Mission and Vision

Mission
Through programs, workshops, communities of interests, and peer-to-peer partnerships, EPSY Distance Education’s mission is to:

• Provide opportunities for instructional development through reflection and collaboration.
• Consult with faculty on challenges and opportunities in technology-enhanced instruction.
• Assist in major and minor revisions of fully online course offerings through instructional design and review of instructional materials.
• Support faculty in the integration of new technologies and techniques in all distance education modalities, including online, hybrid, hyflex, and emergency remote instruction.

Vision
EPSY Distance Education aims to provide faculty with opportunities for:

• Time and space to break out of teaching silos with supportive colleagues.
• Implementation of high impact practices in online learning.
• Developing scholarship of online teaching and learning.

FLC-Lite

An Abbreviated Faculty Learning Community
EPSY Distance Education would like to extend an invitation to join a Faculty Learning Community on Online Teaching. The FLC will be of interest to those who are teaching online, have taught online, or plan to teach online. This FLC will operate on an abbreviated timeline as a “FLC-Lite” (rather than the one-year timeline of a traditional FLC).

• Read the Fall 2022 Call

Outcomes from previous FLC-Lite groups

McCorkle, S., Juntune, J., Ramos, H., Ramos, S., & Whiteside, E. (2022, April 6, 13, 20, and 27). Combating “Study Sites” through engaging assignment re-design [Conference presentation]. ITLC Lilly Online Conference.

McCorkle, S., Juntune, J., Ramos, H., Ramos, S., Whiteside, E., & Kao, S. (2022, June). How to keep your students’ work off study sites. The Teaching Professor. Magna Publications.

* Access to The Teaching Professor is provided by Texas A&M University Libraries.

Peer Review of Online Teaching

SEHD’s Development-Focused Peer Review of Online Teaching
The School of Education and Human Development has adopted OSCQR as part of a development-focused peer review of online teaching and course development.*

The Peer Review of Online Teaching consists of three phases and was informed by Nancy Van Note Chism’s Peer Review of Teaching: A Sourcebook, David Gosling’s use of Genuine Peers in development-focused peer reviews, and the POD Network’s ethical guidelines for faculty development.

• Phase One: Pre-conference to establish goals.
• Phase Two: Observation of synchronous and asynchronous teaching.
• Phase Three: Post-conference to discuss findings.

SEHD faculty complete two modules in Traintraq prior to joining a peer review. To get started, visit education.tamu.edu/oscqr

*This research is supported by a contribution from the POD Network.

Faculty Experimental Technology

One Button Video Kiosk
A portable one button video kiosk is available for faculty who wish to record short, one-take videos. Simply insert your flash drive and click the foot pedal when you’re ready to start the recording. Press again to stop the recording. Your video is automatically saved to your flash drive as an MP4 video file.

Portable Lightboard
The Lightboard is an illuminated dry erase board made of clear plastic. Place the Lightboard between you and the camera and write/draw as usual. Mirror flip your video so your handwriting appears correct when viewing the video recording.

TAMU Technology Resources

Zoom Plug-in for Canvas
The Zoom plugin for Canvas provides a unique interface for you and your students. By scheduling your Zoom sessions for students inside of Canvas, the recordings can also be accessed from within your Canvas course.
How-to:
Schedule and record your meeting in Canvas

Zoom Cloud
You can record Zoom meetings directly to the Cloud and share them with students. Texas A&M’s paid version of Zoom provides this feature. (The free version only lets you save the video to your computer.) Storage space is limited. This option is useful for occasional meeting recordings.
How-to:
Record your meeting to the cloud

YouTube
There are some advantages of using YouTube to host your videos. YouTube’s speech to text functionality can be used to quickly create accurate subtitles for video captioning. You can set your video to be unlisted and disable comments for better privacy.
How-to:
Correct your subtitles for better accessibility
Set your video to Unlisted and Disable Comments

Transcripts in Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365’s transcribe feature produces a voice to text transcript. Simply upload your audio file into the Microsoft 365 version of Word (the cloud version that runs in your browser). Transcripts can be formatted in paragraphs for qualitative data analysis or in the form of short phrases with timestamps for creating video captions.
How-to:
Create an audio transcript in Word

Snagit
Snagit is made by TechSmith and is a very basic screen recorder. The Texas A&M sponsored license can be purchased for $18 from https://software.tamu.edu.
How-to:
Record your screen with Snagit

Camtasia
Camtasia is also made by TechSmith. It is a teacher-friendly video editor and screen recorder. The Texas A&M sponsored license can be purchased for $18 from https://software.tamu.edu.
Tutorials are available on the Techsmith website:
https://www.techsmith.com/tutorial-camtasia.html

Events

List of Available Workshops (PDF)