Thank you for your patience as we all work to get better at remote teaching and learning practices.

To help you keep learning how to best support students at a distance, our Academic and Emerging Technology (AET) team will be holding additional sessions to support your needs for teaching and learning remotely.

Assessing Student Learning with Multiple Options
Wednesday, April 1, at 10 a.m. via Blackboard Collaborate

Blackboard Learn has many tools available to assess student learning. As you identify how you want to assess student learning on any given learning objective, we can help you identify what tools match your assessment goals. This session will cover assignments, tests, surveys, and other gradable interactions among students, and between students and instructors.

Remote Presentations and Breakout Groups in Collaborate Ultra
Thursday, April 2, at 10 a.m. via Blackboard Collaborate

Many classes are upholding the requirements listed on their syllabi to include individual or group presentations while participating in remote teaching and learning. We will provide you with options of how you can support your learning objectives to complete remote presentations or have your students work in breakout groups during live sessions.

NOTE: If some or any of the work can be done in an asynchronous manner, we still recommend that approach. Live sessions are complicated and involve an additional learning curve. We hope to help lessen that learning curve by providing some better practices and approaches.

A few other suggestions:

• Please be mindful that students have other commitments during these changing times and we need to have conversations with the students before changing requirements. Please consult with your students about their availability before switching schedules.
• Remote learning does not equal best practices in distance or online learning. Many universities have had this discussion and all agree that remote learning is a way to conduct what were once face-to-face courses in a different format and yet not be held to the same standards as distance or online learning programs. This is an important distinction to make.

We are working with the best tools we have available to make the best of a situation. This does not mean that you are now conducting a program that must meet distance or online learning standards. Please continue to do the best with what you have, but understand that reality is a changing landscape and our learning environment will continue to need to be fluid in its delivery model.

— Academic and Emerging Technology (AET) Team, ITS

The deadline for submitting Fall 2020 course material adoptions is April 15. The University Bookstore has a simple tool for you to use this adoption season: Follett Discover.

Adopting on time contributes to course materials affordability. By submitting adoptions prior to the due date or by the due date, your campus store has time to source used and rental inventory, which translates to savings for your students. If you consistently use the same book from term to term, partner with the campus store to let them know because this will translate into even larger savings for your students.

Another important aspect that relies on timely textbook adoption is compliance to the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA), which is aimed at making college more affordable and accessible by calling for full disclosure and transparency related to the selection, pricing, and use of course materials when registration for courses begins. HEOA was enacted into federal law in 2010. At Drake University, the Bookstore is the collection agent for textbook adoptions, posting the adoptions submitted and thus ensuring the University’s compliance to the HEOA.

Follett Discover allows you to easily discover, research, and adopt course materials all in one place. In addition to adopting traditional print materials, Follett Discover makes it easy to search and adopt non-traditional materials such as YouTube videos, open education resources, and MOOC content.

Easy steps to access Follett Discover through Blackboard

1. Log into myDrake.
2. Find the Tools channel, scroll down and click the Follett Discover link OR find the Follett Discover channel, and click the Launch Discover link.

For questions about the tool or how it works, contact the Bookstore.

—  Donna Hallstrom, University Bookstore

On Oct. 1, Microsoft will be decommissioning Basic Authentication, an older back-end protocol that allows us to log into email applications, in favor of a more secure method called Modern Authentication.

Modern Authentication is already built-in and enabled in newer versions of Outlook, but there are many other email clients that are incompatible, which will cause them to stop working when Basic Authentication is disabled on Oct. 1, 2020.

Over the next few months, ITS will be installing compatible versions of Outlook on all Drake-owned computers missing this software. If you are using Outlook 2016 or newer on a Drake-owned computer, no action is required.

If you use an older version of Outlook or a third-party email client to access your Drake email account from a Drake-owned computer, personal computer, or mobile device, you have a few options to ensure your access is not interrupted on Oct. 1:

1. Switch to Outlook on the Web. Outlook on the Web is available through myDrake at the My Email link. No software installation or changes are required with this option.
2. Switch to Outlook 2016 or newer. If you are using a third-party mail program, your mail may not be able to be migrated into Outlook.
3. Verify whether your third-party email program or app will work with Modern Authentication. Many email software publishers are updating their software to ensure continued compatibility, but check to make sure yours will work.

The following third-party desktop and mobile apps are currently known to be compatible with Modern Authentication:

• The native Mail app for iOS 11.x and newer
• Apple Mail on MacOS 10.15 and newer
• Outlook 2016 and newer
• Outlook for iOS and Android

For additional information, see Preparing for Modern Authentication (How-to).

Microsoft Outlook is the only mail and calendar application supported by Drake—all other apps are not guaranteed to work and are not supported by ITS.

As the Oct. 1 cut-off date approaches, ITS will send additional communications to those affected to ensure email access is not interrupted.

If you have any questions or need assistance with changing email clients on a Drake-owned computer, please visit the ITS Service Portal at https://service.drake.edu/its.

—Peter Lundstedt, ITS