The Mail tool in SPARK can be a useful tool for managing communications within SPARK, but it has its limitations. It requires users to log in to SPARK to view any new messages. Some people may wish to have messages forwarded out of SPARK to their UMail. Note: SPARK Mail will only forward messages to your UMail account.…
Category: SPARK
SPARK Tips: Downloading All Assignment Submissions
You can download all of the attachments students have submitted so far for a given assignment from the Assignment Dropbox via the “Create Printable View” Option. First, find your way to the assignments you want to download in the dropbox, this may involve looking at the submitted tab for new materials, or the graded tab if…
Posting to SPARK? Try PDFs.
What’s the best way to post files on SPARK? To minimize confusion (and student emails), we recommend converting Word documents and PowerPoint presentations to PDF before posting on SPARK. PDFs usually open right in the SPARK browser window, and most students already have a free version of Adobe Reader. In contrast, students must first download…
Strategies for Online Quizzing in SPARK
Yesterday I discussed online quizzing in SPARK with several faculty teaching large General Education courses and I thought I’d share some of the strategies we discussed: Give a Practice/Low Stakes Quiz Before you start into your “real” quizzes, give students a short simple quiz that counts for few (if any) points; just so they have…
Start of Semester Tip: When can students access SPARK?
Your students will have access to your Spring 2010 SPARK on Monday January 18th (12:01 AM to be exact.) If you have requested and received a SPARK course, but not yet opened it up and begun building it, your students will see that course listed as when the log into SPARK, but receive a “Course not yet available message”…
Start of Semester Tip: Request SPARK courses through SPIRE
In SPIRE, find the SPARK Course Request Form in the left Menu, under Faculty Home > SPARK Course Request. If you have already requested your SPARK course for Spring 2010, you may check the status of your request in SPIRE. For more information about requesting a SPARK course in SPIRE please see: http://www.oit.umass.edu/spire/for_instructors/class_information/sparkcourse_request.html Courses are…
SPARK Community of Practice: Strategies for Using SPARK in Large Classes
Topic: Using SPARK in Large Lecture Courses Last month, about 15 SPARK users –new and veteran– gathered to enjoy lunch and share strategies for using technology to manage large lecture classes. Presenting were Dan Gerber from the School of Public Health, and John Gerber from the Department of Plant, Soil, and Insect Sciences. Both instructors…
SPARK Community of Practice Lunch – Tuesday November 17th 2009
Academic Computing is pleased to announce the next SPARK Community of Practice Lunch. For our second event of the year, Professors Rachel Mordecai (English) and Wilmore Webley (Microbiology) will join us to share their experiences using SPARK. Topics they are planning to address include managing grades, using discussion boards, posting course content, and collecting student…
Grading SPARK Discussions with Grading Forms is Effortless!
Grading weekly discussions for my online class was a nightmare until Blackboard developed “Grading Forms”. Now grading discussions is as easy as 1-2-3. Instead of spending hours reviewing student posts and grading them accordingly I now spend less than 20 minutes per week grading discussion participation. My students receive up to two points every week…
Getting Bubble Sheet Exam Results into SPARK
Just a quick reminder now that the midterm season is upon us, Academic Computing is running several workshops next week on how to import OpScan “bubble sheet” grades into SPARK. Bring your Excel data from Whitmore and we’ll show you how to convert and upload the exam scores into SPARK as a convenient and secure…
Use WebDAV on a Mac to Manage Your UDrive and SPARK Files
WebDAV (World Wide Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a quick and easy tool for managing your files in UDrive and on SPARK. On a Mac, you can mount your UDrive or your SPARK File Manager directly onto your desktop, allowing you to easily drag & drop (or copy & paste) files between your computer…
Start of Semester Tip: When can students access SPARK?
Your students will have access to your Fall 2009 SPARK on Monday September 7th (12:01 AM to be exact.) If you have requested and received a SPARK course, but not yet opened it up and begun building it, your students will see that course listed as when the log into SPARK, but receive a “Course not yet…