I hope your fall is starting well! If you’re looking for a boost to your communication with students but haven’t tried Pronto, this might be a good moment to learn more about it!
Pronto’s a messaging tool that’s integrated with Canvas and also has a fantastic mobile app. We’ve had Pronto at MiraCosta for over 2 years now, and (I just checked) over 9600 MiraCostans have sent almost 176,000 messages with Pronto!
To learn more:
Check out our TIC page on Pronto, which includes links to recorded MiraCosta faculty-led workshops, Pronto guides, and everything else you’d need to get started.
Join our Canvas Pronto Practice course to get access to a Pronto conversation sandbox/playground with other Pronto-interested MiraCosta faculty.
If you are using a publisher website for materials and assessments in your course, you may be able to connect your Canvas course to the publisher course site and/or integrate publisher-provided tools so that students can connect to the publisher resources from Canvas without a separate login. Some publishers also allow for ‘deep integration’ (or ‘deep linking’) between your Canvas course and the publisher site, so that assignments and quizzes are individually accessible in your Canvas course and also integrated with your Canvas grade book.
NOTE: When you adopt a third party tool for use in your class, it is your responsibility to ensure it is compliant with state and federal regulations and MiraCosta policies. Please carefully evaluate the tool for issues such as accessibility and student privacy. Contact Jim Julius, faculty director of online education, if you have any questions about this.
Enabling a Pre-Installed Global Publisher LTI in Canvas at MiraCosta College
The following publisher tools (aka “LTIs”) are currently pre-installed globally in MiraCosta’s Canvas environment.
Access Pearson
Cengage Learning MindLinks/MindTap
McGraw-Hill Connect & Campus
McGraw-Hll SIMnet
W.W.Norton
To connect a Canvas course to any of these, go to your Canvas course, click Settings in the course menu and the Navigation tab at the top. This enables you to alter your course menu:
Scroll down, and you will find hidden items that can be added to your course, including the publishers listed above. If your publisher is listed, drag it up to your course menu, or click the button at the right and then the +Enable option to add it to your course. Then be sure you click the Save button at the bottom of the page.
Cengage Learning MindLinks/MindTap
Cengage has numerous products that integrate with Canvas, such as MindTap, CourseMate, Aplia, and CengageNOW.
Pearsonusers! The integration between Pearson and Canvas had a major update following the spring 2023 term. MyLab is now called PearsonAccess. Links to Pearson MyLab tools from copied courses will no longer work and must be updated. Please see the Pearson Canvas integration guide for instructors and Pearson Transition guide to learn more, and reach out to your Pearson rep if you need assistance.
Pearson MyLab & Mastering has tools and resources for a number of different disciplines, and luckily they all use the same interface for deep integration with Canvas.
Many LTIs can be installed at the course level by a faculty member. Contact your publisher for more information and directions on how you can install their tool at the course level. And please keep in mind the note at the top of this page about faculty responsibility for compliance of third-party tools with state and federal regulations and MiraCosta policy.
Requests for the installation of Global LTIs must be made to the Online Education department through your department, and will only be done when multiple faculty are using the tool. We are not able to add global LTI’s on demand. Adequate evaluation and testing is required prior to installation of Global LTIs. As mentioned above, individual faculty may independently install publisher LTI tools in their Canvas courses.
Some individual publishers can be found in the Canvas App Center, which is the mechanism for individual Canvas users to add LTI tools into their courses. Here are a few guides to the Canvas App Center.
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 HelpDesk in the Portal and select the NEW Zoom Account Request option.
What if I’m having trouble with my Zoom account? Sign in to the MiraCosta HelpDesk 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 run video meetings directly within Canvas, using the new Zoom integration (this is MUCH improved over what what we had prior to 2021). To get started and learn more about the Zoom/Canvas integration, see directions below; for more details you may be interested in:
You may also share Zoom links and recordings inside of 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‘.
PlayPosit is an interactive video learning tool that is fully integrated with Canvas. Playposit allows instructors to create activities using videos from 3C Media, YouTube, or other video sources.
MiraCosta has piloted PlayPosit for several years. As of 2020-21, PlayPosit is now available to all MiraCosta faculty through a CCC system license.
PlayPosit allows you to:
Layer a variety of assessment activities within a video, creating a quiz with results going automatically into the Canvas gradebook. (Canvas Studio has similar functionality, but with fewer and simpler question types than PlayPosit.)
Social Annotation with Perusall (Zoom Recording, 1 hour 5 minutes) – 1/16/2023 workshop by Jim Julius, Michael from Perusall, Rob Bond, John Kirwan, & Aaron Roberts
Perusall makes it possible to have students comment, discuss, and share by annotating a document or image. Some possibilities might include:
annotating the textbook together (Perusall offers many common textbooks within its framework — see the catalog)
uploading pdf files and having students highlight and annotate
uploading images or videos and having students annotate
Perusall has been used independently by a number of MiraCosta faculty for several years, but starting in 2022 the college has licensed it, making it easier for all faculty to engage students in these kinds of rich, interactive learning opportunities. Perusall can be quickly added to any Canvas course. MiraCosta instructor and online mentor Lisa M. Lane has been using Perusall for some time, and has provided instructions and videos below to help faculty get started. You can also reach out to Lisa (email: llane@miracosta.edu ) to arrange for 1-1 mentoring support.
Before class starts: set up Perusall
To get started, you need to set up a site in Perusall. Perusall calls this a “course”. There are two ways to do this.
1: For Canvas courses organized around activity types
If your course materials for students are already set up by type (quizzes, lectures, readings) in Canvas, you may want to add Perusall to the menu.
Click Settings at the bottom of your course menu
Click the Navigation tab
3. Click the gear icon to the right of Perusall
4. Select +Enable
5. Click the Save button
The Perusall link now appears in your course menu. You can click on the Persuall menu link and a new browser window will open. The first time you do this, Perusall will establish Perusall account and sync it with your Canvas account. If you already had a free Perusall account using your MiraCosta email address, Perusall will merge that account with the one being set up under MiraCosta’s institutional Perusall license.
Click on the Perusall course menu link in CanvasA new window opens in your browser connecting your Canvas account with Perusall.
Upon first launch (for anyone), they will be guided on a tour of the platform. If they ever need to restart the tour, they can click their profile icon in the top right corner.
2: For Canvas courses organized in modules or units
If your course materials are organized for students to use Modules or units, you may want to use a test assignment to open the Perusall course.
Add an Assignment, call it Test Perusall
Don’t worry about points, instructions, and other settings
Use External Tool – Find – Perusall
Check the box to open in a new window
Save
In the assignment, click on the box “Load Test Perusall in New Window”
After doing this to connect your Canvas class and Perusall, you’ll follow the same process for setting up each Perusall assignment, and you can change this first Test Perusall assignment later to use it as an actual assignment.
The video below demonstrates both of the above methods for adding Perusall to your Canvas class.
Set up an assignment in the Perusall course
On the Get Started page: fill in boxes, but be sure that if you are not using groups, the number of students is set to your maximum
Library: choose the type of content for the first assignment and upload or put in URL
Assignments: click Add Assignment and select the content from your Library, choose your parameters for that assignment
Copy the name of the assignment exactly — it must be the name of your assignment in Canvas (that’s how Canvas knows which Perusall assignment to use).
Watch the video below for a demonstration of this:
Perusall settings and grading
Here is a video overview of the Perusall settings for a course:
One big settings choice for scoring or grading is this:
Do you want the work graded as it is done, with student scores increasing as they go? or
Do you want the work graded at the end by the instructor?
These are included in Settings, above. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Having grades go up as the student works can provide extrinsic motivation, but can also force the student to work to Perusall’s standards. Grading at the end means working quite a bit with the gradebook in Perusall, and it causes a problem with due dates. If the due date in Perusall matches the due date in Canvas (as it should so students cannot work past the due date), and the instructor grades after that date, Canvas will show the assignment as late. This will need to be explained to students, or manually changed in the Canvas gradebook.
Preventing problems with students going to the wrong assignment
There are two ways this can happen.
The student may go to Perusall.com trying to find the work
If a student gets locked out of the assignment, they may try to get in through Perusall.com, making an account. If they are successful, they will be able to annotate, but their grades will not be pushed back into Canvas, and they won’t get a score (you will see this with a red warning exclamation mark in the Perusall grades).
Solution: Encourage students to only enter Perusall through Canvas, through your assignment.
The student may navigate inside Perusall and click on the wrong assignment using the Library
Once inside Perusall, students, like instructors, can click on the left-hand list of both the Library and the Assignments. That means they can jump ahead to the wrong assignment or even in some cases jump back to an assignment that has already been graded, and work within it when you don’t want them to.
Solution: The best way to prevent this is to set the availability period for assignments, then make a hidden folder in the Library, and put all the Library items in there. Then make sure all Assignments have a due date. That way they can only click on an assignment, and only when it is open.
The video below discusses both of these potential issues:
During the class: Participating in annotating and discussing
Some instructors participate in the annotations as they occur. When participating, it’s good to use the @ symbol to alert particular students that you have a public question or annotation on their annotation. Perusall also allows students to upvote, and for you to upvote, particular annotations. The interactive nature of social annotation allows it to be a replacement for discussion if that’s how the instructor wants to use it.
Set up advance annotations if desired
You can set up questions, add video clips, or annotate your assignment yourself before the class begins as well as during the class. Instructor annotations are saved and can be rolled over to the next semester.
Grading assignments
It is usually not advisable to rely on Perusall’s automatic scoring algorithm.
Perusall’s algorithm attempts to analyze the depth and usefulness of a student’s comment, and that may not align with your goals. For example, an instructor who wants students to post five short superficial annotations or one long in-depth annotation will find that Perusall cannot make this distinction, and may give the student posting one long annotation a lower score.
Until you know the system is scoring like you want it to, it’s a good idea to check each student’s contributions. This can be done using the Students tab from the Course home page in Perusall:
Other options
Perusall is a complex program and can do many things. Scoring can be refined with multiple parameters. Student scores can be averaged and turned into a single Perusall grade rather than individual assignments. The recommendations above are designed for those who are new to Perusall.
Canvas Student View Warning
Canvas’ Student View button will not work with Perusall, since Canvas doesn’t send an email address to Perusall as part of that launch. To see what students will see once they launch into Perusall, utilize the Student View link on the left navigation bar within your Perusall course.
