Student Success Tech

Welcome to UIW, we're thrilled you've joined us. To support your success in educating students, the Office of Teaching, Learning, & Technology (OTLT) invites you to connect with an instructional designer for a 30-minute New Faculty Welcome. We look forward to chatting with you about designing instruction, Canvas courses, ed tech products, and your training needs. Microsoft Bookings makes it easy to select a time convenient for you: Book Your Appointment with Instructional Technology & Design Tour Your Learning Resources New Faculty FAQs Is there a new faculty information course? Yes. You can self-enroll in Faculty Welcome to the UIW Community, a Canvas course that introduces you to UIW history, San Antonio, campus life, faculty resources, and more. Where does the community access UIW technology? Cardinal Apps is the epicenter of tech products at UIW for accessing Canvas, Outlook email, and much more. What education tech is available? Whether you’re recording videos, conducting research, or collaborating, our technologies support a wide range of teaching and learning needs. OTLT maintains alphabetical indexes of instructional technologies available to the UIW community. While you open most tools through Cardinal Apps, these indexes provide an overview of each tool’s purpose, a helpful video introduction, and links to additional learning resources. Explore Available Software for Faculty for teaching solutions or Available Software for Students to guide course planning and expectations. Who handles tech support at UIW? At least 5 areas offer tech services at UIW: Innovation and Technology: IT includes the tech support help desk, Cardinal Apps, password management, software installations, Internet service, phones, printing, enterprise applications, the web team, institutional data, and more. OTLT: Our office, within the Academic Affairs division, supports excellence in education with course design, faculty professional development, audiovisual services, instructional tech training, education software, and Canvas administration. UIW Libraries: Whether searching for books, articles, or library guides, our librarians offer research expertise, loaner devices, computer labs, study spaces, and more. ACCESS Textbook Program: Most Broadway programs participate in a digital and printed textbook program for academic courses. However, health professions faculty are encouraged to discuss textbooks options with their program leadership. School Specific Tech: Divisions select unique software and web apps for various positions; connect with your school or department leadership for details on availability and support. Who works in the OTLT? Visit the OTLT Directory to learn more about us, including the Center for Teaching & Learning, FLIGHT Mentor Center, Instructional Technology & Design, and Media Services. What professional development is offered for faculty? The Center for Teaching and Learning creates exciting learning opportunities each term. Browse the Events Calendar, accept the Outlook emails you'll receive throughout the year, or explore past session recordings. Additional training sessions may be arranged within your department - all invites and email notifications are sent to your UIW email address. Note that forwarding your UIW email to another email address is blocked by IT policy and prevents you from receiving university information. How can faculty get training for classroom AV equipment? To familiarize yourself with classroom audio visual equipment, email mediacenter@uiwtx.edu or contact the HelpDesk to request a demonstration. What video conferencing solution does UIW use? UIW offers Microsoft Teams for video conferencing and online class. Introduction to Microsoft Teams is the best guide to get started and many more MS Teams guides are available to answer common questions. All Microsoft products, including Outlook for email, OneDrive for cloud storage, and all the other products, are accessed through Cardinal Apps. Contact the UIW HelpDesk for assistance installing desktop versions. How do faculty learn about Canvas? Besides scheduling time with your OTLT instructional designer, check the Help button in Canvas and remember UIW offers many self-service learning resources: Everyone is encouraged to visit the IT Service Portal to browse help articles. There you'll find solution guides covering hundreds of topics, from Cardinal Apps to Microsoft Teams and everything in between. Follow a demonstration on how to Build a Basic UIW Canvas Course for step-by-step help. Reference our Canvas Checklist for important reminders every term. Ask the Canvas Assistant, our AI agent programmed to answer all of the common questions and then some. What tasks do faculty complete in Canvas each term? Reference our Canvas Checklist to simplify the process of managing your Canvas courses each term. How do students learn about Canvas? Student Orientation introduces learners to the vast tech resources available to them, specifically the HelpDesk for all their tech support needs. To further support Orientation, most incoming students are automatically enrolled in Learning with Canvas at UIW. Watch a 10-minute overview explaining the topics covered in this Canvas course and encourage your students to take advantage of this practice opportunity: The OTLT also provides extensive support resources within Canvas. Everyone can access help through the Help button in the Global Navigation menu and within individual courses on template pages such as Need Help or Tech Support, Accessibility and Privacy Statements, and Lockdown Browser for Canvas Quizzes. Faculty are advised to edit their course content to include specific instructions for any tools they use, ensuring students have access to the guidance they need.

Join Melissa Dagne on a 3.5-minute tour to discover the learning resources available from the Office of Teaching, Learning, & Technology with specific emphasis on Canvas and Education Software guides and videos. You'll visit Available Software, Canvas LMS, and the UIW Helpdesk as three Cardinal Apps options to find support information around the clock. We've had some changes this summer and the video will be updated soon.

In today’s educational landscape, technology plays a pivotal role in transforming higher education classrooms. Instructional technology enhances student engagement and fosters collaboration for improved learning experiences. This article presents available tools for in-person class and explains the benefits of incorporating backchannels, whiteboards, audience response polling, visual boards, and quizzing during synchronous classroom sessions. For other education tech, visit Available Software for Faculty and Staff or Available Software for Students. Canvas Chat for Backchannels Canvas Chat offers students a backchannel to ask questions or share thoughts freely during class. Canvas Chat Learning Benefits and Considerations Backchannel behaviors already exist; live chat connects this behavior into the front channel of your session. Increases communication, decreases perceived risk of interruption, engagement can improve attendance. Give guidelines, such as comments must be session topic focused and academic in nature. Have a co-instructor or student moderate the backchannel to bring questions to the presenter's attention. Pause to check-in, address questions or comments, and encourage sharing of resources. Students must be enrolled in a Canvas course for access. Instructor must enable Chat on course menu for students to use it. Canvas Chat References Live Chat Overview What is Canvas Chat? How do I use Chat as an instructor? How do I use Chat as a student? Make Lectures Interactive with Slack Backchannels - MIT Sloan Teaching & Learning Technologies Study of Live Lecture Attendance, Student Perceptions and Expectations - PMC (nih.gov) MS Forms for Team-Based Learning MS Forms assesses individuals and teams with unlimited attempts until they get the correct answer. MS Forms Learning Benefits and Considerations Facilitates group assessment for team-based learning. Instant analytics to indicate if the class needs additional instruction. Present feature to review with the entire class and address misconceptions. Create complex questions and use branching to simulate clinical decision making. Have all students take the quiz individually as a pre-test. After iRAT, set the quiz to practice mode for tRAT. Can convert a Word document into a quiz. Available to all instructors and accessed through Cardinal Apps. Instructors can share links that either allow anyone to respond or require UIW sign in to respond in order to track student performance. MS Forms References Microsoft Forms Overview Microsoft Forms Help & Learning Microsoft Forms Blog Use branching logic in Microsoft Forms Microsoft Forms Tips for Education - Microsoft Community Hub Development and Implementation of a Synchronous Online TBL Using Microsoft Forms - PMC (nih.gov) Real-time decision-making in chronic illness branching simulation - PMC (nih.gov) MS Whiteboard for Visual Content Markup MS Whiteboard allows students to collaboratively markup visual content on a shared whiteboard. MS Whiteboard Learning Benefits and Considerations Allows students to visually indicate areas on diagrams or images they have questions about. Point Creates an artifact to study after class. Prepares students for assessments with hot spot questions. Practice helps develop drawing skills for smooth delivery of content. Ask the class to refrain from marking up images until prompted. Insert all images to be used for a unit of study. Use with MS Stream screen recorder for up to 15-min videos. OneDrive is integrated within Canvas for instructors and students to easily share or submit creations in Assignments. MS Whiteboard References Microsoft Whiteboard Overview Whiteboard Help & Learning Microsoft Whiteboard Blog A whiteboard for health literacy – the story of Dr. David Grew | Explain Everything Padlet for Group Discussions Padlet supports small groups in documenting discussion points before the instructor shares the results back with the entire room. Padlet Learning Benefits and Considerations Motivates students to participate during discussion time. Targets the "share" part of think-pair-share type activities. Facilitates the instructor in bringing group ideas back to the whole class. Creates an artifact to provide feedback. Instructors can make a Padlet link or QR code as well as integrate in a Canvas Assignment. Explore the templates to ensure your layout aligns with your intentions. Breakout Groups template works well for discussions. Padlet References Create a UIW Padlet account for unlimited boards and full features. UIW Padlet Guides Use Padlet Templates for inspiration Poll Everywhere for Formative Assessment and Competitive Reviews Poll Everywhere prompts students to demonstrate understanding, share opinions, or compete during review sessions. Poll Everywhere Learning Benefits and Considerations Use to confirm understanding before moving on to new topics. Requires individual attention and informs instructor of participation. Visualized results demonstrate audience misconceptions. Use Folders to stay organized by topic and can be converted into a quiz. Remind audience to limit Word Cloud responses to a single keyword for best results. Use ranking questions for differential diagnosis or skills steps. Use Q&A to collect class ideas for upvoting. Try competitions to allocate points for correct answers with an optional timer and leaderboard display. Once instructor has a presenter account, can create activities allowing anyone to participate. Poll Everywhere References Instructor must request a Poll Everywhere presenter account. Poll Everywhere Overview PowerPoint requires installation: Install for Windows | Install for macOS Poll Everywhere UIW Articles Poll Everywhere to Encourage Learner Satisfaction and Participation in Internal Medicine Fellowship Didactics - PMC (nih.gov) Polling in medical training mimics real-life outcomes | Poll Everywhere