November 2009 Archives

Academic dishonesty is a concern for any faculty whether they are teaching online or face to face. We've all heard the excuses such as "I didn't know that was cheating", "I didn't do it". It's frustrating to see students make this effort to cheat but is it more likely to happen in an online course because students are not physically present in class? According to recent research, students are less likely to cheat in an online course than in a face to face course. We are not talking about ensuring the identity of the student - that is a blog posting for another time - we are talking about handing in the same paper for two classes, plagiarism, cheating on tests and assignments.

Cheating happens for a variety of reasons such as a need to maintain GPA, poor time management skills, assignments are not clear, task loading. Although cheating is still cheating, there are some instances that lead to learning opportunities for both students and faculty. For example, some students simply do not know how to cite sources properly. This happens quite a bit with adult learners who have been out of school for several years. A solution would be to recognize the error and provide citation examples or simply send them to the writing center for help. Another instance of unintentional academic dishonesty is group work when it is not allowed. This can be fixed by providing clear expectations to the students as to what is acceptable and what is not.

Regardless of class delivery mode (online or face to face), assignments and assessments should be modified regularly to avoid "repurposing" assignments from previous semesters. Some ideas are to pull exam questions from a class discussion board, have students to individualized research and submit the paper in parts, randomize and time exams in Blackboard while pulling the questions from a larger pool of questions. Engaging students and providing clear expectations and instructions for assignments and behavior will help students meet our expectations. No matter the situation, we must set examples and follow our own rules. Let's teach them how to use the technology we have in a constructive, not destructive way.

Separating your personal profile from your public profile on Facebook was one of the topics during this week's CTC series entitled Creating Your Social Network Presence. Below is the presentation from this workshop:

If you have any questions about the topics in this presentation, please contact Melissa McDowell at melissa.mcdowell@shu.edu .

The fourth workshop in the CTC series entitled " Creating Your Professional Social Network Presence" is:

If you have any questions about this workshop or how to incorporate the resources contact Melissa McDowell at melissa.mcdowell@shu.edu

On November 17th and 19th, the Computer Training Center will be holding sessions on Movable Type: How your blog sets your online presence apart from the rest.

Below is a session description, and links to the presentation and resource material.


Movable Type is a blogging tool available to faculty and staff at SHU. During this session we will discuss how to request a Movable Type account, how to add and edit entries, and how to add media such as images, videos, and audio.



MovableType Presentation

Movable Type v4.3 Guide

Out with the Old, and in with the New!
In order to make room for new courses in Blackboard, the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Center will carry out a master deletion of Blackboard courses listed with the University Registrar for the Spring 2007, Summer 2007, Fall 2007, Spring 2008, and Summer 2008 semesters on December 10, 2009.

Once the process is complete on December 10, 2009, these courses will no longer be available on Blackboard. If any of these courses contain information you would like to safeguard for the future, you will need to export or archive your Blackboard course.

Click here for more instructions on how to archive your Blackboard courses or click here to register for training session.

On Wednesday, November 11, 2009, the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable held its first event of the academic year: Mobility Project Best Practices. The use of Nokia mobile devices has been piloted by faculty and administration for the last year in their courses or their departments. This fall semester, 16 projects were launched with about 450 devices!

Presentations at this event were conducted by faculty, students and administration to share with the SHU community the exciting work that is being done on and off campus with mobile devices.

Paul Fisher, Director of the TLT Center kicked off the event describing Seton Hall's initiative, SHUmobile, with his presentation The Evolution of the Mobile Campus.

Next on the agenda was Hezal Patel, Freshman Studies Mentor and Mary Zedeck, Instructional Designer. This project involves the University Life course and the use of mobile devices to create multimedia artifacts for student ePortfolios as well as the investigation of platforms for ePortfolio creation. Two Nokia device models spanning two semesters, the N95 and the N97, have been incorporated in three transfer sections of the University Life course. The slides from this presentation can be viewed here.

The third presentation was conducted by Karoline Stankiewicz, William Petrick and Jas Verem of Housing and Residence Life who are using Nokia 97s in a variety of ways to enhance the living and learning communities at SHU. Their presentation highlights the exciting ideas from HRL in how they are creating an online community for distribution and sharing of resources and experiences.

The last presentation was given by Dr. Michael Taylor, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Environmental Studies and two of his students, Brittany Tumminia and Jacie Jones. Dr. Taylor has been using Nokia mobile devices since the beginning of the SHUmobile initiative and has incorporated all three models that are currently on campus, Nokia e71, N95 and N97, in his courses. Brittany showed a location and place digital story that she created in Introduction to Environmental Studies and Jacie showed a mini-documentary that she developed in Introduction to Public Policy. Dr. Taylor discussed the two assignments above, general use of mobile devices in higher education and Seton Hall's newly formed Center for Mobile Research and Social Change.

Microsoft's Windows 7 Operating System has made its grand debut offering new features and faster performance....

Take a Look Inside and See What's New For You

Due to limitations of space, distance and complexity, it is not always possible to bring real-world experiences into the college classroom. Field trips and traditional student internships can offer students authentic learning contexts however these are often short in duration or occur late in a course of a student's educational career and the quality of these experiences tend to vary greatly. During these experiences, students often have little opportunity to develop team building skills and creative problem solving. Multi-user, persistent virtual environments (MUVE) have shown promise for fostering community and situated learning because they can support immersive, collaborative, extended experiences and simulations similar to those found in real world contexts.

This project focused on the creation of a virtual learning environment to support case-based learning using the online virtual world of Second Life, for use in undergraduate Ecology and Environmental Geology courses here at Seton Hall ...

A lot of users are beginning to receive messages about their Outlook e-mail file approaching its quota of 500mb. If you are one of these people, you need to take action immediately or you may find yourself locked out of your e-mail. Go through a few commands in Outlook and you can determine where the bulk of your space is being eaten up so that you can take the appropriate action.

From the menu, click Tools, then Mailbox Cleanup. You will be presented with a Mailbox Cleanup dialog box. Click the View Mailbox Size button and a box like the one below will appear.

Click on the Server Data tab and look for the amount of kilobytes being used (inside the red box above). If you are not familiar with kilobytes, megabytes or gigabytes, just take the number of kilobytes displayed and divide it by 1,000. That gives you the approximate size of your file in megabytes. So, in the example above, the size of the file is approximately 10.8 megabytes.

As you scan down through the list, check out the Total Size numbers for each of your folders. You might see a very large number by one of the folders and you should begin to clear that folder out by deleting unneeded documents, saving attachments from those e-mails to your hard drive or by archiving older documents. Also, remember to empty your Deleted Items folder if it has documents in it. They are taking up space!

You are responsible for keeping your e-mail file under 500mb. You need to take appropriate actions based on your individual needs to accomplish this. Deleting documents, saving attached documents to your hard drive and setting up archiving are all ways to keep your mail file under control.

Please contact me at x2161 or otskeybi@shu.edu if you need assistance with any of these options.

Below is a tutorial that will lead you through the steps of transferring files from the Nokia N97 to your computer. This tutorial also describes the process of deleting files from the N97 after the files have been transferred.

How to Transfer Files from the N97 to Your Computer

Beyond the social networking functionality of Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service can also be utilized as a method for keeping tabs on new product releases, press releases from governmental agencies, and keeping up to date with breaking news.

If you are interested in learning more about Twitter, during the week of November 16th - 19th, the CTC will be presenting a workshop series entitled Creating Your Professional Social Network Presence which includes: Twitter: What do so many people have to say?

As a starting point, here is a list of four Twitter feeds of interest that have more than one million followers:

CDC Emergency

http://twitter.com/CDCemergency
CDC Emergency Preparedness and Response: increasing the nation's ability to prepare for and respond to public health emergencies
http://emergency.cdc.gov/

cnnbrk
http://twitter.com/cnnbrk
CNN Breaking News
CNN.com is among the world's leaders in online news and information delivery.
http://cnn.com/

Downing Street
http://twitter.com/DowningStreet
The official twitter channel for the Prime Minister's Office based at 10 Downing Street.
http://www.number10.gov.uk/

The White House
http://twitter.com/Whitehouse
Official WH twitter account. Comments & messages received through official WH pages are subject to the PRA and may be archived. Learn more at http://wh.gov/privacy
http://www.whitehouse.gov/

click here for a list of additional interesting Twitter feeds to follow.

Students and faculty have the option of hiding and displaying their view of the navigation menu in any Blackboard course in which they are enrolled. To hide the navigation menu, simply click the arrow beside the menu. To display the menu again once it has been hidden, click the arrow again .