Tag: organize

Spring Cleaning – Yes even at work!

Here are some tips for organizing your computer and Blackboard sites.

Remember to Update your Computer Windows and Mac

Hiding courses from previous semesters (they are not gone, just hidden)

Being a good steward of student information (make sure no grade files etc are on your hard drive, they should be saved to pirate drive)

While you are checking My Documents for student information perhaps sort by date modified and clean out those files that are over 5 years old!

Clean up your gradebook.

Organization of content.

Need help with course organization or development contact OET!

 

I missed last week so I am making up for it!

I am often asked what I do besides record lectures, and we do a lot of that at CAHS but my degree is in Instructional Technology and I recently came across this article which might describe more clearly what I can do.

“Instructional Designers support faculty throughout the development of their online course. Their goal is to make online course development easier for faculty as well as to assist in making knowledge acquisition more efficient, effective, and appealing for students. Below are 15 ways … Instructional Designers can assist faculty.

  1. Help faculty identify what they want students to do/know at the end of the course (course and unit level objectives)
  2. Provide tutorials and tips on using Blackboard to teach online
  3. Provide a second pair of eyes to identify potential issues
  4. Provide a sounding board for ways to improve courses
  5. Provide a student perspective
  6. Identify ways to encourage collaboration and build community
  7. Consult on course structure and organization
  8. Promote academic integrity by providing solutions through pedagogy, technology, and community building
  9. Share examples of instructional strategiesused in other courses and programs
  10. Help define criteria for graded work
  11. Help ensure course accessibility
  12. Serve as a liaison for video and other media development
  13. Identify technology to support learning objectives
  14. Provide expertise on integrating innovative tools for learning
  15. Help keep course development on track.”  (from https://teachonline.asu.edu/2015/07/15-ways-instructional-designers-can-assist-faculty/

With just over 3 weeks until Fall Semester begins why not see what can be done?  But do take some time, shut down the computer, turn off the phone and read a book, explore new places, reboot!

In under two minutes . . .

Here is an article on organizing email.  One of the highlights is the

The “Four D’s for Decision Making” model (4 D’s) is a valuable tool for processing e-mail, helping you to quickly decide what action to take with each item and how to remove it from the Inbox.

Decide what to do with each and every message

How many times have you opened, reviewed, and closed the same e-mail message over and over? Some of those messages are getting lots of attention but very little action. It is better to handle each e-mail message only once before taking action—which means you have to make a decision as to what to do with it and where to put it. Under the 4 D’s model, you have four choices:

  1. Delete it
  2. Do it
  3. Delegate it
  4. Defer it Read more