Support for Academics
Members of the Learning and Applied Innovation team collaborate with faculty, staff, and students to enhance the educational experience at Colgate. We provide access to digital tools, resources, and instructional design services to support teaching and learning. Our team regularly writes about the teaching practices we support, the technologies we are exploring, and the ways we support the design of learning experiences for the Colgate community. You can read more on our team blog: The Learning and Applied Innovation Digital Garden.
Educational Technology Tools
Moodle is Colgate's enterprise learning management system (LMS), which supports teaching and learning activities across all courses. Faculty use Moodle to provide access to course materials, facilitate communication, distribute and collect assignments, conduct online assessments, and maintain Gradebook records.
Google Workspace for Education is Colgate’s centrally-supported productivity and collaboration platform. The following familiar set of Google apps are used by faculty, staff, and students to perform a range of tasks:
- Gmail
- Docs
- Drive
- Sheets
- Forms
- Calendar
- Sites
Polling technologies (e.g., classroom response systems, or “clickers”), employ the use of dedicated hardware, or web-based software and mobile devices to collect real-time feedback from learners.
Colgate Domains provides faculty and students with hosted space on the web and digital tools for creating websites. Colgate Domains provides access to various platforms for web publishing (WordPress, Omeka, Scalar, etc.) in support of connected learning and innovative approaches to teaching, scholarship and creative work.
Ensemble has been replaced by Panopto.
Ensemble was Colgate’s video and audio streaming media server and Ensemble Anthem was its associated screen recording tool. Both Ensemble and Anthem have been replaced by Panopto.
To ensure continued access to your video and audio recordings, please note:
-- Recordings stored in Ensemble before September 2021 have been migrated to Panopto (Note: Ensemble recordings made after 9/1/21 will be migrated to Panopto in the near future).
-- All links to Ensemble content will work until July 2022.
-- For the rest of the 2022 calendar year, all links (URLs) for recordings originally stored in Ensemble will be automatically redirected to those videos migrated to Panopto. Ensemble users must check that all needed Ensemble recordings have been migrated to Panopto for this to work.
-- To ensure continued access to all recordings, update the links to your recordings using the Panopto share address before December 31, 2022.
Panopto is a cloud based platform for recording and sharing video content and is freely available to all faculty, staff, and students. Panopto users can create video recordings and share them within courses, groups, or broadly amongst the Colgate community.
Web-based annotation is the digital version of adding highlights, comments, notes and other marginalia to print-based texts and documents. "Hypothes.is" is a free online tool that enables faculty and students to make their annotations visible to their peers.
Gradescope (www.gradescope.com) is a web-based tool designed to streamline and standardize the assessment of paper-based, digital, and code assignments. It supports problem sets and projects as well as worksheets, quizzes, exams, and papers.
SensusAccess is an online document conversion tool that allows Colgate students, faculty, staff, and alumni to convert documents into a range of alternative formats including audio, HTML, text, e-book, and braille. SensusAccess can also convert otherwise inaccessible documents such as image-only PDFs, JPGs, or MS PowerPoints into more accessible formats.
SensusAccess is also integrated with Moodle, allowing students and faculty to submit files for conversion from within a Moodle course.
Training and Instructional Design
Instructional designers within the Learning and Applied Innovation group have grounded knowledge in teaching and learning, and partner with faculty, staff, and students to assist in the design of learning experiences. Our practice areas focus on: evidence-based implementation of technology in education, understanding the affordances of digital technology for teaching and learning, design of course activities/projects using digital media, exploration of new & emerging technologies, and assessing the efficacy and learning impact of technology use. We offer 1:1 and small group consultations to identify needs and support the brainstorming and development of project ideas.
ITS Training offers both instructor-led and self-paced workshops open to all members of the Colgate community. We provide office productivity training in the Google Suite and Microsoft Office Suite, as well as Adobe Creative Cloud and other technologies used at Colgate, such as Moodle, Qualtrics, WordPress, and more.
Please use the links below to browse and register for current workshop offerings:
Using universal design strategies to build a flexible learning environment for students can eliminate potential barriers to learning and result in a more equitable, inclusive learning experience.
Design Daze
Design Daze are 90-minute workshops aimed at helping you take a project from concept to prototype using digital tools that you have access to at Colgate. Each session is independent - come to one, all, or as many as you would like to. These workshops will run from February through April 2023.
Learn more about the Design Daze workshop session topics and schedule
Digital Portfolio Workshop Series
The Digital Portfolio Workshop Series will introduce students to the process of curating and creating a portfolio using WordPress, a popular website creation platform. A digital portfolio can be anything - a blog or a journal, a collection of photography, video clips or written pieces and beyond, or documentation of personal achievements. This workshop series invites students to reflect upon their academic and personal journeys at Colgate, and will develop skills in digital design and publishing for curating their experiences into a portfolio website. This workshop series will take place in February 2023.
Learn more about the workshop sessions, event information and registration
Data Jam Workshop Series
Data slides are not really about the data, they are about the meaning of the data. Are you interested in enhancing your skills to work with data to support your learning and apply it to your coursework? This three-session workshop series will introduce students on how to read the raw data, work with it and make sense of it, and communicate about the data in context to tell a story. There are no prerequisites for this series, just an interest in seeing where the data can take us. This three-session workshop series will take place in February and March 2023.
Learn more about the workshop sessions and register
Learning Spaces
The DLMC is a state of the art computing facility located in Case Library (5th) floor. It serves as an open learning space that can be used as a collaborative studio, a formal classroom, a computer lab, and a showcase for student work. The DLMC provides instruction and integrated support for course-based digital media projects (e.g. digital storytelling, podcasts). The DLMC also loans a range of equipment to support digital media projects.
The VisLab is a digital theater and planetarium for immersive learning and research experiences. This one of a kind space at Colgate displays stars and constellations as well as original content developed for full-dome display.
The Hub is a fledgling makerspace to house and facilitate many of our emerging technologies like 3D printing, 3D scanning, AR/VR, and other maker technologies. It’s a space where students and faculty can work with and explore these tools while being an open space that encourages creativity and trial and error development.
Additional Resources & Services
We offer a service to print course-related academic posters and are available to consult on layout and design.
The lightboard is a glass writing surface (think chalkboard), combined with a video camera setup that allows for the creation of compelling instructional content.
Through our makerspace, the “Hub,” we offer a variety of 3D printing and scanning technologies. 3D printers include fused filament-based machines as well as a high-resolution Formabs printer. Three filament printers are housed just outside the DLMC (5th floor Case Library) for open use by the Colgate community. We also facilitate use and access to various 3D scanners, including two high-end Artec 3D scanners.
Learning and Applied Innovation maintains a variety of platforms, computers, and gear to facilitate the usage of augmented and virtual reality in the classroom and on an individual basis. We provide consultation on the use of these technologies and provide facilitation of their use to supplement academic learning.
Colgate facilitates and supports the use of small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones) for academic applications. We maintain a fleet of FAA registered sUAVs and can work with students and faculty to explore and safely incorporate these vehicles into academic research projects.
The Teaching and Technology Micro Grant program provides funding for faculty members to explore and experiment with digital technologies to enhance teaching and learning. Faculty members may request up to $500 to support the purchase of software or hardware that will be used in one or more courses.
Description: Colgate had over 200 classrooms and mixed use and event spaces. Keeping these important learning environments up-to-date and working well, and ensuring your experience is smooth and consistent, is our top priority. Most spaces have a room computer and projection system, while many have sound systems.
Availability: Classroom spaces are available as scheduled through the Registrar. EMS can be used to schedule other spaces, pending the approval process through EMS.
Prerequisites:
Requesting a Training or a Modification to a Classroom: Contact the ITS Service Desk
Accessible technology draws from principles of universal design, enabling users to interact with technology in ways that work best for them. Whether you want to ensure that the content you create is accessible or are looking for ways to make your computer work easier, there are many tools to help you.
Visit Tech for Enhanced Access to learn more about the technology available at Colgate to promote accessibility including:
- Captioning and transcription
- Creating accessible documents
- Assistive technology for reading, writing, magnification, etc.
Ask for Help
If you are unable to find the information you need in the documentation available online, the ITS Service Desk is available to assist.