LIBRARY SPOTLIGHT

Online Video for Teaching & Learning: Films on Demand

Video content is a great way to enrich teaching and learning in the classroom and in Blackboard. Your Library subscribes to many online video collections that provide access to more than 100,000 streaming video titles from across the disciplines. All the videos in our collection are licensed for educational use, which means you can show them in class or embed them in our Learning Management System. Films on Demand is one of your Library’s largest collections of online videos. Search or browse more than 36,000 videos and nearly 300,000 segments from content providers including HBO, National Geographic, BBC and PBS. Content includes feature documentaries as well as vocational and technical training videos. Create clips and playlists to use in class and share with your students via DC Connect. For information about how to access or use Films on Demand in your teaching practice, please reach out to your Subject Specialist Librarian. Our team of Librarians are always happy to support teaching and learning in your classroom!

COOL TOOLS

John-Paul Mann, Finance Professor & Program Coordinator, in the School of Business, IT and Management shares a best practice for using Respondus Lockdown Browser.

I am an advocate of using electronic testing for evaluations, and using Respondus is a simple technology aid within DC Connect that helps “level the playing field” for all students, by helping to reduce cheating. Respondus locks down student browsers preventing navigation to other sites or opening additional windows during an evaluation.

Here is my Best Practice;

Before using Respondus on an evaluation for grades, create a simple one question quiz with Respondus enabled. Have students open the simple quiz and if they have not already added Respondus to their laptops, they will be prompted to initiate set-up. This simple one question quiz with Respondus added to their laptops, helps prepare students and confirms they are ready to complete a quiz with Respondus enabled.

This quick small activity will save students the frustration and anxiety of trying to load Respondus just before taking an evaluation.

Want to Know More?

Check out the resources available for faculty and instructions for faculty to share with their students.

This month, we begin our Faculty Spotlight feature. We are planning to have this spotlight every month to highlight the exemplary teaching practices that are taking place in our classrooms. Highlighted this month are faculty who are nominated for Durham College’s 2019 employee awards. We asked each faculty – What is your go-to engagement teaching strategy?

Ali Taileb SET ProfessorAli engages his students by integrating authentic real-life project examples into his courses. When delivering the curriculum, Ali ensures that all of his students are given a voice to express their ideas and opinions. This approach supports students connecting with the content in every unit.

Joyce Myers SET ProfessorJoyce ensures that the course material remains relevant for her students. There are always new and exciting developments in the microbial world to keep her lectures current! She also injects humour into her classes; she finds that telling stories about her experiences in industry working with microbes provides comic relief!

Kevin Keays START ProfessorKevin brings practical industry examples into his classrooms so his students can make the direct connections between what they’re learning in the class and industry practices. This includes showing videos that he makes in industry. This allows students to connect the content with real industry scenarios.Students need to know why the content that they are learning in class is relevant, so Kevin’s curriculum highlights real scenarios so students can apply the knowledge that they’ve learned in a practical way. All of Kevin’s assessments are scenario-based, requiring students to apply their critical decision-making skills. Last year, an impressive 84% of his graduates had a job in industry by the time they graduated!

Kris Felstead MAD ProfessorKris’s favourite strategy to engage his students is to establish a culture of learning. His work with the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion included a challenge to create a website “SeeDifferent” that students would use to learn and share experiences based on the foundation of inclusion and non-discrimination.The challenge from an instructional standpoint was to cover the learning outcomes in the Portfolio class while substituting an outside initiative that fits within the learning outcomes of the class. The SeeDifferent website was vetted by students at public and junior high schools for design and user interface functionality (including all social media channels brought into one site) and was distributed as a government initiative campaign for inclusion.Adapting the learning culture was supported through a number of ways: 1) the creation of virtual meetings with the students’ schools that couldn’t attend physically; 2) mentorship “progress checkpoints” for students developing the site to provide support and direction; 3) inclusion of the SeeDifferent team in the gantt chart development cycles that included “global classroom” style discussions with students, staff and faculty at all developmental stages of the site.This project not only covered all of the learning outcomes in the curriculum, it provided students an opportunity to effect change with their peers, community, external stakeholders and the general public. Students felt they were able to “make a difference” and the classroom significance was lifted to higher levels of performance and understanding of the material supported by a confidence that the skillset that they are acquiring is indispensable to the community and Industry they will be entering upon graduation.