware of resources like http://ManyBooks.net/ and http://www.gutenberg.org/, but ultimately there is a responsibility to insist that public works and public education remain public, including the resources and stored knowledge of previous generations.

This is a cultural problem. Our society and our laws have shifted from the Enlightenment ideals of a democratic and educated populace to the business-centric emphasis on preserving the right to make money on intellectual property. The 20th century turned copyright from a limited protection for those who applied for it to a lifelong (99 year) automatic protection, introduced technologies to enforce copyright, and made it a felony to try to circumvent the technologies. And when there's opportunity, a business will apply the same technologies to public property, as eFollett has done.

The problem is more prevalent in digital music downloading and "piracy", but we are slowing moving to the same battle over textbooks. There's more. See http://free-culture.cc/ for the legal and historical perspective.

Sakai Updated for Fall 2006

Several changes have been made to Sakai in the last few days. Most of these changes are minor, but there are a few new features that instructors may find interesting:

• Photo Rosters
• Wiki (collaborative writing tool)
• Library eReserves
• NetID lookup, for adding students or other participants
• Better descriptions of tools, and improved instructions for site setup
• "Tests and Quizzes" has been updated to a fixed version, but also hidden so we can monitor it's use and correct any new problems. Send e-mail to sakai@rutgers.edu to have the tool added to a site.
• For advanced uses, OIRT has developed a tool to link to other web applications. Contact sakai@rutgers.edu for more information.

OIRT's plan is to stay with the current version of Sakai, making only minor changes for this year. In Spring 2007, the next version of Sakai will be set up for previewing and testing, this will be a major upgrade to Sakai and will replace the current version of Sakai in Summer 2007. This future version should be capable of everything that WebCT can currently do, and there should be an easy means of moving from WebCT to Sakai.

WebCT Problems - Tuesday, Aug 1

WebCT is behaving erratically since the server maintenance on Monday; OIRT is investigating the problem and will resolve it as soon as possible.

WebCT may not be consistently available today, until the solution is found.

Sakai https://sakai.rutgers.edu/ is working normally, and is a recommended alternative to WebCT for most uses.

WebCT - Unavailable on July 31

Due to necessary server changes, OIRT will take WebCT out of service for several hours overnight Sunday, July 30 to Monday July 31, beginning at midnight and extending into Monday morning and afternoon. The outage is expected to at least 12 hours. You will not be able to access WebCT during that time.

The outage is for data storage reasons, no change will be made to WebCT itself.

Sakai, http://sakai.rutgers.edu/, will remain available during this time. We encourage faculty to try Sakai since WebCT will be phased out over the next two to four semesters.

Apple Podcasting Seminar

OIRT is in the processing of finalizing an agreement with Apple Computer to use their "iTunes University" service. As part of that process, Apple Computer has scheduled a half-day seminar on what their service provides and how it has been used at other schools.

Podcasting on Campus (Apple Computer)
May 23, 2006
8:30 A.M. - 12:30 P.M.
Rutgers Student Center, Room 411
CAC

View the brochure (PDF)

To register, go to this page:
http://seminars.apple.com/goToEvent.html?id=47032

This event is open to all New Jersey educators, however seating is limited.

Podcasting is here, now.

The podcasting system in Scott 135 is ready to use now. Anyone teaching in Scott 135 can schedule a podcast by filling out the form at http://cat.rutgers.edu/podcast-test/. The form schedules the recording and creates the podcast URL that the students will use to subscribe to the podcast.

Once scheduled, simply go to the classroom, turn on the microphone and press the touchscreen controls to start the recording (the actual recording happens remotely; the touchscreen controls merely prevent the audio signal from leaving the room, giving the instructor full control of what gets recorded).

Our web server will automatically save the mp3 audio file, tag it with the name of the course and lecturer, and send it out on the "RSS feed," all within a few seconds of the end of the lecture. Students merely paste the podcast URL into iTunes, and that software will automatically check for new recordings at regular intervals, automatically downloading new ones and transferring them to the students' iPods (if they have them). Students without iPods can listen to the recordings on their computers or other mp3 players. The podcast URL can also be pasted into the "news" tool in Sakai, and the audio recordings will show up automatically in the course web site.

You'll find more information on our podcasting page, plus information on how to join the discussion on the benefits and drawbacks of podcasting.

Free Books

Many people are already familiar with the Project Gutenberg <http://gutenberg.org/>. One of the oldest public sites on the web, the goal of Project Gutenberg has been to digitize public domain works and make them freely available. They currently have over 17,000 titles that can be downloaded free of charge. If you need students to read something published prior to 1923, there is a good chance that it is available for free from Project Gutenberg.

But the problem with Project Gutenberg has always been that the files are not convenient to use. That's where ManyBooks.net comes in. They have taken the Project Gutenberg titles and reformatted them in several ways - you simply choose the format that works for your Palm, PocketPC, iPod, or whatever device you use.

ManyBooks.net is a free service.

Podcasting...

We are preparing to announce a new tool that will enable faculty to "podcast" quickly and easily. It's not quite ready yet. We need a few more days for the finishing touches before we start a limited trial.

For those unfamiliar with the term, "podcasts" are simply audio recordings and as such they are nothing new. However they are distributed in a way that is automatic and effortless — so effortless that they have begun to revolutionize (yet again) the way we communicate. Several universities have begun to podcast courses, and Rutgers is headed in that direction (but that announcement is still a few days away).

While we are getting ready to make our announcement , please join a discussion on Sakai about the benefits and drawbacks of podcasting, issues around intellectual property rights, digital distribution of audio files, digital rights management, and anything else that comes up.

To join the discussion, sign up for the "Podcasting at Rutgers" site. From then on you can go directly to https://sakai.rutgers.edu/, log in, and click the “Podcasting at Rutgers” link in Sakai to participate.

Feedback Devices in Effective Pedagogy

We are hosting the next in our series of web seminars, Feedback Devices in Effective Pedagogy, on February 2, 2006 from 1:00 P.M. to 2:30. Anyone who uses "PRS" or "clicker" devices for student feedback in the classroom or wants to know more about them is welcome to attend.

Please register online if interested.

More information is available on our events page.

Intellectual Property Rights and Free Culture

Issues of copyright and intellectual property affect Rutgers faculty and instructors in their role of published authors as well as in the role of educators. While the university policy on copyright covers issues of authorship, it does not provide much guidance on fair use of other's work for education.

Meanwhile, the entertainment industry is lobbying heavily to stop the "piracy" made possible by the internet. New laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act have been passed that, while intended to protect intellectual property authorship, may have unintended consequences on educational use.

Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University Law School has recently published a book on the effects of the new copyright laws on cultural freedom. He raises some important questions that will concern faculty both as authors and educators.

The book, Free Culture is available for free at Lessig's web site, and we have a copy here (right-click to download or save) for quicker access on the campus network. As might be expected for a book on Free Culture, it is free to redistribute according to the terms of its Creative Commons License.

Educational Gaming

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching (CAT) invites all faculty and instructors to a two-day video conference hosted by the New Media Consortium on "Educational Gaming" on Wednesday, December 7, from 12 noon to 5 pm at the Kreeger Center computer lab on the College Avenue Campus and Thursday, December 8, from 12 noon to 5 pm at Rutgers Student Center Room 407. Space is limited. Register online at http://cat.rutgers.edu/events/webconferences.html, by contacting the CAT at 732/932-7466, or curiosity at CAT.rutgers.edu
Full details on the conference program can be found at http://www.nmc.org/events/2005fall_online_conf/program.shtml. Additional information about the conference can be found at http://www.nmc.org/events/2005fall_online_conf/

WebCT and Blackboard evaluations

We are beginning the next phase of evaluating web based course management systems to replace the current version of WebCT.

OIRT has scheduled two workshops to cover WebCT "Vista" and Blackboard. Anyone interested in seeing the latest versions of both of these products should please sign up for the following dates by sending e-mail to oirt@rutgers.edu:

WebCT Vista - 10/27, 9am-noon
Blackboard - 11/1, 1pm-4pm

Session locations will be in a hands-on lab on Busch or College Avenue, the exact room is still to be determined. Both WebCT Vista and Blackboard are significantly easier to use than the older versions of WebCT. If you are using WebCT now, you should be pleasantly surprised by how different both systems are.

Incidentally, the WebCT and Blackboard corporations have announced a plan to merge. Ultimately the two products will become one under the "Blackboard" name, bringing in features from both products. The new, merged product is still several years off.

Bibliographic Software

The library, in coordination with the Office of Instructional and Research Technology and with the Center of for the Advancement of Teaching, is currently considering implementing a university-wide site license for bibliographic database software. The two prime candidates are EndNote and RefWorks.

For those unfamiliar with these tools, both allow people to collect and organize bibliographic data for their research while searching through library indexes. This creates a complete reference list which can be inserted into papers during the writing process. In most cases it will automatically format all citations for the particular writing or publication style needed.

People who already use this type of software are more likely to be familiar with EndNote, but for central distribution it makes more sense to use RefWorks. EndNote works by requiring people to install the software on their own computers then uses the network to link to library resources, while RefWorks is accessed via a web site and allows people to save the collected data to their own computers when needed. Since everyone accesses RefWorks through the network, any updates to library resources are handled automatically, whereas users of EndNote would need to download and install updated "filters".

Naturally people can continue to use whichever product they choose, regardless of the university site license. A site license would merely lower the cost (possibly to nothing) to students, faculty and staff for new purchases, as well as allow the university to concentrate on fully supporting the software in a way that is not currently possible.

OIRT is soliciting feedback on the choice. They have arranged for demonstrations of the two products. EndNote has a 30-day free trial on their web site, and RefWorks is allowing the Rutgers community access to their web site during our evaluation period. Anyone interested can sign up for the demonstrations at OIRT.

Sakai Transition

Anyone who has tried the Sakai web-based course and collaboration system should be aware that OIRT is making some changes over the next month.

Currently there are two versions of Sakai running:
http://sakai.rutgers.edu/ (the old version)
http://sakai2.rutgers.edu/ (the new version)

All new courses and web sites should be created on the new version of Sakai, http://sakai2.rutgers.edu/. Summer Session courses should continue to use the old version.

On August 26-27, OIRT will remove the old version and replace it with the new version, including all courses and web sites that exist on sakai2.rutgers.edu. The courses and web sites that exist on the old version of Sakai will disappear, unless the person responsible for the web site contacts OIRT and indicates that they want their sites moved to the new version.

To request that your sites be moved to the new version, please write to hedrick+sakaimove @ rutgers.edu

Why Sakai?

The university is currently engaged in a exploration of what web-based course system should replace WebCT 4.1 - possibilities include a new version of WebCT (6.0) that is so different from the current one that it should be considered a new system, WebCT "Vista" which really is a different system altogether (and prohibitively expensive), Blackboard, eCompanion (already available to Rutgers faculty through the Division of Continous Education), Desire2Learn and Angel, and an unfinished, rudimentary system named Sakai.

http://sakai.rutgers.edu/

Feature-for-feature, Sakai is years behind the rest. Yet OIRT is putting considerable effort into a Sakai pilot project, at first glance a seemingly odd thing to do. But there are two significant differences that make Sakai well worth considering: customization and collaboration.

Sakai is an "open source" project being developed jointly by a consortium of universities; Rutgers is participating in the process. We can change Sakai to fit our own institutional needs, as can other universities. More than with any other platform we can alter Sakai to fit into existing Rutgers administrative and computing systems, potentially easing the administrative tasks of managing a course's web site. With existing systems these administrative tasks are left to the instructor and can quickly consume time that would be better spent teaching. Beyond administrative details, unique instructional tools can be developed or added to Sakai to support individual disciplines — without the need to wait for a corporation to work the tool into their existing product on their own timeline. Sakai is limited by Rutgers' own priorities and staff resources, but that may be far better than being limited by an external corporation's priorities.

Moreover, since other universities can also customize Sakai, it is possible to exchange the custom-built pedagogical tools between participating universities. Something that MIT or the University of Michigan has done on their Sakai system could easily be brought into use at Rutgers.

While customization is useful, the most significantly important feature of Sakai is collaboration. Sakai turns the traditional course web site on it's head, allowing the students to be as involved in the creation of the course web site as the faculty are (at the faculty's discretion). This is where a real transformation of teaching and learning can take place. The 400-student lecture can be shaken from it's movie-theater style presentation mode to a dynamic community of small groups. The students themselves can create the web pages, discussion boards, document sharing areas and chats. Imagine a contributive web site, like Wikipedia, where students add to the course materials, collaboratively building their own textbook and correcting each other's work, all under the tutelage of the instructor.

Sakai is intended as a collaboration system. It supports research groups, it can be used for committee work, it allows students to innovate and engage in their own education. The fact that it also does standard web-course tasks too is almost incidental. Those features will improve with time, but to base a comparison of Sakai with WebCT or Blackboard on the strength of the common tools is to overlook the dynamic shift in what is possible. Ultimately the replacement for WebCT 4 will be chosen based on how well it fills the needs of faculty and instructors. Sakai may not be all the way there yet, but in spite of it's incompleteness it needs to be considered.

Use of Tablet PC's

Comments from Eastern Washington U, Vanderbuilt U, and U California on their uses of the new tablet PC's -

Our Teaching & Learning Center purchased Tablet PCs for several faculty
as a part of course-redesign projects, and several have found them to be
particularly useful. In several cases, instructors in English
Composition have seen benefits in responding to student writing, both
inside and outside of the classroom. One instructor reported a
substantial savings of time in how long he spends commenting on student
papers as a result of using the pen-based input combined with audio
comments in MS Word via a Tablet PC.

Another uses Macromedia's Captivate or Techsmith's Camtasia, motion
screen-capture applications, to record procedures for solving equations
and adds voice narration. These can be output in several formats and
posted to our Course Management System for student to access outside of
class.

Both of these instructors make use of features unique to the Tablet PC
to display or capture handwritten input with the capabilities of digital
ink. You lose nothing compared to using a laptop, but the ink does add
features which may save time or facilitate other types of learning. I
would say that disciplines which involve a significant amount of
writing, like English, and those which involve writing out formulas,
equations or other special types of notation--would find Tablet PCs
useful. Neither case I described involves a device which is secured to a
podium. They are assigned to individual faculty as their primary
computer, which, in my opinion, enables these faculty to better
incorporate the Tablet into their teaching and professional work.
There's a modest learning curve and a more substantial practice shift
involved in migrating from a desktop or laptop to a Tablet PC if it is
to be more than a novelty. I would predict that a secured device would
be underutilized by faculty who are unacquainted with it and who could
not practice using it at their leisure before using it in front of a class.

I understand that there is also a company which has produced several
mathematics/equation-focused applications for the Tablet PC which will
solve equations written out in digital ink (xthink.com).

-Patrick

Patrick Lordan
Instructional Designer
Teaching & Learning Center
106 Patterson Hall
Eastern Washington University
Cheney, WA 99004
509-359-4368

Patrick's comments match the one in-depth tablet PC pedagogical
experiment that's been done at Vanderbilt. I've pasted below a summary
of that project - if you would like the full report, please email me off
the list.

Peter

Peter Felten
Center for Teaching
Vanderbilt University

----

Project: Greg Walker (Engineering): Lecturing with Tablet PCs in
Auditoriums.

Abstract
This project explored the impact of a tablet PC on both the instructor's
teaching behaviors and on student learning patterns in a large
Mechanical Engineering course. Using the white board effectively as a
presentation platform for problem-solving in a large lecture hall is
often unsatisfactory because the format is too small to be viewed
effectively by the entire class; moreover, the use of overhead
transparencies or PowerPoint slides are modes that are too static to
illustrate the dynamic nature of the problem-solving process.

Evidence for Impact on Student Skills
Through observations, student surveys and self-analysis, this project's
investigator found that the tablet PCs offer several advantages, such as
a natural inclusion of complex digital media alongside active concept
development--making thinking "visible" by maintaining a real-time
mixture of complex engineering concepts and expert annotations. In
addition, the instructor is mobile, can face the class, and does not
obstruct the view of the material, thus creating a more fluid and
coherent lecture. Survey results suggest that students are more likely
to pay attention during the lecture and recognize the more salient
points of the presentation in this modality than in others.

Publication and Dissemination Efforts
The leader has already co-authored papers based on this project which
have been accepted for presentation at a national conference, and for
publication in a national Engineering education journal:
"Case study of the Pedagogical Impact of Tablet PCs as a Presentation
Medium in Large-Scale Engineering Classrooms" - Proceedings of the 2005
American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference &
Exposition

University of California Teaching, Learning and technology Center (TLtC) published 2
articles in its webzine about tablet pc's in the classroom:

FROM MEDIEVAL STUDIES TO COMPUTER SCIENCE, TABLET PCS ARE SHOWING
PEDAGOGICAL PROMISE
http://www.uctltc.org/news/2005/04/feature.php

STUDENTS AT UC BERKELEY USING TABLET PCS FOR COLLABORATIVE NOTE-TAKING
http://www.uctltc.org/news/2005/04/students.php