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 DyKnow Vision Teacher Tips – Full Version.

General technical tips for starting a new semester

• Create your course before the first day of class.
• User accounts
  • New students should set up their user account using their DePauw email username.
  • When setting up a user account, the fields without an asterisk (*) are not required and may be left blank (e.g. Student ID, etc.).
  • User accounts remain active from semester-to-semester.
• Students must signup for a course before they can join an active session. This only needs to be done one time.
• Additional support information is available by browsing to DyKnow: Help and Support Options.
• Consider printing copies of the DyKnow Quick Guide for Students handout to pass out to 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 private notes window
• Save and retrieve work
• Replay work
• Print work

Clearly state your expectations early

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

To prepare your notebook

• Providing a skeleton of your class notes on DyKnow gives 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 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.

Reviewed: 3/5/2021