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Tuesday, May 29, 2018

CEI Online Learning Seminar: Incorporating Multicultural Inclusive Learning & Teaching Practices

Begins June 11, 2018
Register online

This seminar brings together higher education professionals in a virtual space to learn, share, and develop strategies for cultivating learning spaces and teaching practices that support the broad range of learners enrolled in our colleges, programs, and courses. Working together we will re-examine and expand ideas about a) what we teach, b) how we attend to who is in the classroom, c) when we address tensions/conflicts, d) where to be transparent, and e) why all this matters. This seminar does not incorporate webinars for any session. Offered systemwide as a Center for Educational Innovation Developing Effective Online Learning Spaces Seminar, this summer session begins on June 11, 2018 and runs for five weeks.

Thursday, May 24, 2018

PACE Celebration: A project like this takes a village!

The PACE Project began in August 2014 as a four-year initiative funded by The Language Flagship aiming to promote and sustain an ongoing culture of student-centered assessment and curricular improvement at the University of Minnesota.

The project includes three major components that aim at building greater student language proficiency:  proficiency testing, self-assessment, and professional and curricular development.

Proficiency Testing + Self-Assessment + Professional Development = Greater language proficiency

This project was designed and implemented collaboratively between the Language Center, CARLA and department chairs, coordinators and instructors from seven language programs:  Arabic, French, German, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, and through the support of the broader language and technology communities. In total, at least 176 university instructors and staff helped with the planning or implementation of one or more of the three components:

  • Contributing to the 2014 grant proposal
  • Serving on the PACE Advisory Board
  • Serving on the PACE Administrative Team
  • Serving on the Professional Development Peer Team
  • Incorporating assessment or self-assessment into their classes
  • Presenting or facilitating a workshop or other event for instructors 
  • Contributing to BOSSA development and implementation
  • Contributing to curriculum development
  • Providing support for data collection, technology implementation and budget decisions 
  • And more!

The PACE Project wrapped up a busy fourth year on May 4, 2018 with an informal celebration and thank you to the 176 university employees who made it all possible. PACE PI Dan Soneson and CLA Dean John Coleman provided an overview of the project and thanked everyone for their participation. Approximately 60 instructors and staff were able to join the celebration, including a few people who have since left the university.

Dean Coleman leads the welcoming remarks at the May 4 event
Dean Coleman leads the welcoming remarks at the May 4 event

The PACE Project administrative team would like to thank everyone for their support, encouragement, guidance and good will. This project was not always easy, especially for language instructors and coordinators who rearranged their syllabi to accommodate it (often in multiple ways). As a result of all this work, we have learned much about student language proficiency, and more importantly, students now better understand what they are capable of doing with their own language skills. As an added benefit, the project has helped bring the university language community together in new ways.

The “Tree of Thanks” includes the names of the 176 instructors and staff
The “Tree of Thanks” includes the names of the 176 instructors and staff.


Coming soon: what we have learned from four years of the PACE Project and next steps.

The PACE Project is funded by a grant from The Language Flagship.

Monday, May 14, 2018

Summer Canvas Basics Workshops

New to Canvas? Starting to think about moving from Moodle to Canvas? If so, plan to attend an 90 minute, online “Canvas Basics” workshop that will include a review of the Canvas interface, tools and features, course design options, and an introduction to moving content from Moodle to Canvas.
  • Review of the interface, tools and features.
  • Explore design decisions in Canvas that impact ease of use and navigation.
  • Should you transition your content from Moodle to Canvas or start from scratch?
  • Once content has been transitioned, where do you find it in Canvas?
  • How do you modify / move content?
The workshop dates are:

Discover Canvas Workshop Summer Series

Information Technology is offering a series of short, blended workshops facilitated by academic technologists and training professionals. They are designed to be flexible and impactful.

Participants should expect to commit up to one hour per day over four days (for a total of up to four hours) completing online activities in addition to attending a 1-hour online session in WebEx.

To receive an alert when registration opens for these online workshops, please provide your contact information.
  • July 16 - 19, 2018: Get Started in Canvas (blended 4-day course; up to 1-hour per day). Become familiar with the Canvas interface, learn about Canvas design considerations that make courses easier for students to use and navigate, and plan your own course design.
  • July 30 - August 2, 2018: Create Content and Assessments (blended 4-day course; up to 1-hour per day). Gain experience creating course content, including pages, quizzes, forums, and assignments, and learn to organize and deliver course content through Canvas modules.
  • August 13 - 16, 2018: Assess Student Progress (blended 4-day course; up to 1-hour per day). Learn about the Canvas gradebook interface and experience how Speedgrader can be used to provide timely and detailed feedback to students while making grading efficient and enjoyable.

CLA Instructors: Fall 2018 Canvas Migration Help

Liberal Arts Technologies & Innovation Services (LATIS) staff are here all summer, and ready to help you prepare your move to Canvas for Fall 2018.

LATIS can help ease the transition by migrating your course materials from Moodle to Canvas--with their staff doing much of the work. The deadline to request assistance for Fall 2018 courses is June 1, 2018. Request assistance at z.umn.edu/migrateCLAcourse.

For more information about migration, online resources, and workshops, see canvas.cla.umn.edu. Contact Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) at cla-tel@umn.edu with questions.

CourseShare: Moving Towards a More Balanced Partnership

The University of Minnesota has been an active participant in the Big Ten Academic Alliance CourseShare program since it launched in 2006. Our institution was an early adopter, sending an Old Norse course to Michigan that first academic year. However, in recent years we have become primarily a receiver of language courses taught by other Big Ten institutions. The word about this incredible resource has gotten out to students, and they have initiated requests to receive languages like Turkish, Persian, Indonesian, Hungarian and Romanian. We now receive between nine and twelve language and culture courses per semester, and the number of university students registered for CourseShare courses grows every year.

Prior to academic year 2017-2018, we typically shared only one or two courses per semester, one of which was the perennially popular ALL 3576: Lang & Society of Two Koreas taught by Hangtae Cho, and sent to a variety of universities.

In 2017-2018, we shared ALL 3576 again, and launched two new exchanges with the University of Nebraska: Beginning Italian taught by Ornella Lavecchia and Beginning Ojibwe taught by Zoe Brown. Next year, we are scheduled to again share ALL 3576, the two beginning courses, plus Intermediate Ojibwe, as well as Beginning Korean, Swedish, and Akkadian. We are also piloting an inter-system exchange by sending Intermediate Latin to UMN Morris.

This surge in language exchange has been made possible through the generosity of instructors like Hangtae, Ornella, and Zoe, who have been willing to share their language outside Minnesota. Technology has also improved, and facilities will be significantly better Fall 2018 when four fully renovated videoconferencing classrooms reopen on the Minneapolis campus. In addition, this year, a working group comprised of experienced CourseShare instructors, as well as staff from LATIS, CARLA, and the Language Center, have organized professional and curricular development opportunities for instructors, including sending six instructors and a technologist to a two day retreat at the University of Wisconsin this May. Special thanks are due to Finnish instructor Dan Karvonen, who has diverse experience supporting remote students, and who has been uncommonly generous with his time in sharing it with other instructors and advising the working group.

The University of Minnesota may never achieve CourseShare balance (to send as many courses in the Big Ten as we receive), but we’re beginning to close the gap!