Welcome to the Latest Edition!

July 20th, 2021

Good morning Rotman! 

In this week's edition we highlight our on-campus teaching rooms which are available again this year for instructors and TAs who are looking for a quiet space to teach online classes. Information on what you'll find in a remote teaching room and how to book them are included below.

Rotman Digital's instructional designer, Ivan Chow has put together a page highlighting the importance of building a Community of Inquiry in online and dual delivery courses. Students naturally form learning groups in traditional, in-person classes, but careful course design is required to encourage the creation of learning communities online. 

Finally, we highlight new transcription features in Teams and breakout rooms in Zoom. For more information on course design, video creation, and Quercus please visit rotmandigital.ca

If ever you have feedback or questions or would like to schedule an appointment, please contact us at rotmandigital@rotman.utoronto.ca. 
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Book Teaching Rooms for the Fall

Teaching rooms for faculty will once again be available in the fall. These rooms have the recommended hardware (webcam, writable surface computer, 2 screens, etc) and software (Office 365, Adobe, Camtasia, Snag-it, MS teams, Zoom) to allow you to either record asynchronous videos or to deliver synchronous teaching with access to fast and reliable hard-wired internet access. You will need to bring your own USB headset. You can book these rooms by emailing roombookings@rotman.utoronto.ca and typing “Temporary Teaching Group Study Room” in the subject line. Be sure you test the room in advance of your first session.
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Building a Community of Inquiry Online

In traditional in-person lectures, the instructor generally acts as "information provider" while students take on a passive role as "receivers of information". In an online/dual delivery mode, students autonomously acquire background knowledge by reading the assigned course material and harnessing additional available resources. They then engage in discussions with other students to deepen their knowledge on the subject matter. The instructor's role is to design learning activities that facilitate these discussions, to moderate student conversations and to help students apply content knowledge to solve "real-life" problems. Click here to read more.
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MS Teams Live Transcriptions

MS Teams has added a new live transcription function. It is similar to live captioning but instead of overlaying captions on top of the video feed the text appears alongside the meeting video (or audio) in real time. Live transcription includes speaker attribution and time stamping. The transcription can also be downloaded after the meeting has ended. Click here for a detailed guide.
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Managing Breakout Rooms in Zoom

Breakout groups are an essential part of online teaching and learning. In Zoom, you can assign students to groups randomly or pre-assign them before class begins. Click here to read more on creating breakout rooms in Zoom.
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5 Key Lessons from HBS’s Pandemic Teaching Transformation

At the start of the pandemic, educational institutions around the world had to to quickly adjust to online learning. As one might imagine, many lessons were learned from that process. This Harvard Business Review article discusses what they consider to be the 5 most important lessons learned from the big shift to online learning. Click here to read.
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Access previous editions of the newsletter here