Webster’s Online Writing Center is expanding its services!  Over the past year, this free service has become available to all graduate students at Webster St. Louis as well as any student (undergraduate or graduate) on our extended campuses or in Online Programs.  Now the OWC is ratcheting its maximum turnaround time down from five to three business days.  Each paper submitted to the OWC receives extensive comments and suggestions for improvement from trained writing coaches. Instructions for sending papers to the OWC via email are available at here, or students can use the “Writing Assistance” button on the left side of their WorldClassRoom sites.

Kurzweil 3000 software launched

Students, faculty, and staff at the Webster Groves campus are invited to explore Kurzweil 3000, the latest development in learning software. Kurzweil is a comprehensive package including synthesized reading, OCR, digital annotation, test-designing, test-taking, and word-processing capabilities.  The program is available at workstations in the Library and the Academic Resource Center, and can be installed by request on any Webster-registered computer.  For more information or to schedule a training session, call Natasha Baebler at 314-246-8699, email her at baeblena@webster.edu, or look out for our Kurzweil workshop at the Faculty Development Center this coming fall!

New RSS integration in WorldClassRoom

RSS, a standard web format, is used to deliver content that is updated frequently, including blogs, podcasts, and news. RSS, or Rich Site Summary, solves one of the most time-consuming problems for those who frequent the web - visiting sites repeatedly to locate new content.

Instead of visiting each website individually to see what’s new, you can “subscribe” to an available websites’ RSS feed using either RSS feed software or a web service, such as Google Reader. The updates then come to you - similar to email, but without the email, clutter, and spam. You launch the software or service and presto! All the latest published content from your subscribed websites is downloaded and available for reading from all your subscribed websites. So, those 20 or 30 websites you visit everyday could mean one or two clicks to your RSS reader for updated content.

RSS capabilities have been integrated with WorldClassRoom. You can now take the RSS feed you subscribe to, or one you created from your own blog, wiki, or podcast and add it as a resource within WorldClassRoom for your students to quickly access frequently updated content on external websites such as iTunes U, blogs, wikis, podcasts, and numerous news and information websites. It can now all be at your students fingertips within WorldClassRoom.

The pedagogical impact of RSS is significant. It's now easier than ever for faculty and students to create, publish, and subscribe to content. Faculty and students can subscribe to interesting content and be provided with the latest commentary and news. Or, faculty and students can use one of many services available to publish their own content on a blog, wiki, podcast, and more. The resulting RSS feed can then be shared and subscribed to by colleagues and students.

To learn more about how to use RSS in your course or in WorldClassRoom, contact Instructional Support Services.

TurnItIn integrated with WorldClassRoom

Over the last seven years, more than 30,000 papers have been submitted by Webster faculty to the TurnItIn plagiarism prevention service.  We are pleased to announce that at the beginning of the Fall 2008 semester, the TurnItIn service will be even easier for you to use with your student’s assignments.

Each and every course home page in WorldClassRoom can now has the ability for you to easily create an assignment for your students to submit papers for instructor review, checking for matching content from the internet, journals, and other papers in the process.  Those that have used TurnItIn in the past know that this new process will save much time by removing the need to 1) create an account, 2) create a course, 3) enter a course roster, 4) create an assignment, and 5) finally uploading the papers.  Now, teachers simply use the “Content Link” option in WorldClassRoom to create a TurniItIn assignment.  When the student is ready to submit their paper to the instructor, they log in to the course home page to, well, turn it in.

For those unfamiliar with TurnItIn, here is a brief description.  TurnItIn generates “originality reports” of student papers, color coding matching text it finds from the Internet, scholarly journals, databases, and periodicals, as well as papers that have been submitted by other students at other institutions and Webster, including the very class and assignment you are working with.

TurnItIn is designed to help deter plagiarism as well as to help teachers identify it in action as a means to help students learn the criteria of academically sound writing.  For more information on Webster’s plagiarism prevention efforts, visit: http://www.webster.edu/faculty/plagiarism

GradeMark: edit and return papers online

One amazing new feature to accompany the new TurnItIn integration is called GradeMark, a tool that lets student submitted papers be edited with your mouse and keyboard in the same way you would use a pen (and more).  Here’s how it works.

Students submit their paper via a TurnItIn assignment that has been created by the instructor in WorldClassRoom.  The instructor returns to the assignment, and clicks the GradeMark icon next to the student’s name.  The paper will open in a new window, allowing the instructor to use either a highlighter tool with a comment box, or a free form text to provide feedback on student writing.  The instructor can enter general comments and even a grade, and the paper is automatically “returned” to the student by accessing the same place they turned the paper in.

While GradeMark doesn’t offer the extreme portability of paper and pen, it does have a few cool features to help save time:

The Comment Clipboard  allows you to provide the same written feedback without having to retype it for each student.

The QuickMark feature has built-in Format and Composition libraries that allow out to drag and drop edits over student text.  Instead of seeing simply an edit mark, the student gets an explanation of what was wrong.  Custom QuickMark libraries can be created as well, and even shared with others.

An instructor can build Rubrics to be used when reading a students paper, letting them calculate grades based with a few clicks of the mouse.  Students can see their strengths and weaknesses after the paper has been returned to them.  Rubrics can be saved and used with multiple assignments and can even be exported and shared with others.

Instructors can view Statistics in the form of charts to see how students progress through assignments, how they compare to the class average, and  the frequency of Rubric and GradeMark items to help the instructor identify common strengths and weaknesses.

Faculty Podcasting taking off at Webster

Podcasting is a collection of digital media files, which is distributed over the Internet, often using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers.

Faculty, staff and students can create an audio file or an enhanced audio file with pictures or videos and make it available to any person who has access to the Internet. After posting the audio file to a designated space on a website, the file can then be downloaded and viewed/heard by other Internet users either on a computer or MP3 player. One does not need an iPod or other MP3 player to access a podcast as they can be, and most often are, viewed on a computer through the use of iTunes. Just posting recorded audio files on a websites is not technically considered podcasting—the term indicates the use of RSS for automatic download of new files.

Podcasting is a tool that can provide a personalized approach to education and can give the instructor an opportunity to use more class time for active learning. The use of podcasting can encourage creativity, scholarship and individual enterprise in students and faculty as well as providing an opportunity to educate students using alternatives to traditional methods.

iTunes U is one method of delivery that is being considered here at Webster. iTunes U is a service provided by Apple where universities can host educational content which is delivered via podcasting. This is a free service. The content can be public or private and is available 24/7.

The Faculty Development Center has created a new podcasting room.  This quiet room in the FDC suite on the 4th floor of the Emerson Library has room for 2 or 3, a variety of recording equipment, and Mac or PC for capturing and editing podcasts.

Here at Webster University a faculty member could record these types of files and upload them to their web-enhanced class so that the files are only accessible to class members. They can also be delivered from a faculty member’s personal webspace. The Instructional Support Specialists have been working with individual faculty members to develop content for podcasts to be used in classes for the fall.

New page assists with Fair Use decisions

Copyright and fair use law remains one of the most complex legal areas due to the fact that it is intentionally vague.   Each institution must determine its own guidelines according to its interpretation of the law and its level of acceptable risk.  In 2004, a University-wide committee drafted the University’s fair use policy and guidelines, which were approved by the Academic Affair Council and Faculty Assembly.  Since then, we have heard from faculty that there is a need for a simpler way to address fair use issues and questions. 

We are pleased to announce that the University’s fair use web page (available at http://www.webster.edu/faculty/fairuse) has been redesigned to make it easier to find answers to specific fair use questions.  You can now search the University’s fair use guidelines by a specific use, e.g., “using copyrighted materials in multimedia projects,” and by format, e.g, all fair use guidelines for using articles, DVDs, web pages, etc.  

Also included in this redesigned page is a place for faculty to pose fair use questions that may not be answered yet.  As we received these, we will work with appropriate University offices to determine the fair use guidelines and post them on this evolving web page.

Plagiarism resources for students and faculty

Two distinct websites have been developed by the Faculty Development Center, Emerson Library, Academic Resource Center and Student Affairs in collaboration with the Office of Academic Affairs to support academic integrity at the university. 

The student plagiarism website (available at http://www.webster.edu/students/plagiarism) has been designed to be formative in nature and includes tutorial modules on how to recognize and avoid plagiarism, how to quote and paraphrase effective, and how to cite appropriately using a variety of style formats. 

The faculty plagiarism webpage (available at http://www.webster.edu/faculty/plagiariam) has been designed to include best practices on teaching students about plagiarism so it can be avoided;  developing assignments that deter plagiarism; and using Turnitin as a revision and teaching tool. 

In addition, should these efforts fail, University policy information as well as a plagiarism agreement form are provided for first-time incidents of plagiarism.  The agreement form can be used as an important teaching opportunity in promoting academic integrity and avoiding future instances of plagiarism.  Faculty are encouraged to incorporate these resources into their courses whenever writing assignments are required.