Author: Jim Julius

Preparing for Summer 2021 Online Student Success

To all faculty teaching this summer – please take advantage of and share these important resources and opportunities for you and your students!

Support for You

  • Instructional Design help – To request online teaching and course design support from our instructional designer, please fill out our request form. We’ll get you connected! (This is only available through June.)
  • Tech Support – Canvas options include 24×7 phone and chat support. Just click the Tech Support button at lower left in Canvas! Zoom tech support for faculty is available through the MiraCosta employee help desk.
  • Our Canvas start-of-term checklist can help you finalize your summer classes.
  • The MiraCosta Online Class Quality Guidelines were significantly updated this spring and approved by the Academic Senate in May. Please review them to learn more about MiraCosta requirements and recommended practices for online instructors.
  • MiraCosta technologies supporting online teaching and learning – please see the last section of this email for an overview, with links to learn more.

Support for Your Students

  • Student Orientation to Online Learning – In collaboration with the library, I’ll be offering eight of these workshops at the start of the summer semester– see all dates and times on the TASC site and in Canvas announcements. These workshops help to familiarize students with the resources MiraCosta provides online to support them, as well as to adopt habits and attitudes of successful online students. Encourage your students to attend and, if you like, find out which of your students participated in order to incentivize their attendance.
  • Online Student Support Access Points – the Student Support Hubin Canvas, accessed via the Student Support button on the left in Canvas gives quick access to online support from the library, STEM & MLC, online tutoring, writing center, counseling, career center, open computer lab staff, student help desk, health services, and more! The Help Hut on the MiraCosta website is also a quick way for students to connect with all kinds of support services including A&R and Financial Aid.
  • Tech Support – Also at lower left in Canvas is a button for students to quickly access Tech Support options, including 24×7 phone and chat support from Canvas, and our local MiraCosta student help desk.
  • Technology Needs? – Be sure to share the CARE form for students to fill out if they need a laptop and/or hotspot to succeed this summer.

MiraCosta’s Online Education Tools

Click the link immediately after each bullet for a detailed MiraCosta-specific overview of each item below. This is not intended as a comprehensive review of all technologies for online teaching supported by the college, but rather a quick look at the essentials. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions about these or other resources.

  • Canvas – of course is the #1 tool for most faculty.
  • Zoom – Make sure you are using MiraCosta’s professional-level Zoom account to get access to the full set of Zoom features.
  • Canvas Studio – This great tool enables faculty and students to create videos while inside Canvas. Faculty can create interactive discussion or quiz activities based on video.
  • Pronto is an incredible mobile-friendly and Canvas-integrated messaging platform that’s ready to use in every course.
  • Pope Tech  helps faculty detect and correct accessibility issues within Canvas. See also Creating Accessible Course Content for tips on ensuring all the content you add to Canvas is fully accessible.
  • Ally automatically converts content you share through Canvas into multiple formats for students, allowing for listening rather than reading and better access to content on mobile devices.
  • PlayPosit – This video interaction tool offers more complexity and options than Studio. Studio is a great place to start, but if you’re looking for more question types to add to your videos, PlayPosit is a great option.
  • Turnitin – Many faculty use Turnitin to help students learn to properly cite sources and avoid plagiarism, as well as to assist with grading and peer review processes for written work.
  • Productivity Software, Hardware, and other resources for working from home – this AIS website includes a number of links to helpful resources for being fully equipped when teaching from your home.

Happy summer teaching!

– Jim

Jim Julius, Ed.D.
Faculty Director, Online Education

Finishing strong and looking ahead

Dear MiraCosta Faculty,

Congrats as we approach the spring finish line! Here are a couple quick reminders and opportunities for support with your online teaching:

Canvas End of Term

After June 7, your spring Canvas classes go into read-only mode for you and your students. If you wish to remove access to any of your course materials for your current students beyond this semester, you need to do so by June 7. Review our Canvas end-of-term guide for details.

MiraCosta Online Mentors and Instructional Designer Support Still Available

If you’d like help with any semester wrap-up tasks, or as you begin working on summer or fall classes, our MiraCosta peer support faculty are available through the end of May, and our Instructional Designer is available through the end of June. Fill out the request form to get connected!

Pronto Available for 2021-22

Check out Pronto, an incredible mobile-friendly and Canvas-integrated messaging platform that’s ready to use in every course. Faculty who used it this spring found it extremely useful for communicating with students.

Summer Professional Learning Opportunities

Fall Flex Friday: Call for Participation

Friday, August 13 has been designated by PDP as having a focus on online instruction. Sean Davis and I would like to organize the day into a conference format. We’re grateful for the proposals already submitted to PDP and we would like to involve more folks. If you didn’t submit a proposal but would like to be involved in some way, please just send me a quick email expressing your interest and ideas. We look forward to working with you!

In gratitude,

– Jim

Jim Julius, Ed.D.
Faculty Director, Online Education

Office 365 Integration in Canvas

MiraCosta College Canvas now supports an LTI integration with Microsoft Office 365 in Assignments, Collaborations, Modules, Course Navigation, and the Rich Content Editor. This integration allows students and instructors to use, create, share, and collaborate on Office 365 files within Canvas. Users can also view their OneDrive files directly in Canvas.

Enable the Office 365 Integration in Canvas

  1. Enter your Canvas course
  2. Click Settings on the course menu
  3. Click the Navigation tab
Zoom Canvas LTI Step 2 and 3
  1. Click the 3 dots to the right ofOffice 365 and select Enable.
  2. Click the Save button
Office 365 step 4 and 5

Log on to Office 365 as a Faculty / Staff Member

  1. Click the Office 365 course menu item which will appear in your course menu.
  2. Click the Log In button.
  1. Enter your Faculty / Staff MCC email address

    Example: kturpin@miracosta.edu
  2. Click the Next button
  1. Click the Accept button on the Permissions requested page.
    Note: This page will only display the first time you log on to the Office 365 Integration in Canvas.
Step #5 Permissions Page

Now you can access Office 365 documents from inside of Canvas.

Faculty Office 365 Guides for Canvas

Faculty Office 365 Help and FAQS

Student Office 365 Guides and Support

Students log on to Office 365 with their  MiraCosta Student Email Address
They may also use their SURF ID + “@student.miracosta.edu“
Example: W71234567@student.miracosta.edu

Mid-Semester Online Updates & Save-the-Dates

Spring break is just about here, hooray! I haven’t been throwing a lot of info at you this spring, so this email has a lot of quick and useful items … please take a look!

I’m offering a final set of Student Orientation to Online Learning workshops the week after break. These are especially to support students starting in 8-week classes but of course are open to all.

Professional Learning Opportunities & Save-the-Dates:

  • MiraCosta
    • Friday, April 30, save the date for a local online event recognizing and celebrating our efforts (especially over the last year) to offer equitable online learning to our students, and deepening our skills, knowledge, and commitment to this ongoing work. Look for more details coming soon!
    • Remember that you can request personal, 1-1 online teaching assistance from peer faculty and/or our instructional designer.
  • CCC system
  • Across all 3 California Higher Ed systems
    • Aug. 4-6 a new free online conference called Cal OER will take place. A call for proposals will be open soon – I’ll send an email with more info when it’s out.

Online technology tips and updates of note:

  • Zoom now offers automatic live captioning/transcription in addition to transcribing recordings. Meeting hosts have to enable this every time you start a meeting.
  • MiraCosta’s Canvas system now includes an Immersive Reader feature at the upper right of every Canvas page (Pages only, not assignments, discussions, or other Canvas tools). Immersive Reader supports Universal Design for Learning by providing tools supporting student comprehension of course material, including language translation options and (high-quality!) reading aloud of content on pages.
  • Office 365 is now available as an integration in our Canvas system. This enables quick access to your OneDrive files for adding to Canvas as content, as well as tools for collaboration and assignments using Office 365 files. To learn more, start with our Office 365/Canvas integration instructor guide on the TIC site . The bottom of that page includes links to resources supporting students as they get started with Office 365.
  • Putting Your Best Self Forward: 6 Keys for Filming Quality Videos has some great tips, most of which also apply to setting up and using Zoom effectively. It’s an easy read with some funny examples of what *not* to do as well.

Best wishes for R&R for those taking a break, and gratitude to all who will be continuing to do the work!

Jim Julius, Ed.D.
Faculty Director, Online Education

Teaching with Zoom at MiraCosta College

Zoom Logo

This page provides guidance on teaching with Zoom, and assumes some basic familiarity with Zoom. Visit the Getting Started, Getting Help, and Using Zoom with Canvas page for details and technical information about getting started with Zoom at MiraCosta College, including how to set up integration of Zoom within Canvas.

Zoom Teaching Tips: Inclusion, Equity, Privacy, Security, and more

MiraCosta Zoom how-to videos from faculty

Please note that some of the following resources may refer to the version of Zoom that MiraCostans used in fall 2020 or earlier; MiraCosta Zoom is now hosted at https://miracosta-edu.zoom.us rather than https://conferzoom.org.

  • Teaching with Zoom (Fall 2020 workshop) – CSIT faculty member Rick Cassoni provides a 1-hour overview of Zoom, from the beginnings of signing up for a Zoom account, to recommended settings within your account and creation of meetings, to the basics of using Zoom for both live and recorded online instruction.
  • Connecting with Students in Zoom (Spring 2020 workshop) – Letters faculty member curry mitchell shares a few simple activities and methods for scaffolding an interactive, collaborative Zoom workshop with students.  curry also discusses flexible and compassionate practices–such as attendance policies and creating asynchronous means for participation–to ensure we’re using Zoom to help each other. (Note, this session included 10 minutes in breakout rooms but the recording was not paused, so you can skip from when that happens at around minute 39 ahead to minute 49 of the recording.)
  • Sharing your iPad screen on Zoom – Math faculty member Angela Beltran-Aguilar demonstrates in this short (under 3 minutes) video how to use an iPad as your sharing source for teaching with Zoom.
  • Capturing a separate screencast of a Zoom session – Psychology faculty member Robert Kelley demonstrates in this very short (under 2 minutes) video how to capture a portion of a Zoom session, excluding student participants, in order to be able to share the recording more widely without FERPA concerns.

Captioning for Zoom

  • Enabling Automated Real-Time Captions in Zoom – We now have access to automated captions inside our Zoom meetings – both live and recorded. While automated captions are a great resource for our students, they are not a replacement for professional captions when those are needed.
  • Zoom cloud recordings auto-transcribe and caption recorded Zoom sessions within a few hours (typically) of completion of the recording. Zoom’s interface makes it easy to fix up the captions so they are fully accurate.
  • If you have a student who requires live captions and you are using Zoom, please contact MiraCosta SAS.
    • You will need to make a one-time change in your Zoom account settings to enable live captioning, and at the start of each Zoom session with captioning, you will need to assign the captioning role to the proper person in your meeting. See directions for both.
1 … 8 9 10 11 12 … 25