Looking to refresh your assessments in Canvas? New Quizzes is the platform’s next-generation tool, designed to make building and delivering quizzes more flexible, interactive, and insightful—and it’s a feature option you can enable right within your course. With new question types like categorization and stimulus-based prompts, plus cleaner workflows and improved analytics, it opens up new possibilities for engaging students and understanding their learning.
If you’re used to Classic Quizzes, you’ll find New Quizzes feels familiar—but with more room to experiment. Classic Quizzes is still a solid, straightforward option, and contains features like anonymous surveys that are still missing in New Quizzes, but New Quizzes is where Canvas is investing for the future. If you’re curious about new ways to design assessments or want deeper insight into student performance, it’s definitely worth turning it on and giving it a try. Contact Brandon Bucy or Helen MacDermott with your New Quizzes questions (or really any of your Canvas questions!).
Attention faculty: are you looking for a way to manage attendance in your classes? The Roll Call Attendance tool in Canvas provides instructors with a simple way to track student attendance directly within your course site. With just a few clicks, faculty can mark students as present, absent, or late for each class meeting. The tool automatically records attendance and can calculate a running attendance score that appears in the course gradebook if you choose to use it. Because it is built directly into Canvas, Roll Call Attendance helps streamline record-keeping and makes it easy for you to monitor participation and identify patterns in student attendance throughout the term.
Want to learn more? Need assistance activating Roll Call Attendance in your course? Contact Brandon Bucy today!
High-quality audio is one of the most important elements of professional-looking video production. Whether you are recording a lecture, creating instructional content, producing interviews, or assigning video projects for your classes, clear and consistent sound makes a significant difference in how your and your students’ work is perceived and understood.
To support high quality academic video production across the Washington and Lee University community, the Harte Center offers a selection of professional audio equipment that faculty, staff, and students can request for use in their projects. These tools are well-suited for a wide range of recording environments and experience levels, helping elevate the production quality of your videos without requiring specialized audio expertise.
Available Audio Equipment
We currently maintain the following audio gear, all available for request:
Sennheiser Shotgun Microphones (8 available)
Shotgun microphones are ideal for capturing focused, high-quality dialogue while minimizing background noise. They are commonly used for interviews, lectures, and narrative-style video recordings where clean, directional audio is essential.
RODE Wireless GO II Microphone Sets (8 available)
These wireless systems provide a compact, wireless solution for recording clear audio without restricting movement. These are especially useful for presenters who need hands free, or for interviews or film scenes requiring audio capture from two speakers at the same time. They are well-suited for both indoor and outdoor recording scenarios.
Sennheiser Boom Pole Sets (8 available)
Our boom pole sets allow microphones to be positioned just out of frame, providing professional-quality sound capture while keeping the focus on the subject. Boom poles are commonly used in interviews, demonstrations, and film scenes.
Boom Pole Stands (8 available)
For situations where holding a boom pole is not practical, boom pole stands offer stable, hands-free microphone placement. These stands are particularly helpful for longer recordings, panel discussions, or static interview setups.
Audio-Technica Studio Monitor Headsets (8 available)
Monitoring audio during recording is critical to ensuring clean sound. Our studio monitor headsets allow you to listen in real time, catch issues early, and ensure consistent audio quality throughout your project.
Supporting Professional Academic Video Production
All of this equipment is available to support professional-looking video production projects for academics and students across the W&L community. To request audio equipment or learn more about availability and usage guidelines, please contact Senior Academic Technologist Brandon Bucy via email at bucyb@wlu.edu. We are happy to help you determine which tools best fit your project and ensure you have what you need for a successful recording.
Join Senior Academic Technologists Brandon Bucy and Helen MacDermott for bite-sized training sessions designed to boost your tech confidence and efficiency.
Each week, we’ll spotlight one tool, tip, or feature from platforms you use every day—like: Canvas, Qualtrics, Word, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Express …and more!
💡 What to Expect:
A single, focused tip or feature
Live demo and walkthrough
Time for questions and discussion
Whether you’re streamlining workflows or discovering hidden features, these short sessions are designed to fit your schedule and elevate your tech game.
Classroom computers in W&L spaces now have Office 365 installed to provide the most up-to-date feature set and to enable advanced Box functionality such as co-authoring)
Users who launch any Office product (i.e. Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, etc.) on a classroom computer will be prompted to authenticate for their initial use.
When launching an Office application the first time, users will encounter this challenge, and should SELECT “SIGN-IN” and proceed. Your Washington & Lee University email and password are the correct credentials to use.
After authentication in a classroom, subsequent use of Office apps should not require authentication beyond your standard login to the PC.
If you should encounter difficulties after the initial use and authentication, please contact the ITS Helpdesk at help@wlu.edu, call 540.458.4357 (HELP), or stop by the Main Level of Leyburn Library.
The IQ Center awards funds for novel and innovative student projects that utilize IQ Center equipment and resources.
There are no limits on the subject – History, Art, Architecture, whatever! Recipients will be chosen by an IQ Center panel of students and staff. Projects will be evaluated on the following criteria:
Utilization of the IQ Center: The project should take advantage of the resources in the IQ Center.
Innovation: The project should not simply re-create someone else’s design.
Difficulty: The project should be challenging, but possible to complete by the end of the semester.
Eligibility
All undergraduate students are eligible to apply.
Grant Funds Two grants of up to $500 will be awarded per term. Funds are purely for prototyping and experimenting, not for buying materials to create products for sale. No funds will be released directly to award recipients; all necessary supplies will be purchased by the IQ Center.
Project Requirements The project must be completed within the term in which funding is granted.
GrantRequirements Award recipients must share their experience and discuss their project, process, and the ways in which the IQ Center was used with the W&L community.
Questions? Contact Dave Pfaff, IQ Center Academic Technologist, at dpfaff@wlu.edu, 540.458.8044.
ITS Academic Technologies and the Harte Center for Teaching and Learning cordially invites all W&L faculty and staff to our Technology and Tacos series. For the Winter Term, we’ll talk about how AI tech developments could affect our classrooms. How do we teach now that it exists? How can we use it?
ChatGPT, which stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer,” is a cutting-edge AI model developed by OpenAI. It has the ability to generate human-like text and has shown remarkable performance in tasks such as language translation, question answering, and even creative writing.
As a “disruptor,” ChatGPT has the potential to change the way we interact with technology and how we process information; in fact, it already is! However, it also presents a great opportunity for us to explore new and innovative ways to use AI.
POGIL is an acronym for Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning.
As a student-centered instructional approach, in a POGIL classroom, students work in small groups/teams on specially designed activities that follow a learning cycle paradigm of exploration, concept invention, and application, with the instructor acting as a facilitator.
Developed in Chemistry before expanding to fields throughout the disciplines, the POGIL approach has two broad aims: to develop content mastery through student construction of their own understanding, and to develop and improve important process skills such as information processing, communication, critical thinking, problem solving and metacognition and assessment.
Matt Tuchler and Gail Webster
Image 1 of 10
Gail Webster, Professor and Chair of Chemistry at Guilford College, and our very own Matt Tuchler, Associate Professor of Chemistry, acted as the facilitators, leading us though the organization of a POGIL course, how guided inquiry is structured in a POGIL classroom, several POGIL activities, as well as considerations for classroom facilitation.
Attendees who experienced a POGIL-based learning environment included faculty and staff members from Accounting, Biology, Business Administration, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Cognitive and Behavioral Science, Computer Science, ITS, Journalism and Mass Communications, Physics and Engineering, and the University Library.
Many thanks to both Gail and Matt, and all who took the time to attend. We’re always thrilled to offer provide training in new teaching pedagogies and even more elated when faculty are interested and willing to learn to use these methods.
BONUS: Find the Enhancing Learning by Improving Process Skills in STEM (ELIPSS) rubrics helpful? We did, too! View and/or download all the rubrics.
CT = Critical Thinking
IC = Interpersonal Communication
IP = Information Processing
MC = Metacognition
MG = Management
PS = Problem Solving
WC = Written Communication
TW = Teamwork
The files with “feedback” in the title — CT, IC, IP, TW — are those with suggestions for improvement. This new style is not available for all rubrics yet.
If you’d like to hear about a new approach to teaching lab report writing that will yield more effective lab reports AND deepen student learning of course content, then watch this recording:
[NOTE: You must login with your W&L credentials to view this video.]
*** We recommend having both Firefox AND Chrome! ***
I know, I know, ensuring that you have the latest version of a web browser is about as exciting as watching paint dry and as important of a task as ironing underwear, BUT updates will make a considerable impact upon your browser experience. How?
Most importantly, outdated versions of web browsers make you vulnerable to serious security flaws that can allow malicious websites to potentially read your files, steal passwords, and infect your computer with viruses, trojans, spyware, adware, or other sorts of malware. Many browser updates are issued to specifically to combat these critical problems.
Not updating your browser regularly can also lead to technical difficulties or odd behavior with web-based tools like Canvas, Digication, and more.
Every newer generation of a browser improves the speed at which you can explore and use the Internet: web sites can load faster, making the tasks you carry out on those web sites quicker, too.
Another reason to keep your browser up-to-date is to have the best browsing experience otherwise. Web sites built using new technology for their display and features will look as they should and work better.
So, please, please, please, take the time to update your web browsers. If you need assistance, you can always call the ITS Information Desk at 540.458.4357 (HELP), email help@wlu.edu, or stop by Leyburn Library!
NOTE: While making your browser more secure helps reduce the risk that a hacker will use it to compromise your computer, it is still important to employ safe computing practices!
