Category: Ed Tech

Ed Tech, EMC, Instructional Design, Lamakū

Leeward Lamakū Weekly Tips (Fall 2025)

During Fall 2025, the EMC IDT unit shared weekly Lamakū tips via the Leeward Campus bulletins. Here is a summary of all the video tips shared. You can also watch the video playlist on YouTube.

Tip 1: Course Starter Template

How to find and use document templates, and how to change colors in the course starter template.

Tip 2: Course Banners

How to update the course banner image and upload a module banner image.

Tip 3: Attendance Tool

How to use the attendance tool and input grades for attendance via the Grades tool.

Tip 4: Embedding YouTube Videos and Google Slides

How to embed Google Slides and YouTube videos on a content page in the Content tool.

Tip 5: Quick Eval Tool

How to use Quick Eval to grade, update, retract, save a draft/publish, and filter by submission or activity.

Tip 6: Rubrics Tool

How to create a rubric and attach it to an activity. How to grade using the rubric in the Quick Eval tool.

Tip 7: Intelligent Agents

How to create an intelligent agent and use replacement strings.

Tip 8: Google Assignments

How to create and grade a Google Assignment in Lamakū.

Tip 9: Creator+ Part 1

How to “Insert Elements” and use “Layouts.”

Tip 10: Creator+ Part 2

How to insert Practice Questions and H5P interactives.

Tip 11: Discussions & Lumi

Using Lumi (an AI feature) to help generate possible discussion prompts that you can edit/refine.

Tip 12: Quiz Questions & Lumi

Using Lumi (an AI feature) to help generate possible quiz questions that you can edit/refine.

Tip 13: Grades – Settings

Setup Wizard vs Settings, how to change the settings, and how to change specific settings to update the gradebook.

Tip 14: Releasing Final Grades

Settings for “Final Calculated Grade” or “Final Adjusted Grade” and how to release the final grade to students.

Ed Tech, EMC, Lamakū

Lamakū Grades: A Gradebook Structure for Tracking Student Engagement/Appointments

Do you require your students to attend office hours, One-to-one check-ins, or project consultations?  If so have you struggled with grading them in a meaningful way?  Follow this approach to easily communicate these graded course requirements and display the date and any brief comments you have.  Then enter in a summary score for the overall section of the gradebook and apply to their final grade.  This easy structure, is a quick organized and transparent process to tracking this data and a step toward making participating in these required appointment important.

The first minute of this screencast is comprised of an AI (Google NotebookLM) generated podcast, generated from presenter notes, that expands on and “hooks” the listener into why this topic is important for all online instructors who do these types of activiites.

 

Ed Tech, EMC

Want Engaging Online Content?

H5P Art

H5P is a software ecosystem that provides instructors with 53 tools to create engaging learning activities for student learning. The web based activities are responsive and adjust to either desktop, laptop, mobile device, Safari, Chrome, Firefox. Take a look at the course samples created and shared in the UH H5P Interactive (Faculty) Gallery. H5P + Laulima is officially supported by the UH ITS Helpdesk, The learning activities are capable of being embedded in Laulima course sites and automatically registers student interaction scores in the Laulima Gradebook.

For the past few semesters the EMC has been participating with the UH System H5P work group to bring H5P to instructors. Many Leeward CC faculty have participated in the UHOIC H5P + Laulima program, currently on cohort three of faculty adopters with several alumni participating in the I Mua community support group. Over the summer the university announced that faculty can purchase H5P licenses directly from UH ITS  Site License office (with departmental funds).

Be on the look out for upcoming EMC hosted H5P workshops this semester.  To learn more about H5P please take a look at the recently completed Practical Guide to H5P.

Practical Guide to H5P Thumbnail

 

 

Ed Tech, EMC

Updating the Laulima Overview Tool

For those of you using a UH Laulima template, after the most recent Laulima update, you no longer need to update the overview.html page in Resources to update your Overview tool/page in your Laulima course site. There is a one-time step you’ll need to do to put that overview page content directly in the Overview tool which will then allow you to edit directly in the Overview tool using the text editor. You will continue to edit/update using the Overview tool’s text editor even when you import the Overview tool into your next semester’s Laulima site. Follow these instructions and/or watch this video tutorial (6:00) to show you how.

8/23/23 Update: You’ll also need to update any images you have on your Overview page because that image is private to that particular course site. Either upload the image to your course site’s Resources tool and re-insert it on your Overview page. Or, and recommended, upload it to your Home site Resources tool, change the settings to public, and in your course site, re-insert that image on your Overview page. Doing it the latter way will allow you to import to next semester’s site without having to update the image file.

Ed Tech, EMC

An Instructor Preview of Leeward Online Learning Orientation for Students

Tips for Online Learning

Much time and thought goes into trying to delivery an online course designed for students success. Besides course design, what else can contribute to a successful online learning experience? Leeward CC provides our students with a online learner orientation originally developed by the University of Hawai’i Information and Technology Services and modified with permission for our Leeward students.

Sharing Tips & Best Practices

This resources is sent out to all distance education students via a broadcast email prior to the start of the semester. However, instructors may also consider sharing this resource with their online students as a prior to the start of the semester or as a week 1 activity. After students register themselves (http://go.hawaii.edu/3V7) the Laulima site provides them tips and best practices for learning online and is divided into 5 sections.

  1. Basics of Online Learning
  2. Communication & Engagement
  3. Self-Management Strategies
  4. Technology
  5. Support & Resources

Recognizing Completion

At the culmination of the orientation students may request a personalized certificate of completion which they can share with their instructors as proof of completing the orientation.  The following is a brief overview of the Leeward Online Learning Orientation highlighting its benefits and potential application in a course setting for instructors to consider.

Thoughts, questions, or feedback, please comment below.  – Mahalo

Ed Tech, EMC

Differentiate Learning – Giving your Learners Choice

Voice and Choice

Are you looking for a dynamic way to gauge student learning beyond assigning a traditional quiz or discussion forum post? Have you ever considered asking your students how they would like to demonstrate their learning? Consider giving students voice and choice by differentiating learning. Doing so also provides you, the instructor, differentiated student submissions to look at for grading (how refreshing 🙂). With a little pre-planning, organization and communication, differentiated learning can be a meaningful enhancement to your course. The following is an example of applying this concept to an online class.

Learners’ Choice

In this example, students are presented with a Learners’ Choice Activity Board and four categories to choose from. Students can complete each category only twice.  Leaners’ Choice is a weekly culminating activity and is applied to 8 weeks of the course. One student-chosen activity is due at the end of each week. The content of the activity must be focused on the subject topic from that week. Rubrics can be helpful to assessment. Since topics vary week-to-week, activity rubrics can be designed at a higher level (independent of a specific subject topic) yet still provide students feedback on meeting activity requirements and the depth of the learning that they have demonstrated for the week’s topic.

Thoughts, questions, or feedback, please comment below.  – Mahalo

 

Ed Tech

Why Exceed Proficiency?

Shoot for the Stars

Do you have a rubric listing a range of developing proficiency to meeting proficiency and have wondered how to recognize students who’ve exceeded proficiency?  Have you seen a rubric that ends with exceeds proficiency, stating that exceeding equates to full credit for the assignment?  If so you may have pondered, how can I encourage students to push themselves to strive to exceed proficiency. Awarding extra credit points each time students exceeds proficiency may not be practical, but if a student shows an established record of exceeding proficiency shouldn’t they be recognized for it?

Recognizing Exceeding Proficiency

Single Point Rubrics

The idea of a single point rubric (composed in Laulima Lessons) is that you simply specify a single column for what the students need to do in order to demonstrate they Meet Proficiency and receive full credit.  Student who do not meet all the criteria would be in the Developing proficiency and receive less than full credit.  Conversely students to truly Exceed Proficiency receive full credit and recognition on the class sticker board.  Overtime should a student receive four stickers they will then receive extra credit.

Simple Sticker Chart

The idea is to recreate (in a Google Doc) the classic motivational sticker chart found in many grade school classrooms. Gamification of your teaching can be complex, but the classic sticker chart incorporates some of the core gaming elements in an easy to update and maintain leaderboard which recognizing individual student accomplishments. This type of sticker board can be easily created in a Google Doc and embedded into a Laulima course site.  The instructor has Edit access while the students have View access.  For the instructor it is as simple as copying and pasting the sticker icons as appropriate.

Thoughts, questions, or feedback, please comment below.  – Mahalo

Ed Tech

Enhance your Laulima Course with H5P

H5P + Laulima

 

Have you been linking various third party tools and services into your Laulima course to enhance and engage your students in formative learning activities? If so you may be interested in learning about the H5P + Laulima pilot and how it can enhance students’ Laulima (Learning) Experience.

Take a look at these benefits:

  • An open source program based on HTML 5, it is a stable, web and mobile device friendly software.
  • Student’s do not need a new account, authentication occurs through Laulima Lessons
  • Support for over 40 types of instructor created formative learning interaction types
  • Interactions display within Laulima Lessons
  • Student scores from H5P interactions save to course Laulima Gradebook
  • H5P + Laulima support community (UH Pilot)

This pilot is a led by UH ITS (UHOIC) and Ed Tech/ID collaborators from several campuses, including Leeward’s EMC. For this systemwide pilot participants were accepted from throughout the UH system.

Congratulations 2021 – 2022 Leeward CC faculty who have participated.

  • Darci Francis
  • Jiajia Garcia
  • Tracie Losch
  • Danielle Mizuta
  • Janet Wang-Lee
  • William (Bill) Wright

Take a moment to view and interact with the H5p Interactives they’ve built and implemented (into fall ’21 and spring ’22 courses). View the complete UH System H5P + Laulima interatives library. Check out what the 2021-2022 H5P + Laulima cohort pilots accomplished.

Consider applying to be in the second cohort of participants this fall, 2022-2023 H5P + Laulima Cohort applications are now open! Deadline to apply is Friday, May 20, 2022. Applicants will be notified by mid-June.

Thoughts, questions, or feedback, please comment below.  – Mahalo

Ed Tech, EMC

Apple Pencil and Digital Paper Delivers

Super Sucker Boat

 

User Review of Apple iPad Pro with Apple Pencil

I have used several graphics tablets over the years, unsuccessfully. There was always something impractical about them. First, writing on a black plastic surface off to the side of the screen displaying the actual content is not intuitive and takes some hand-eye coordination. Second I’ve found that often the black plastic surface is a scaled down version of the display on which I was trying to write. The combination of the two traits often gives traditional graphics tablets a high learning curve for integration into a workflow and hinders adoption.

Why the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil?

Apple’s iOS ecosystem and iPad are significant players in the educational technology field.  It therefore makes sense to start with a device that integrates with a large share of the educational technology market and established workflows to improve instructors integration and adoption.  Specifically the iPad Pro 12.9″ (measured diagonally) provides a writable surface similar to a standard 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper.  The Apple Pencil 2 is a precise and well designed stylus made to compliment the iPad. The stylus magnetically sticks to the side of the iPad and charges wirelessly. The tip of the stylus is durable and does not scratch the iPad’s screen. Writing on the iPad glass does take a little bit of practice. If that is of concern films are sold online to stick on the iPad screen to provide the resistance of writing on paper.

Advantages of Digital Note-taking?

I tested this package with the free Notability app which provides an intuitive way to leverage the benefits of iPad, iOS and Apple Pencil. Specifically there are numerous combinations of pen styles, stroke widths, and ink colors available.  Notability allows for inserting pictures (new or from your photos), can concurrently record audio while note-taking, as well as export notes in multiple file types, email or Google Drive.

I’ve found the combination of  iPad Pro and Apple Pencil to be stable and very usable, which increases the chance of it being used as a replacement to paper and pencil.

Pros:

  • iPad/ iOS ecosystem
  • iPad Pro 12.9″ (diagonal) writable surface is about 8.5″ x 11″
  • Aim stylus directly at the image being displayed
  • Precision stylus
  • Ability to take and insert images into notes
  • Share out notes to multiple file types and services

Cons:

  • Cost
  • Weight

Leeward Community College instructors interested in learning more can contact edtech@hawaii.edu to arrange a demo and schedule a trial today!

Thoughts, questions, or feedback, please comment below.  – Mahalo

 

Ed Tech, EMC

EMC Workshops on the Go (Microlearning Series)

EMC Workshops on the Go

About our EMC Workshops on the Go (Microlearning Series)

  1. Colleagues will receive an open invitation via email and registration button to announce the latest microlearning series.
  2. Simply register once for this workshop series by clicking the button and you will receive an email on Mondays and Tuesdays of the week featuring overview and link to view examples that support interaction and/ or student engagement.
  3. When you receive the email, take some time to review the contents. Give it a try, too, and use the resources for additional help. Reflect on how you can apply it in your classes. Jot down some ideas.
  4. Come to our optional Virtual Open Lab (Zoom sync session) on Thursdays at 1:00-2:00 p.m. to further engage in your learning by practicing what you learned with your peers, asking questions, getting ideas for your classes, etc.
    1. Example of microlearning series:
      1. Monday (date): Topic
      2. Tuesday (date): Topic 2
      3. Wednesday (date): Independent work time for hands-on exploration
      4. Thursday (date): Virtual Open Lab, live online office hours for sharing participants work, responding to questions and reflections.

 

Thanks for taking the time to visit our EMC Blog. If you have thoughts, questions, or feedback, please comment below.  – Mahalo

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