PROBLEM: WebDAV on Windows 7 does not connect with SPARK. WORKAROUND: If you are on Windows 7, use www.anyclient.com as a third-party client to connect with SPARK. We have instructions below.
Tag: SPARK
Fall 2010 SPARK Numbers
Requests for SPARK courses continue to roll in, here are the numbers so far for the semester: Number of SPARK courses: 2,184 Number of instructors in SPARK: 1,119 Departments and programs represented: 95 Number of students in SPARK: 23,030 Number of student “seats”: 78,671 (the average student has SPARK for several courses) Largest course in…
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…
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…
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: Getting TAs into SPARK
As the beginning of the semester approaches and faculty continue to prepare for teaching, Teaching Assistants are also being assigned. Academic Computing would like to remind you of the necessary steps for giving TAs access to your SPARK course: For Graduate TAs: If your TA cannot access your SPARK course, confirm with the Academic Scheduling Representative in your department…
Downloading Your Roster
Summer’s here, and you may have started (tentatively!) thinking about next semester’s classes. If you use or have thought about using Excel to manage your student grades, then one of your biggest problems may be figuring out how to enter student data into a spreadsheet without typing in every last student name and ID number…
SPARK Unavailable May 28 & 29
SPARK will be unavailable from 11:59 pm on May 27 to 11:59 pm on May 29 while we perform necessary hardware and software upgrades. We anticipate SPARK will be unavailable for only 2 days; however, unexpected problems could delay resuming service into the first days of the Summer 2009 session. These improvements will keep…
Designing A Hybrid Course: Tips for Making it Work
This is our second post based on a presentation given by Pamela Trafford last month (read the first post here) on using web tools to deliver content for face-to-race courses. Pamela Trafford is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management, and seasoned veteran of online teaching. Strategies for Making it Work Using SPARK in ways that will improve the…
Designing a Hybrid course: Best Practices for using Online tools
Last month I had the opportunity to attended a Center for Teaching session on “Designing Hybrid Courses” given by Pamela Trafford, Senior Lecturer in the School of Management, and seasoned veteran of online teaching. In this session, she provided advice on best practices for teaching hybrid courses; courses that meet face-to-face, but also make use…
Online Survey on Instructor use of SPARK
Academic Computing wants to hear from you about your use of SPARK. We have added a new course to SPARK with a brief (5-10 minute) online survey for instructors to tell us about what they value most about SPARK, what they would change, and what they never use. Please take a few minutes to log…