Author Archives: Kris McElroy

Use an OER Textbook

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Textbooks are expensive. Some students may not buy the textbook for a course because they can’t afford it which affects their performance in the class. Others may simply not take a course due to the cost of the required texts. This infographic from OpenOregon.org visualizes the numbers. What’s the alternative?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are “teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits free use and repurposing by others.” OER includes course materials, textbooks, videos, tests, software and even full courses. OER can cut textbook costs for student making education more affordable. It can also provide more freedom to an instructor who is no longer limited to a textbook structure. Instructors decide what to teach and then look for resources to support their content.

The video from Open Oregon below provides a good intro to OER and this list of OER sites from Educause will help you get started.

 

Can I Use That?

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You’ve found the perfect article, book chapter, image or video and you want to use it for your course. Can you?

Yes! Wait, No! Well… maybe. It can be complicated. In most cases, you can create link in your myLesley course that takes your students to the author’s website. However, you may not have permission to make a copy of it and distribute it to your students… even for education purposes. Fair Use provides you with an exception for educational use, but you still need to balance the Four Factors of Fair Use to make sure your situation applies.  

  1. Purpose of Use – Is your use of the work transformative or different from way it was used before?
  2. Nature of the work – Facts are not protected by copyright, but creative works are.
  3. Amount of work used – Using only the amount of the work needed or very small amounts
  4. Effect on the market value of the work – Will your use of the work impact the ability of the author to make money or sell copies of the work?

Fair use is not black and white which is why it’s so confusing. The video below provides a good overview for instructors on what might be possible without getting into legal hot water. The University of Texas Libraries Copyright Crash Course and Digital ID’s Can I Use That? Creative Commons Guide are great resources for learning more. When in doubt, Ask a Lesley Librarian. They can help determine fair use or find an alternative.  

 

 

Create a Screencast for Your myLesley Course

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Kaltura CaptureSpace Lite is a presentation production tool that allows users to record any combination of their screen, voice and webcam. Features include: the ability to pause your recording, activate drawing tools, edit the video after recording as well as add titles and credits. CaptureSpace Lite is a standalone application that you install on your computer, which means it can be used even without an internet connection. All recorded presentations can be easily uploaded to your My Media library in myLesley with just one click.

Use CaptureSpace Lite to narrate your Powerpoint presentation and post it in your course. Record an application demo on your computer. Walk them through a process or analysis of something while providing commentary. Give a tour of your myLesley course site. If you can view it on your computer, you can record it, narrate it and share it with your students. They can then review it as often as needed.

 

Collaborate and Get Work Done with Office 365 Groups

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Do you have a team project or group assignment? Need to coordinate information and documents with other people? Not always in the same place at the same time?

Office 365 Groups was designed for collaboration. It’s available within Office 365 right alongside your Lesley email, your calendar and OneDrive. Create an Office 365 group and provide your team with a shared email inbox, calendar, space to share documents and a OneNote notebook. It’s a great place to work out project plans, collaborate on documents and make sure everyone is in the loop.

Get started using Office 365 groups by logging into Office 365 at http://lesley.edu/email and watch these Atomic Learning video tutorials for quick how to information.

 

Email Your Students Without Knowing Their Email Addresses

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myLesley has a couple of helpful tools that allow you to easily communicate with your students without having to first look up their email addresses or create an email list.

Announcements

Announcements allow you to post timely information and reminders to your students in your myLesley course. You can also send the announcement as an email to all of your students, allowing them to receive the information even if they are not logged into the course. Want to remind them that you are meeting in the lab tomorrow? Learn how in the video below.

Send Email

The Send Email tool allows you to easily send email to a single student in your class, a small group or all students without ever leaving myLesley. You can also email TA’s or another instructor co-teaching with you. Your students can use this tool as well. So much for the excuse that they lost your email address.