Academic Tech Tips

VoiceThread ~ Interact, Collaborate, Communicate!

Looking for a way to collaborate and communicate with your students online in a fun, engaging format? Check out VoiceThread which is fully integrated with Sakai, and now offers new features including the option for assignment linking to the Sakai Gradebook.

VoiceThread allows instructors to place collections of media including images, videos, documents, and presentations, at the center of a conversation – wherever and whenever you like! Faculty can use VoiceThread for collaboration and to lead conversations using any mix of text, microphone, webcam recordings, or audio files.

Think of it as a media-rich, interactive “discussion board” of sorts. Start with a PowerPoint slide, photograph, or even video, and record voiceover questions to get the conversation started. Have students create their own VoiceThreads to introduce themselves and share class presentations asynchronously.

For more information about VoiceThread, please visit our website at: http://luc.edu/itrs/teachingwithtechnology/voicethread/ and add the VoiceThread tool to your course site in Sakai to begin exploring.

There’s good news for qualitative researchers at Loyola! The university has moved from a per seat license to a site license for NVivo 10. All faculty are now eligible to use NVivo. If  you require NVivo 10 and you do not yet have an association to the software on your LUC desktop, email helpdesk@luc.edu. Provide the LUC bar code of your computer in the request for the software.

If you already have NVivo 10 associated to your LUC desktop you should upgrade both the service pack and license by doing the following:

1. In All Programs, click on the Loyola Software icon.
2. Choose Statistical Applications.
3. Under Statistical Applications, click on the NVivo 10 SP5 icon to apply the new license code and Service Pack 5.

Students access to NVivo has increased from one open access lab to three:  CLC 710 and 201 at WTC and the Information Commons, 3rd Floor at LSC. The software can be found under Loyola Software > Statistical Applications > NVivo 10 SP5.