Using video to communicate with students

Curtin Teaching and Learning — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 18:33:43 +0000

Kathryn Greenhill talks about her approach to connecting with her online students by creating personalised introductions and delivering general course information via video.

Issue 22 – Live@edu a window for staff

Curtin Teaching and Learning — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 23:59:59 +0000

In 2010 Curtin adopted Microsoft Live@edu for its student email system and this has changed the way students communicate with their peers and lecturers. Live@edu offers many benefits that can enhance learning and teaching and can be used to create online (and on campus) communities.

This newsletter provides information on the features and benefits of Live@Edu and how staff can utilise it to access their students’ written work and multimedia files.

The following features are examined in more detail:

Student Email
Office Live Workspace
SkyDrive

All applications require an internet connection.

Student Email

Live@edu enables students to retain their Curtin email accounts indefinitely. Keeping in touch with peers and lecturers and being notified of alumni events is much easier.

For more information about student email, access the Windows Live Mail Help Center.

Office Live Workspace

The Office Live Workspace provides a structured document sharing facility which enables students to collaborate on complex projects, store research and share work in progress. At present Office Live Workspace only supports use of the following browsers; Firefox, Internet Explorer (Windows), or Safari (Mac).

Students can essentially access a web version of Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint and Excel) through their student email account, which also means they don’t have to purchase a license for this software. Once a document is created and has been saved to the Office Live Workspace, students can access it from anywhere – they simply need to login to their Live@Edu account and can continue working on their documents stored within the Office Live Workspace.

Students are not constrained to using only one computer to access and edit their documents and they no longer need to always keep a copy saved to their USB. Students can work on group assignments from any location and multiple authors are able to write and edit project documents at the same time allowing students to work collaboratively and efficiently in an online environment.

Live@edu also provides students with the capacity to:

create a profile and allocate sharing permissions;
post photos and videos online; and
create and share a calendar which can be viewed and updated online or on a mobile phone.

For more information about Office Web Apps, access the online Help Center.

SkyDrive

The SkyDrive is essentially an online area where students are provided with 25Gb of free storage space in which to store their files and documents. The previous student email system was restricted to only 40 megabytes-per-user, which was limiting for students who today are highly mobile and use email to store and send very large files. This additional storage space means that students can now create and upload larger multimedia files, presentations or videos which they can share with their lecturers and peers as required.

How do my students share a file with me via their SkyDrive?

If your students need to share files with you via their SkyDrive they need to follow these steps.

Scroll over the document that you have created (or uploaded to your SkyDrive) and that you wish to share with your lecturer.These will be stored under Office > Your Documents.
Click on More > Share > Send a link.
Type in the email address of your lecturer, provide an optional message and then click Send.
Your lecturer will receive an email with the embedded link to your document.

Tip: Staff are advised to reply to student emails regularly to acknowledge receipt of the emails with links.

For more information about Windows SkyDrive, access the SkyDrive Help Center.

Collaboratively written with Jessica Short, Student Relations Technology Consultant, at CITS.

eScholar 2010 – Connecting student cohorts using social media (Twitter)

Curtin Teaching and Learning — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:46:09 +0000

Tama Leaver tapped into popular social media to connect students outside of the classroom. Setting clear communication guidelines around the appropriate use of the technology is important.

eScholar 2010 – Blogs for student reflection, feedback and overall unit communication

Curtin Teaching and Learning — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 16:35:07 +0000

By maintaining a unit coordinator blog Matthew Molineux was able to address student communication needs and model good blogging practice.

Issue 12 – Why everyone’s tweeting about Twitter

Curtin Teaching and Learning — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 05:15:26 +0000

Twitter is a micro-blogging service that lets you post status updates of your activities, known as ‘tweets’. The nature of twitter is that tweets need to be short and sweet as tweets can only contain 140 characters or less, including spaces and punctuation. Find out how you can incorporate this type of social media within your teaching and learning. This site has comprehensive Twitter instructions and ideas.

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