CHRISTMAS CAROL CAPTION FAIL – Rhett & Link

We’ve all seen them – those hilarious caption fails generated by YouTube’s automatic captioning. Some people, like Rhett & Link, have become internet celebrities by sharing their caption fails with the world.

If you’re like me, you were thrilled in 2009 when YouTube (Google) started implementing automatic captions for videos posted on their website. However, the “thrill” was soon gone as we realized that the captions were not exactly perfect. In fact, sometimes the automatic captions YouTube produced were quite embarrassing. The reality was not the dream, but still, I was excited that a major company had recognized the need to incorporate video captions. Their efforts helped people become more aware that captioning should be an integral part of video production.

As time went on, YouTube offered a variety of approaches to fixing the automatic captioning, and I’m happy to report that they continue to improve accuracy and invent easier ways to fix captions all the time. Sometimes you may hear me growling about this because it means re-doing the YouTube video tutorials that I’ve already created for faculty, but generally, I find that YouTube’s improvements for fixing automatic captions refine the process.

Most of us will agree that captioning videos to make them ADA compliant is the “right thing to do,” but sometimes our enthusiasm wanes because the process is arduous. I am always looking for new ways to make the captioning process easier. Yes, there are a lot of tools out there for captioning, but unfortunately, all of them are somewhat time-consuming. For matters of speed, I prefer to upload my screencasts to YouTube and then fix the automatic captions. I have found that fixing the captions is much quicker than typing them out (even though I pride myself in being a very fast typist since I am a pianist/organist after all). If you record with an excellent microphone and make sure to check your speed and enunciate when you speak, the necessary fixes will be minimal. If in the end, I don’t want the video to be posted permanently on YouTube, I can download the YouTube subtitles file that includes the proper timings and use Camtasia or some other software to merge the files to post elsewhere.

Recently YouTube changed the process of fixing automatic captions (again). My search for a good tutorial on the process came up empty, so I created one. Watch the video below and learn how quickly you can fix your YouTube captions.

Happy captioning in a fraction of the time!

~ Dr. Luanne Fose (The Tweed Geek)

Spanning the 2015-2016 academic year, Cal Poly Communications Studies Sr. Lecturer, Martin Mehl, and Lead Instructional Designer, Luanne Fose, from the Cal Poly Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, conducted a formal, institute-wide research pilot on whether or not video assessment can improve faculty feedback for student assignments. Initially, the academic and administrative ramifications were restricted and limited to the scope of Professor Mehl’s four introductory Communication Studies classes in spring of 2015. Upon generating 1) best practices; 2) course design suggestions; 3) syllabi organization; 4) rubric optimization; and 5) assignment clarification, the Digital Commentary Grading Project (DCGP) was expanded to be a formal, year-long campus-wide study at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

The study included recruitment of faculty representing all six divisions of the university including the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences, College of Architecture and Environmental Design, Orfalea College of Business, College of Engineering, College of Liberal Arts, and College of Science and Mathematics. The whitepaper of the research was shared at the OLC Innovate Conference in New Orleans, in April 2016.

The series of articles that will follow for the next few months in the Online Learning Consortium Research Center for Digital Learning and Leadership will outline the process of the study, lessons learned, and provide leadership on how others can succeed in promoting mentorship at their own campuses and corporations. The first two articles of a six-part series by Mehl and Fose on The Digital Academic Revolution Mentorship Competency were published on November 1, 2016. To download and read the articles, please visit the OLC web site.

The new PolyLearn Assignment Grader tool allows faculty to:

• view a PDF file
• annotate a PDF (.docx will be available this Winter)
• use advanced grading tools (Rubric and Grading Guide)
• provide a final grade
• write feedback in comment form
• upload an attachment (text or audio file)

Rubrics can be expanded with the toggle buttons on the bottom right side of the screen for easy viewing, and Faculty grading time can be significantly reduced when using rubrics and grading guides.

A well-designed rubric provides consistency, structure, and efficiency in the grading process. Rubrics can be seen by students before the assignments are due, and provide a description of expected performance requirements.

If you would like to learn more about the PolyLearn’s Assignment Grader tool and how to use rubrics in your grading, please visit the PolyLearn Support site.

If you would like to learn about all of the new features in the recent update of PolyLearn to 3.1, please visit “What’s New in PolyLearn This Fall“.

“In 2014, students approved the allocation of student success fees towards Career Services’ proposal to expand programs targeting career development. This included a portfolio platform to allow students and alumni a space to store resources and reflect upon and showcase work samples and competencies acquired through academic, co-curricular, and professional experiences. Today’s employers expect graduates to communicate and show proof of knowledge and abilities and have expressed a preference for visible evidence of such qualifications. By teaching students to consider the significance of their Learn by Doing work, communicating skills and knowledge, and collecting related artifacts, we will better prepare them for today’s job search.” (Rinaldi, 2016)

In April 2015, the Career Services department launched Portfolium to all students. Since then, over 16,000 current students have created accounts.

How Can You Use Portfolium in Your Course?

Student assignments that lend themselves to critiques, projects, and electronic files can be added to Portfolium to be shared with instructors, peers and potential employers.

“Portfolium is helpful to me because I can add projects from school, work, and personal work to showcase my diverse range of skills and experience in different fields. I think having students post their work on Portfolium is a great idea. Many students do great work but never show it to the world. I think young adults starting out in the professional world should learn to market themselves not just on a resume but also on a portfolio website like Portfolium.” (Lu, 2016) Students like Sophia Lu, may post their artifacts to the Portfolium site. Showcasing her work with digital images, descriptions of the projects and what was learned, attachments, a list of skills used to complete the project, and comments from her instructors or other professionals.

Paper resumes can’t showcase a student’s presentations, videos, writing samples, images, designs, prototypes, code, performances, musical compositions, digital credentials, or assessments like a web-based portfolio can. Portfolium can also link to other websites (personal or others such as LinkedIn) to provide additional information. If you would like to see examples of other students’ work, check out the Cal Poly Contest Winners.

Cal Poly Materials Engineering faculty member, Dr. Linda Vanasupa, used Portfolium in her MATE-340 class.

“Portfolium gave the class a platform to showcase their individual projects to tell a story about their education…that it’s more than just answering questions on a test.” (Vanasupa, 2016)

Linda’s PolyLearn course outlined the Course Project.

She provided an example in her own Portfolium site…

…and a rubric.

Students posted their Portfolium URLs in a PolyLearn Assignment so Linda could review them.

If you would like other students to view Portfolium pages instead of limiting access to only the instructor, you could use the PolyLearn Forum tool to share URLs.

How Do I Learn More?

If you would like to talk to an instructional designer about student portfolio projects, please schedule a consultation with Tonia Malone (tmalone@calpoly.edu). She would be glad to help.

References

Charlotte Rinaldi, Assistant Director of Cal Poly Career Services.
Sophia Lu, Student, Architecture
Linda Vanasupa, Professor, Materials Engineering

Morgan Livingston is a lecturer in the English Department at Cal Poly. She was inspired to write the following blog post through her participation in the CTLT Faculty Learning Community, “Teaching Technical Communication.”

Last Tuesday was a beautiful and sunny 75-degree day in San Luis Obispo. My students walked into the classroom, sweating from the lack of air conditioning and exhausted from the accumulation of finals, projects, you name it. I looked at them. They looked back at me. And I said, “That’s it. You’re going for a walk.”

When I was growing up, my mother’s answer to any problem was “take a walk.” Have an argument with your best friend? Take a walk. Eat too much pizza? Take a walk. Stressed with exams? Take a walk. While I was resistant to it at the time, there is something to be said about walking’s natural ability to clear the mind.

But what about walking and its connection to creativity? Many historical geniuses went for daily walks: on these walks, Aristotle lectured his pupils on rhetoric, Beethoven heard the bird songs that would inspire his sixth symphony, and Steve Jobs held business meetings. It seems, then, that walks not only clear our heads, but they clear our heads enough for creativity and inspiration to enter. And that’s exactly what some recent Stanford experiments sought to prove.

Over the course of four experiments, Stanford researchers found that walkers overwhelmingly have more (and better) creative thoughts than sitters. From walking on a treadmill to walking outdoors, the study proved a link between creativity and the act of walking itself. The implications for education, then, seem to be substantial.

After discovering this link between creativity and walking, I decided to test the theory in my own classroom. I teach English 149, Technical Communication for Engineers, and if we flash back to the bright and sunny day at beginning of this post, my students were brainstorming for a large report. So, prefacing it as a “hippie experiment,” I sent them out in pairs to walk and talk during class time. I did not want them to feel restrained, so my only requirements for the activity were that they walk the whole time and that each person’s topic should be discussed for a total of 10 minutes.

Student responses to this assignment were overwhelmingly positive. In fact, in a post-walk reflection, 100% of my 97 students said they would like to do the Walk and Talk again, and many explained that they felt more innovative and free than they would in the traditional classroom. One of my quietest students even said it was hard for him to stop talking after his allotted 10 minutes were up.

While my class activity was by no means a formal study or experiment, I am pretty excited by the results. I am now convinced that students need to move more during class time. Because we know of the connection between walking and creativity, we are doing a huge disservice to students by forcing them to stay sedentary during key educational moments that demand creativity (like brainstorming).

The next time my students need some creative inspiration, then, I’ll tell them “take a walk” – like mother, like daughter.

Comments:

1. Author : Amy Wiley
E-mail : awiley@calpoly.edu

What a terrific post, Morgan! Thanks so much for sharing this–I’m definitely going to incorporate it into my own classes.

2. Author : Matthew Luskey
E-mail : mluskey@calpoly.edu

Great post, Morgan. The National Survey for Student Engagement measures the importance of talk, so this sounds like a great activity. Healthy, too!

3. Author : Erin Martin-Elston
E-mail : ejmartin@calpoly.edu

Love this idea, Morgan.

4. Author:  A. Moretti
Email:  moretti@calpoly.edu

Thanks for this wonderful post, Morgan!

“A rubric is a scoring guide: a list or chart that describes the criteria that you will use to evaluate or grade completed student assignments.” (Suskie, 2009)

Advantages of Rubrics

• clarifies vague and fuzzy goals
• helps students to understand expectations
• helps student self-improve
• improves student performance
• makes scoring more accurate, unbiased, and consistent
• improves feedback to students
• reduces confusion of students

Types of Rubrics

• Checklist: a simple list indicating the presence of items your are looking for within the assignment.
• Rating Scale: a checklist rubric with a rating scale added to show the degree of importance.
• Descriptive: replaces the check boxes on a rating scale with descriptive information describing each level of performance.

A Descriptive Rubric is most effective by explicitly listing your standards for the students performance.

You can search for free descriptive rubrics at Rcampus.com.

Evaluate your Rubric

Things to consider when selecting a rubric:

• Does the rubric relate to the outcome(s) being measured?
• Does it address anything extraneous?
• Does the rubric cover important dimensions of student performance?
• Do the criteria reflect current conceptions of “excellence” in the field?
• Are the categories or scales well-defined?
• Is there a clear basis for assigning scores at each scale point?
• Can the rubric be applied consistently by different scorers?
• Can the rubric be understood by students?
• Is the rubric developmentally appropriate?
• Can the rubric be applied to a variety of tasks?
• Is the rubric fair and free from bias?
• Is the rubric useful, feasible, manageable and practical?

Retrieved from (http://business.fullerton.edu/Main/CollegeAssessment/RubricDirectory
/evaluatingrubrics.pdf)

PolyLearn’s Advance Grading Option

PolyLearn (Moodle) Rubrics are connected to the Assignment activity. The rubrics consist of a set of criteria for each specification. A numerical grade is assigned to each of these levels. The grader chooses which level answers/describes the given criterion best. The raw rubric score is calculated as a sum of all criteria grades. The final grade is calculated by comparing the actual score with the worst/best possible score that could be received.

To learn more about PolyLearn Assignment Rubrics or rubric templates, please visit the PolyLearn support site.

Reusing Rubrics

Once you have created a rubric within your assignment, the rubric can be reused in all your PolyLearn courses. As the creator of the rubric, you can search for it within the new assignment’s advanced grading – rubric tool.

Within the search, you will find your own rubrics.

To learn more about reusing rubrics, please visit the PolyLearn support site. Please feel free to schedule a PolyLearn consultation with the PolyLearn Support Team.

The CTLT has also provided some writing rubrics that you can use as is or modify in your own courses. You will be able to search for these rubrics and use them as a template.

• University Expository Writing Rubric – ULO Committee
• General Evaluation Rubric for Papers Assignment
• Written Communication Value Rubric

References

Suskie, L. (2009). Assessing Student Learning (second ed.). 989 Market Street, SF., CA: Jossey-Bass.

Goodrich-Andrade, H. (2008). Using Rubrics in Middle School Understanding Rubrics. Retrieved from https://ilearn.marist.edu/access/content/group/bb30edbb-84eb-4d65-8292-ff8ac52de2e3/Readings%20and%20Information/Andrade%201997%20rubrics.pdf

Additional Resources:

Why Rubrics?
http://ctlblog.calpoly.edu/ctlblog/teachinglearning/rubrics-in-polylearn

Rubistar, an online rubric generator site with many examples
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php

The University of San Francisco – a simplified tutorial on creating rubrics
http://health.usf.edu/publichealth/eta/Rubric_Tutorial/

L.A. Valley College’s page on holistic and analytic rubric development
http://www.lavc.edu/profdev/utilizingrubrics.pdf

Recently somebody asked me if Cal Poly has any instructional designers that can help put together an online course, and if so, where that person might find them. I was delighted to introduce this person to the instructional design services of the CTLT and how we could be of assistance. It occurred to me that perhaps the campus at large needs a reminder of the services offered by the CTLT from our instructional design team for online, hybrid, flipped and (of course) face-to-face classes!

What is an instructional designer and what type of services might you expect from somebody with this title?

An instructional designer is someone who helps faculty create, refine, and reimagine a course that

• engages students with one another and with the instructor
• offers meaningful real-world learning activities
• is mindful of accessibility concerns and honors a diverse audience of learners
• incorporates thoughtful design approaches that addresses many levels of learning
• aligns content and assessments with student learning outcomes
• incorporates technology in a way that enhances (and does not distract from) the learning outcomes of the course

In order to become an instructional designer, one must have a strong background in teaching, pedagogy, classroom management techniques, and emerging educational theories. In addition, we also have strengths and experience in implementing Universal Design for Learning, multiple technologies including web design, multimedia and learning management systems and all of the interactive and collaborative tools that are included in an LMS. Often the road to becoming an instructional designer starts with a jarring fork (the road kind, that is) where one may originally have plans to be an instructor, or a technology specialist, and then suddenly enters the other world, combining the paths in a surreal Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup of skills. It takes some rather diverse talents, and not a small amount of courage, to become an instructional designer.

By now, you are either thinking about peanut butter and chocolate, or you are intrigued by the idea of meeting with an instructional designer. The CTLT can offer you both options at the same time!

So, what might you expect from a consultation with an instructional designer? It truly helps if you can identify an area of your course that you’d like to improve upon, or if you can identify the direction you’d like to take your course in the future. Some examples may include:

• improving student test scores or refining assessment strategies
• creating a stronger class community through active learning
• providing students with more frequent formative assessment opportunities
• engaging students in authentic assessment projects
• providing course materials and presentations in PolyLearn for student review
• creating captioned videos for self-directed learning
• leveraging advanced PolyLearn tools for group activities, assessments, or other assignments
• creating opportunities for recorded, synchronous discussions with industry experts

The first step is to identify your goals, and from there we can help you achieve them!

If you’re interested in meeting with an instructional designer for a one-on-one consultation, please contact the CTLT at 756-7002 or email us at ctlt@calpoly.edu and you can set up an appointment with Tonia, Luanne or Catherine, plus some tasty snacks. For a limited time (until they are all gone) we’ll even supply the Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups! (For those allergic to peanuts, we will also offer Junior Mints.)

We hope to hear from you soon!

Have you ever had a file that you needed to send to someone, but the file was too large to be sent via conventional email? This often happens to me when I have to send a video file for another person to review. In the past, I would just use my Public folder from my Dropbox account, but since I am running out of space in my Dropbox account, I started looking for an alternative. Upon some inquiry with my friends in ITS, I found out that Cal Poly has a subscription to a service called FileSender that allows you to send files to any internet user as long as they have access to email and an appropriately configured web browser. The best part is that you can send a file to an on- or off-campus recipient — the recipient doesn’t have to be a Cal Poly employee.

Another great feature is that FileSender can accommodate sending out files up to 1TB in size. This is a great way to send a large GIS or video file to an individual student when you don’t want to place it in PolyLearn, One Drive, or on YouTube. All you have to do is upload the file to the FileSender server and provide the email address of the intended recipient and the recipient will be informed via email with a link for downloading the file. The file you have sent will automatically be deleted from the server after two weeks from the sent date, whether or not it was ever downloaded by the recipient. Unfortunately, I don’t think knowledge of this subscription service has gotten around to many people beyond ITS employees at Cal Poly, so I thought some of you might find this information useful. Here’s instructions on the process from my experience using it several times in the last week:

1) In your browser, go to the following URL:   https://filesender.internet2.edu/
(Note: I’m on a Macintosh computer and I found that my go-to browser, Safari, didn’t work well with this service; however, Firefox worked fine.)

2) Click on the Logon button on the FileSender page.

3) FileSender will bring up a page that asks you to enter your organization’s name. Type “California” in the search box and it will bring up a list of California organizations that participate in FileSender’s service. Click on California Polytechnic State University – San Luis Obispo and then click on the Continue button. Alternatively, you can also click on the link Allow me to pick from a list and scroll through the list until you find Cal Poly, SLO, but this takes a bit longer to do. (Note: After the first time of using FileSender, there will be an icon to denote Cal Poly that you can just click upon instead of searching or picking from the list.)

4) FileSender will take you to the Cal Poly Portal login page. Log in to the Cal Poly Portal as you normally would with your Username and Password and click on the Sign In button.

5) FileSender will automatically bring up the Send File page after you log in. Type in the email address of the intended recipient in the To: textbox. You can then optionally type a Subject line and a Message. FileSender will list an Expiry date to denote when the file will be removed from the server (i.e., in two weeks). Click on the Browse… button to navigate to the file you wish to send and click on the checkbox that says I accept the terms and conditions of this service. Then, click on the large Send button. (Note: You can only send one file at a time, but you can do this as many times as you wish.)

6) Your recipient will receive an email similar to the example below with a link to click on in order to download the file. (Note:  You will receive a copy of this email as well.)

7) If you want to check back at a later time regarding which files you sent, to whom, and when the expiration date is, you can click on the My Files button on the main page of FileSender.

8) Another great feature of FileSender is that you can send someone outside of Cal Poly a guest voucher that allows them to send you a file that might be too big to send via email. (Note: You can also send a guest voucher to Cal Poly faculty, staff, or students who don’t understand the FileSender system, but need to send you a large file). To send a guest voucher to someone, click on the Guest Voucher button on the main page.

9) Fill out the Guest Voucher form. The Guest Voucher page also shows you at the bottom who you sent a guest voucher link to in the past.

10) The person you sent the Guest Voucher to will receive an email that looks something like this:

11) That’s it! Be sure to log off of FileSender when you are finished.

~ Luanne Fose (The Tweed Geek)

Every once in a while, I challenge myself to try out a new software tool to see how it works for a particular learning objective I have in mind. Recently finding some of the content to be a little dull in an online class I have been developing, I decided to try the free online software, Powtoon, in order to create some animation to liven it up a bit.

In order to better explain what Powtoon actually is, let’s look at their mission statement as described on the company’s web site:

“PowToon will create the world’s most minimalist, user friendly and intuitive presentation software that allows someone with no technical or design skills to create engaging professional “look and feel” animated presentations. Our aim is to establish a new presentation category called “powtoon” – a combination of presentation and animated cartoon – as the industry standard for evolved (animated) presentations.”

As I began to use the tool, it occurred to me that this is one that I should put on the list, not just for teachers to create presentations, but also for students to use in order to ignite their creativity for class project assignments. Powtoon files are developed in your browser – there is no special software or plugins to download for your project creation. Thus, it can be used in any computer lab or students can develop assignments from their own computers. Powtoon has a series of templates that can serve as a jumping off point for your creativity. You can edit characters, images, animations, text, and provide your own voiceover and music choices in the template or you can start from a blank slate. It’s up to you and your students how you wish to create them.

• Here’s a short Powtoon that explains the software better than my description will:

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Here’s an example of a student botany project done with PowToon:

Click here to view the embedded video.

•  Here’s an example of an instructor explaining an upcoming assignment to their students with a Powtoon:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I hope you can see the possibilities… they’re endless.

Here’s a couple more things you should know before you get started: Powtoons that are up to 5 minutes in length are free. You start by simply making an account on their website and then save your work at their web site within your browser. You can return there and work on your Powtoon as often as you need to until you have completed it; then, upload your finished project to YouTube. If you wish to do presentations longer than 5 minutes, there are subscriptions at various prices that you can purchase. But you know what? It’s best if your presentations aren’t too long. You can actually share a lot of content in a 5-minute animation. Select a project of yours and give it a try and then consider offering it as a tool to your students as a way to enliven their own presentations.  Have fun!

~ Luanne Fose (The Tweed Geek)

Comments:

Author : John Hagen (IP: 129.65.201.33
E-mail : jhagen@calpoly.edu

Thanks, Luanne!  I will try this.