Not being a visual learner, I always struggled with ways of graphically representing course content. I was never very successful until I discovered that students could do what I couldn’t. During those summary times at the end of a class session, I often asked them to show graphically their sense of how the ideas related. I was surprised how clearly those visual representations showed whether or not they understood. Even more surprising, they sometimes depicted relationships I hadn’t thought of or positioned ideas so that they highlighted different aspects of a relationship.

Students know that in any online course assignments will be required, and students expect the online educator to read the assignments and give feedback that can help them improve their understanding of the subject and improve grades on future assignments in the course. All instructors give feedback—but there is an approach to grading assignments that is merely okay, and another that involves grading mini lessons in the subject matter while also motivating the students to do better. It is this latter approach that must be practiced so that the student can do the maximum learning in the online environment.

We appreciated reading Dr. Weimer’s article “Getting students to act on our feedback” (March 5, 2012). The solution proposed of asking students to identify three ways to improve their assignment based on instructor feedback is a great idea. We would like to offer a further solution that addresses students’ incorporating instructor feedback.

If you ask a faculty member to think of a new technique, strategy, assignment, activity or policy they’re using in their classroom and you ask where they got the idea, “from a colleague” is the most common answer. Interesting, isn’t it, that so much of our pedagogical knowledge is transferred orally. The beauty of it is that ideas are easily and freely exchanged via this mode. Somebody gives you a good idea for dealing with an instructional issue and you don’t have to worry whether it’s copyright protected. You don’t need to know where the idea came from or who originated it. Best of all you can borrow it and make changes without anybody’s permission.

I hope you won’t stop reading once you find out the idea being proposed here involves automating the feedback provided students on papers, projects, and presentations. If you were to look at a graded set of papers and make a list of the comments offered as feedback, how many of those comments have you written more than once? Is the answer many? If so, you should read on.

Assembling the annual tenure and promotion dossier to best represent one’s teaching, research, and service can be overwhelming and anxiety-ridden for some junior faculty. Yet, prior to earning tenure, junior faculty in colleges and universities across the country spend untold hours preparing the annual dossier to present and illustrate accomplishments and productivity across teaching, research, and service.

If unprepared students and student motivation are two of your biggest teaching challenges, you’re not alone. They scored number one and two in the annual Faculty Focus reader survey conducted earlier this year.

“I don’t really have any diversity issues in my class because all of my students are white.”

Notes Plus is one neat program! In fact, it is one of the few iPad apps that I use frequently when I attend meetings or need to make notes to myself in either handwritten or typed format. What I really like about this app is that I can do a lot of things all without ever leaving the app. I can draw, insert diagrams and photos, paste, insert new pages at different places in a notebook, and best of all I can add a voice memo!

Use the erase swipe to delete text, or draw a circle around any object on the screen to: group, delete, convert to text (will need to purchase the handwriting module for $1.99), arrange items, copy or to change text styles. Another neat feature is the ‘palm pad,’ which allows your hand to rest comfortably without interacting with the screen. Without this “moveable a neutral zone “ I would have accidental pen marks all over my page because I have a hard time trying to write without putting the heel of my hand on the writing surface. The ability to edit PDF files is a handy option as well.

A really cool feature is the close-up writing mode. Hold one finger on the page and a box comes up (this is adjustable) that allows you to cram more notes on a single page while still writing normally!

You have to play with Notes Plus to really appreciate how much you can do with it. I would have preferred to access the pen and text style from the tool icon for obvious reasons—grouping of all tools. However, an argument can be made for ‘styles’ being in the ribbon area for quick accessibility. Either way, once you start using Notes Plus you will not have any trouble locating and using this feature-rich app.

Summary:
Notes Plus is one great app that should be on every iPad! It has numerous options that allow it to be a good notebook replacement and frankly, there is not much to dislike about the app. The tool features, the audio record option, the palm rest, and the close-up writing mode leaves me wishing that all apps were as multifunctional and easy to use. I cannot say for sure that I will ditch all paper notations but Notes Plus brings me closer to full electronic note-taking! Some of Notes Plus competition include: Notability ($0.99); Sundry Notes (free); Catch Notes (free); Note Taker HD ($4.99); Notebook for iPad ($8.99); and WhiteNote ($3.99); The only thing I dislike about this app is that I often forget how to access the ‘redo’ function—you need to hold the undo to get to the redo function—a bit awkward. Other than that, there is much to like about this app. I’ve tried a few similar products but always come back to Notes Plus.

Dave Yearwood, associate professor and chair of the technology department, University of North Dakota.