Educational Technology Resources Provided by ITS
The IT Client Services department (with walk-in helpdesk in J107) has several educational technology resources available to faculty members (and, with some limitations, to students).
ITS also provides group and/or individual training sessions for these resources. Email helpdesk@ubishops.ca for information, training and booking of equipment.
Moodle
The CMS (Course Management System) that we use at Bishop's is called Moodle, an open-source web-based product akin to WebCT or parts of Blackboard.
Moodle allows you to upload content (Powerpoint decks, PDFs, etc.), setup date-observant assignment submission areas, poll your students, conduct online quizzes, embed online videos, and much more.
Find out more about the use of Moodle at Bishop's here.
Student Response Systems (aka "Clickers")
ITS offers http://www.einstruction.com/products/student-response-systemsclickers from eInstruction for borrowing by faculty.
With this resource you can, either anonymously or not, sample your students at points throughout the lecture using a variety of question formats (multiple choice, short answer, Likert scale, etc.). Additionally, you can decide to record these results as a basis for in-class participation marks.
You can find out more about these clickers from the ITS page here.
Smartboards
Some multimedia classrooms on campus are equipped with a Smartboard from SMART Technologies.
Using the software provided on the classroom computers you can annotate your Powerpoint or web-based content and then save those annotated images/slides to distribute to your students after the class.
Additionally, using a SMART-developed Powerpoint replacement called SMART Notebook, you can produced interactive slide packages that allow yourself or your students to interact with the display on the Smartboard to work through lesson modules and receive active feedback.
You can find out more about the Smartboards on the ITS page located here.
