With a few quarters of remote instruction in the books and the shock of transitioning to Zoom and CCLE (hopefully) subsiding, now is a great time to look back and see what opportunities we have to improve our students’ experience. One area in particular that has an enormous impact on the student experience is the…
Read More
HumTech’s Digital Services Group (DSG)—responsible for managing websites, servers, and networking for Humanities—successfully completed the migration of the majority of its websites and applications to servers on Amazon Web Services (AWS). With the added flexibility, cost savings, and ease of use it brings, AWS will enable DSG to offer improved services and a wider variety…
Read More
In part three of four in the XR series, we take a more in-depth look into VR through VSim, a VR software developed by Dr. Lisa Snyder, the Acting Director of the Research Technology Group (RTG) and manager of GIS, Visualization and Modeling at UCLA. VSim is a software that allows users to create computer…
Read More
As anyone who’s ever had to write anything knows, there’s a whole host of forces seemingly conspiring against your words appearing on the page. Aside from the many sources of distraction inherent to working in a digital medium, writing is in and of itself a task which does not lend itself easily to a straightforward…
Read More
The idea that language learners need exposure to the language (or “input”) to make progress in the target language is neither surprising nor new. What is surprising is what the best type of input might be. Linguist Stephen Krashen (a UCLA graduate) has written about this in his “Input Hypothesis”. Krashen supports an i+1 input…
Read More
As part two of four in our XR series, this article focuses on the use of virtual reality (VR) in higher education. Insights and commentary regarding VR implementation in higher education and at UCLA is provided by Francesca Albrezzi, Digital Research Consultant in the UCLA Institute for Digital Research and Education, and Lecturer in Digital…
Read More
This blog series is titled “Extended Reality (XR) Series” because “XR” is a term that encompasses the immersive technologies of Virtual Reality (VR)/Augmented Reality (AR)/Mixed Reality (MR) and allows for a flexible designation of a variety of combinations between virtual and real environments, as well as human-machine interactions. The articles will highlight the VR and AR…
Read More
In Fall 2017, UCLA Humanities Technology was faced with needing to undertake a major PHP version upgrade of a locally hosted, custom application that provides web-based 24/7 scheduling for thousands of appointments annually for the Undergraduate Writing Center (UWC). This UWC Scheduler supports thousands of undergrads every year and facilitates the matching of peer writing…
Read More
Over the past few terms, we’ve been fortunate enough to work with and support instructors as they create non-traditional assignments in their classes. Despite some of the challenges that may arise with a technical implementation, both direct student feedback and observation indicate these may have a longer lasting impact on students than more traditional writing…
Read More
Writing Instruction and Research Education, known as WI+RE, is a community at UCLA that fosters student success in their writing and research projects. UCLA’s WI+RE team has developed 7 online workshops, 19 quick tutorials, and 9 handouts to help students with the research and writing process. Some of our most popular resources cover topics like…
Read More
