DE Oracle @ UMUC

A team of academic directors from the School of Undergraduate Studies has designed a series of Hallmark Guides to provide SUS faculty with an understanding of the importance and purpose of each of the eight undergraduate hallmarks in the classroom. The Hallmark Guides featured in this edition are Technology Fluency and Information Literacy.

There is no question that online students are excited (and probably nervous) when they first gain access to their classrooms--just like any student on the first day of school. But the lack of live, face-to-face contact in the asynchronous online classroom means that the students need a little more support in the form of directions and reassurance to help get them moving at the beginning of the semester and stay on track until the course ends. This article offers practical tips and suggestions for guiding and engaging online students from Day One that feed on their initial excitement and show that you are ready and willing to help them in their learning journey.

Graduates will be able to modify thinking based on recognizing and critiquing assumptions, emotional appeals, and speculations to form logical, evidence-based conclusions.

Graduates will be able to effectively communicate in writing to a target audience, integrating credible evidence from appropriate sources and using the expected conventions of format, organization, and style.

In Part 2 of this two-part series, practical instructor and student frameworks for successful virtual teamwork and online classroom interactions are presented, based on student comments and suggestions in a previously reported survey. The guidelines presented here, stemming from a total of 130 student responses, will help online faculty and students work together to create a collaborative culture in the online classroom.

This article discusses the integration of hallmarks in the School of Undergraduate Studies curriculum. The hallmarks are directly aligned with program learning outcomes and are continuously assessed for improvement of the undergraduate curriculum. This article briefly discusses the hallmarks and their integration in the undergraduate curriculum, how they meet internal and external standards, and new resources and processes that are in place to reinforce the hallmarks and support their importance to UMUC.

In video format, this article discusses the basics of multimedia presentations, including demystifying modern presentation design and highlighting some design tools and their effective use in presentation software.

This article examines the benefits of using Open Educational Resources (OERs), discusses how to find dynamic content from non-educational providers and make it instructionally relevant, and reviews various methods for including dynamic OER content within the WebTycho conference area. It also links to a tutorial on how to embed objects in WebTycho conferences.

This article briefly describes screencasts, discusses how they can be used in an online classroom, and provides tips and tricks for creating engaging and useful screencasts of your own. It also links to a tutorial on how to download and use a free screencasting tool to help you get started.

This article examines interactive information networking tools, a category of tools that can aid in building interaction and engagement in the classroom. It discusses activities that can be developed and their potential benefits, and it provides a brief overview of one tool and links to a tutorial on how to use it.