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

Linguistic Bias, Part 2 – A SAFE Topics Podcast

All of us with the SAFE Topics podcast team are back at it with another episode! In this latest release, we continue our conversation with faculty on the topic of linguistic bias. The question we initially asked was: how do we welcome diverse voices and prevent privileging one dialect over the other? Join hosts Sean, curry, and Mana along with special guests Maria Figueroa (English), Denise Stephenson (Director of Writing Center), Eric Robertson (Communication Studies), and Andrea Petri (International Languages) as we go into part two of this most excellent episode!

Ways to Listen!

  1. Podbean – S.A.F.E. Topics
  2. Google Podcasts
  3. Spotify
  4. Apple Podcasts
  5. Amazon Music
  6. Audible

What to Listen For

  • How is language like code as in computer science?
  • Are we perpetuating bias in our professional language?
  • Being a jerk vs misunderstanding. 
  • Respectability politics.
  • “Erasing ourselves in order to be seen.”
  • Focusing on the identity of a language.
  • Dropping the F-Bombs to dismantle the system.
  • Relaxing when you have privileged positions to be your authentic self.
  • Formality vs informality.
  • Pluralizing language.
  • What makes language legit in your classrooms?
  • Mana gets the chills at the end! 🙂

The S.A.F.E. Topics Team

curry mitchell – Faculty, Letters (Co-host)
Sean Davis – Faculty, Sociology (Co-host)
Mana Tadayon – Student, ASG President (Co-host)
Kelly Barnett – Intern and Music Technology Student (Audio Editor)
James Garcia – Associate Faculty, Sociology (Show Notes, Online)

Connect with Us

PodBean
Safe Topics
S.A.F.E Topics logo

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

Linguistic Bias, Part 1 – A SAFE Topics Podcast

We hope you are all doing well and are ready to listen to our latest release! In this episode, the SAFE Topics podcast team has a conversation with faculty on the topic of linguistic bias! The question we ask is how do we welcome diverse voices and prevent privileging one dialect over the other? Join hosts Sean, curry, and Mana along with Maria Figueroa (English), Denise Stephenson (Director of Writing Center), Eric Robertson (Communication Studies), and Andrea Petri (International Languages) as we go into part one of this great episode and keep an eye out for Part Two to be released later this week!

Ways to Listen!

  1. Podbean – S.A.F.E. Topics
  2. Google Podcasts
  3. Spotify
  4. Apple Podcasts
  5. Amazon Music
  6. Audible

What to Listen For

  • How is a discipline that teaches formal language structures racist?
  • The ordering and structuring of teaching language.
  • Moving away from the prescriptive to the descriptive.
  • The concept of language or dialect.
  • How do you approach students who seek help in spaces like the writing center?
  • “Searching for a standard.”
  • Contextualizing is very important when teaching language.
  • Code switching – assimilate, strategize, or eliminate?
  • How language can create a power distance.
  • Language is only one form of communication.
  • Breaking away from standards for students who need it.
  • Positionality and giving students agency.
  • Fairness vs equity.
  • The idea of articulation.
  • The team discusses code-switching.

Mentioned in the Episode

The S.A.F.E. Topics Team

curry mitchell – Faculty, Letters (Co-host)
Sean Davis – Faculty, Sociology (Co-host)
Mana Tadayon – Student, ASG President (Co-host)
Kelly Barnett – Intern and Music Technology Student (Audio Editor)
James Garcia – Associate Faculty, Sociology (Show Notes, Online)

Connect with Us

PodBean
Safe Topics
S.A.F.E Topics logo

Equity Online: Celebrating Our Collaborative Work in Progress

Equity Online: Celebrating Our Collaborative Work Progress

Hello, Faculty Community! 

This Friday the C3 Teaching & Learning Center and Online Education welcome you to a full day of celebrating, cultivating, and connecting around our commitment to equity-minded online education. This year has been incredibly challenging in so many ways, but our instructional practices have also advanced under those challenges, and this day is intended to both recognize the efforts of our community and to inspire and inform our ongoing work.

You may view a detailed schedule for the day,including Zoom links, but here are some quick highlights:

  • 9:00 – Welcome and introduction to the day
  • 9:30 – A panel of ASE students sharing their experiences as students during COVID-19
  • 10:35 – Keynote address by Michelle Pacansky-Brock, known for her work helping CCC educators to humanize online teaching
  • 12:30 – A SAFE Topics live podcast with ASE program faculty and staff sharing about student support during COVID-19
  • 1:35-3:40 – three workshops to choose from, including:
    • two-hour workshop on Canvas accessibility 
    • one hour workshop on Open Educational Resources 
    • one hour workshop on Addressing and Reducing Online Microaggressions

The day will also include social times at lunch (with a professional DJ supplying the soundtrack!) and at the end of the day.

No Zoom Registration Required – Just use the link and hop in!​​​​​​

Please plan to join us for some or all of this great day. We look forward to seeing you there!

Sean & Jim

1 … 11 12 13 14 15 … 30