DLiT provides a wide variety of resources, tutorials, and guides for various online learning, technology-enhanced teaching, and learning supports. Explore the following tabs and sections. If you don't find what you need, please make suggestions to dlit@andrews.edu.
LearningHub is Andrews University's learning management system and is powered by Moodle. If you need additional assistance, email dlit@andrews.edu.
This tutorial page is for teachers who are opening their LearningHub course page for the first time
Now that you are into your course you can go to the next section below and learn how to add assignments or to the next tab to the right and learn how to add Zoom for face-to-face classes.
These items will help you get started with your new LearningHub course site.
Additional setup items:
There are a variety of ways to set up assignments in LearningHub.
Q: How do I get help getting my quiz/exam into LearningHub?
DLiT is willing to put your quiz/exam into LearningHub. Please email it to dlit@andrews.edu along with the quiz/exam and the answers (at least the answers for autograded items such as T/F, multiple choice, and matching).
The following resources will assist you with grading and setting up your gradebook. If you feel there are issues with your gradebook, please email dlit@andrews.edu and we can provide a gradebook audit to ensure the settings match your syllabus.
Gradebook
Grading
Access to LearningHub - Overall Guide
The following procedures are for granting access to LearningHub for people who are not automatically entered from Banner.
Zoom is the University's tool for videoconferencing, webinars and distance instruction.
Using some basic audio and video concepts and a few environment adjustments, your recordings can look natural and professional.
Need to meet with students live? The following tools help you with scheduling.
Alignment means that we want to create continuity between the learning objectives, the course activities, the learning materials, and the assessments.
Assessment is how we improve our instruction and measure student performance.
What is the Purpose of Assessment?
The primary function of assessment is to measure student learning. There are two types of assessment, formative and summative. Formative occurs while the instruction is in process, while summative is a final overall determination.
It is quite common in higher education to see a very heavy focus on summative assessment, with very little formative assessment opportunities. This is contrary to effectively designed instruction due to the lack of opportunities for the learner to practice and receive feedback. In an online course, this approach is especially problematic.
Formative assessment provides feedback to learners as they are learning content. Opportunities for practice and feedback are CRUCIAL to the effectiveness of instruction, especially online instruction.
Below are some ideas for utilizing online resources to enhance your course, moving beyond the read a chapter or watch a lecture and take a quiz.
Videos
How to Use Online Video in Classrooms
Images
How to Cite Images and Media (This is a great resource for a challenging topic.)
Audio Files
Learning Objects and Lessons
How to Add Apps to Your Course
Embed interactive content using https://www.edu-apps.org/.
Student Identity Verification
Andrews University uses multiple methods to verify the identity of online students. All online students have a secure login to the online course materials. Assignments such as papers and projects are submitted through Turn-It-In, a plagiarism checker which allows us reduce the possibility that the student is handing in work that is not their own. Most courses have proctored exams where the student must show their ID before they are allowed to take the exam. Some courses have live sessions where the student shown on the webcam is verified against the photo in our student information system to verify the student identity. The combination of these methods verifies that the student taking the online class is the same person who is participating in the class.
Cheating and Plagiarism
Just because you can download or copy/paste content from the web does not make it legal. Browse these resources to learn. DLiT and library staff can assist you in ensuring that your use of resources is legal.
How To:
Andrews Standard for Teaching Online: Target: The course includes opportunities for students to think critically by requiring them to do most or all of the following: define and describe a relevant issue from multiple angles, evaluate sources of information, identify and question others and one’s own assumptions, acknowledge different sides of an issue, share a conclusion logically tied to a range of information including opposing viewpoints, and/or identify consequences
Background and Overview Resources
Critical Thinking Activities
Content should be presented and designed in ways that all students can access equitably.
Using the Forum for More Than “Discussion”
The discussion forum is great for interaction, but what else can you do with it besides “discuss”?! Here are some ideas to bring in some variety:
Course Housekeeping Forums
Assessment of Discussions
Exams
Well constructed tests motivate students and reinforce learning. Well constructed tests enable teachers to assess the students mastery of course objectives. Tests also provide feedback on teaching, often showing what was or was not communicated clearly. While always demanding, test writing may be made easier by considering the following suggestions for general test construction.
Quizzes
A quiz is a form of student assessment that measures knowledge, skills, and abilities. A quiz is generally a frequent and short assessment that can gauge a student’s retention and comprehension of a small amount of information. A quiz can function throughout a course as an informative feedback device allowing both the instructor and the students to see where they are excelling or need more focus. In order to effectively create quizzes, it is important to establish and understand the learning objectives that are being measured.
Andrews Standard for Teaching Online: Target: The course includes appropriate worship opportunities connected to the course content, appropriate connections to the Adventist faith throughout the content presentations, assignments that encourage growth in students’ understanding of life, learning and civic responsibility from a Christian point of view. The teacher’s interaction with the students exhibit care for the student.
What could this look like in an online course? The evidence may come in instructor-student interaction, in discussion on how the Christian worldview intersects with the content knowledge, in how students are viewed and treated as whole persons made in the image of God, in the instructor’s teaching presence. Here are some examples:
Instructor Presence
Writing Assignments
Biblical Foundations
Are there any natural connections between Biblical perspectives and your course content? Here are a few examples to challenge your thinking:
Teaching Civic Responsibility
7 Steps to Flatten Your Classroom
Presented by Vicki Davis to Andrews Univeristy Faculty Institute, Fall 2015
Inspired by Thomas Friedman in “The World is Flat,“ Vicki has been leading global collaborative projects for many years. Global collaboration is not a choice between current pedagogies or global collaboration. Rather, it is an “and“ proposition. We should use current teaching pedagogies and effective global collaboration pedagogies as part of the complete, healthy classroom ecosystem. You can get there one step at a time.
Group Work to Promote Critical Thinking
Resources for Designing Group Work
Andrews Standard for Teaching Online: Target: The participants and instructor are engaged and present in facilitating social and cognitive (learning) opportunities for interaction among the students.
One of the biggest concerns of faculty and students new to online learning is the feeling of disconnection and distance. Creating an interactive learning community can make all the difference for student satisfaction in an online course. In addition, the learning community is a great way to encourage students to think critically about your academic content, to reflect on their learning, and to consider connections between a Christian worldview and the core content to be learned.
The Community of Inquiry model of online learning includes the Teaching Presence, Social Presence and the Cognitive Presence. We will use these concepts as a framework for organizing these resources.
Social Presence
Social Presence is “the ability of participants to identify with the community (e.g., course of study), communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and develop inter-personal relationships by way of projecting their individual personalities” (Garrison, 2009). In a face to face class, how do students and the professor get to know each other? They see each other’s faces and body language. They share their ideas in classroom discussion. They may meet each other outside of class to work on additional learning. Online, we need to deliberately set up spaces for students to get to know each other and for you to get to know them. In high quality online programs, students even feel a bond of solidarity and friendship and are excited to meet each other later face to face.
Here are some ideas to enhance the social presence of your online classroom:
Cognitive Presence
Cognitive Presence is the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001).
Faculty Presence
While you focus on building your online course, keep in mind how you will be “present” in your online course. How will students feel that you are “there” in the course? Creating a sense of instructor presence is an important aspect to student satisfaction in online courses.So what are some ways to be “present” and visible to students?
See Faith Integration and Critical Thinking for additional ideas.
Just because a course is online doesn’t mean that the student has to stare at a screen the whole time. Here are some ideas for learning activities outside of the online classroom:
What are some different types of learning activities that you could include in your class? How can you engage your students in more interesting ways? Here are some ideas to get you thinking.
Provide Choices:
Consider how you can provide choices for students to meet your learning outcomes.
Integrate Gaming Principles
Collaborative Knowledge Creation via Wiki Tools
More Ideas
Learning increases when learners have a sense of what they are setting out to learn, a statement of explicit standards they must meet and a way of seeing what they have learned." Loaker, Cromwell and O'Brien (1986) pg.47. Rubrics are written criteria that details expectations of what students will need to know and be able to do in order to receive a given grade. Rubrics help instructors to develop clear learning objectives for their students and if provided to students prior to the activity, serve to guide their efforts..One of the timeless verities of student psychology is that students will focus on learning material that will impact their grade.
Andrews Standard for Teaching Online: Target: Substantive guidance and opportunities are provided to students for them to reflect personally and professionally on the course content and its application. Instructor feedback is provided on these reflections.
Student reflection is designed to assist students in thinking about their learning processes, their learning experiences, and their metacognition. Reflection is a critical component for teaching students to be self-directed learners. Students should reflect on the course content and it’s application to their personal and professional lives.
Dee Fink’s Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning includes a series of questions for including reflection in course design (p 19-20).
Social Presence
Need more ideas for designing reflection?
These writing assignment examples can be submitted directly to the teacher via the Assignment tool or TurnItIn, or shared with the class to stimulate further discussion.
Mahara is the electronic portfolio system supported by Andrews University's Center for Digital Learning and Instructional Technology. Mahara is best for personal portfolios, quick setup, and visual design. If used for accreditation, we recommend rubrics and outcomes set up in Anthology (contact Laura at assessment@andrews.edu).
Mahara integrates with LearningHub, has flexibility for visually appealing design; and we are exploring it's ability to meet other non-course related learning community/social networked learning needs.
DLiT provides support for two tools for classroom polling and response systems.
Using Twitter as an academic professional
Blogging as an academic professional