Author: Jim Julius

Pope Tech and Canvas Accessibility

Pope Tech And Canvas Accesibility Flex Workshop Recordings

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
Canvas LTI Dashboard and Accessibility Guide

Pope Tech Canvas LMS Tool Resources

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 Pope Tech icon 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.

Pope Tech button at left of Cancel and Save buttons

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.

Pope Tech button at left of Cancel and Save buttons

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.

Pope Tech Accessibility checker interface

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:

  1. 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. 
  2. Click any field to view detailed results and how to fix them.
  3. 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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0izZNAG-BMu0026feature=youtu.beu0026ab_channel=YoussefFrancis
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.

Credit

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.

Adding NetTutor to Your Canvas Class

MiraCosta’s Learning Centers provide great online tutoring for all students, available in Canvas through the Student Support Hub. For subjects and times where local online tutoring may not be available, the next option is eTutoring through the Western eTutoring Consortium. A third option with even more subject and time availability is NetTutor, available through the California Virtual Campus (CVC-OEI).

Regardless of which online tutoring services may best benefit your students, these are recommended practices that faculty use to help more students benefit from tutoring:

  • Mention online tutoring sources in your syllabus
  • Embed reminders about use of tutoring within instructions for assignments
  • Provide specific references to the opportunity for tutoring in your feedback/communication with students
  • Normalize tutoring as an option that can support everyone

NetTutor provides support for just about any academic subject, up to 24×7 for the most popular subject matter, and can be made available via your Canvas course menu. The link opens an interface where students select their subject for NetTutor help, with no additional login required. Students can access both the STAR-CA tutoring consortium from California and the full complement of professional NetTutor tutors.

How can you help students take advantage of NetTutor?

First, please keep in mind that if your subject is supported by local MiraCosta Learning Center tutors, you should direct your students to that support primarily. If you do want your students to consider NetTutor support:

Also with NetTutor, each instructor may specify “Rules of Engagement” that inform tutors about the approach and resources you would like them to use when working with your students. If you would like to do this, contact Jim Julius for more information.

Adding NetTutor to your Canvas course menu

Once you add NetTutor to your course menu following the directions below, click the NetTutor link to verify that your subject is available.

1- Click Settings at the bottom of your course menu

Canvas SEttings

2- Click the Navigation tab

Navigation step 2

3- Click the gear icon to the right of NetTutor
4- Select +Enable
5- Click the Save button

Step 3-5 add NetTutor

A NetTutor link now appears in your course menu.

Online News for You: End of Fall 2023

Dear MiraCosta Faculty, 

We’re almost there! Let’s finish strong and (maybe?) think a little bit about prepping for spring online teaching 😅

Canvas End of Term

After Dec. 31, your fall Canvas classes go into read-only mode for you and your students, and move from the Canvas Dashboard to the Past Enrollments area of Canvas (select Courses at left in Canvas, then All Courses). 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 Dec. 31. 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, as well as what to do if you wish to close course access sooner than Dec. 31.

Finishing Up and Looking Ahead

If you’d like help with any semester wrap-up tasks, and/or as you begin working on spring classes, you can consult with our Instructional Designer, Nadia Khan (click the link to schedule a time). For those teaching spring classes that are Zero- or Low-Textbook Cost, if you haven’t yet done so, please update your course section ZTC/LTC designations in SURF.

Helping Students to SOAR this Spring

The SOAR (Student Online Academic Readiness) workshop returns in spring. In partnership with librarians, we’ve already lined up many workshop times for the spring semester. Please recommend this to your students as you build syllabi and welcome pages for your classes! As always, we’ll have Canvas announcements reminding students of sessions each week. And as always, you can check to see if your students have attended one of these workshops in order to incentivize participation.

Finishing Up and Looking Ahead

If you’d like help with any semester wrap-up tasks, and/or as you begin working on spring classes, you can consult with our Instructional Designer, Nadia Khan (click the link to schedule a time). For those teaching spring classes that are Zero- or Low-Textbook Cost, if you haven’t yet done so, please update your course section ZTC/LTC designations in SURF.

Helping Students to SOAR this Spring

The SOAR (Student Online Academic Readiness) workshop returns in spring. In partnership with librarians, we’ve already lined up many workshop times for the spring semester. Please recommend this to your students as you build syllabi and welcome pages for your classes! As always, we’ll have Canvas announcements reminding students of sessions each week. And as always, you can check to see if your students have attended one of these workshops in order to incentivize participation.

Happy break!

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

Student Online Academic Readiness (SOAR) Workshop Information

Each term, typically in weeks 1-3, 5, and 9, Online Education offers multiple 1-hour Student Online Academic Readiness (SOAR) workshop sessions open to any student. The list of SOAR sessions is available on the TASC Student Workshop site. Students also have an announcement in Canvas with upcoming workshop dates/ times provided. Note: Prior to 2022, this workshop was known as the Student Orientation to Online Learning (SOOL).

SOAR has the following outcomes:

  • Students will learn habits and attitudes of successful online students
  • Students will be able to effectively select and get started in online classes
  • Students will be able to navigate and use basic online education tools (primarily Zoom & Canvas)
  • Students will be able to access key online technical and academic student support resources

SOAR is typically offered in-person at the Oceanside campus and online, though during COVID and for spring 2022, all sessions are online. (It was offered in-person at SEC but attendance was extremely low.) Student attendance at SOAR is recorded in SURF so that instructors may require attendance or provide extra credit (instructors, see below for details).

Students who attend SOAR are enrolled into a Canvas course that includes extensive information to support student success in online education. The course remains available to the students indefinitely.

The Canvas SOAR class is open for anyone to self-enroll in, and the main Online Education page also includes a recorded version of the online SOAR which is open for anyone to view. Simply self-enrolling and/or watching the recorded version does not make a student eligible to have their attendance recorded in SURF; attendance at a live in-person or online session is required.

Over 5500 students have participated since SOAR began in 2014. Research shows that from 2014 to 2018, 72.8% of those who attended SOAR in the same or a previous term successfully completed DE courses vs. a 65.9% DE success rate for students who had not attended a SOAR workshop.

Student Online Academic Readiness Attendance

Any instructor can use SURF to find out which of their students have attended.

  1. Enter SURF, go to a Class Roster page, and scroll to the bottom
  2. Click the “Student Orientation to Online Learning Roster” link (see image below)

Student Orientation Link location on SURF

A PDF should open in a new browser tab or window with a roster showing which students attended an orientation, and on what date. If the roster doesn’t open, please ensure that it wasn’t blocked by a popup blocker. Please note: you will see a spinner icon while the PDF is generating. This can happen quickly or it can take a significant amount of time – up to several minutes – so please be patient while the process runs.

Recorded GIFTS Teaching with Technology Zoom Cast

Greetings Colleagues:

At yesterday’s Great Ideas for Teaching: Teaching with Technology Hy Flex Zoom Cast, we shared ideas about 

1) zoom conference-based grading for papers and larger projects, 

2) using the notes tool in canvas to encourage personalized contact and follow up with students, and 

3) incorporating quiz questions and annotations into video using canvas studio

Video Screen Shot of Technology Zoom Cast

Here is the recording from our meeting.

And here are some links for those who wish to follow up on what we are sharing (remember, we are just briefly introducing ideas, not walking step b step through the how to’s).

  • As Jim J. worked through his ideas, he reminded us of what an amazing recourse the TIC home page is and the practical teaching ideas we can find in our Distance Education Handbook.
  • When Nadia walked us through adding quiz questions and annotations to video in canvas, she highlighted the possibilities. But she also has a video that walks interested colleagues step by step through the how to’s of this tool: embedding quizzes and annotations in videos.

Thanks to all — especially our colleague Arturo Arevalos — for another lively session.

gym sullivan
joyfully celebrating, cultivating, and connecting

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