Tools to share lectures online subject of workshops

Instructors hoping to create engaging, high-quality online classes can access tools that support equivalent learning opportunities to those found in face-to-face classes, says Nick Baker.

Director of the UWindsor Office of Open Learning, he is promoting a series of upcoming workshops to introduce instructors to some of the resources available to support their teaching in both online and on-campus settings.

“With the recent investments in online learning from the province and growing demand from students, many instructors are wondering what Windsor has available to support online learning, including ways to record lectures and communicate with students in live online classrooms,” Baker says.

He points to such lecture capturing tools as Echo360, which can record and stream live lectures from a traditional classroom, making them available both to on-campus and online learners.

“It provides more equitable access to learning,” he says. “Combined with tools for students to ask questions remotely, online learners now have the opportunity to feel they are a part of the institution. They can be included in the kind of learning that their on-campus colleagues get.”

Baker says that many instructors in online courses are also experimenting with, or have switched to, delivering live online classes through Blackboard Collaborate. This flexible tool, now available in all CLEW sites, gives instructors the ability to present and annotate slides, draw diagrams, annotate images, involve students in “breakout rooms” to discuss problems, and much more.

The Office of Open Learning is running two-hour workshops in room G141, Erie Hall, to help instructors explore the options available to them and their students:

  • Echo360 and Screen Capturing, 10 a.m. on Friday, November 7; and
  • An Introduction to Blackboard Collaborate, 10 a.m. on Friday, October 24, and 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 5.

Register for the workshops at: http://ctl2.uwindsor.ca/openlearning/workshops/7/.

“We are also happy to provide customized workshops and sessions for departments or groups of instructors on campus who are considering expanding their online or blended course offerings, or who just want to find out what options are available to them,” Baker says.

For more information, contact Alicia Higgison at 519-253-3000, ext.2008, or e-mail higgison@uwindsor.ca.