Our second and final SPARK Community of Practice Lunch of the semester will be Thursday April 24th, 11:45-1:00. For this event we will be revisiting a topic from our Fall series of events: Strategies for Using SPARK in Large Classes.
Our guest speakers will be Professors John Gerber and Susan Han, both from Plant, Soil & Insect Sciences. They will discuss how they have used SPARK in their large courses (100+ students) and what has worked well for them. Specific topics they are planning to address include: incorporating online quizzes to open up class time and using assignments and quizzes in SPARK to manage student submissions of work.
The event will include time for open discussion and a demonstration of StudyMate: a new tool for generating study guide style material such as self tests, quizzes, and simple “game-style” content for delivery via SPARK. We announced StudyMate last semester and now have some feedback from instructors who have used it we can share with you as part of this demonstration.
If you are interested in attending this event, please follow this link to the registration form:
http://www.umass.edu/accoprod/workshop/register.php?s=s08sparkcop
About the SPARK Community of Practice
“SPARK Community of Practice” is an interest group for faculty and instructors who are interested in discussing the successes, challenges and best practices they have discovered while using SPARK as well as finding out about the newest tools and features available. These sessions are intended as forums for faculty-centered discourse. If you are interested in hands-on training in these tools, we are happy to provide it through the Instructional Media Lab (instruct@oit.umass.edu or 545-2823). Faculty have priority for these sessions when seats are limited.