Hi!

I am also very interested in finding a way to interact with my colleagues and other instructors in need of technical and pedagogical support. We have Blackboard, and I could easily set up a BB Organization with a Q&A discussion forum, but access would then be restricted to faculty at my institution. Also, Blackboard is not very flexible in terms of organizing and decentralizing information. Searching options are a joke, in my view, as well.

My first attempt to create something a bit more flexible is here: https://elearningxxi.blogspot.com/2020/03/solo-tienes-que-preguntar.html, a Qualtrics survey for Q&As embedded on a blog post that also links to previous questions and responses. This allows for anyone to ask questions and see my responses (after I post them), but it's not exactly the interaction I am looking for. I have been looking for free platforms or services to set up a simple --yet easy to organize by topics-- Q&A, but the ones I found did not meet my needs. I really miss Wikispaces, as I think it would have been a good platform, open to anyone, to compile and organize information for the community by the community.

I am also active on Twitter (see here a thread on basic recs for instructors teaching online for the first time: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1238118735375937537.html?fbclid=IwAR12tEtwdllbLsngnMJmdmSZiIpkKG2jYa6KPHLAIkzHVc2lC72c37FGPzA) and other social networks, and am trying to answer as many questions as I can, but as you point out, not everybody is on social media. 

So I am open to all your ideas,


Esperanza Román-Mendoza, Ph.D.
Graduate Studies Director
Associate Professor of Spanish at George Mason University
On Twitter at @eromanme


From: llti@lists.iallt.org <llti@lists.iallt.org> on behalf of Nicholas Swinehart <nswinehart@uchicago.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2020 1:42 PM
To: llti@lists.iallt.org <llti@lists.iallt.org>
Subject: [LLTI] Ways for instructors within one institution to collaborate, communicate
 
Hello all. Like all of you, we're working hard to support our instructors during this difficult period. But I'd also like to open channels of communication for our instructors to discuss and ask questions amongst themselves. (This, like many other things, could/should have been in place before now! But here we are.)

Of course I can imagine many ways this could be done, but am curious of what you all have done/are doing. I also want to minimize barriers to participation (e.g., not everyone uses Facebook/Twitter, not everyone wants to install a new app).

Thank you all!

--

Nicholas Swinehart
Multimedia Pedagogy Specialist
University of Chicago Language Center, Cobb 211
773-702-8006

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