• Assessment Design Decision Tool  

    Assessment Design Decision Tool  

    Starting a new semester offers a chance to renew existing courses or plan new ones, providing an opportunity to enhance assessments. In this blog, we offer an assessment design decision tool. The tool begins by helping you clarify the purpose of your assessment with learning outcomes. Next, it guides you in creating assessments that support students…

  • Choosing the Right Tool for Asynchronous Online Learning

    Choosing the Right Tool for Asynchronous Online Learning

    Asynchronous online learning activities are the ones that students can do in their own time and at their own pace. These activities are an important part of any type of course with an online component. There are several things to consider when choosing the right online tools to use for teaching and learning. In fact,…

  • Towards a Trauma-Informed Syllabus

    Towards a Trauma-Informed Syllabus

    With a new semester right around the corner, you may be looking at revising your course outlines so that they reflect your plans and new ideas for the semester. One way to refresh a syllabus to be inclusive and welcoming to students is to draw on principles of trauma-informed practice. Trauma-informed practice Trauma-informed practice has…

  • Teaching in Teams: Virtual Office Hours

    Teaching in Teams: Virtual Office Hours

    Teams meetings are designed to facilitate ongoing conversation both synchronously and asynchronously. This offers many opportunities for engaging students, but it also means that the way you run virtual office hours may need to change in order to protect the privacy of your students. In this blog post we will look at a couple of…

  • Upcoming Teams Training Sessions

    Upcoming Teams Training Sessions

    CIEL is offering training to help instructors get familiar with Teams for the Fall 2024 semester.

  • Student Orientation to VIULearn & Other Learning Tools

    Student Orientation to VIULearn & Other Learning Tools

    We offer live webinars to introduce students to the learning technologies available at VIU, especially our online course platform VIULearn. Go to our Events Calendar to view the schedule and register for a live orientation webinar! Otherwise, We recorded the orientation so you can watch it whenever is convenient & as many times as you’d…

  • Accessibility in Teams: Best Practices for Running an Accessible Teams Session

    Accessibility in Teams: Best Practices for Running an Accessible Teams Session

    In part one of this series we looked at some of the accessibility tools in Teams and how you can create content to improve accessibility for students. Making sure everyone has an equal opportunity to access, the content of your class session is a great place to start, but there are other things you can…

  • Accessibility in Teams: Creating and Sharing Accessible Content

    Accessibility in Teams: Creating and Sharing Accessible Content

    Synchronous online sessions offer unique challenges and opportunities for accessibility. With some planning and preparation, you can help students with a diverse set of needs to thrive in your Teams class setting. By incorporating best practices to help students who have a variety of accessibility needs, we can also create an environment that is more…

  • Teaching in Teams: Key Features for Instruction and Collaboration

    Teaching in Teams: Key Features for Instruction and Collaboration

    In the first post in this series we looked at what you needed to know to schedule and run a meeting in Teams. In this post we will look at some of the key meeting features that are often used when teaching online: breakout rooms, screen sharing, and chat. The IT department is currently working…

  • Teaching in Teams: Meeting Basics

    Teaching in Teams: Meeting Basics

    This post is the first in a series designed to help transition successful teaching practices that you were doing in Zoom into the Teams meetings software. In this post we will look at the basic things everyone needs to know when using Teams including how to set up a meeting and invite students, what controls…

  • Recharging Assessment with Generative Artificial Intelligence   

    Recharging Assessment with Generative Artificial Intelligence   

    The 2022 surge in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), marked by the launch of ChatGPT, continues to bring critical considerations to how educators assess learning. This blog proposes alternative assessment methods and offers ways that educators can make the most of GenAI. 

  • Upcoming Zooms to Teams Training Sessions

    Upcoming Zooms to Teams Training Sessions

    CIEL is offering a training series through April and May for instructors who will be moving their online synchronous teaching from Zoom to Teams for Fall 2024. Due to the popularity of our Teams 101 session we have added an additional date for that webinar. If you don’t have any experience hosting meetings in Teams,…