Transcript for:
Increasing In-class Engagement Through WSJ’s Context

Go ahead and get started. Now again thank you to everyone for joining me today on this webinar. I just want to welcome you. My name is Leslie Bedingfield and I'm the marketing manager on the student memberships team at the Wall Street Journal. I actually look after the professor tools that we offer and my goal is to really make sure that everything that we're offering professors is easy to use and integrate in classes.

So we're always evaluating the tools we offer and I'm always looking for feedback. So it would be great to hear from any of you as we go through this webinar today, as well as if anything comes up after the call. So again, you can feel free to email me. I've included it here on the slide. It's just leslie.beddingfield.

dowjones.com if you have questions about context, feedback about context, or any other professor tools that the Wall Street Journal is offering. Again, feel free to reach out. So I just want to cover a few housekeeping items with you today.

So our session today should be about 30 minutes and we will be taking questions as we go. So by default all of you are on mute. But there is a little chat feature within the GoToWebinar panel that you can use to type in any questions that you have. If for some reason we run out of time and can't answer all of the questions, we will follow up with you via email. Additionally, this session is being recorded, so you don't need to worry about taking any notes.

We'll share the recording with you in the next few days. It does take a few days to just get the recording and make sure we can get it hosted for you, but we will send you a follow-up email as soon as it is available. I just want to talk to you now a little bit about the Wall Street Journal. So as many of you know, the Wall Street Journal newsroom is covering breaking news and offering in-depth analysis across a variety of industries.

And it's considered one of the most trusted news sources. by different polls and outlets, including Reuters Institute, YouGov Poll, Economist, Pew Research. And then I've actually called out on this slide the Simmons News Media Trust Index, which rated the Wall Street Journal first, and it was the only newspaper brand within the top five.

So that's something that we're really proud about the Wall Street Journal. And I know the newsroom and editorial staff are always working rigorously to make sure they're offering great reports. reporting to our readers. And now specifically for students, the Wall Street Journal is providing that trusted news source that we just talked about. And it's a great way to get them in the habit of reading and keeping up with current events.

And also the Wall Street Journal is really providing a lot of content outside of business and finance. We are providing career and lifestyle content so students can... learn about topics such as student loan repayment, salary negotiation, email etiquette, and more. All WSJ memberships also include access to WSJ Plus, so that can provide exclusive events just for students.

It can really allow the opportunity to attend in-person discussions and networking events, which can be great for students who are looking to... kind of network and learn more about specific industries, whether they're deciding what their major should be or they're getting ready to graduate and they want to start networking and figuring out how they can get an internship, the Wall Street Journal is really covering all of those aspects. So right now students can access membership through our university-sponsored program or by purchasing an individual subscription. Our individual subscription actually has a sale going on. We're in our Black Friday sale, so it's normally $4 a month and can actually be purchased $1 for 15 weeks right now.

And both of those can be viewed at our education website, so students and professors can go there to learn more about what we're offering. So specifically for today, we'll be covering our tool called Context. It's actually the Wall Street Journal's first... ever higher ed focused product. So Context allows professors to curate reading lists with WSJ articles that relate to their course and it makes lecture prep really easy.

Additionally, by using real-world examples from the news to connect to the curriculum you are covering, it's a great opportunity to engage students in in-class discussions. We also have a discussion tab within Context, which is a great way if you host an online class to be using Context to engage your students. So we'll be looking at how you can actually use Context to kind of cover these few points how you can easily search and how you can engage your students. So to show you that I think it makes sense to really just dive into the actual tool itself. So if you'll bear with me while I change over to that.

So here we have our Context login and that is available just at context.wsj.com and it'll take you right here. Context is a part of your education subscription so if you're a professor who signed up for the journal through our education pricing or if you are part of the site license membership you will have access to Context automatically. If you're not sure or you're not seeing it, but you know you're a member, please reach out to me.

You might have our normal subscription entitlement, so we'll just want to look at that. But again, it should be applied to all professors and students who have purchased their membership through their education. And so once you get to the login page, you'll just be able to log in with your normal Wall Street Journal credentials.

So once you log in, you will be taken to your dashboard. Looks like we're moving a little slowly. There we go.

This is because it's my test account, but normally you wouldn't necessarily see a verification as you already have your membership. If you do see this, it will just prompt you until you verify. So again, this is just due to my test account credentials. And so now you are taken into a actual dashboard of what the context tool looks like.

So for this, we just have our demo course in here. If you teach several courses, you would see them all showing up here. It also defaults to sort to any current classes.

So if you have classes from your last semester or from a year ago, you would be able to filter and see those as well. And then if you ever want to be able to repeat a class, so if you teach a section on Tuesday, Thursday, and a Monday, Wednesday section, and you want to have the readings for the same classes, you can easily go ahead and just duplicate that class. So you'd bring over all your reading lists and things like that, so you don't have to spend time individually creating a class for each section you teach, or if you want to go and just duplicate and make a few edits.

from year to year, that is a possibility that you can do within the tool. And then if you want to create a new class, you simply hit the new class button over on the right hand side. That's blue. And you can start filling out the information. So I'm going to do context webinar demo.

And then again you can select your start and end dates. I would recommend that again because we're filtering by current and past courses so this is just a great organizational way to keep track of your classes from semester to semester. And then you can create your class and you'll be taken right into that class right away and so from there you can start inviting your students.

or creating a reading list. So you'll be taken by default to your reading list tab. As you can see, you have this message as we haven't added any content yet. So you can go ahead and start adding to your reading list. So you'll want to create your reading list depending on how you set up your course.

It can dictate how many reading lists you have. If you would like your students to do a weekly reading and you really want it to correspond with like the topics you're covering in your course, you could go ahead and set it up that way. Or if you want to be having students do extra credit work, you might be able to set up a few reading lists over the course of your semester and just have your students do that as well.

There's tons of options when it comes to how you want to set that up. And again, for the reading list, you also have the due date, which is optional. If you'd like to make sure your students are reading the articles by a certain time, you can select the due date that that would need to happen by.

And there's also a publish date. So that defaults the reading list to be published on the day you are creating it. If you're doing any sort of course prep work and you don't want the reading list to be published until a future date, you can select a future date as well. So I'll go ahead and show you a future date so you can see what that looks like.

So you can see when you select the future date, you'll have this little blue lock and the note that's unpublished at the top of your list. For anyone that you select to be published immediately, it would just say published. So that's how you can always tell if you've actually published a list or not.

And as of right now, even though we're unpublished, we also haven't invited any students. So this is completely empty of students and reading lists. So you can go ahead and start adding articles to your reading list that you create. And what's really great about Context is that we've actually pulled out disciplines and subtopics that allow you to search for articles that are the most relevant to your. courses.

Instead of having to either read the printed copy and remember that an article you liked might be good to share with your students or trying to search through directly on wallstreetjournal.com for relevant articles, we kind of make it a little bit easier by allowing you to search directly by your discipline. So we have 16 disciplines in here, everything from accounting all the way to strategic management, I believe. So you can go ahead and select what makes sense for your course.

And then you'd also have the option to select subtopics. So if you want to get more granular, if you're teaching a principles of microeconomics course, an advanced economics course, you can go ahead and select those as well. And what context will do will serve up the most relevant article that we know of. related to that discipline and subtopic. And we are by default sorting by date added.

So you're going to be getting the most recent articles first and then going back within the year. So you can see here we have a few for microeconomics. You can also look at marketing and things like that. So you can see we have them sorted by date and I believe they go back about four years. So that's as far back in our archives as context will go.

And then you can also search directly within wallstreetjournal.com. If you did see an article and you know the title, you can go ahead and simply search directly for that with the search bar. If you want to add any of these articles to your reading list, that's also very simple. So you'll be able to see a little bit of a preview of the article you can also select this show more which will pull in the first few paragraphs of the article.

If you'd like to read the whole article you can click on that and you'll be taken directly to WallStreetJournal.com to view the full article. If everything looks good and it's something that you think is interesting for your class you can simply hit this add to reading list button and it will add it and change to blue letting you know that you have indeed added it to your list. So I'm just going to add a few here for examples. And then now that we go to our articles tab, we can see all the articles that I have added to this unpublished reading list. So now if I'm ready to share this with my students, I can go ahead and click on that invite student button.

That will generate a unique link that I can then share out with my students. So you can share this out. Via email, you can put it on your LMS, things like that to let students know that you'll be using Context. You could add it to your syllabus, anywhere that you want to share it to allow students to access this.

The link is unique to your course that you created, so each class would have different invite links, so you'll want to be mindful of that as you're sharing with different sections. They will all have unique links because you can actually track which students have signed up, so you'll want to make sure that you are sharing that with the appropriate course end section. And then we also do feature here a discussion tab. So this is the same commenting feature on wallstreetjournal.com.

If any of you are familiar with that, we've integrated it here so that you can host discussions with students. Like I said, if you teach an online class or you want to provide some extra credit for engagement points or anything like that, you can do that here within the discussion tab. So this is at the reading list level.

questions like please so as a professor I could say please share your three points from these articles I could go ahead and post that and then when students are in the reading list they will be able to see that comment and they'll also be able to reply directly students can like each other's comments as well well. And that's something that can all be seen at the reading list level by both students and professors. So I'm going to make another quick reading list that is open. I'm going to grab this invite link and I'm going to go ahead and share that and show you what it looks like to be a student. So let me just log out of this.

So once the student follows that share link that you will provide to them, again either via email, syllabus, LMS, they'll be taken to the Context landing page again. where they can sign in again with their student credentials. Again, just verifying message comes up for my test account. But then I will be taken into the student view. And so a student cannot create a class, but they can see any classes or reading lists that are shared with them.

So because I'm only in one class right now, I'm taken directly into that context webinar demo class where I see my one test reading list is available for me to view as a student. So I can click into that. I will be able to see all of the articles that are in that reading list and I'll also be able to participate in any discussions on that reading list there.

Again, the main difference is professors have the opportunity to see or to create classes, reading lists, and then be able to see when students join. Students will only have the opportunity to view the classes that they've been invited to and any reading lists that the professor has made available there. So now let me jump back into our presentation and just wanted to see if there are any questions that have come up, we'll take a look at that and as we round out the end of our half hour, I just want to reiterate that if you'd like to learn more about any of the tools or programs that we offer, you can do so on our education site listed here on the slide, education.wsj.com, or you can email me again that's lesley.beddingfield at dowjones.com.

On our website, we have the option to find your rep as well. So if you wanted to speak directly to your rep, you can do that. And now let's see if we have some questions.

So will students at university-sponsored institutions need to sign up for wallstreetjournal.com before accessing the reading list if they have not previously signed up? Yes, they will have to sign up for Wall Street Journal. There is an option if they don't already have their membership created to do so within that context login screen.

Right under the email and password, there's an option that says need to sign up and that will take them to the signing up process for setting up their university sponsored membership. Are students included in the university site license or do they have to buy their own account? So there is a university sponsored program if your school is a part of that.

All students would have access to the Wall Street Journal and Context for free to them. So to find out if you are a part of that, you can go to our education website and there's a search bar where you can find out if your school participates. If your school does not participate, a student would have to buy the Wall Street Journal on their own to be able to read the articles and have access to Context Yes. Where are the instructions that you put in for the discussion? So I did that on the unpublished reading list.

So when I went over to the student page, I just had the one article without any directions but that should show up for students in there when you share that. Can reading lists be exported? No, not at this time. They cannot be exported. Oh great.

Seems like a great tool. Thanks. You're welcome. Glad to hear it. Again, how do students get access to a WSJ account?

So they can go to our education page, education.wsj.com, and that is where they can either search for their school within our sponsorship program or be directed to purchasing the individual membership. Again, that's on sale right now for just $1 for 15 weeks. So that should cover the rest of the semester. Another very helpful, thank you. You're welcome.

Glad to hear it. Who determines the articles by topic? Do you have teaching notes?

We don't have teaching notes. So right now our tech team has basically matched articles to those topics and mapped those on the technological back end and those are pulling those results forward. to you.

So right now it's pretty much based on technology. Let's see, please clarify. Oh, so if you are part of a university account, do you automatically have access to contacts?

Yes, you have access to Context, but you will still need to activate your Wall Street Journal membership in order to see the reading list. So if they haven't actually set up an account on WallStreetJournal.com, they won't be able to see Context yet. Ooh, how do we initiate university sponsorship?

I would say email me. There could be lots of different possibilities. Generally, we work with librarians. So a great place to start would be going to your librarian and saying that you'd be interested in having the Wall Street Journal sponsorship program.

And that's a great place to start. But we can definitely discuss more of that specific to your university offline. Is the link shared with the students for the class or for each reading list?

Also, is there a way within the reading list to have different due dates for each article? So the link is specific to the class level. So if you're teaching a class and you set up a Monday Wednesday class and a Tuesday Thursday class you would have two different links.

And then is there a way within the reading list have different due dates for each article? No, the reading list is sort of thought of as a component. So the reading list would be due all in one go.

If you really wanted to have each specific due dates, you would probably want to create a reading list of just one article. So can the discussion boards and context be graded and can the grades be included in the gradebook in Canvas? So at this time, there's no auto grading feature within context. So if that's something you'd be interested in doing, you would have to be manually tracking that and adding it into your LMS gradebook. Can reading lists be copied from one class to another or only the class?

Yes, you can also duplicate reading lists. Okay, let's see. And I do see a few more questions in here, but I know we're coming up on time.

So if I didn't answer your question, I will be sure to follow up with you via email. I'm just gonna Yeah, I see a few more coming in. So, can discussions be disabled? No, you can't disable the tab per se.

You just wouldn't want to be using that. So, I see a few more, but like I said, I think the, do you have a blurb to include in a syllabus about the reading list? I might want to follow up with you directly just to see what you're looking for exactly, but we can probably provide you with something there. And like I said, I see a few more that I know I need to answer, so we'll go ahead and follow up with these offline.

But I want to thank you all for your time today.