DyKnow Tips for Instructors

DyKnow can be used in a variety of ways depending on your teaching style and pedagogical goals. It is most effective when it is used to actively engage the students during the class. The following is a condensed version of Dave Berque's January 2005 "DyKnow Vision Teacher Tips". A full version is available for printing here (pdf 115KB).

General technical tips for starting a new semester

Create your course before the first day of class.
User accounts
- New students should setup their user accounts using their DePauw email user name.
- When setting up a user account, the fields without an asterisk (*) are not required and may be left blank (i.e., the student ID field, etc.).
- User accounts remain active from semester-to-semester.
Students must "sign up" for a course before they can join an active session. This only needs to be done one time.
The newest version of DyKnow should be used.
Additional support information may be found at Information About Using DyKnow at DePauw.
Consider printing copies of the DyKnow Quick Guide for Students at DePauw University (pdf 160KB) handout to give students on the first day of class.

Students most commonly want to know how to

Navigate from page to page
Use synchronization
Annotate their work
Open the private notes window
Save and retrieve their work
Replay their work
Print their work

Clearly state your expectations early

Think about what you want the students to be doing during class and let them know these expectations.
State what the students are not allowed to do during class and consider placing this in the course outline.

To prepare your notebook

Providing a skeleton of your class notes on DyKnow provides structure for the discussion at the same time as allowing student interactivity when they fill in the missing information.
Use private ink to prepare material in advance.
Include answer boxes, margins or other conventions to prompt students to write notes.
Take advantage of "undo" when preparing notes out of session for quick corrections to notes.
Span two pages for problem solving - one page for you to display the problem on the screen up front and one page for the student to work out the solution on their individual desktop.
Progressive disclosure allows you to display answers after the students have an opportunity to think about the solution.

To avoid collisions

Use private ink to avoid overwriting students work.
Suggest students use the private notes area.
Copy a panel and paste it to a blank panel for annotating.
Use private ink to force student activity.

To encourage engagement

Use answer management to collect individual or group work.
Allow students to control the system by being a scribe for a brainstorming session or other activity.
Demonstrate the replay feature so students know they can use it to review complex diagrams after class.
Integrate graphics, content from other programs and web content by using the screen grab feature.