TeachOIT: a Blog for People Who Teach with Technology

Due to recent legislation that requires the University to make textbook and course material available to students during registration (HEOA Textbook Provision(PDF)),  a new Class Overview page has been added in SPIRE to allow instructors to publish course information (in the Schedule of Classes).

The page includes an option to link to an online syllabus. Though not required, it’s a great idea to post a syllabus for each class you teach. You can choose to post a full or abbreviated version. Posting even an outline syllabus may result in fewer inquiries from students about next semester’s classes during the enrollment period, and reduced add/drop activity after classes start.

The Easiest Way: Link to your Syllabus on UDrive

To link to your syllabus from SPIRE, you first need to upload your syllabus to a public location on the Web. One quick and easy option is to upload syllabus files into a public folder on your UDrive.

What’s UDrive? UDrive provides members of the UMass community free online storage space.  By default, only you can access the files on your UDrive, but you can also share individual files or folders, with particular members of the UMass community or the entire public.

Here’s how… (more…)

Creating a class email list can be a simple way to keep your students up-to-date with announcements on course events. Instructors can use SPIRE to create, refresh, and delete class email lists. This will generate a single email address that lets you email all the students enrolled in the course at once. 

More information at:

http://www.oit.umass.edu/spire/for_instructors/class_information/mailing_list.html

Tip: Your enrollment will be in flux during add/drop so it is best to not rely heavily on email lists until after your roster has settled down  (usually 2 weeks into the semester).

The addition of photo rosters to SPIRE has been a personal boon to me in terms of learning my students’ names as quickly as possible.

Don’t have access to photo rosters for your own courses yet? Take the FERPA quiz and earn your security certificate to activate this feature in SPIRE:
http://www.oit.umass.edu/spire/for_instructors/class_information/photo_roster.html

The addition of photo rosters to SPIRE last semester has been a personal boon to me in terms of learning my students’ names as quickly as possible. The catch is that the photos of students aren’t always the best depiction of how they currently look (they’re usually taken during their freshman orientation). I’ve taken to using a pen on the photos; adding features like hats, glasses, piercings, longer hair, and a spectrum of facial hair styles in order to “update” them as a reminder to myself of what the students sort of look like today. Quick tip: Boston Red Sox hats are not useful as a unique identifying feature. 

Don’t have access to photo rosters for your own courses yet? Take the FERPA quiz and earn your security certificate to activate this feature in SPIRE:
http://www.oit.umass.edu/spire/for_instructors/class_information/photo_roster.html

You are most likely familiar with SPIRE as the place to go to see your class rosters and submit grades at the end of the semester, but more and more feature keep getting added into SPIRE. Over the summer OIT added a variety of new tools that can help you with managing your courses.

Some of the new SPIRE features that will be of particular interest to instructors:

• Create a Course OIT Account: Create a new OIT account for each course that you are teaching. This comes with an email address, UDrive, a UMass Blog, and Web space.
• Class Photo Rosters: Photo rosters for your class (based off student ID photos) are available to all instructors who earn their Security Certificate or FERPA Certification.
• Create class email lists: Create email mailing lists for the classes you are teaching each term (including summer and winter sessions.)
• Manage your OIT Account(s): Look up your current OIT account(s) and reset passwords. (Particularly useful for instructors in departments that don’t regularly use their OIT accounts.)

Read more about the other new SPIRE features at:
http://oit.umass.edu/spire/whatsnew.html