I’m happy to share with you some cool opportunities coming up: online teaching courses led by MiraCosta faculty, a local AI discussion workshop series, the CCC Online Teaching Conference in June, and additional free webinars.
MiraCosta Online Mentors will offer three professional learning courses for MiraCosta faculty starting Monday, April 3. Sign up now for any of our three course options (quotes are from MiraCosta faculty who took these earlier this spring):
Introduction to Asynchronous Online Teaching and Learning (“It gave me many ideas on what to do in my own classes.”)
Creating Accessible Course Content (“This course can be helpful to any faculty, not only those with online courses but for anyone utilizing Canvas or other online resources”)
Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning (“This class is well organized and provides great samples to help you find new ways to connect with your students”)
We’ve held two great Zoom workshops about Artificial Intelligence this spring, with two more coming up on April 14 and May 12, 2-3:30 pm. You can view or join a developing Canvas course where you’ll find links to recordings and resources we’re gathering.
Registration for the 2023 CCC Online Teaching Conference June 21-23 in Long Beach is now open. The Online Education budget can provide support for registration costs for interested faculty – please reply to me to learn how. Don’t forget that there may be additional budget resources to support your attendance at this conference. Discounted registration ends May 10. Let’s send a good group of MiraCosta faculty to this excellent event!
Online teaching webinars and recordings that may interest you:
We’ve redesigned our TIC website to include Flex workshop archives on every main online technology page – go to tic.miracosta.edu and select any of the technologies listed in the Media & Technologies menu
Social Annotation with Perusall (Zoom Recording, 1 hour 5 minutes) – 1/16/2023 workshop by Jim Julius, Michael from Perusall, Rob Bond, John Kirwan, & Aaron Roberts
Hands-On Labs in an Online World – (Zoom Recording, 1 hours 12 minutes) – 12/3/2020 workshop by Lynne Miller, Barbara Juncosa, Paul Katson, Scott Fallstrom, and Dominique Ingato.
Moving to Free and Open Course Materials – (Zoom Recording, 1 hour 39 minutes) – 8/17/2020 Online workshop by Jim Julius, Pilar Hernandez, Nate Scharff, Jennifer Paris, & Richard Ma.
Additional recorded zoom sessions and online teaching guides from Summer 2020 can be viewed within the PROJECT Online Teaching Foundations Canvas course.
Using Turnitin in Canvas (video, 77 min.) 1/16/2018 Chat Transcript (txt) In person workshop by Billy Gunn and curry mitchell with simulcast online via Zoom
Zoom provides a reliable, easy-to-use, mobile-friendly tool for live, recordable online presentations, meetings, and discussions with audio, video, chat, screen sharing, polling, and more. It can be used within Canvas or independently.
Zoom Pro is available to all MiraCosta faculty and staff at no charge. Students don’t use the Zoom Pro account but can use free Zoom basic accounts. Nobody at MiraCosta should be paying anything to use Zoom!
The version of Zoom that MiraCostans use changed after the fall 2020 semester; MiraCosta Zoom is now accessed at miracosta-edu.zoom.us rather than conferzoom.org or cccconfer.zoom.us. Faculty need to sign in to Zoom with their MiraCosta College login and password to obtain unlimited pro (“licensed”) access to all features of Zoom, including:
Unlimited meeting lengths and very large numbers of attendees
Recordings “in the cloud” so that you do not need to manage large files of your recorded meetings
Auto-transcription of your cloud-based Zoom recordings
This page includes basic technical how-to information and resources on using Zoom in general, and Zoom use in tandem with Canvas. Please see our separate Teaching with Zoom at MiraCosta College page for more detailed tips about teaching securely, effectively, and accessibly with Zoom.
Log On to Zoom at MiraCosta College
To access your Zoom account via the web go to: https://miracosta-edu.zoom.us Sign in with your MiraCosta College employee account and two-factor authentication (2FA).
How do I get a Zoom account? If you had a pro Zoom account through ConferZoom prior to 2021, it should have been automatically migrated to the MiraCosta Zoom, and there’s nothing you need to do. If you did not previously have a Pro Zoom account, and need to create a MiraCosta Zoom account, sign in to the MiraCosta HelpDesk in the Portal and select the NEW Zoom Account Request option.
What if I’m having trouble with my Zoom account? Sign in to the MiraCosta HelpDesk in the Portal and click the User Accounts button to request help.
What happened to my Zoom recordings made before 2021? They are still in your Zoom account! The old links to Zoom recordings will still work, but a message will briefly appear when people click an old link. If you update an old recording link with the new MiraCosta Zoom URL (replace cccconfer.zoom.us with miracosta-edu.zoom.us in the link) it will work seamlessly.
What happened to my recurring Zoom meetings I set up before 2021? Similar to your recordings, old links to recurring Zoom meetings will still work, but a message will appear when people click an old link. If you go to your Zoom account, you’ll see that your meetings have been migrated in, and you can get a new invitation. You can also simply update a meeting link created before 2021 with the new MiraCosta Zoom URL (replace cccconfer.zoom.us with miracosta-edu.zoom.us in the link).
What happened to Reports from Zoom meetings held before 2021? They are gone, sorry.
How much storage do I have for Zoom recordings? As of spring 2021, there is not a limit; however, this may change in the future if we do not manage our recordings well. Please delete recordings that you do not need.
Zoom Documentation
The following Zoom trainings, documentation, and resources can help you stay informed:
You can schedule and run video meetings directly within Canvas, using the new Zoom integration (this is MUCH improved over what what we had prior to 2021). To get started and learn more about the Zoom/Canvas integration, see directions below; for more details you may be interested in:
You may also share Zoom links and recordings inside of Canvas without using the integration.
Canvas Integration with Zoom
Enter your Canvas course
Click Settings on the course menu
Click the Navigation tab
Click the 3 dots to the right of Zoom and select Enable.
Click the Save button
Click the Zoom course menu item which will appear in your course menu.
Now you can schedule and access Zoom meetings from inside of Canvas.
Viewing All My Zoom Meetings in Canvas
When you first enter Zoom on Canvas you will see only the Zoom meetings associated with the Canvas course you entered from. To see and access all Zoom meetings within your account, click the link ‘All My Zoom Meetings‘.
Pope Tech is an accessibility remediation tool available to instructors in Canvas. This tool (provided through the CCC Accessibility Center) gives instructors a quick but powerful way to check for and fix common accessibility concerns in Canvas content. Ensuring your Canvas courses are free of accessibility concerns helps support inclusion and equity for all students, and also is a requirement of MiraCosta policies as well as state and federal regulations.
The Pope Tech Overview (PDF) is a handy 2-page overview. You may also watch this 7-minute video for a helpful demonstration of how Pope Tech works in Canvas:
Instructor Accessibility Guide: Demo for Canvas LMS
Pope Tech Detailed Guidance
Click any of the items below to view more details, including video guides, for using Pope Tech.
What Canvas elements can be tested? What does Pope Tech check for?
What Canvas elements can faculty test with Pope Tech?
Most areas where faculty use the Canvas Rich Content Editor can be tested with Pope Tech:
Canvas pages
Syllabus
Quiz descriptions
Discussion Topics
Assignments
Announcements
To test a Canvas item for accessibility concerns, activate Pope Tech by selecting the button at left of the Cancel and Save buttons while editing any of the Canvas items above. Pope Tech works even when the item is not yet published.
What does Pope Tech check for?
If headers are present or skipped
Flags suspicious alt text for images (contains “image of”, “image”, etc.)
Color contrast between text and highlighted colored-background (Note: doesn’t check color contrast within images)
If font size is readable
Flags non-descriptive links such as “click here”, “link”, “more”, “read more”
Flags redundant links
Flags tables that lack at least one header and caption.
Flags YouTube, Canvas embedded video and Canvas embedded audio to bring awareness media will need to be manually reviewed for captions
Flags potential inaccessible files that need to be manually reviewed
How do I use Pope Tech?
Using Pope Tech is simple and intuitive.
Step 1: Open Pope Tech
To test a Canvas item for accessibility concerns, simply activate Pope Tech by selecting the icon next to the Cancel and Save buttons on the page while using the Rich Content Editor.
Step 2: Use Pope Tech to Locate and Fix Accessibility Issues
Once Pope Tech is activated, the Pope Tech menu will appear on the right-hand side of the screen. At the top of the interface, the number of errors and alerts will need to be addressed.
Errors are accessibility errors and should be looked at for remediation.
Alerts are suspicious areas. Alerts may or may not be an accessibility error. The user should review these and fix if necessary.
Rescan can be used once errors and alerts are fixed. This will allow the user to scan the page a second time and verify that all fixes were applied correctly.
Note: Files, videos, and audio will always be listed as alerts, as these require manual review with human eyes!
In the example below, we have 11 errors and 4 alerts.
In the Pope Tech interface, results are organized by the following categories:
Images and Links
Text and Contrast
Headings
Tables and Lists
Documents and Videos
Each of the categories can be expanded to show the errors or alerts. To view the content raising an error or alert:
Select the arrow displayed next to any category name. Once you expand a category, Pope Tech will display fields grouping together issues within that category.
Click any field to view detailed results and how to fix them.
Click a particular result to highlight the indicated content within the Canvas editor, enabling you to fix that content.
This quick (42 second) video demonstrates the process described above:
Video Demos: Fixing Alternative Text, Color Contrast, and Table Errors
Fixing Alternative Text
Alternative Text errors are listed in the Images and Links category of the Pope Tech tool. This video demonstrates how to fix such errors:
https://youtu.be/sHs7gQLaihs
Fixing Color Contrast
Color Contrast errors are listed in the Text and Contrast category of the Pope Tech tool. Users can fix color contrast errors by one of two methods:
Adjust the color in the Canvas rich text editor.
Adjust the contrast by using the sliders in the Pope Tech interface until the interface displays a “Pass” message.
This video demonstrates how to fix such errors:
https://youtu.be/2aDRvb-VGBA
Fixing Table Captions and Headers
Table errors are listed in the Tables and Lists area of Pope Tech. Using Pope Tech, it is very simple to add a table caption and designate whether the first row or the first column must be the header. This video demonstrates how to fix such errors:
https://youtu.be/AFPkAQ4knDw
Accessibility Issues Explained, from PopeTech
Click any link below for details about common accessibility issues, why it matters, and what to do to fix/avoid the issue.
Thanks to Tracy Schaelen of Southwestern College for originally developing content represented here, and to Liesl Boswell of the CCC Accessibility Center for some modifications and suggestions.
Social Annotation with Perusall (Zoom Recording, 1 hour 5 minutes) – 1/16/2023 workshop by Jim Julius, Michael from Perusall, Rob Bond, John Kirwan, & Aaron Roberts
Perusall makes it possible to have students comment, discuss, and share by annotating a document or image. Some possibilities might include:
annotating the textbook together (Perusall offers many common textbooks within its framework — see the catalog)
uploading pdf files and having students highlight and annotate
uploading images or videos and having students annotate
Perusall has been used independently by a number of MiraCosta faculty for several years, but starting in 2022 the college has licensed it, making it easier for all faculty to engage students in these kinds of rich, interactive learning opportunities. Perusall can be quickly added to any Canvas course. MiraCosta instructor and online mentor Lisa M. Lane has been using Perusall for some time, and has provided instructions and videos below to help faculty get started. You can also reach out to Lisa (email: llane@miracosta.edu ) to arrange for 1-1 mentoring support.
Before class starts: set up Perusall
To get started, you need to set up a site in Perusall. Perusall calls this a “course”. There are two ways to do this.
1: For Canvas courses organized around activity types
If your course materials for students are already set up by type (quizzes, lectures, readings) in Canvas, you may want to add Perusall to the menu.
Click Settings at the bottom of your course menu
Click the Navigation tab
3. Click the gear icon to the right of Perusall
4. Select +Enable
5. Click the Save button
The Perusall link now appears in your course menu. You can click on the Persuall menu link and a new browser window will open. The first time you do this, Perusall will establish Perusall account and sync it with your Canvas account. If you already had a free Perusall account using your MiraCosta email address, Perusall will merge that account with the one being set up under MiraCosta’s institutional Perusall license.
Click on the Perusall course menu link in CanvasA new window opens in your browser connecting your Canvas account with Perusall.
Upon first launch (for anyone), they will be guided on a tour of the platform. If they ever need to restart the tour, they can click their profile icon in the top right corner.
2: For Canvas courses organized in modules or units
If your course materials are organized for students to use Modules or units, you may want to use a test assignment to open the Perusall course.
Add an Assignment, call it Test Perusall
Don’t worry about points, instructions, and other settings
Use External Tool – Find – Perusall
Check the box to open in a new window
Save
In the assignment, click on the box “Load Test Perusall in New Window”
After doing this to connect your Canvas class and Perusall, you’ll follow the same process for setting up each Perusall assignment, and you can change this first Test Perusall assignment later to use it as an actual assignment.
The video below demonstrates both of the above methods for adding Perusall to your Canvas class.
Set up an assignment in the Perusall course
On the Get Started page: fill in boxes, but be sure that if you are not using groups, the number of students is set to your maximum
Library: choose the type of content for the first assignment and upload or put in URL
Assignments: click Add Assignment and select the content from your Library, choose your parameters for that assignment
Copy the name of the assignment exactly — it must be the name of your assignment in Canvas (that’s how Canvas knows which Perusall assignment to use).
Watch the video below for a demonstration of this:
Perusall settings and grading
Here is a video overview of the Perusall settings for a course:
One big settings choice for scoring or grading is this:
Do you want the work graded as it is done, with student scores increasing as they go? or
Do you want the work graded at the end by the instructor?
These are included in Settings, above. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Having grades go up as the student works can provide extrinsic motivation, but can also force the student to work to Perusall’s standards. Grading at the end means working quite a bit with the gradebook in Perusall, and it causes a problem with due dates. If the due date in Perusall matches the due date in Canvas (as it should so students cannot work past the due date), and the instructor grades after that date, Canvas will show the assignment as late. This will need to be explained to students, or manually changed in the Canvas gradebook.
Preventing problems with students going to the wrong assignment
There are two ways this can happen.
The student may go to Perusall.com trying to find the work
If a student gets locked out of the assignment, they may try to get in through Perusall.com, making an account. If they are successful, they will be able to annotate, but their grades will not be pushed back into Canvas, and they won’t get a score (you will see this with a red warning exclamation mark in the Perusall grades).
Solution: Encourage students to only enter Perusall through Canvas, through your assignment.
The student may navigate inside Perusall and click on the wrong assignment using the Library
Once inside Perusall, students, like instructors, can click on the left-hand list of both the Library and the Assignments. That means they can jump ahead to the wrong assignment or even in some cases jump back to an assignment that has already been graded, and work within it when you don’t want them to.
Solution: The best way to prevent this is to set the availability period for assignments, then make a hidden folder in the Library, and put all the Library items in there. Then make sure all Assignments have a due date. That way they can only click on an assignment, and only when it is open.
The video below discusses both of these potential issues:
During the class: Participating in annotating and discussing
Some instructors participate in the annotations as they occur. When participating, it’s good to use the @ symbol to alert particular students that you have a public question or annotation on their annotation. Perusall also allows students to upvote, and for you to upvote, particular annotations. The interactive nature of social annotation allows it to be a replacement for discussion if that’s how the instructor wants to use it.
Set up advance annotations if desired
You can set up questions, add video clips, or annotate your assignment yourself before the class begins as well as during the class. Instructor annotations are saved and can be rolled over to the next semester.
Grading assignments
It is usually not advisable to rely on Perusall’s automatic scoring algorithm.
Perusall’s algorithm attempts to analyze the depth and usefulness of a student’s comment, and that may not align with your goals. For example, an instructor who wants students to post five short superficial annotations or one long in-depth annotation will find that Perusall cannot make this distinction, and may give the student posting one long annotation a lower score.
Until you know the system is scoring like you want it to, it’s a good idea to check each student’s contributions. This can be done using the Students tab from the Course home page in Perusall:
Other options
Perusall is a complex program and can do many things. Scoring can be refined with multiple parameters. Student scores can be averaged and turned into a single Perusall grade rather than individual assignments. The recommendations above are designed for those who are new to Perusall.
Canvas Student View Warning
Canvas’ Student View button will not work with Perusall, since Canvas doesn’t send an email address to Perusall as part of that launch. To see what students will see once they launch into Perusall, utilize the Student View link on the left navigation bar within your Perusall course.
button at left of the Cancel and Save buttons while editing any of the Canvas items above. Pope Tech works even when the item is not yet published.
