Author: Jim Julius

Hello, all!

Whew! You’ve just about made it to mid-semester. As you begin thinking about finishing fall well and looking ahead to another semester online in the spring, I want to remind you of various ways you can get support and enhance your professional knowledge and practice in online education.

Collegial Mentoring Available!

If you’d like to connect with a faculty colleague for any kinds of questions about online teaching – from getting a quick answer to a head-scratcher, to a more comprehensive conversation about effective practices and/or a walkthrough of a course – we have a dozen folks ready to help. Just fill out the form to request a mentor.

Career Education Faculty – Would you like professional instructional design support?

A strong workforce grant has given our CE faculty access to an outstanding instructional design expert, who has been working with many MiraCosta faculty for more than a year. She can help you with online course design guidance/advice and she can also work directly to make enhancements to your course(s), if you desire. Just reply to this email indicating interest and I will get you connected.

CE Faculty may also be interested in the Developing and Strengthening Online Career Education: The CVC-OEI Improving Online CTE Pathways Speaker Series featuring CE discipline-specific and general online teaching webinars later in October and November.

Interested in Open Educational Resources (OER)?

Adopting OER is a great way to support equity by lowering course material costs, and through greater flexibility to teach a course the way you think students will learn best, rather than being tied to the organization of a traditional textbook. Over 340 MiraCosta fall classes are listed in SURF as Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC)– that is awesome! Want to get more involved with OER?

• MiraCosta still has grant funds available to provide stipends, timesheet-based compensation, and/or instructional designer expertise to support efforts to reduce course material costs by at least 30% through the adoption of OER and other no-cost course material. Please reply to me if you would like to learn more.
• The statewide Academic Senate (ASCCC) has great resources available via the ASCCC OERI website, as well as a Canvas site (tinyurl.com/ASCCC-OpenEd) with more informal sharing of discipline-oriented information.
• The ASCCC is recruiting discipline faculty to support OER advocacy efforts by serving as Discipline Leads. “Our intent is to expand our discipline collections during the fall 2020 term and to increase our targeted advocacy efforts across all identified disciplines in the spring 2021 term. In order to meet these goals, we are now seeking Discipline Leads for disciplines that have never had a Lead and we will be seeking new Leads for the disciplines that have had a Lead previously. Read more about the disciplines we are recruiting, the Discipline Lead role, and the application process.”
• Register for Copyright, Fair Use, and Piracy. Where does OER Fit In?webinar from ASCCC this Friday, Oct. 16 at 3 pm.
• The Open Education Global conferenceis online Nov. 16-20. MiraCosta is an OEGlobal member, making your registration just $25.

Additional Upcoming Events, Courses, and Recorded Workshops

• Check out our comprehensive set of recordings of past MiraCosta Online Education workshops. Viewing workshop recordings is always Flex-eligible.
• FACCC is holding a statewide “Future of Distance Education” event on Friday afternoon, Oct. 23.See details and register.
• @ONE provides comprehensive online teaching courses for CCC faculty. New courses are starting soon – check out what’s available. Departmental travel funds can potentially be used to pay for your registration in these courses; if you don’t have access to such funds please reach out to me for support from the Online Education budget.

What Additional Training Opportunities Would You Like?

As you think about your needs over the next few months in finishing out fall and preparing for spring, what kinds of training and support are you looking for? Please reply to me with any requests/suggestions. I will be collaborating with Sean Davis, Joyful Teacher in Residence, to plan online teaching workshops over the next two months.

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

Hello, faculty –

This is a quick recap with links to critical emails sent last week, for those who may have been immersed in summer until the last minute (good for you!). Please review any and all that may be of interest!

Email #1 – includes info on the new ability to merge Canvas course sections

Email #2 – includes a quick overview of MiraCosta’s primary online teaching tools, a heads-up about potential broken links in your courses, and a note about special support for CE faculty

Email #3 – includes info about online ed Flex workshops (now you can view archives of those), new Canvas-based faculty support resources, info on how to access past workshop archives, a note about updates to AP 4105, and info about Canvas support now available via chat

Email #4 – Includes key online student support resources to share with your students: the Canvas Student Support Hub, Student Orientation to Online Learning workshops, CARE resources for students in need, and support for student identity online (pronouns and preferred name)

PROJECT Trainers & Mentors Wanted – was sent by Sean Davis with a call for faculty interested in serving as compensated trainers and/or mentors for other faculty this fall to enhance our equity-minded online teaching practices. Remember to fill out the form by Friday, Aug. 21!

Best wishes for a great start to fall!

– Jim

Jim Julius, Ed.D.

Faculty Director, Online Education

Enjoying your last hours of summer freedom? Haha! This is the fourth in a series of emails about all things online leading up to MiraCosta’s fall 2020 semester. If you missed email #1, email #2, or email #3 (which, yes, was inadvertently labeled as a second #2 – oops) please check those out!

Thursday updates: all about connecting your students with support for online learning –

• Student Support Services & Resources, Online
• Student Orientation to Online Learning
• Resources to Include in Your Classes
• Pronouns and Preferred Name in Canvas – an important change

Campus Closed. Student Support Open.

Campus may be closed, but our amazing array of student support services and resources are just one or two clicks away. Point your students to the Student Support Hub in Canvas. Share the link and point them to the Student Support button on the left in Canvas for quick access to online support from the library, STEM & MLC, online tutoring, writing center, counseling, career center, open computer lab staff, student help desk and more! The new Help Hut on the MiraCosta website is also a quick way for students to connect with all kinds of support services, and the tutoring hub gives access from the website to all the academic support resources found in the Student Support Hub within Canvas.

Student Orientation to Online Learning Workshops

I’ll be offering over two dozen Student Orientation to Online Learning workshops this fall – 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.

Two Highly Recommended MiraCosta CARE Resources

The Reshaping Your School Schedule During Remote Instruction document has great info for students on good habits for online student success, self-care and mental health tips, online learning netiquette, Zoom tech tips, and more. Linking to it from your syllabus and course home page could easily provide students with a wealth of great tips tailored for this unique time. You may also wish to share the CARE form – students who are need of technology resources or have other major life concerns making it difficult to maintain their studies can seek help via this form. You also can fill out the form on behalf of students experiencing hardships.

Ensuring Student Identities are Equitably Presented in Canvas

• Canvas itself now supports pronouns and all Canvas users are able to select their pronouns in their Settings. An announcement in Canvas reminds all users about this. If you previously used NameCoach to support pronouns, note that it is no longer available at MiraCosta.
• Please make sure that students know that if they prefer to be known by a different name from their legal/formal name, they may indicate their preferred name via SURF – instructions are here. Preferred name is used in Canvas, on class rosters, and elsewhere around MiraCosta.

Got your Flex schedule all planned out? See you online!

– Jim

Jim Julius, Ed.D.

Faculty Director, Online Education

Hello Hello! This is the third in a series of emails about all things online leading up to MiraCosta’s fall 2020 semester. If you missed email #1 or email #2 please check those out!

Wednesday updates: all about faculty support and professional learning resources for online teaching –

• Online Ed flex workshop schedule
• Canvas-based online teaching resources for MiraCosta faculty
• Additional workshop archives of interest
• Updates to AP 4105
• Canvas support now available via Chat!

Online Education Fall Flex Workshops

Online Ed and C3TLC have coordinated a number of workshops being offered this Friday and Monday. You can see all of these workshops listed in one place; they are also included on the complete Flex workshop schedule. Please note that there are a number of other superb-sounding online ed-related offerings that are also being offered during Flex week. Of special note this Friday is that in addition to the workshops, there will be four hours of open Canvas support time offered by Karen Turpin and several faculty Canvas power users. Drop into that open support lab anytime to get your pressing Canvas questions answered!

Online Education Canvas-based Resources for MiraCosta Faculty

The MiraCosta Distance Education Handbook and the PROJECT Online Teaching Foundations course are two resources you may not be aware of. The DE Handbook covers all kinds of details about policies, procedures, guidelines, and recommendations for online teaching at MiraCosta. The PROJECT Online Teaching Foundations course was put together this summer and includes many recordings of Zoom presentations made by MirCosta faculty and other online teaching experts this summer, as well as a lot of great activities and resources. While there is still a bit of finishing touch being applied to both of these resources, they are ready for you to begin exploring and using.

More Online Ed Workshop Archives

We’ve been offering online workshops and recording them for years! Explore what’s available in our workshop archives page. We also have a separate page with all the great workshops conducted during our instructional continuity transition week in March. If you’re looking for help with a tool or online teaching topic that’s not on this fall’s Flex schedule, you can probably find a recording on one of these pages to help you out. And viewing those recordings is, of course, Flex-eligible.

Updates to AP 4105

AP 4105 – MiraCosta’s administrative procedure on distance education – was updated in the spring to ensure MiraCosta is aligned with California Title 5 regulations on distance education. Most notably, student-to-student interaction is required for all distance education classes as an expansion of the definition of regular effective contact. You’re encouraged to review this AP and make sure you’re on the right track as you set up your classes.

A New Canvas Support Option: Live Chat

You may be one of the many faculty who loves the Canvas 24×7 phone support. Or, you may be one who (like me) would prefer a chat. If you haven’t clicked that Tech Help button at the bottom left corner of Canvas recently, you may not have noticed that Live Chat with Canvas Support is now an option, for both faculty and students. Just be aware, these days they are BUSY! You may need to be a little patient to get through to a rep, but it’s still a great way to get unstuck on Canvas issues as quickly as possible.

Tomorrow: Student support resources!

– Jim

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