Instructional Computing - Stony Brook University

Teaching with Technology Workshops for Faculty, Staff and Teaching Assistants

Spring 2008 Schedule

Please check back soon for our upcoming workshops!

Sessions with fewer than 5 registrations will be cancelled.

Session Descriptions

Blackboard Basics/Posting Content

Consider this a crash course in Blackboard. First, we will demonstrate Blackboard and highlight some features. Then, you will be able to log into your Blackboard site and explore how it works! This workshop is primarily for those who have never used Blackboard, or those who have just started to use it. However, if you've used Blackboard before and need a refresher, you are welcome to join us!

We will go over how to navigate Blackboard, and how to post simple types of content.

In order to attend, and be able to actively participate, you must have:

A Blackboard User and Class account.
Files on it that you would like to post either saved on a Jump drive or your MySBFiles.

Assignments in Blackboard

Learn about the different assignment submission tools in Blackboard:

Assignments - Students submit their work through Blackboard. Instructors can either read submissions in Blackboard, or download it to their computer. Grades are assigned in Blackboard's Gradebook.
SafeAssign - An assignment submission tool that checks student work for potential plagiarism. This workshop will show you how to create an assignment, how to check submissions for plagiarism, and assign grades.

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Using Blackboard Tools

This workshop will cover how to use the most commonly used Blackboard tools, including:

Announcements
Staff Information
Sending Email
Discussion Board
Collaboration tools (Virtual Classroom and Chat)

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Blogs and Wikis

This workshop will cover how to use Blackboard's Blog and Wiki tools in your class.

Potential uses
Creating a blog and wiki
Editing
Assessing student participation

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Adaptive Release

Learn how to further control availability of your content to students by using Adaptive Release. In the past, you could hide content from students, setting it to "switch" on at a certain date and time. Adaptive Release gives you more options on how to control your content:

By date and time restrictions
By username or group membership
By score or grade on a previous assignment/assessment
By review status of another piece of content

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Using Blackboard's Gradebook

FERPA (Family Education Rights & Privacy Act ) states the following regarding posting student's grades:

" New York State law specifically bars the display of a student's social security or identification number in any public posting of grades, on class rosters or other lists provided to teachers, on student identification cards, and in student directories or similar listings. Accordingly, faculty and staff may not use student social security or University identification numbers - or any portion thereof - to post grades or provide other publicly accessible information. "

Please note that if you are posting grades via Blackboard as a document (such as a spreadsheet) and are using parts of the student's ID#, you are indeed violating this policy as all students can see it.

During this session, participants will learn how to:

Add items to Blackboard's gradebook
Post student grades via the gradebook
Utilize Blackboard's weighting feature
Create new categories in the gradebook
Download Blackboard's gradebook
Upload grades from Excel (or other spreadsheet programs)

This session is ideal for Graduate TA's who are responsible for grading students!

In order to attend, and be able to actively participate, please bring:

A Blackboard User and Class account.
A disk or thumb drive with files on it that you would like to post.

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Exploring Quizzes and Survey's in Blackboard

Blackboard has two different assessment tools, they are:

Quizzes and Surveys

Come to this session to learn how you can:

Create Question Pools which can then be used to create a test or survey
Have the system "grade" the student answers or summarize the results for you

In order to attend and actively participate, you must have:

A Blackboard User and Class account.
A disk (Floppy or CD) with questions on it that you would like to post.

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Respondus – A New Quizzing Tool for Blackboard

(Excerpted from the Respondus website)

Respondus 2.0 is a powerful tool for creating and managing exams that can be printed to paper or published directly to Blackboard. Exams are created offline in a familiar Windows environment and the software provides many time-saving tools such as equation editors, web links, and multimedia functions. Existing exams can be converted from eight different formats including word processor files. Respondus is used at over 2,000 institutions worldwide.

During this session we will show you Respondus and explain how you can use this new tool within your Blackboard site.

This session is a demonstration, not hands on!

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Using Blackboard to communicate with students in your department for Academic Departments & Student Service Areas

This workshop is open to all staff who are interested in using Blackboard to communicate with students.

This includes Academic Departments who wish to communicate with their majors / minors as well as student service areas who employ students and are looking for ways to share information.

Prior to attending this workshop, participants must :

1. Know their NetID username and Information (Which can be set in SOLAR)
2. Request a Blackboard site for their department. This can be done on-line at: http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/DoIT/bbreq.nsf/bborgrequests

During this workshop participants will explore how to:

1. Add/Remove students from their Blackboard site
2. Post Content (PDF / Word files)
3. Add information to Blackboard's calendar
4. Post announcements for students

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Blackboard Faculty Showcase

At least once a semester, we try to bring Stony Brook faculty together to share their Blackboard experiences, demonstrate how they are using Blackboard in their courses and discuss future possibilities.

Currently not scheduled

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Flashlight On-lineWorkshops!

Flashlight™ Online is the web-based system for creating surveys, gathering responses, and analyzing data. Instructional Computing at Stony Brook University pays for this service and it is available to all faculty/staff and graduate students who are conducting research studies. In order to use this service and to be able to actively participate in this workshop, you will need an account. You can request your account at: https://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/DoIT/sinc.nsf/flashlightaccountrequest.

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Digital video

This presentation will show you how to take VHS material and convert it to a more portable format using the resources freely available on campus.

Currently not scheduled

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Data and Design, HTML and CSS

If you are using HTML without CSS you are trapping your information in your HTML.
Let your data be free to be used in devices of the future like cell phones and PDA's and make a site that is easily maintainable.
This presentation will discuss the design philosophy behind CSS and why many of the methods that were used to create a web page 5 years ago are now discouraged. (and why the same thing won't happen again in another 5 years).

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Podcasting - How to Create a Podcast, A Hands-On Lesson

We will brainstorm about how faculty can use podcasts with their existing curriculum. Then, using two computers setups, (one PC and one Mac) we will create content, load it up to a weblog server and then download it back onto the computer and/or iPod. Though not every person attending this session will be sitting in front of their own computer, this will still be a hands-on class, and class size will be limited to meet this goal.

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Using PowerPoint's Producer to create Enhanced Podcasts.

Enhanced Podcasts allow for images to be synchronized with audio, this is a great way to package PowerPoint presentations for the web or playback on iPods. Currently the tools for creation of enhanced podcast such as "Profcast" or "Podcast Maker" are only available on the Macintosh OS X. This presentation will show how you can use an online interface to convert Powerpoint Producer files directly to Enhanced Podcast.

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