February 14, 2023

Fall in Love With Teaching

By OIR and Friends

Office of Instructional Resources

OIR Loves Free Training for You!

The Office of Instructional Resources (OIR) offers training throughout the year. From the Academic Resources Conference (ARC) in January, May, and August to our Community of Practice on Facebook, we work to get WSU instructors of all ranks what they need to be successful in the classroom. We also work to promote all the fantastic training opportunities offered by ITS. Nevertheless, there is always more to learn, so we keep on the lookout for free training opportunities "out in the world" that we can recommend.  Here are some upcoming events that we hope meet your needs, and if you know of any not on this list, let us know at OIR@wichita.edu. 

Microsoft

Microsoft Loves Collaboration

Collaborating with a group on a project? Stop, don’t email that file! You are going to fall in love ❤ with Microsoft’s Cloud platform. Collaborate in real-time, avoid the confusion of multiple emailed file versions, and access your files anywhere (provided there is internet). You can share personal files from your 1TB of OneDrive storage, or create a group storage location in Teams. Visit wichita.edu/cloud for more information and tips to get started.

Want a deeper dive? Sign up for live, hands-on training on OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint in myTraining. All sessions are offered remotely and listed regularly every 4 to 6 weeks.

Blackboard

Blackboard Loves Updating Ultra

A little over a year ago, Anthology (the company that owns Blackboard) tripled their Ultra development team, and it shows. Ultra updates are coming so quickly now, that it can be hard to keep up.  If you tried Ultra a few semesters ago and went back to Classic Blackboard, a lot has changed since you visited it last. Bb organizes its updates on a "Release Notes" webpage that you can bookmark. Recent improvements include:

  • Sorting improvements in the student list view of the grade book
  • Announcement rescheduling 
  • Deactivation of discussion board postings after a certain date
  • SafeAssign Originality Report export as a PDF

If you would like to help influence the future of Blackboard Ultra, you have a great opportunity to do so right now! If you teach in Ultra, you are invited to join the "Flex Grading Tech Preview" team. This group of instructors agree to do some of their grading in the beta version of Bb's new Ultra Grading Interface and provide insights and suggestions to Blackboard.  If you are interested, sign up TODAY.

Library

The Library Loves Data Sets!

Need data sets? University Libraries is a member of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), which is a huge archive of political and social research data.  Users can search for and download data collections in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and many other fields. Need a little training first? No problem! The ICPSR YouTube Channel has webinars and tutorials on how to use ICPSR to find data, analyze data online, and how to use ICPSR data with SPSS, SAS, and Stata.

Teach

Fall in Love With Teaching All Over Again

Teaching is a passion, a calling, and a hard job.  If you need help falling in love with teaching all over again, we would suggest making time to come to a Teaching Matters get-together soon.  Teaching Matters is hosted by the Retention Faculty Fellows, and runs monthly during the regular semester. The theme for March, "Giving and Receiving Effective Feedback" will be held in RSC 261 on March 3. You can find out more at the Teaching Matters website, and if you would like to check out the recording of the February Teaching Matters talk, "We Love to Retain our Transfer and Online Students," you can find it here. These are fun, frank, and inspiring discussions about the craft of teaching.