Learning requires a social component, and much of what is enjoyable about teaching and learning is wrapped up in the exchange of ideas. This is true for in-person and remote instruction. In an in-person class, methods for creating an environment for engaging students can seem more intuitive, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible to also create this environment in a remote instruction course, too. So, the first thing you might consider is how to relay and share in that sense of camaraderie in your remote instruction class. Discussion...
Include Beginning of the Course and Mid-Semester Surveys
One way to learn more about your students and their experience in your course is to conduct surveys at the beginning and mid-semester points. A survey at the beginning of the course will allow you to get a better understanding of the challenges students may face in a remote instruction course, as well as provides an opportunity to learn more about each student on an individual basis. A mid-semester survey provides an opportunity to find out what’s working and what’s not in your course, and then make adjustments where needed. It...
When adding lectures, ensure consistency in your layout so that students can follow a pattern; make a statement when you deviate from it. This will increase ‘findability’ and reduce time lost on tasks and frustration levels (Simunich, et al., 2012). bCourses Pages can be used to create a pattern layout for your units of study.
In the Core Template
Week 1 is set up in the page format in the template. You are welcome to edit the layout to create your pattern and designated space for your lectures.
Faculty Checklist for Quality Digital Learning Development
The DLS Core Template is a solid starting place to establish an effective and successful remote instruction course. Ultimately, however, the student experience will depend on how you use the template and deliver your course. DLS has created a Faculty Checklist for Quality Digital Learning Development so that you may review your course and how its design and execution may impact the student learning experience.
Canvas Commons is a repository of digital resources that allows users to share and import content into a course site. The DLS Core Template is available in Canvas Commons to UC Berkeley users in the Instructor, TA, or Designer roles.
Follow the steps below to import the template to your new course site.
Digital Learning Services will be operating with reduced staff Monday-Wednesday, November 23-25 and is available to provide urgent support between 9am to 4pm via email (see specific service page for contact details). Requests will be prioritized by urgency. Service or support requests received during the UC Holidays between Thursday 11/26 and Sunday 11/29 will be replied to beginning Monday 11/30. The team will monitor for major outages from bCourses and Kaltura during the holiday period...
A new version of the Kaltura Capture desktop application has been released. You can verify the version that you are using currently on the splash screen when the application is opening; the previous version was 4.2.83 and the new version is 4.2.110. (If you miss the splash screen, click the Manage link and then switch to the information tab.)
We recommend updating, as 4.2.110 fixes bugs which have resulted in problematic recordings. Specific issues resolved:
(Mac and Windows) The issues causing out of sync recording between the screen capture...
Last week Kaltura stated that issues related to the migration to Amazon Web Services would be resolved over the Labor Day weekend. However, while we have seen some improvements, we have received tickets identifying new issues with:
Delays in video uploads
Delays in video *transcoding and processing
Kaltura has acknowledged these issues and has provided the following update as of [9/10/20 at 2:25 PDT]
Syncing issues with video and audio have occurred with longer dual-stream videos (i.e. those in which you capture both Camera and Screen). To avoid these issues we recommend that you:
Make short videos. For the best results when recording dual-stream videos, keep recording time short, 6 to 10 minutes. Additionally, when it comes to playing back dual-stream videos, giving the video time to load on the bCourses page and/or refreshing the page can reduce sync issues with longer videos; you may want to alert your students to this,...