Category Archives: Pedagogy

Intellectual Property for Faculty and Digital Course Materials

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In Fall 2015, the Faculty Senate asked Rebecca Frost Davis, Director of Instructional and Emerging Technology, about the issue of intellectual property for faculty and digital course materials.  Her reply was shared with all faculty members with the Faculty Senate Agenda for the meeting on January 29, 2016 and is reproduced below.  This text is intended to provide information about common practice in higher education and is not a legal opinion.

I believe that there are two areas of ambiguity in intellectual property for faculty around the digital assets of their courses. In particular, I am speaking of what we call the “course shell,” which is essentially all the material and the course layout in the learning management system, e.g., Blackboard, Canvas, etc. Because course shells can be exported from one system and imported into another (even between institutions), the issue of ownership is called into question. The two areas of ambiguity are 1) low-residency, hybrid or online programs and 2) courses taught by multiple instructors, especially including contingent faculty members.

1) Low-residency, hybrid or online programs

The first area of ambiguity comes with online or low residency courses because their course shell is so much more substantial and often requires that substantial university resources go into course construction. While we have no way of knowing how much time a faculty member puts into constructing a typical face-to-face course, I do know that for online or low residency courses where an instructional designer designs the course shell, the instructional designer typically puts in 150 hours of work (this does not include faculty labor). For this reason, we advise those programs considering hybrid, low-residency, or online programs to create contracts with faculty clarifying ownership of the course and its assets.

The new low-residency MBA program provides a good example of this issue because courses are designed to be taught by multiple faculty members for the program. Faculty designers knew this from the beginning, signed contracts to that effect, and are actively designing the courses for reuse by others. For example, courses include videos from multiple university community members to better represent the Munday School of Business rather than just the course designer. Nancy Schreiber would be the best person to ask about these contracts.

Contracts that clarify intellectual property are best practice in this area; typically, the university retains ownership of the course shell, especially where they supplied substantial resources for design and creation of the faculty member was contracted to design the course for reuse by others. In effect, this does not mean the faculty member cannot teach the same content at another university (that would be difficult to monitor), but it does mean they should not be exporting the course shell, video content, etc., and reusing it at another institution without permission. It also means that the university can reuse these digital assets even if the original designer has left the university.

2) Courses taught by multiple instructors

A second area of confusion comes with courses taught by multiple instructors, like many of our required courses for general education or courses required for certain programs that are taught by multiple faculty members, especially contingent faculty members. Instructors at St. Edward’s routinely share course materials, pedagogical approaches, and teaching ideas. That is part of our vibrant culture of teaching and learning, and I would hate to see that end because of concerns about intellectual property. Once again, however, because technology makes that sharing even easier, it can also lead to abuses.

It is common practice for instructors to request that their course be copied for use by another instructor. Instructional technology also gets requests from new or contingent faculty for a copy of another instructor’s course shell. This practice is an extension of the practice of sharing syllabi with new faculty. For example, when I taught Latin at UT, I was given multiple syllabi from former versions of the course as a model for my course. I don’t have exact numbers at hand for how often each of these happens at SEU, but I would be happy to ask my team to look into it. In either case, our practice is to only make copies with the permission of the instructor or, if the instructor is no longer available, with the permission of the department chair or someone else with authority over the course.

Canvas offices a promising new functionality that will clarify ownership and sharing. Canvas Commons allows instructors, departments, and schools to share materials, assignments, course elements, and even whole courses. These can be shared with departments, schools, the whole university, or the general public. Those who share are required to label their material with a license, which can range from “Copyright, All Rights Reserved” all the way up to the most open Creative Commons License. This is a great solution for making transparent the sharing that goes on between instructors and within departments, programs, and schools at SEU because it puts control of the material in the hands of the faculty creator. You can find out more about Canvas Commons here: https://stedwards.instructure.com/accounts/1/external_tools/101?launch_type=global_navigation

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Register by 12/1 for Free, Local Event on Digital Pedagogy, January 5-6, 2016

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THATCamp Digital Pedagogy ATX logoJoin local and national faculty to network, share ideas, assignments, and techniques for integrating digital technologies into teaching and learning.  THATCamp Digital Pedagogy ATX 2016 seeks to bring together diverse participants to share ideas, issues and strategies around teaching and learning with digital tools and methods.  Registration is free, but space is limited and we request that you only register if you are actually planning to attend.  Find out more and register by December 1 here: http://dpatx.thatcamp.org/

St. Edward’s Office of Information Technology is co-sponsoring this event and several St. Edward’s faculty and staff have contributed to planning, including the logo designed by St. Edward’s University graphic design student Melany Klopp.  The event will be held in Austin, Texas at the University of Texas Libraries’ new Learning Commons on January 5-6, 2016 (just before the annual convention of the Modern Language Convention also in Austin).  THATCamps (The Humanities And Technology Camp) are unconferences that originated in the digital humanities community.  This one has been organized by a network of digital humanists in the Austin area.

Inside Great St. Ed’s Courses: A Guided Tour of How They Work

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Please join Instructional Technology and the Center for Teaching Excellence for this event on

Thursday, November 12, 3:30 – 5:00 pm, Fleck 305

RSVP online

Canvas

Inside Great St. Ed’s Courses: A Guided Tour of How They Work

One of the advantages of digital course tools is that they allow us to archive and share our course design. For this panel, we asked a variety of faculty members whose pedagogy is  made visible through Canvas to show us the inner workings of their courses. Learn how they structure the semester’s work, facilitate ongoing student interaction inside and outside of class, provide timely feedback and grades, check students’ knowledge through quizzing, organize group activities, and deepen student engagement. Courses will be shared by:

  • Tricia Shepherd, Professor of Chemistry
  • Susie Brister, Adjunct Professor of Art
  • Carol Gee, Associate Professor of Mathematics
  • Casey Sherman, Assistant Professor of Mathematics,
  • Elisabeth Johnson, Associate Professor of Literacy
  • Grant H. Potts, Adjunct Professor of University Studies
  • Debra Zahay-Blatz, Professor of Marketing
  • Billy Earnest, Assistant Professor of Communication

 

Effective Strategies for Online Disscussions in Your Course

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Planning Your Online Course v2 -Giulia ForsytheOnline discussions can serve as a great opportunity for your students to reflect on the ideas presented in your course and allow them a safe place for challenging academic discourse. This blog post shares a few starting points for thinking about the format of your discussions, the roles students can play in the discussion space, and ways you can assess and incorporate the online discussions back into your face-to-face class. Illustration by Giulia Forsythe

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Partner with Instructional Technology to Research New Technologies

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Venn diagram of participatory action researchInstructional technology is researching how best to integrate several technologies for teaching and learning at St. Edward’s. We are seeking faculty to partner with us in this research. Would you like to try any of the following activities in your courses this year?

  • Virtual meetings for group projects, office hours, etc.
  • Connecting students through live video (in or out of the classroom) to remote colleagues, students, or experts
  • Recording and/or sharing presentations outside of class
  • Flexible furniture to enable group work (seats 24)
  • Working with the library to take advantage of digital course materials.

If so, you can express your interest (without making a commitment) by using this form at http://bit.ly/SEUpilots2015

New Technologies in Pilot Status

Instructional Technology and our colleagues in the Office of Information Technology are bringing several new instructional technologies to the SEU community, as well as conducting research on some technologies that became available in the last two years to better understand their pedagogical uses.

  • The technologies to support virtual meetings and live video are desktop video conferencing with Webex or high definition video conferencing in the global digital classrooms in the library. For Webex, every faculty member can have their own 100 person meeting room, and each student gets an 8-person meeting room.
  • Panopto is a new tool that allows users to easily record presentations from their desktop with video and slides synched together. It is only available through Canvas.
  • Moody 212 is our experimental flexible furniture classroom. It holds 24 students, and has wheeled node desks that can be easily rearranged, as well as huddle boards—which are portable whiteboards for group work.
  • Finally, staff in the Munday library are interested in demonstrating the many ways they can help you and your students integrate digital materials, including online e-reserves, linking to ebooks from your course in Canvas or Blackboard, and openly available digital resources.

What else would you like to try?  Let us know by responding on the survey form or just get contact us via email at instcom@stedwards.edu!

Migrating Courses from Blackboard to Canvas

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Do you want to move course materials from Blackboard to Canvas? In making the transition from Blackboard to Canvas, it is important to complete the following three steps:

Migrating from Blackboard

  1. Export your Blackboard Courses
  2. Upload and save your Exported Blackboard courses Zip files into Box
  3. Import your course files from Blackboard into Canvas

We highly recommend that you Export all your Blackboard courses and then upload the Zip files into to your Box account. The Export file is used to import content into Canvas, such as all your course files. We recommend NOT importing your grade center columns and assignments. It is best to create these within Canvas.

We have detailed instructions on how to Export copies of your course to Box, and also how to Import your course files from Blackboard into Canvas.

Blackboard and Canvas Logos

For more questions about Canvas and Training visit our Canvas Training Center for faculty. We are here to help you get your courses started in Canvas.

Open Peer Review of New Resource for Digital Pedagogy Ends August 3

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Digital Pedagogy Avatar for MLA BooksWe invite you to take part in open peer review of a new project on digital pedagogy that is being coedited by Rebecca Frost Davis. The brief essays and pedagogical artifacts present valuable models of innovative pedagogy.  Read on for details.

Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments, edited by Rebecca Frost Davis, Matthew K. Gold, Katherine D. Harris, and Jentery Sayers, is a dynamic open-access collection currently in development on MLA Commons. The editors invite your participation in the open peer review of this collection.

Each entry in the collection focuses on a keyword in the field of digital pedagogy (ranging from “queer” to “interface” to “professionalization”) and is curated by an experienced practitioner, who briefly contextualizes a concept and then provides ten supporting artifacts, such as syllabi, prompts, exercises, lesson plans, and student work, drawn from courses, classrooms, and projects across the humanities. New keywords will be added in batches throughout 2015, with fifty keywords to be included in the final project.

Please visit https://digitalpedagogy.commons.mla.org  to read through and respond to the first set of keywords, now available for open review. The official review period for the first set of keywords will end on 3 August 2015. You do not have to be a member of the MLA to take part in open peer review, and while this collection focuses on humanities pedagogy, many of the keywords and resources will be relevant to other disciplines.

Keywords and curators in the first batch are:

  • Hybrid (Jesse Stommel)
  • Interface (Kathi Inman Berens)
  • Praxis (Bethany Nowviskie, Jeremy Boggs, and J. K. Purdom Lindblad)
  • Queer (Edmond Y. Chang)
  • Rhetoric (Douglas Eyman)
  • Video (Daniel Anderson and Jason Loan)

Thanks in advance for reading and participating!

New Technology for Innovative Learning & Teaching Pilot Project Grants for 2015-2016

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Swivl-iPad-Mini-2-thumb-316x333-51901The Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable (TLTR) congratulates the winners of Technology for Innovative Learning & Teaching Pilot Project Grants for 2015-2016. These grants fund faculty who wish to pursue innovative and technologically-sophisticated teaching. All proposals are evaluated by the TLTR Grants Selection sub-committee, comprised of at least 3 faculty members, 2 instructional technology staff members, and the CTE director. Abstracts for the projects are available on the TLTR Pilot Projects webpage. This year’s projects will engage students in research by using mobile devices to gather data and by using qualitative data analysis, join the Maker movement through 3-D printing, use remote control robots in conjunction with iPads to document teaching practice, and help students gather and reflect on their own personal data.

This year’s winners are:

Raelynn Deaton Haynes, Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences (NSCI) for the project, “Grabbing Panama by the Isthmus: Using Technology to Enhance the Study Abroad Experience for Evolution Students”

Rachael Neal, Assistant Professor, Sociology, Social Work, and Criminology (BSS) for the project, “Inside and Outside: Exploring the Boundaries of Community”

makerbot-printer_smSara Parent-Ramos, Visiting Professor of Art, Visual Studies (HUM) and Michael Massey, Assistant Professor of Humanities, for the project, “3D Printing Pilot Project: Interdisciplinary Applications and Pedagogical Explorations”

Kris Sloan, Associate Professor of Education and Chair, Teacher Education (EDUC) for the project, “Capturing Complexities in Classroom Teaching”

fitbits_smMichael Wasserman, Assistant Professor, Environmental Science & Policy (BSS) for the project, “Incorporating Personal Health Devices Into Environmental Science and Global Studies Courses in Angers, France: Understanding the Influence of Culture and Environment on Human Health”

Using Box for Collaborative Cloud Storage in Your Courses

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Box is a cloud storage and collaboration solution available to St. Edward’s University students, faculty, and staff. With Box, you can create, store, collaborate, and access files and information securely from anywhere, on a multitude of devices. Faculty, you have 50 GB of storage space on Box. Use it today to save files for your courses and share folders and files with your students or colleagues to collaborate.

Box Logo How do I Access Box?

To access your new Box account, visit https://stedwards.app.box.com and click continue. You will be routed to the myHilltop login screen, and after successfully entering your St. Edward’s username and password, you will be routed to your Box dashboard.

Once logged in, you can check out the “Welcome to Box” resources folder provided for you. Please review the Box SEU FAQ document. There is also helpful documentation and videos, to help you get the most out of the great Box benefits now available to you, including:

How are Faculty using Box Today?Box Interface

Faculty, staff, and students are currently using Box for their work and courses. Here are a few faculty stories of how Box is used for their courses:

Kim Garza, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design, uses Box in her course and shared her story:

“I wanted to share what happened in my class yesterday with Box. At the beginning of the semester, I created a class folder by posting the collaboration link in Bb/Canvas (super easy). We’ve been adding files to it along the way. But yesterday, I asked them to edit a Box note in class. They were so jazzed by the colored boxes with their initials moving all over the place. It was a bit performative in nature. I enjoyed watching them delight in collaborating in the cloud synchronously. Now, I will say that their task wasn’t really profound — an over-glorified sign-up sheet — but the engagement and geek-out factor was off the charts.”

Other faculty, including the Capstone Faculty, such as Todd Onderdonk, Associate Professor Of University Studies, are encouraging their students to use Box as a great option for the students to store the electronic parts of their research files in Box folders, and to help them with their research processes.

Jump In or Get Help

Box is fully available to all faculty, staff, and students of St. Edward’s University.  Feel free to start using it whenever you are ready. If you would like support, however, in using box, the Office of Information Technology can help.

Watch Videos about Experiments in Teaching at St. Edward’s University

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Curious about what your colleagues are up to in the classroom? Looking for some new ideas for next semester?  Check out this playlist of two-minute videos from the “Experiments in Teaching” faculty innovation showcase held Friday, October 24th.

Want to try your own experiment? Consider applying for an Innovation Fellowship or Technology for Innovative Learning & Teaching Pilot Project Grant.