WOOL Blog: Ram-ping Up Your Instructional Technology

It's that time of year again. With advising upon us, you will soon have students knocking on your door with a proposed schedule in hand. It is likely that some of your advisees will be considering online coursework for the first time, and they may be unsure if this type of coursework is right for them. While you may know your advisees well enough to make a more personalized recommendation, you can also point them to our Online Learning Readiness Self-Assessment. This assessment is a short questionnaire consisting of 12 questions focusing on your advisees' learning disposition, technical abilities, and expectations for online coursework. After answering each question, students will be presented with a short evaluation of how well-suited or prepared they are for taking an online course. While this may not be the sole factor in decided to take an online course, we hope it provides a helpful foundation for your advisees' decisions. You can access the online learning readine...

Do you ever feel lost in Blackboard, sorting through your long list of courses, or feel like navigating out from one course and into the another is cumbersome? Here is a quick tip to help you jump between your most relevant courses. Enter a Blackboard course. Under the "Winthrop University" tab, you'll see a home icon and a drop-down arrow.  Click the arrow, and then from the list, choose title of the course you'd like to switch to. At the top of the list, you'll find your most recently visited courses; you do not have to sort through all of your courses to find the ones most relevant to you this term. Voila! You're in the new course in the exact same location in Blackboard (eg. Grade Center, Announcements) with the quick click of the mouse. For more information about Blackboard, please visit our website at  https://www.winthrop.edu/onlinelearning .