This week I had the new experience of teaching with Microsoft Teams. While I have given webinars on many occasions to both student and librarian audiences, this was the first time I taught an instruction session to 120 students across three on-campus classrooms simultaneously from my office. Background The Business Cluster is the core educational... Continue Reading →
Wake Up and Get to Work: How to Engage Large Classes with Active Learning Exercises and TopHat
A few months ago I wrote a post about how I use TopHat to better engage students in my large classes. Last week I presented on the topic during one of our library's "Impact Through Action" workshops. The video below is a recording of my presentation.
I made my students 49% smarter and I can prove it
"Well looky there, you learned something! You're 49% smarter than you were 5 minutes ago!" This aha! moment occurred while teaching over 400 business students this fall. Using Tophat in my business research instruction sessions, I was able to assess that my students did in fact learn something through my teaching. The Challenge Each semester... Continue Reading →
Teaching a one-shot library instruction session with TopHat
This spring I used Tophat to shake up the delivery of my large research sessions. This is one example of how I have used Tophat to enhance my library research instruction. The scenario Each spring I am invited to give a one-shot, hour-long orientation to approximately 125 students who are part of the Global Consulting... Continue Reading →
How to make library instructional (or other educational) videos and screencasts
The video below is a follow-up to my previous post about how I make library instructional videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENyxbkXm1eY This video shows the basics of making library instructional (or other educational) videos and screencasts. The video discusses the inexpensive equipment and software needed, and shows how to make a video from start to finish. Discusses camera... Continue Reading →
YouTube and Fox News for an evaluation exercise
I've been doing an evaluation exercise with many of my English 151 classes for the last couple of years. It works pretty well, and I've had several instructors request that I repeat it again for their future classes. Many of my colleagues have been asked about this exercise, so I thought I would... Continue Reading →
Why use web video to reach your audience?
Because it's growing by leaps and bounds, that's why! "The number of unique viewers of online video increased 5.2% year-over-year according to The Nielsen Company, from 137.4 million unique viewers in January 2009 to 142.7 million in January 2010." I'd like to think that a few of my videos that I created in the... Continue Reading →
It’s a small world after all
Last night I got an IM question from a student while staffing our IM reference service. She was in the stacks, but "was totally overwhelmed" with how many books we had and was very confused about how to actually find a book. Since four floors separated us, I decided to send her my... Continue Reading →