While Blackboard and similar on-campus technologies are great for managing courses and organizations, they aren't the easiest way to coordinate communications for students, freelance contractors, scholars, and professionals from other insitutions and campuses. "Groupware" - Web-based software that helps organize and store group communications and provide groups with other tools for storing and sharing information - continues to be a popular way to coordinate communications between groups large and small. This article introduces you to the ups and downs of four options for managing your online group. Google Groups One of the best established groupware tools on the Internet is Google Groups. Functioning much like a classic mailing list, Google Groups distributes your emails and messages to the whole group. In addition, Google archives your messages, and allows you to search through the Group's archives for information. Google also provides collaborative pages (with version control) for group members to use to share information with each other and the larger public, and upload pictures, documents, and other files for sharing with group members. Google hosts advertising links on your group space, but they are neatly tucked into the lower-right corner of the Group's main page. Yahoo Groups Another of the Internet's oldest Web-based groupware tools, Yahoo groups has many of the same tools you would find with Google Groups: messages are distributed to all group members, and also stored in a searchable online archive; the ability to set your group's privacy settings; and group members can share pictures and files. In addition, Yahoo Groups can also be set up to include special information tables, including tables for a phone book, contact information, library lists, and other applications, as well as polls and a calendar for your group. However, Yahoo will advertise on your group's page much more aggressively. Facebook Groups If all of your potential members are on Facebook (or are willing to join), Facebook groups are an option. Facebook groups provide a message board and message wall to groups, some messages from which will show up on the news feeds of group members. Group administrators can also send messages to all group members, which are then delivered to group members email addresses, as well as set privacy settings for who can view or join the group. Members can share pictures and videos, but not other types of files. However, unless your members regularly monitor Facebook, it makes it hard for any member to send out a message to all other members right away. CiteULike Groups CiteULike is a new social network and academic bookmarking site. It provides groups with the ability to share and tag Web-based academic materials (such as articles online or in online databases) and information on books, as well as to have discussions and share blogs. While the system is still new, new features are constantly emerging, so this may be a groupware option to watch.

Labels: faculty, students

Thanks to Dr. Ed Moreton for pointing out his nifty online tool. Do you ever need to poll multiple group attendees, especially across campuses or institutions, on a best time, agenda, or date for a meeting? Doodle allows you to collaboratively schedule and plan events for a group of people across multiple campuses and locations by using a poll to see who can (or will) participate at what times. Thanks for the pointer, Dr. Moreton!

Labels: didyouknow, faculty, students

Blackboard has a nifty feature where instructors grading an assignment or an assessment can enter specific feedback for each student. This is a great way to send comments to students that you'd normally write on a printed assignment. It isn't obvious, though, how students can see that feedback. That's because they need to click the link for the assignment or assessment again to see your feedback. Because students need this link to see their feedback, you'll need to keep it available to students. Instead of limited student submissions by date, you'll simply need to allow students to make only one attempt at a test -- assignments always only allow a single attempt.

Labels: faculty

When you create a new item in Blackboard's gradebook, it gives you two options that affect how students will be able to see the grade: Make item available to users This controls whether students can actually see this grade. Invisible grades are useful if you're going to be putting in grades early but don't want students to see them until a certain point, or if if you'd like to keep notes of some kind about the student -- some instructors use this to track what group a student is in, for example. Include item in Gradebook score calculations This controls whether a grade affects the final grade that Blackboard calculates for each student. You definitely want to turn this off for grades that are just for notes, or if you gave an assessment that wasn't for credit. Keep in mind that both these settings work independently, so you can have an grade visible to students that doesn't count towards the final grade, an invisible item that does count towards the student's grade, and so on.

Labels: faculty

As in previous semesters, students will be completing their course evaluations online. The exact dates of the course evaluation period for this fall haven't been determined yet, but there are two things coursemasters should do sometime in November to prepare:

• Take a look at the standard evaluation questions and decide if you would like any extras associated with your course. Please e-mail these requests to Lisa Lebovitz.
• Look at your course's list of lecturers in the portal, and confirm that it's complete. Please e-mail changes to the CNS help line.

Please do both these things by December 1, so there's plenty of time for us to make adjustments to your evaluations before the semester ends. Once evaluations begin, though, you don't need to take any action. Our evaluation application automatically e-mails students to notify them that an evaluation opens, and then periodically reminds them to complete them if they haven't yet. There will be also be a link to the evaluation in your Blackboard site, under the Assignments section.

Labels: faculty

The campus is hosting a free symposium titled "Innovation in Education through Technology" on November 18th from 8:30am - 1:15pm in the School of Social Work's Kaplan Hall. The keynote presentation is titled "21st Century Learning: New Communities, New Content, New Conversations" given by Barry Adams, Ed.D. and educational consultant for Apple Inc. Additional sessions will be held on topics ranging from copyright for instructors, classroom technology, developing online interactive course content and more. Our very own Drs. Sheth and Wilks will also be presenting on their work to create online case-based learning tools in Microbiology and Antibiotics II. For more information and details for registering: http://www.umaryland.edu/etc/ConferenceInformation

While many faculty are interested in networks such as Facebook as social phenomena for students (and as ways to keep track of friends from their personal lives), many are less interested in using Facebook as a place to network with current and former professional colleagues. For that, many faculty have already started using a network called LinkedIn, which launched in 2006. While LinkedIn was originally just a place to share resumes and CVs and find work-history connections, the network has recently expanded its services. One of the most interesting features it has added are groups. Groups can be set up to foster networking among alumni, current and former colleagues, research interests, professional associations, or particular industries. Groups can host discussions and share information in their own forums, and you can choose to be notified of group activity via email (so that you don't need to stay perpetually logged in to LinkedIn in order to keep up with the discussions). To find out more about Groups, log into your LinkedIn account (or sign up for a new account) and then click Groups from the left-hand toolbar.

Labels: faculty

Tired of seeing a course you taught last spring in Blackboard? They'll eventually get archived, but if you're impatient, you can remove a course from your My Institution page by clicking the pencil icon in the upper-right corner of the My Courses section. Uncheck all the checkboxes next to a course to remove it from view. If you ever change your mind, you can bring back a course by checking the Display Course checkbox.

Labels: didyouknow, faculty

In what may be a first, Springer U.S., a major publisher of science and business texts, has begun sponsoring a social networking site that focuses on academic users. Called CiteULike, the site combines features of social networks, social bookmarks, and blogging platforms. The most notable utility of the site is the ability to track information on academic articles. You can place a CiteULike bookmark on your browser. Once you find an online article you want to keep track of, you can click the CiteULike bookmark and a new window will pop up giving you a chance to fill in the bibliographic information, an abstract, and your own notes. CiteULike can even automatically fill in this information from some of the major science and technology databases. In addition, once you save an article, you can upload a PDF copy of the article (so you can access it again anywhere), and see what notes others have added for the article. You can also export the materials you have saved into formats that can be read by bibliographic programs such as Zotero or EndNote. In addition to saving and tracking online articles, CiteULike allows users to create profiles, host blogs on their research process, and maintain networks of colleagues (called "Connections"). It will even look at the articles you are saving and identify "neighbors": users you may or may not know, but who are bookmarking the same articles that you are. Instructors and research team leaders can also form groups that are either private (open only to a specific group of students or researchers) or public (open to any researcher or student with an interest).

Labels: faculty

When someone types your name into Google or another search engine, what will they find? If you are like most people, you have tried searching for yourself on the Web at least once. In the past, unless you were listed on a work or school site, or unless you ran a personal site or blog, most people wouldn't find much. But Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites have made themselves increasingly searchable. As many students begin to prepare to enter careers and search for jobs, they have become increasingly concerned about how to protect your online identity while still enjoying the benefits of an increasingly social Web. This is the beginning of a series of posts on managing and protecting your online identity. While the "best" way to protect your online identity may be to stay off the Web, that cuts you off from opportunities connect with new and old friends, build professional and personal networks, and share ideas with people with common interests. These first few posts will look at the privacy features of one of the most popular social networks, Facebook. View the tutorial.

Labels: students