Wow, the school year starts on Monday. Where did the summer go?!

One highlight of my summer was the 2014 COLTT conference, it was a blast! It is always nice to be around like minded folks. The conference always inspires me to try something new for the fall semester, and this year was no exception. Before I can talk about my plans for this year, I need to go back a bit.

Last year, thanks to COLTT, I added social media, namely a Google+ community, into my class. Using a private Google  site (meaning I had to manually add each student to the site) as my course management system, I created a Google community to add a two way or social experience to my class. Things went okay, watch for a update later in the year with updates from a satisfaction survey, but I felt they could have been better. The website seemed to get in the way, and made the Google community less effective because students could stay on the site, read the instructions, then post to the community and leave. There was very little in the way of Peer to Peer conversations.

This year, all that changes! At least I hope. Thanks to Marc Mueller, who is a big proponent of open access content and works for a company making that easier, I am ditching the learning management system and moving my class directly into a social world! Everything will be posted into the Google community: readings, assignments and rubrics, discussion prompts, and the syllabus. Students will be encouraged to engage with each other, offer critique, and help their peers learn. Learning is a social thing, and humans are social animals, which could explain our current love of social media.

Hopefully, by midterms, I will have some mid-semester feedback from this year so I can compare it to last year. There are some confounding variables here, last year I taught in a larger school, 17000, while this year there are only 3000. My hope is the spirit of the course, a first year success seminar, will reveal some reliable correlations. Stay tuned for updates!

InfoGraphics

One of the many projects I work on is managing the probation and suspension process in a business school. If a student does not earn a 2.0 overall GPA or 2.0 business GPA, I am the guy who sends out the notification letters, updates student transcripts, and creates programming to help students create an "academic recovery plan". Each semester I also create a report showing current numbers. This semester I tried Piktochart to spice up the data. Overall I really like the app because it works. Here is a sample: Leeds Spring 2014 Academic Standing Report. The template is just a minimalist, freebie with few customization options. Faculty out there might consider using InfoGraphics for any research they create because they are a great way to spice up data!

Piktochart has a publish and presentation feature, so you just create the graphic, publish it, copy or save the link, then click "presentation mode" in the right corner of the screen and BANG! Your data is live for your next presentation at your faculty or department meeting. You can also download the image and embed it in a blog or web post. Not as interactive, but still nice!