Q: How to improve usability for my online course?

A: First - inquire information from your department regarding a usability study.There are usability testing strategies that can help you to identify changes necessary to improve your students' interaction with course materials. Numerous tools are available to address the needs: Mailchimp, IntuitionHQ, and User Testing. You can conduct a brief study to identify strengths and weaknesses of a design. You will learn if students can complete specified tasks and identify how long it takes them to do so etc.

Q: I developed an online version of my course. What is the best way to provide copyright protection at the time when students sell notes to commercial notetaking services?

A: Some faculty include a statement to the syllabus forbidding selling/buying class notes, exercises, quizzes, exams without their written permission. There are no tools to monitor the infringement of copyright when students sell notes to commercial notetaking services (FlashNote/Noteutopia/Notehall, Course Hero etc.).
Copyright protection for online course materials is a grey area. Is it legal or ethical?
There are "legal issues and the general controversy around selling class notes. Notehall and competing platform Course Hero even received a cease and desist letter from the UCSC general counsel, and it also alerted faculty members and undergraduates that the commercialization of class notes is illegal in California." 

Q: How do I check students papers for plagiarism?

A: There is Plagiarism Checker Tool: http://www.plagiarismchecker.com/help-authors.php

You can download it for free: http://www.plagiarismchecker.com/

or Turnitin

https://turnitin.com/static/products/index.php

Turnitin is very powerful but it is not free.

Look for the plagiarism checking tools incorporated into the LMS platform you use. For example, you can create Safe Assignments using Blackboard.
SafeAssign checks all submitted papers against the following databases:

• Internet - comprehensive index of documents available for public access on the Internet
  
  
• ProQuest ABI/Inform database with over 1,100 publication titles and about 2.6 million articles from '90s to present time, updated weekly (exclusive access)
  
  
• Institutional document archives containing all papers submitted to SafeAssign by users in their respective institutions
  
  
• Global Reference Database containing papers that were volunteered by students from Blackboard client institutions to help prevent cross-institutional plagiarism.

Blackboard Help Articles

• About Safe Assignments
• Create & Edit Safe Assignments
• Grade & Manage Safe Assignments
• Understanding Originality Reports
• Direct Submit a Paper for Plagiarism Check

Top 10 FREE Plagiarism Detection Tools for Teachers

Google offers a Scholar Plagiarism Search tool to search " not only plagiarized phrases but also correct missing quotation marks and citations. This software scans your research paper, essay, coursework or dissertation completely from its database of internet resources, past exam papers, past essays, old dissertation papers and published journals."

Q: What 10 Edtech Tools Will Educators Use This Fall?

A: more

Q: I need my online class students to watch "An inconvenient truth" documentary. It is available via Amazon and Netflix streaming for $3.99. How can we make it available to students without them spending money for a streaming service?

A: The question is related to copyright issues. There are educational licensing options but they generally are too expensive or intended for public screening (http://www.swank.com) .

To check where movies are available, use CanIstreamit (http://www.canistream.it/).

There is FAQ article by Peggy Hoon that contains most answers to questions about using copyrighted works in your teaching: http://www.knowyourcopyrights.org/bm~doc/kycrfaq.pdf

Read answer 4, part 2. My conclusion it is to ask students to pay for a movie rent for the screening assignment because of a conflicting situation with TEACH Act obligations.

Q: "Quality" in my online course is a challenge for me. How do I measure student outcome?

A: More artificial intelligence tools are coming to support education. Read about Cerego technology that used adaptive learning approach to enhance online learning.
I also learned that IAIED society journal, International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, is now indexed by ERIC - see http://eric.ed.gov/ and the publications at 
http://eric.ed.gov/?q=source%3A%22international+journal+of+artificial+intelligence+in+education%22

This will make IJAIED far more visible to a broader Education audience. Take advantage, collaborate!

Q: I'd like to use technology more to enhance my teaching. Are any webinars available that cover this topic?

A: SoLS Summer Tech Webinars: Summer Webinar Series: Please join The ASU SoLS Faculty   for a series of technology webinars!   We will discuss easy ideas for incorporating videos, usin...

Q: I enjoy interacting with students in f2f classroom by using clickers for example. How can I recreate this experience online?

A: It is challenging because the most powerful component of polling practice is a real-time feedback. In online classroom the polling still could be used to elicit information from students asynchronously to capture an overall mood of your virtual classroom. Look at some  tools that are available for free: 
TodaysMeet
Padlet
Poll Everywere
Polldaddy
Check the additional resources here.

Q: Do you know if any digitizing approach is available for group projects? In my class groups of students are assigned to build a repository of primary sources and then exhibit their collection.

A: The web publishing platform, Omeka, would work for creating narratives around digital collections. Read about the teaching with Omeka experiences here and here.

Q: How faculty integrate technology in teaching? Could you share some examples?

A: I'd like to point to my colleagues:  Sustainability and success: Teaching with technology | ASU News

Q: What do you use to check student assignments for plagiarism?

A: There is Plagiarism Checker Tool: http://www.plagiarismchecker.com/help-authors.php

You can download it for free: http://www.plagiarismchecker.com/

Check Turnitin  - it worth to pay for effectiveness if you don't have LMS system with integrated tools.

Q: I’ve noticed that some people are using a service called “brainshark” for their audio slideshows. Do you have any information about it?

A: You can narrate your PowerPoint presentation easily by signing up for a free account at brainshark.com.

This service is like Adobe presenter, allowing you to add narration to your presentation and then store it in the cloud. Your presentation is always editable and you will have a link that you can put in your emails, websites and blackboard shells. A couple of caveats.... Since your narrated copy of your presentation is stored on their service, you should consider what to do should their service go away.   

Retrieved from: ASU UTO Meeting Minutes

Q: In order to find valuable information about people and business, students required to perform search on Internet. Can you share some technical tips to make this search safer and less time-consuming?

A: There are many articles in PCWorld that could help. Here is one tip from Sarah Purewal: 
How to Run an Online Background Check for Free:
 "You can also use site-specific searches if you're looking for someone within a school or business. For example: site:pcworld.com "sarah jacobsson purewal" will give a list of search results found only in the PCWorld.com domain." More

Q: I have videos in my course for students to watch in preparation to the next class. I have to summarize the video's content in class because I am not sure that students were watching the videos. Is a "flipped classroom" approach effective?

A: A new study from the Stanford Graduate School of Education flips upside down the notion that students learn best by first independently reading texts or watching online videos before coming to class to engage in hands-on projects. Studying a particular lesson, the Stanford researchers showed that when the order was reversed, students' performances improved substantially. More

Q: The mobile learning seems to be attractive to students in my class. It is easier for them to stay connected while working on a group assignment online. What mobile app would you recommend which is safe to use in a classroom environment?

A: I would recommend ooVoo app - it is free and user-friendly video chat. It can handle up to 12 people at a time. The alternatives are listed here.

Q: I'd like to boost my course to make more relevant to technology my students use (like iPhone or iPad). What platform would be a most modern one with the less challenging learning curve?

A: I would recommend iTunes U app. It gives you access to enormous resources and makes it easy to manage. You can build your course in it in private/public format. It is not an LMS. It has been designed to enhance students/instructor interactions in the flipped classroom or online setting. More

Q: My class is heavy on a video content. Is it any platform available to perform an inside-video search?

A: Panopto is a helpful video platform. You can use it to do recording, broadcasting and inside-video search. The alternatives are listed here

Q: Do you know any effective student response systems for cell phones?

A: With learning/catalytics students use any modern web-enabled device they already have — laptop, smartphone, or tablet to participate in a group activity or test, allowing a teacher to diagnose difficulties when working with students individually. 

Q: Animated videos as course materials are very engaging for students. Is it any way to create them quickly?

A: There is a tool - VideoScribe. See if you like it. Start with Sparcol.com account.

Q: The best format for students outcomes in my online class would be a portfolio. What technology would you suggest?

A: Try Digication software - it opens the lines of communication by combining elements of e-Portfolios and learning networks

More

Q: Where I'll get the code to embed video in my Blackboard course?

A: Use Embedomatron - a new web app called Embedomatron. It automatically optimizes video for use in course learning management systems by:

• Resizing all videos to be 650 pixels wide
• Limiting the amount of corporate branding
• Preventing “Related Videos” from being displayed at the end of video playback
• Generating HTTPS embed code for use on the secure pages on your LMS

Embedomatron currently works with YouTube, Vimeo and ASU CLAS MediaSpace/Relay videos. More platforms will be added soon

Read more: http://teachonline.asu.edu/2013/10/improve-course-videos-embedomatron/#ixzz2s1YLo85A

Q: The LMS I am using for my online course has technical constrains. What platform would you recommend for video discussions, video presentations, group presentations, and poll questioning?

A: YouSeeU is a leading platform for education - online, blended and in-classroom. More

Q: I want to make a group activity in my online course more effective. Is it any tool available that supports peer to peer evaluation?

A: CritViz is a custom online tool for supporting real-time critique, conversation, and peer to peer evaluation of student work in large classrooms. More

CritViz software