Academic Innovation Blog

As users of the Brightspace by D2L learning management system (LMS), we have access to the Brightspace Community, which is a community of practice to support instructors, LMS administrators, learners, and more.  A few highlights on the Community website are Topics, Help, the D2L YouTube channel, and the Product Ideas Exchange (PIE).  Faculty will be glad to know the webpages are extensive yet easy to navigate and have a similar layout to the Daylight interface. 

Topics for instructors dedicates resources to usability and features that are sometimes underutilized in the online classroom: common troubleshooting, interacting with learners, and class progress. Upon visiting the webpages and opening resources like New Best Practices for Rubrics in Grading and How to fix broken links in Content, faculty will discover tools in your online courses that will be simple to access and easy to use. Grading, correspondence, and student progress become a pleasure, or at least sustainable, by using some of these tools. 

You may be familiar with the D2L YouTube channel because we link to it from Instructor Videos in both Help menus in your course navbar and the Falcon Online home page. The Brightspace Tutorials page has videos for many of the tools within the LMS, and they are an excellent resource for instructors and students alike. 

Finally, the Product Ideas Exchange is a place for you to submit suggestions for improvement to the LMS.  Perhaps a student provides feedback on the usability of the system or you identify an area that you believe needs improvement; you can submit the idea to D2L via the PIE.  In addition, you can see current ideas and "promote" them using the Up vote feature.     The more promotions an idea receives, the more likely D2L is to implement it.  You can share your idea on currently posted ideas with your peers and ask them to promote them too.  It is an excellent approach by D2L to provide the PIE for us to improve the product and ultimately the classroom. 

You can use your Daytona State College email address to register with the D2L Community and gain access to the content. I hope you check out some the items because they are excellent resources from your peers throughout higher education.

Aaron Sunday
Instructional Designer, Division of Online Studies
aaron.sunday@daytonastate.edu | 386-506-3209 

Daytona State College was just ranked the #1 Least Expensive Online College for In-State Students by U.S. News & World Report! This ranking is compared to 145 other ranked, public online colleges. DSC's $92 per credit hour cost falls far below the national average of $305 per credit hour for online, in-state tuition. That's a total of $11,040 for an entire bachelor's degree program! The average per credit cost among the top 10 most affordable schools is $123 per credit hour for a total program tuition cost of $14,890.

This ranking, in addition to DSC's Top 25 ranking for Online Bachelor's Degree Programs, solidifies our standing as one of Florida's best values in online education! Daytona State also continues to maintain its number one ranking in the Florida State College system.

For information on Daytona State's online programs, visit the Online Programs webpage.

Pam Ortiz
Administrative Specialist, Division of Online Studies
pamela.ortiz@daytonastate.edu | 386.506.3638

Beginning in the Fall 2018 semester, adjunct faculty will have access to Peoplesoft Campus Solutions, Falcon Online, and Office365 four weeks before the first day of classes. Adjunct faculty access to Campus Solutions will expire two weeks after the end of classes. Adjunct faculty access to Falcon Online and Office365 will be extended 380 days from the last class day.

These changes will allow adjuncts to correspond with students, process incompletes, and receive messages during the 380 day time window. The Information Technology Department hopes these adjustments will improve both the student and adjunct experience.

IT/Instructional Resources
helpdesk@daytonastate.edu | (386) 506-3950
http://daytonastate.edu/help/faculty.html

Greetings Faculty and Friends!

The IT Department would like to provide some history behind the establishment of the current tiered classroom technology levels currently known as TEC and TEC+ and their predecessor, the “Classroom of the Future." We hope to be able to explain the logic, motive and passion concerning the efforts made to embrace technology in the classroom in this blog and in future entries!

A long time ago, in a galax…wait wrong story. A long time ago in 2012, a collaboration with a selected group of faculty, department chairs, IT staff and the EXCITE (Excellence in Curriculum and Instruction through Technology Enhancement) committee spawned the Classroom of the Future (CotF) initiative. This initiative began with the goal of researching and recommending a new group of standards by which all future classrooms constructed at Daytona State College would conform to regarding technology standards. The Classroom of the Future initiative led to serious in-depth discussions regarding technology and how it can ultimately influence instructional success in the classroom.

One of the biggest “takeaways” from these discussions was that instructors wanted the freedom to be able to teach from anywhere in the classroom and not to be tethered to the large bunker that was virtually bolted to the floor. Another major input received was that instructors would like to be able to leverage mobile devices in the classrooms—both to embrace the “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) philosophy as well as to further enable the ability to float around the room while still interacting with a digital presentation or PowerPoint.

In order to facilitate these two major goals, we moved to eliminate the big, bulky monstrosity that was the existing bunker and replace it with minimal casework that was conveniently located in the front corner of the room. Above the casework, we devised a solution to utilize a wall-mounted computer and monitor with a lockable cabinet beneath in order to secure personal belongings or minor classroom supplies and equipment. To allow mobility in instruction, a portable lectern was selected based on its size and ease of movement throughout the classroom. The casework and wall-mounted computer area was not intended to be the space from where instructors provided lectures, but rather an area to fire up the computer, insert any USB based storage devices or CD’s and then move to the portable lectern and select their preferred lecture space anywhere within the classroom (front, back, floating, etc). Various faculty members even expressed the desire to not utilize the lectern at all but rather float around the room with a presentation remote or tablet in hand while interacting with students. Finally, we decided robust wireless coverage was an absolute necessity and, to ensure connectivity, we made it standard to have at least one wireless access point in each future classroom.

These items were deemed as an appropriate foundation for all future classrooms. In the next blog post, we will delve into the most exciting aspects of the Classroom of the Future initiative: the actual TECHNOLOGY! Exciting, right?

Dave Tatum
Associate Director, Information Technology
david.tatum@daytonastate.edu | 386-506-3887

The staff at the FIC want to provide you with helpful tools and technology to aid in building your online courses. We also want you to be aware of the parameters in which we can use those tools and technology.

One of those tools is our scanner. The scanner was purchased in order to help instructors incorporate material into their courses that is found in books or periodicals outside of the books required for the course itself. You may just want an excerpt or a few pages from a source and, as long as you are within Fair Use Guidelines, you have the ability to do that.

Before I go over how to use the scanner, I think it would be wise to define what Fair Use is.

Fair Use "allows limited copying of copyrighted works for educational and research purposes. The copyright law provides that reproduction "for purposes such as criticism, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research" is not an infringement of copyright." (www.copyrightkids.org.)

The following link provides excellent real-world examples of fair use in an online class environment.

https://csulb.libguides.com/copyrightforfaculty/scenarios (Distance Education section) 

Now that you understand Fair Use, let's go over how to use the scanner.

1. Log into the computer specifically designated for the scanner.

2. Turn on the scanner by pressing the SCAN button on the device. This will trigger the computer to be ready to scan.

3. Place the item you want scanned on the black "mat, "and hit the SCAN button once again.

4. A window will pop up on the computer screen which shows the image you have just scanned. If you need to keep scanning, click the SCAN button on the physical scanner. If you're done, click "Finish Scanning." (Figure 1) At this point, you will have the opportunity to edit your document pages. (Figures 2-3)

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

5. Click "Save and Exit." Save the document as a PDF on either your One Drive or a thumb drive.

6. Exit the scanner and delete the images off of the computer.

Of course, if you have any questions or need assistance, we are always here to help you.

Happy scanning!

Pam Ortiz
Administrative Specialist, Division of Online Studies

pamela.ortiz@daytonastate.edu | 386.506.3638