Author: Jim Julius

Dear MiraCosta Faculty,

As we near the much-needed winter break, here are some reminders and resources to help you reach the finish line, and perhaps, to begin spring preparation.

Canvas End of Term

After Dec. 31, your fall 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.

Speaking of Canvas, if you like, you can read more from Instructure about the Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage that affected Canvas last week.

MiraCosta Online Mentors and Instructional Designer Support

If you’d like help with any semester wrap-up tasks, or as you begin working on spring classes, some of our MiraCosta peer support faculty are available over break (yes, they will continue to be available in spring, hooray), and our Instructional Designer, Nadia Khan, is available as well over the break and into the spring. Click either link to make a connection!

Please also check out the helpful “five-minute fixes” and “more than five-minute fixes” videos some of our amazing Online Mentor faculty have created to inspire and support your online teaching!

SOOL is Now SOAR

We’re changing the name of what used to be the Student Orientation to Online Learning to SOAR: Student Online Academic Readiness. In partnership with librarians, we’ve already lined up 20 workshop times for the spring semester – please feel free to 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 their participation.

Upcoming Professional Learning Opportunities

• The Online Teaching Conference. Is scheduled to take place in person this summer, June 29-July 1, in Long Beach. More details will come in 2022, but the call for proposals is open now through January 31 if you’re interested in presenting.
• @ONE has opened registration for free spring webinars on equity, with two focused on grading practices. You can also register for a number of @ONE online teaching courses starting in early spring, and they are offering 25% discount on courses starting before April with coupon code PD4U_2022. Let me know if you’d like financial support to register for one of these. 

Spring Online Ed Flex Planning – Got Something to Share?

I’m pulling together Flex week online ed workshops around topics including student-instructor interaction, student-student interaction, accessibility, and proactive support of students through monitoring engagement and progress. I’d love to include diverse faculty voices/examples in these sessions – please let me know if you’d be interested in sharing your practices in one of these workshops!

Wishing you peace, joy, and rest for your winter break!

– Jim

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

Many wonderful professional learning opportunities to enhance your online instructional skills and knowledge are coming up! Please see below, and let me know if you are looking for something beyond what’s listed here!

MIRACOSTA

• Anytime: Connect with a MiraCosta peer faculty helper for any question related to online teaching, big or small!
  
• Five Minute Fixes to Simplify Online Teaching – Tues. Oct. 5, 8 pm in Zoom (no registration needed)
  Want to make a quick fix that makes a difference? We’ll share ideas for how to prevent students getting lost, liven up discussion, stop spending so much time grading, and answer fewer student questions. See how you can simplify your online teaching. Presented by Laura Paciorek and Lisa M. Lane, sponsored by MiraCosta Online Mentors.

• Faculty Show & Tell – Tues. Oct. 12 & 26, Nov. 9 & 30, 2-3 pm in Zoom (no registration needed)
  Join me, Lauren McFall, and Sean Davis for open discussion allowing us to connect with colleagues, consider new possibilities, and potentially find our next collaboration.

CANVAS

• InstructureCon, Canvas’s annual conference, is Thursday, Oct. 7. It’s fully online and fully free! Click the link to learn more and register.

ASCCC OER INITIATIVE WEBINARS (Click links to register)

•   OER for Administrators – Fri., Oct. 8, 10:30-11:30 am
  What should administrators know about OER? What do administrators want to know about OER? How do faculty advocate for OER with their administrators? Join us to discuss approaches to turning your administrators into OER supporters – and fellow advocates.

•  OER Basics for the Less Familiar – Fri., Oct. 15, 10:30-11:30 am
  Are you interested in OER but not quite sure where to start? We can help! Join us to learn more about what OER is and what it allows you to do as well as compelling reasons to consider using OER in your teaching.
  
• Remixing Spanish OER – Fri., Oct. 15, 1-2:00 pm
  Are you interested in searching for Spanish OER? What about remixing OERs? Come and learn about search options and how Spanish instructors have remixed different Spanish OERs for their courses.

• Saddleback College: Building Zero Textbook Cost Momentum Over 5 Years – Fri., Oct. 22, 10:30-11:30 am
  The OER/ZTC movement has grown exponentially at Saddleback College. Join us for a presentation on how we started with only six OER faculty and advanced OER/ZTC on our campus to now offer 26 ZTC Degree/Certificate Pathways. Topics include: beginning stages, building relationships around campus, stipends, marketing, and data.

•  Equity from the Start, Utilizing HEERF (Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds) for OER – Fri., Oct. 29, 10:30-11:30 am
  Looking to leverage HEERF funds to support OER at your college? Then this webinar is for you! Join faculty and staff from Contra Costa Community College District as they describe how they joined forces to transform small, independent OER efforts into a $500,000 districtwide program for student equity that is supported throughout the district. The presentation includes the program description, evolution, funding, success data, student comments, and take-aways for other colleges.

@ONE WEBINARS AND COURSES

• Michelle Pacansky-Brock has set up a fantastic-looking series of webinars and workshops for this fall on Humanizing Online Education. Individual sessions are free to attend.
• Many @ONE courses start later this fall – check out the options and register if you’re interested!
• If you’re interested in having my office cover a fee for an @ONE class just reach out to me!

@ONE MATH-THEMED WEBINARS (Click links to register)

• Encouraging Academic Honesty in STEM through Authentic Assessment – Thurs., Sept. 30, 12-1 pm
• Active Learning: How to Increase Engagement in Online Math Classes to a Level You Never Thought Possible – Fri., Oct. 15, 1-2 pm
• Math + OER: Integrating Open Educational Resources (OER) and Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) into your online math course – Nov. 12 – 12-1 pm

PLAYPOSIT (Click link to register)

• Reimagining your Video Content with PlayPosit – Fri., Oct. 8, 12 pm – from CCC TechConnect and PlayPosit staff
  PlayPosit gives faculty the ability to add interactivity to their videos for class assignments, lectures and more. Use interactivity in videos to assess student learning by using in-video quizzes. Instructors can add a variety of questions and activities to videos that go well beyond Canvas Studio’s capabilities.

Happy learning!

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

Welcome back to fall semester! I’m excited to share Flex workshops and other resources for your professional learning as you prepare for another semester of mostly or entirely online teaching!

Flex Week starts tomorrow with a Friday the 13^th full of online ed workshops!

But this is a day of good luck! You can see all of these workshops listed on a handy 1-page schedule; they are also included with full descriptions on the complete Flex workshop schedule. Please note that there are a number of other superb-sounding online ed-related offerings later in Flex week, too.

Online Ed Workshop Recordings

We’ve been offering online workshops and recording them for years! Explore what’s available in the Online Education workshop archives page, including the fantastic sessions from our Equity Online day last April. If you’re looking for inspiration with a tool or online teaching topic that’s not on this fall’s Flex schedule, you can probably find a recording that’s just what you need. And viewing those recordings is, of course, Flex-eligible.

Return of the MiraCosta Online Mentors!

Many of you met with a MiraCosta peer faculty helper last year for support with your online course preparation and teaching. Happily, this program will continue this fall! More information on this will be coming soon, but if you can’t wait to get connected with a peer, feel free to reply to me.

Completely Updated: MiraCosta Online Class Quality Guidelines

Last year, the MiraCosta Online Educators committee undertook a major revision of the MiraCosta Online Class Quality Guidelines to place a greater emphasis on equity and to reflect updated regulations. Check out the document, which is intended “to help faculty develop and redesign online classes and foster conversation in departments about effective and equity-minded teaching practices in online education.”

Professional Learning Opportunities through @ONE

Many MiraCosta faculty looking for deeper professional learning about online education have let me know how important the @ONE program has been to them. Some events and classes are free while extended, facilitated classes typically have a fee. If you’re interested in having my office cover a fee for an @ONE class just reach out to me!

• Michelle Pacansky-Brock has set up a fantastic-looking series of webinars and workshops for this fall on Humanizing Online Education. Individual sessions are free to attend. If you’d like to register for the full series and associated activities, there is a cost.
• @ONE has many courses starting in the next few weeks – check out the options and register if you’re interested!

Save the Date: InstructureCon (the Canvas annual conference) is online and free – October 7  

You can learn more and register now!

Happy online teaching!

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