Health Sciences Edition Newsletter

Health Sciences Edition: June 2024

Plan Ahead For Your Fall Course

Gear up for an exceptional Fall 2024 semester! We're here to supercharge your success with a range of support services, from course building and new course design to learning assessments, group training, course quality reviews, and multimedia creation. Need to tweak online materials, craft new courses, design impactful assessments, ensure top-notch course quality, or create captivating digital content? We've got it all covered. Just log in to the ITS self-service portal and fill out the project request form, schedule an ITRS Consultati on, or visit us in SSOM 180 on Wednesdays (11am-2pm) and Thursdays (9am-12pm) with no appointment necessary. We're excited to assist you in making this semester your best one yet!

Get Ready for the New VoiceThread

The new VoiceThread is now available to all Loyola faculty and students. This update includes an accessible, user-friendly interface design as well as enhanced navigation and commenting workflows. Learn all about these new features and functionality by attending an upcoming webinar. You can also find additional information about this new experience by visiting VoiceThread.

Wednesday, June 12th, 11:00am-12:00pm CT

Important Information Regarding Your Sakai Courses

Loyola has a regular practice in place of deleting Sakai course sites that are older than two years at the conclusion of each spring semester. This clean-up process helps to keep the Sakai system running at optimal performance and avoids incremental costs for content that is no longer used. A permanent record of final grades is maintained in LOCUS. The next course deletion cycle will occur early morning on Friday, July 26, 2024. It will include the following academic terms:

Spring 2021 [1212]
Summer 2021 [1214]
Fall 2021 [1216]
Winter 2021-2022 [1218]
J-Term 2022 [1221]

Please take time to review your older courses and keep what may have future value. There are several methods you can use to download and save a local copy of course content. For step-by-step instructions, visit Sakai Retention Policies.

If you have any questions or need assistance with the instructions provided, please don't hesitate to contact the ITS Service Desk at ITSServiceDesk@luc.edu or 773-508-4ITS, or schedule an appointment using the ITRS Consultations booking page.

Start of School Webinars

If you are new or returning to teach this fall, please plan to participate in all or part of this live webinar series. Topics include Sakai, Zoom, VoiceThread, and Top Hat, as well as statistical and qualitative data analysis, and survey applications. These sessions are designed to help you integrate technology into teaching and learning quickly, while gaining insights into best practices for using each tool. A panel of moderators will be available to answer questions throughout each webinar. For full session descriptions, visit Start of School Webinars.

Statistical Applications for Teaching and Learning

Tuesday, August 6th, 1:00-1:30pm CT

Interactive Learning with Top Hat

Wednesday, August 7th, 1:00-1:30pm CT

Sakai Essentials for Faculty

Monday, August 12th, 1:00-2:00pm CT

Get Ready for the New VoiceThread

Tuesday, August 13th, 2:00-3:00pm CT

Intro to Sakai for Students

Tuesday, August 20th, 2:00-3:00pm CT

Zoom AI Companion

Wednesday, August 21st, 1:00-1:30pm CT

Empowering Learners to Work in Community: Designing for Collaborative Learning

Learning tools designed to facilitate feedback and collaboration can help you save time on designing technical logistics for student activities. Some tools also offer multiple modes of engaging dialogue and feedback between members. Though several learning tools may overlap in learning activity type, such as written discussions or conversations, few offer specifically collaborative engagement adaptable for a variety of activities as much as VoiceThread. Read the full article.