Congrats on (just about) making it to summer. Here are reminders and opportunities as you wrap up spring and start thinking about what’s next.
Canvas End of Term
After June 6, 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 then. Review our Canvas end-of-term guide for details. It also discusses what you need to do if you have any students who will receive Incomplete grades.
Support for Wrapping Up Classes and Summer/Fall Class Prep
Looking to develop or refine course policies about AI usage? I’ll be sending a separate email on that soon, but here’s a one-page course AI policy development guide I’ll be sharing.
The Online Teaching Conference is in Long Beach, June 26-28. Early bird registration ends May 24. Contact me if you’re interested in funding to support your registration.
When’s the last time you explored the TIC website? Start on the tic.miracosta.edu home page and see where it leads you – there are many great resources including workshop recordings, tutorials, examples, and guidelines for online teaching.
Have a super summer!
– Jim
Jim Julius, Ed.D. Faculty Coordinator, Online Education
Turnitin Plagiarism Framework is available within Canvas and offers a tighter integration between a Canvas assignment and Turnitin than the Turnitin 1.3 LTI Canvas integration. No separate login or password is required for faculty or students.
The primary difference between the two tools is that theTurnitin LTI 1.3 integration is best used if faculty prefer to use Turnitin for grading and feedback; the Turnitin Plagiarism Framework is preferred by faculty who want Turnitin for plagiarism prevention but like to use the Canvas grading and feedback tools.
MiraCosta College has an unlimited license to Turnitin, GradeMark, and Peer Review.
Testing a Turnitin Assignment with your MCC Sample Student
Turnitin is an LTI tool that is globally installed on our Canvas system. LTI tools are not native to Canvas so they will not work in the internal Canvas Student View. You must log off of Canvas, as an instructor, then log on with your MCC Sample Student account. Now you will be able to experience a Turnitin assignment within your Canvas course as a student.
Professional Learning Opportunities related to online teaching
This week: The free online Peralta Online Equity Conference started yesterday and goes through tomorrow. You can still register to ensure you have updates and access to recorded sessions!
Summer:
The CCC Online Teaching Conference is in Long Beach, June 26-28. If you would like support to attend, let me know! Online Ed can cover conference registration but likely not hotel expenses.
All facilitated and self-paced @ONE online teaching courses are free! (Be sure to click the Load More button at the bottom of that page to see all your options, including many related to OER/ZTC.) Enroll now in a facilitated class before they fill up!
Pope Tech is an accessibility remediation tool available to instructors in Canvas. This tool 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.
MiraCosta College has two Pope Tech Canvas LMS tools:
Accessibility Guide – a page-by-page accessibility checker and remediation assistant for Canvas
Accessibility Dashboard – a course-level dashboard allowing you to review and correct accessibility issues throughout an entire Canvas course
Pope Tech Accesibility Guide 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 access the PopeTech Course Dashboard tool, click Pope Tech Accessibility in any Canvas course menu.
To test an individual Canvas item for accessibility concerns, activate Pope Tech by selecting the icon next to the Cancel and Save buttons on a Canvas item while using the Rich Content Editor.
Step 2: Use Pope Tech to Locate and Fix Accessibility Issues
When Pope Tech is activated, the Pope Tech menu appears 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.
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 Help Desk in the Portal and select the User Accounts option.
What if I’m having trouble with my Zoom account? Sign in to the MiraCosta Help Desk 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 share Zoom meetings and recordings directly within Canvas, using the Zoom integration. To get started and learn more about the Zoom/Canvas integration, see directions below.
Note: You may also share individual Zoom meeting links and recordings in 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‘.
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.
