New VoiceThread Assignment types

Voicethread.com
A video about the new VoiceThread Asssignment tool
A video about the new VoiceThread Assignment tool

Get ready for new VoiceThread assignments! A number of courses and institutions have adopted already, and we’re looking forward to having everyone else upgrade by June. If you haven’t gotten started with the new features yet, please check out the resources here.

What’s new?
Too much to list here! Some highlights are:

  • A streamlined interface
  • More control for instructors
  • Editable assignments
  • A “student gallery” so students can easily see classmates’ VoiceThreads
  • Better feedback for students

Getting Started

If you are using VoiceThread in your Learning Management System, you can start using new assignments in your courses right away. Turn it on for some courses and leave it off for others until you feel comfortable.

If you are a VT administrator, you can require all courses to remain on the old version of assignments or move everyone to the new version immediately instead. You have full control over when and how your institution updates.

Is there any interruption?
Absolutely not! All of your older assignments will continue to work seamlessly, so you don’t need to rebuild anything or warn your students about an interruption. There is no down time as you transition, and no back-end technical work is required.

Do I have to use new assignments?
Not yet. You can start exploring and using new assignments today, but it is optional for now. You have until June 30, 2021 to migrate at your own speed, and then all remaining courses will be updated automatically.

Where can I get more training?
Join us for one of our live walkthroughs! Workshops are open to everyone, and each one will be recorded so you can watch it on demand later.

February 16 at 1:00pm ET
March 9 at 1:00pm ET

You can also watch the recording of the previous workshop we offered on this topic.

Thank you for your partnership while we worked on this major update! We can’t wait for you to see what we’ve been doing.

The VoiceThread Team

Zoom advice

3 Zoom App Tips that fixes many of the tickets we have been seeing:

We also have a troubleshooting page for zoom that can be found here:  https://it.stonybrook.edu/help/kb/zoom-troubleshooting-tips-signing-in-microphone-blackboard-general-issues

Thanks to Julie & Nichole for their tips as always!

 

Where Can an Instructor Turn ASR On and Off in Echo360?

SBU will be setting Echo360 to automatically produce Automatic Speech Recognition after a recording is finished.  This will bring it into line with Zoom and VoiceThread which already do this.

If the instructor would like to turn this back off, they can follow this link:

Enable or Disable Automatic Transcriptioning for a Section (ASR)

image of setting panel in echo360

A Comparison of Automatic Captioning in Various Streaming/Recordings Solutions we Presently Have at SBU

The first demo is inside of Google Meet.  While we are a Google Apps campus, the fact that we can record right now freely inside of Google Meet is actually a feature that Google turned on during COVID-19, and not something that normally is included.

Google Meet does have a live captioning feature (run by computers) that comes with Meet.  However, as you can see in the screen shot below and compared to the recording, not only does it not give you any documentation of that live captioning afterwards, in the form of a transcript or regular closed captioning, it even disappears from the recording as well.  (How rude!)

screen shot of live Google Meet session

Recording from Google Meet

screen shot from recording of same meeting:

screen shot of google meet recording

Now in Zoom.

Screen Shot:

screen shot from live re

To get the live captions, I shared my screen with Google Slides and turned on live captioning.  This also does not produce a transcript at the end, BUT the live captions are captured in the recording, unlike Google Meet.  On the other hand, because I recorded to the Cloud in Zoom, an entirely new ASR caption file is created after the recording is done being processed.

Here is a screen shot showing both the live captions and the new post process created captions at once:

live captions and post processed captions shown together in screen shot

Here is the actual Zoom recording**:

https://stonybrook.zoom.us/rec/share/84usuh4yyp2J_qor9mlnr6lpenOhsYZFfpRzq1JqmvHwa4YEXzR7QO196J0VAZzY.nFjtJGL8UW_ohU2W Passcode: 8?Lq4Jrj

And last but not least, a recording with echo360.  This time the slide that I throw up to get live captioning leaves google out entirely.  This one I use MS Powerpoint for the live captioning.  This would have behaved the same way in Zoom.

One of the nice things about echo360 is that the viewers can decide how big some of the components are (using the Source pull down option), so it is possible to give those automatic captions a bit more window real estate for easier visibility.

Keep in mind, that the automatic captions in a recording are visibly seen, as I showed in Zoom and echo360, but are not screen readable.  The post processed captions or transcripts are screen readable.  On the other hand,  the Google Meet recording does not show them at all in the recording and has no post process ASR capability built in.

Final break down:

Google Meet Zoom Echo360
live captions Yes Yes* Yes*
live captions visible in recording No Yes Yes
streams live Yes Yes Yes
records For now Yes Yes
ASR post process No Yes when recorded to cloud Yes if turned on
*If used with another application such as Google Slides or MS Powerpoint and the screen is being shared

 

**  Don’t be hating on my COVID-19 pants!

SUNY Virtual Symposium on Adaptive Learning

 

Someone wrote me and asked what Adaptive Learning was.  Her is my quick answer:

“The idea of Adaptive Learning, is that there is a program monitoring the understanding/progress of the student, that can shift what their next course of action is (a reading, or quizzing, etc) based on performance.  So it has built in remediation, and possibly acceleration, depending on the actual platform.  Some of them are made by for profit publishers, and some work largely with open educational resources and funding from grants. They make an interesting case [as a tool] for helping students meet course objectives in a remote environment.”

 

Creating a VoiceThread Assignment that is tied to the Blackboard Grade Center

To create a VoiceThread Assignment, you will go to Build Content -> Mashups -> VoiceThread.
Make sure to enable Grading.
Screen Shot 2020-04-30 at 9.05.25 AM.png
If you forgot to do this part, you will not see the Assignment Builder option in the next step.  You can go back and enable grading if you need to:
1. Edit the VoiceThread link that you’ve already built in Blackboard.
2. Scroll to the grading section and make sure that “Enable Evaluation” is set
to “Yes.”
3. Set the number of points your assignment is worth.
4. Save.Now Click Assignment Builder.

Screen Shot 2020-04-30 at 9.06.56 AM.png
.

After you click on Assignment Builder you will have options of VT assignment types:

This is the Create a VT option:
Notice the option to allow resubmitted assignments
This is the Submit a Comment VT assignment option:
Note the name of my assignment is VT test.
The watch a VT assignment looks much the same where you have to select the already built VT (or create a new VT that you want them to watch).
The Grade Center won’t show that something has been submitted, but as soon as
you enter the grade into the VoiceThread assignment, that grade will be passed
back to Blackboard for you automatically.

Image not Appearing in Test?

This is from the Bb listserv.  I thought it might be of interest.

 

…yesterday we had an instructor report that students could not see images in
test questions, but they could. After extensive testing, we discovered that
if the ‘Display Until’ date has passed, the images will no longer appear.In our situation…
Due to a recent issue of students cheating, the instructor set a 10 or 15
minute time window where students had to start the test.They did this by
using the ‘Display After’ and ‘Display Until’ settings. The test was
setup to present/display “One at a time”. When the ‘Display Until’ date
passed, the images no longer appeared in the test. The test continued to
function as normal and the text is all there, just the images do not
display and instead a broken image icon displayed. If the ‘Display Until’
date was changed to in the future, the images reappeared.

I submitted a support ticket to Bb Support and after submission it gives
you potentially related articles. One of those was a Nov 06,2015 “Article
No.- 000041338- Assessment Images and Other Attached Files Cannot be Viewed
While Inside a Test After Display Until Time”:
https://blackboard.secure.force.com/btbb_articleview?id=kA3700000004EdO

So our particular issue has been around for a while and doesn’t appear is
planned to be fixed anytime soon.

Jeffrey Ries
Applications Administrator/LMS
IT-Educational Technology & Media Services
University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa

Emerging Tech for a Changing Edu

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