Integrating Technology – Page 2

Discord App Adds Options for Remote Learning & Teamwork

March 15, 2021

by Nathan Loewen, Faculty Technology Liaison & Department of Religious Studies Someone responded to the survey for Last Week’s Teaching in 2020 with a comment about the Discord app. It turns out plenty of people use Discord for teaching and learning (Several teachers in France and Quebec are adopting Discord). Here are the experiences of four people at UA. (Please continue to share your ideas and experiences here, and your entry could spark another cross-campus search for teaching innovation!) Creating […]

Social Reading Supports Student Success (e.g., Hypothesis)

December 17, 2020

by Nathan Loewen, Department of Religious Studies Maintaining engagement and a sense of community is valuable no matter how strange and extenuated the conditions for teaching and learning. 24 UA courses used the new Hypothesis tool in Blackboard (found in your “build content” menu). Hypothesis allows teachers and learners to add a layer of commentary over PDF files and web pages. At UA in Fall 2020, 1004 students and 48 teachers made 11,863 annotations on 547 assignments. If you do […]

Last Week’s Teaching in 2020 – Episode 6

December 6, 2020

professor's home office teaching amid their children

Faculty and staff are being asked to do so much in Fall 2020, but the circumstances of the doing aren’t visible. That is just as true for students this fall. We can pause to think of our colleagues and our students — the ones who’ve excelled despite everything, the ones who seem like they’re holding it together but are really struggling, the procrastinators who’ve been caught flat-footed, and the ones who are just so overwhelmed by all of it. The […]

Messaging with Slack Improves Class Communication

November 23, 2020

by Lauren Horn Griffin, Department of Religious Studies I’ve been using Slack, a communication and collaboration tool, with the students in my Fall 2020 course REL310, “REL Goes to the Movies.” The app has given me more insight into student understanding and progress (those formative moments) than the live discussions where only some participate. Due to COVID-19, we are not watching the movies in the same room together. How were we going to watch and discuss movies remotely? I still […]

Social Reading in Undergraduate Courses

October 20, 2020

by Matt Smith (Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies), Andrew Deaton (History), and Camille Morgan (Anthropology) How might a class read together remotely? One way is to assign a reading and then have students respond on a discussion board. Compared to Blackboard’s Discussion Board, the Hypothesis app has both drawbacks and benefits. One drawback, for example, is that the tool has only a few built-in options, including annotation and highlighting. There are, however, several specific pedagogical advantages to using Hypothesis […]

Transition Multiple-Choice Exams Online: A Large-Enrollment Solution

October 8, 2020

empty notebook with pencil and pencil sharpener

by Diana Leung, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry In 2020 the changes brought about by COVID-19 forced me to transition my normally face-to-face classes to an online format. This fall semester I teach two sections of a freshman Introductory Chemistry class (CH 104), each with about ~200 students, and an Organic Chemistry II (CH 232) sophomore class with ~130 students. One of the worries I had when transitioning online was how to give exams to this large student population. Ultimately, […]

Electronic Whiteboard Options for Online Lectures: iPad & Zoom or Blackboard Collaborate Ultra

September 23, 2020

by Diana Leung, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The University of Alabama. After the need for social distancing due to COVID-19, I had to transition my face to face classes to an online format. My teaching style relies crucially on the use of a whiteboard to provide handwritten notes. I believe the use of handwritten notes allows students time to process the information as the instructor is […]

Engage Students with Socially Distant Annotation of Course Texts

June 25, 2020

by Nathan Loewen, Department of Religious Studies I hope that you and yours are keeping safe, healthy, and well this summer. With the University’s plan in place for Fall 2020, you might be taking more concrete steps in with your syllabus and course designs. Some of your planning might involve UA-supported online platforms and software. There are more than 200 faculty-written Teaching Hub blog posts, too, whose content you might adapt to your purposes. I wish to add to this list […]

Five Rules For Engaging, Legible Presentation Slides

January 17, 2020

by Xabier Granja, Department of Modern Languages and Classics Picture this: you are teaching a content class that is not based on visual material. Maybe you cover centuries-old literary works or political movements that did not spark a major artistic style, so you have to rely on text. We live in an age where 92% of teens interact online on a daily basis using all sorts of devices and, in following the evolution of the Internet as a whole, graphical […]

Insights From Around the Nation—in Alabama’s Teaching Theatre Course

May 2, 2019

by Alex Ates, Department of Theatre and Dance As I exasperatingly jogged between terminals to catch the connecting flight from Boston, Massachusetts to Birmingham, Alabama, I couldn’t help but reel with delight by how wildly this semester was functioning. One day, I would be working with undergraduates in Boston, the next, in Tuscaloosa. As flexible educators learn, there is creativity in contradiction and a curious fuel released through academic mania. Jetting back and forth between The University of Alabama where […]

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Category: Integrating Technology