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Browse Help Articles Submit a TicketFaculty Training
The Center for Online Learning & Teaching Technology will be offering various training on Quality Matters, Blackboard Learn and other supported tools. These sessions are open to all UTRGV faculty interested in learning more about Blackboard Learn and how they can apply it to their courses and beneficial for faculty who are currently teaching or will be teaching fully online or hybrid courses in the near future.
The training that we offered are listed below, please check the training services website for specific dates and times. If you need to request a special training session for a group of faculty or staff, please submit a Faculty Help Request.
Applying the Quality Matters Rubric Workshop
Goes over how to Apply the Quality Matters Rubric. This rubric introduces participants to best practices, instructional design, and research-based design principles of an online/hybrid course to ensure quality assurance. This workshop is required if you are planning to teach online.
| Date | Time | Location | Register |
| May 13 and 14 | 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM | Zoom | Register Now |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 17 and 18 | 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM | Zoom | Register Now |
| June 7 and 8 | 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM | Zoom | Register Now |
| June 17 and 18 | 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM | Zoom | Register Now |
| July 12 and 13 | 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM | Zoom | Register Now |
| July 15 and 16 | 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM | Zoom | Register Now |
Getting your Blackboard Course Ready
The purpose of this training is to get your online course ready for next semester. Ensure you have all the essential elements to have an excellent online presence and show you how to create a course copy, manage course dates, edit content as needed and add new course tools.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 21 | 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM | Online | Online |
|---|
Blackboard Basics
This training is designed to help faculty members develop the basic knowledge and skills necessary to use Blackboard Learn. This training covers the basics of Blackboard navigation, creating, editing, and deleting items, folders, etc.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 11 | 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM | Online | Online |
|---|
Blackboard Intermediate
This intermediate session will provide a deeper dive into creating gradable assignments within a Blackboard Learn Original.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 11 | 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM | Online | Online |
|---|
Blackboard Advanced (Gradecenter)
Empower yourself to teach with maximum efficiency by understanding Blackboard Learn’s powerful Grade Center. The Grade Center is more than just a location to record students' grades--it is an interactive tool that allows faculty to filter, sort, and access data, calculate grades, and monitor student progress. Join this session to learn the basics of efficiently managing your students’ work and grades.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 12 | 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM | Online | Online |
|---|
Grading in Blackboard Learn (Advanced)
Let’s face it – grading is possibly one of the least ‘fun’ parts of teaching. However, now that you’ve created assessments, assignments, and quizzes in Blackboard Learn, the grading process can be easier than ever. In Blackboard, instructors can provide feedback, post grades, and check the originality of student work with ease. Discover how much easier it can be to grade papers when you can annotate right within the online course. You can even provide audio feedback to the student, helping them understand areas of the paper that may need some attention. Want to set up a quiz to be automatically graded? You can do that too! Join us in this informative session on how to use Blackboard’s course tools to make your online teaching experience more efficient, more engaged, and less time-consuming!
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 20 | 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM | Online | Online |
|---|
Improving Student Engagement
Join a team of Blackboard experts who understand first-hand the demands of a fully online teaching environment—we are eager to help you discover how utilizing tools within Blackboard Learn can encourage meaningful engagement among students and between your students and you! Effectively use discussion boards, engage students with interactive lectures and quizzes and challenge them to collaborate together in teams, and then present their work back to the larger class. Blackboard’s team of academic professionals have plenty of ideas to share with you and are eager to support you as you consider different ways to promote communication, get your students involved, and keep them engaged in online classes.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 25 | 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM | Online | Online |
|---|
Guide to Building Mobile Content
Many students prefer to consume course content on their mobile phone. This webinar is designed to provide you with basic fundamentals for preparing online course content for mobile delivery. Additionally, we will review Blackboard mobile apps and provide you with a helpful worksheet on mobile content development.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 26 | 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM | Online | Online |
|---|
Ask the Expert: Blackboard Learn
Have a question on how to do something in Blackboard Learn? Join this live Office Hours session where Blackboard experts will be on hand to answer questions, demonstrate workflows, and provide guidance on teaching remotely.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 27 | 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM | Online | Online |
|---|
Blackboard Collaborate Ultra
Blackboard Collaborate Ultra is a virtual classroom tool that allows you to continue to engage with your students in real-time or even to record sessions for students to watch at a later time. In this 45-minute session, we will review the Collaborate interface and tools that support engaging virtual classroom sessions.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 18 | 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM | Online | Online |
|---|
Blackboard Collaborate Ultra - Beyond the Basics
This webinar will help you move beyond the basics of Blackboard Collaborate and provide an overview of specific use cases and features that will facilitate synchronous interaction with your students. Some features include using breakout rooms, sharing content through your camera, polling, and other features that will help you engage your learners and empower student success.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 11 | 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM | Online | Online |
|---|
Ask the Expert: Blackboard Collaborate Ultra
Have a question on how to do something in Blackboard Collaborate? Join this live Office Hours session where Blackboard experts will be on hand to answer questions, demonstrate workflows, and provide guidance on teaching remotely.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 27 | 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM | Online | Online |
|---|
Panopto Basics
The Basic Training Webinar is designed for new users and beginners who would like to learn how to use the Panopto software. This webinar will cover creating, managing, and editing sessions as well as navigating the Panopto interface.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 12 | 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM | Online | Online |
|---|
Panopto Advanced
The Advanced Training Webinar is designed for advanced users who would like to learn how to use the Panopto software. This webinar will cover more advanced editing features as well as new Panopto release features.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 14 | 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM | Online | Online |
|---|
Respondus LockDown Browser & Respondus Monitor
This comprehensive training webinar is intended for instructors who plan to use LockDown Browser and/or Respondus Monitor with online exams. The session provides a detailed demonstration of both applications, including enhancements that make Respondus Monitor even more effective and easy to use.
Respondus Test Generator
Creating quizzes and exams is often a time-consuming task, but Respondus takes much of the difficulty out of it. With Respondus, instructors can import test questions from a word document, and the program will convert the document to a format that is ready to upload to Blackboard- no more copying and pasting.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 19 | 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM | Online | Online |
|---|
Test Generator for Mac
Creating quizzes and exams is often a time-consuming task, the online test generator takes much of the difficulty out of it. With the online test generator, instructors can generate a file that can be imported into Blackboard to create a quiz or exam.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 19 | 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM | Online | Online |
|---|
SoftChalk Cloud
Create, customize and personalize content by mashing up your own materials with rich media, interactive exercises, quizzes, and text.
The combination of personalized content, embedded assessment, interactivity, and immediate student feedback increases student engagement and improves learning outcomes.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 14 | 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM | Online | Online |
|---|
Top Hat
Introduction to Top Hat - Join us for an introduction to Top Hat and learn how to use our platform to engage your students before, during, and after class. This webinar will focus on the key building blocks in Top Hat for engaging students in active learning, from anywhere. We will focus on how to create interactive Top Hat content as well as how to digitally deliver that material in asynchronous and synchronous classes.
Teaching with Top Hat Remotely - Join us for an introduction to Top Hat and learn how to use our platform in a remote teaching environment. This webinar will equip you with best practices for effectively structuring your online course. We will focus on the organization of your course, how to track and increase comprehension, and how to keep your instruction personable to simulate an in-class environment.
Top Hat's Virtual Classroom - Join us for an introduction to Top Hat's Virtual Classroom and Slate. This webinar will equip you with best practices for effectively integrating our Virtual Classroom and Student Messaging Application into your course.
Turning Technologies
This training will cover the setup of Turning Point, how faculty use the receiver, how to create a polling presentation in PowerPoint, and how to integrate or create sessions.
Zoom
This training will introduce you to the Zoom interface, it's integration into Blackboard, and how to conduct online classes and office hours.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| May 18 | 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM | Online | Online |
|---|
Collaborative Groups
Join us as we dive into online group work and learner-learner collaboration. We’ll discuss best practices, the tools in Blackboard, how to apply them in your course, the technology and multimedia available. There will also be an opportunity to get hands-on Blackboard practice in creating, managing, assigning, and grading group work.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| June 16 | 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Online | Online |
|---|---|---|---|
| June 18 | 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM | Online | Online |
| July 14 | 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Online | Online |
| July 16 | 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM | Online | Online |
Microlectures
Microlectures, aren’t just for School House Rock. As we begin to relax health and safety protocols, Face-to-Face teaching is coming back in a big way. However, should everything we practiced in remote teaching go away? Students are now more than ever looking for easy ways to consume content as they start becoming more mobile. Microlectures are a great way to help meet those needs This training, Microlecture Fundamentals will show you some of the design thought that should go into microlectures and how to use the tools supported by UTRGV to leverage cutting edge videos with little to no production budget. Join us to learn how to plan, record, and share your microlectures with your students.
| Date | Time | Brownsville Campus | Edinburg Campus |
| June 14 & 15 | 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Online | Online |
|---|---|---|---|
| July 12 & 14 | 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Online | Online |