FTTC 2024: Focus on Teaching and Technology Conference

This session will introduce a number of games that have been developed or adapted to increase student engagement across disciplines and fit various modes of instruction including lectures, discussions, reviews, and more! These games and accompanying resources will include digital options (PlayingCards.io, Google Dice, etc.) that can support remote learning as well as games played face-to-face (Chameleon, Jenga, etc.) that can encourage more interaction from students within the classroom.  Participants will also get to begin developing or adapting games for their own classes through “Game-Storming” sessions and prompts provided in a session workbook!  

H5P is a free tool that any faculty can use to create interactive course content. This session will allow participants to see how we created a customized, interactive experience/manual for students to supplement Anatomy lab activities.

Enjoy lunch as you listen to lightning round introductions (~5 minutes each) presented by faculty and instructional designers sharing their favorite tools for their teaching. Learn about new tools or new ways to use some favorites.

From 12:30- 1:00 participants in this session will hear from the following speakers:

Jana Gerard: Chrome Extensions that Save Time: Learn what a Chrome extension is, how to install extensions, how to be safe when selecting extensions, and be introduced to some extensions that help faculty and save time. These extensions include LastPass, TabCloud, Google Scholar, Google Translate, Ad Blocker, Equatio, and more.


Elizabeth Dorrsom: Encouraging Undergraduate Course Engagement Through Anonymous Programs: Participants will learn how to use Padlet, Quizizz, and Mentimeter to encourage undergraduate course participation.

Amanda Joyce: Using Google Alerts to Enhance Your Teaching: This session will focus on how instructors can use this tool to combat indecision and encourage discussion in the classroom with cat memes!

Jerol Enoch: Lucid and Figjam: What can you do with an infinite whiteboard? Well, the possibilities are in…credible. Come and see what Lucid and Figjam can do for you

They keep telling us that AI is the future of education. But how does AI actually work? When you type text into ChatGPT, an ensemble of technologies spring into action to predict the response you'll be happy with: we'll open the hood and take a look at them; and in doing so, we'll build intuition for where this technology is headed and what it means for your classroom in the near and long-term.

Can our teaching affect actual change in behavior?  In this session we will highlight the results of a study on what effect a targeted educational module on privacy literacy had on the social media sharing behaviors of 1st and 2nd year college students.  On a practical level, this presentation will demonstrate how YOU can easily implement some of the impressive features in the H5-P interactive book and the Perusall marking tool.

This session will show you how to use OneNote with MS Teams to help instructors teaching multiple sections set up their individual sections of master courses for asynchronous online instruction and communicate issues that may arise while teaching.

In 2024, Google's announcement regarding the discontinuation of Jamboard raised significant concerns within the educational community. This presentation will include various challenges and opportunities presented by the discontinuation of Jamboard and the subsequent need for educators to explore alternative interactive whiteboard (IWB) solutions. Alternative IWB applications will be discussed. This session will involve interactive activities, enabling participants to engage directly with technology tools and actively discuss technology-related topics.

It's time syllabus publishing got simple. Over 400 colleges and universities utilize Simple Syllabus, 10 of which are in Missouri, including UMKC, S&T and MCCKC. Simple Syllabus is a centralized, template-driven platform that enables instructors to quickly personalize and publish interactive class syllabi—directly within the LMS.

This session will introduce new process-oriented tools to cultivate academic integrity and higher-order thinking skills in students. It will also discuss how students can be allowed to use AI in a safeguarded manner. Participants can expect to learn from the co-presenter's experiences and depart with numerous new ideas to implement in their classes.