Can EdTech help you solve a teaching challenge?

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence manages and supports UIC’s centrally provided Educational Technologies to enhance and facilitate instructors’ teaching. There are some great workshops organized by CATE staff, for example the new Teaching Tidbits series; however, another useful source of EdTech learning for instructors comes directly from the companies that provide UIC with these technologies.

Learn how to use UIC’s supported technologies by joining vendor-led webinars from the comfort of your office or home. Below is a direct link to weekly or monthly training for some of the new tools and popular technologies used by UIC instructors:

1. Acadly is a classroom interactivity tool with features for in-class student response, math-TeX support, and no limits on the number of responses. This is a new tool for UIC instructors! Request a personal demo with an expert from Acadly.
2. Echo360 is a lecture capture and video streaming tool. Join an Echo360 webinar to learn video capture and active learning best practices. They offer updates about new Echo360 capabilities, and discuss research and initiatives for the year ahead.
3. Gradescope is a rubric-based grading application. Join a Gradescope online workshop to learn how you can use this tool to deliver and grade your existing assignments, whether online or in person. Gradescope will offer guidance on how to save time grading and get a clear picture of how your students are doing.
4. iClicker is a classroom response system that allows faculty to create pre-selected or ad-hoc questions that are asked during class. Schedule a training session with iClicker to learn how to use polling. During this one-hour training, iClicker staff will focus on a full product overview.
5. Respondus is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment for tests taken in Blackboard. Join a Respondus webinar to learn how to use LockDown Browser and/or Respondus Monitor with face-to-face and online exams. Respondus staff provide a detailed demonstration of both applications, including enhancements that make Respondus Monitor even more effective and easy to use. (Note: Be sure to check only Instructor Training for LockDown Browser & Respondus Monitor; UIC does not have a central license for Respondus 4)
6. Panopto is a media-streaming and video capture solution. Join a live Panopto webinar to learn how to use video in your teaching.
7. VoiceThread is an interactive collaboration tool available in Blackboard that can be used to encourage student discussion and build community in asynchronous learning settings. Join a VoiceThread webinar to learn how to create VoiceThreads and add them to your Blackboard course as lessons, discussions or assessments. VoiceThread offers several different types of training, please be sure to select the ones related to Blackboard, UIC’s LMS.

If there is any educational technology that you need help with, please reach out to CATE’s support team at LTS@uic.edu and we will be happy to schedule a training session for your group/department/college-level teaching initiative.