Category: Canvas

Canvas Student Annotation Submission Assignment

The student annotation assignment allows the teacher to upload a file to Canvas that the student can then, without leaving Canvas, mark up using the built-in annotation tools (highlight, make comments, draw marks, etc.) as their submission.

See the end of this page for some ideas for how you might use this feature.

Screencast Video

Canvas has published a one minute overview video of the new feature.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/541889461

Overview/How to Use

  1. Create an assignment as normal.
  2. For the assignment type, choose Online.
  3. Under online entry options, check student annotation.
  4. Choose an existing file (such as a PDF, Word document, or JPG), or upload a new one, that will be the template for the annotation assignment.
  5. Finish completing your assignment with the normal process.

Limitations

  • Annotation assignments use the same annotation tools available to teachers with SpeedGrader. While a variety of file types are supported, PDF or Word files will have the best compatibility. Here is a list of file types the DocViewer can preview.
  • These assignments are not currently available for use with with peer assessment, but this is planned for the future.
  • This type of assignment cannot be made a group assignment. (For these, consider using a full collaboration tool, like Office 365.)
  • This is not a multi-user live collaborative document (like Office 365, Google Documents, etc.).
  • Keep in mind that most students do not have a stylus for detail drawing, and drawing with a mouse is imprecise at best.
  • All annotations exist as a layer in Canvas displayed over top the original; it is not actually editing the original document. You can export the annotations to a PDF file, where the annotations will exist on the PDF comment layer.

Student Directions

Student Guide: How do I annotate a file as an assignment submission in Canvas?

Assignment Ideas

Here are some ideas to get you thinking about how you might use this new tool in your course. Do note that many of these are possible to do in other ways (like using Office 365 documents). The tool in Canvas can make some of these quicker or easier, but, in some cases, it may be appropriate to continue to use the other tools.

  • Have students analyze, critique, or respond to prompts (texts, images, or both).
  • Train academic paper reading skills. Reading academic papers can be challenging to read and learn from without training. Upload a paper (either relevant to this course, or perhaps in a similar field, but not exactly related to this course) and ask the students to read it. Have them use the annotation tools to highlight passages they consider important, make margin notes for questions that remain or their thoughts at that moment of reading, or to make commentary about the structure, flow, and formatting of the paper.
  • You can provide feedback on important information the student did not take notes on, extraneous highlighting, and other details.
  • Ask for self-reflection and/or start a class discussion of errors in papers. Use a sample assignment submission like students might hand in and ask them to mark it up. Optionally, you can include a rubric in the template document for the students to fill in. This will allow you to have a discussion with them about the feedback that they find most important. This can also help them to review their own submissions before submitting.
  • Post a “find errors and correct them” assignment. Especially useful for a language or coding course (but also can apply to others, like math or logic), create an assignment of statements or solutions that have errors in them, and ask students to mark up what the error is, and suggest corrections. Do keep in mind the limitations of annotations as small corrections; do not have problems that require a significant rework. “True or False, but, if false, make it true” assignments are a narrower sub-type of this activity.
  • Ask students to label a diagram or image as their submission. The student can use point comment tools to label individual parts, or box comments for larger structures that cover an area. This is comparable to a “hot spot” question in some ways. This is only recommended for identifying parts of a diagram, image or document; other assignment types are better for whole image identification. This can be used not only for low-level identification (“label the parts of this building’s façade and attribute it to a period”), but also higher-level analysis (“discuss your interpretation of this x-ray”).
  • Collect student feedback in a specific format, such as providing a form or template that you would like students to fill in for a “360 degree” peer evaluation after a group assignment, but you do not want students to need to download or upload files (and a survey is too much for what is needed).
  • Fill out “lab notebook” or “observation notebook” documents in a course that does not make heavy use of them to utilize another tool specialized to that purpose.

Office 365 Integration in Canvas

MiraCosta College Canvas now supports an LTI integration with Microsoft Office 365 in Assignments, Collaborations, Modules, Course Navigation, and the Rich Content Editor. This integration allows students and instructors to use, create, share, and collaborate on Office 365 files within Canvas. Users can also view their OneDrive files directly in Canvas.

Enable the Office 365 Integration in Canvas

  1. Enter your Canvas course
  2. Click Settings on the course menu
  3. Click the Navigation tab
Zoom Canvas LTI Step 2 and 3
  1. Click the 3 dots to the right ofOffice 365 and select Enable.
  2. Click the Save button
Office 365 step 4 and 5

Log on to Office 365 as a Faculty / Staff Member

  1. Click the Office 365 course menu item which will appear in your course menu.
  2. Click the Log In button.
  1. Enter your Faculty / Staff MCC email address

    Example: kturpin@miracosta.edu
  2. Click the Next button
  1. Click the Accept button on the Permissions requested page.
    Note: This page will only display the first time you log on to the Office 365 Integration in Canvas.
Step #5 Permissions Page

Now you can access Office 365 documents from inside of Canvas.

Faculty Office 365 Guides for Canvas

Faculty Office 365 Help and FAQS

Student Office 365 Guides and Support

Students log on to Office 365 with their  MiraCosta Student Email Address
They may also use their SURF ID + “@student.miracosta.edu“
Example: W71234567@student.miracosta.edu

Teaching with Zoom at MiraCosta College

Zoom Logo

This page provides guidance on teaching with Zoom, and assumes some basic familiarity with Zoom. Visit the Getting Started, Getting Help, and Using Zoom with Canvas page for details and technical information about getting started with Zoom at MiraCosta College, including how to set up integration of Zoom within Canvas.

Zoom Teaching Tips: Inclusion, Equity, Privacy, Security, and more

MiraCosta Zoom how-to videos from faculty

Please note that some of the following resources may refer to the version of Zoom that MiraCostans used in fall 2020 or earlier; MiraCosta Zoom is now hosted at https://miracosta-edu.zoom.us rather than https://conferzoom.org.

  • Teaching with Zoom (Fall 2020 workshop) – CSIT faculty member Rick Cassoni provides a 1-hour overview of Zoom, from the beginnings of signing up for a Zoom account, to recommended settings within your account and creation of meetings, to the basics of using Zoom for both live and recorded online instruction.
  • Connecting with Students in Zoom (Spring 2020 workshop) – Letters faculty member curry mitchell shares a few simple activities and methods for scaffolding an interactive, collaborative Zoom workshop with students.  curry also discusses flexible and compassionate practices–such as attendance policies and creating asynchronous means for participation–to ensure we’re using Zoom to help each other. (Note, this session included 10 minutes in breakout rooms but the recording was not paused, so you can skip from when that happens at around minute 39 ahead to minute 49 of the recording.)
  • Sharing your iPad screen on Zoom – Math faculty member Angela Beltran-Aguilar demonstrates in this short (under 3 minutes) video how to use an iPad as your sharing source for teaching with Zoom.
  • Capturing a separate screencast of a Zoom session – Psychology faculty member Robert Kelley demonstrates in this very short (under 2 minutes) video how to capture a portion of a Zoom session, excluding student participants, in order to be able to share the recording more widely without FERPA concerns.

Captioning for Zoom

  • Enabling Automated Real-Time Captions in Zoom – We now have access to automated captions inside our Zoom meetings – both live and recorded. While automated captions are a great resource for our students, they are not a replacement for professional captions when those are needed.
  • Zoom cloud recordings auto-transcribe and caption recorded Zoom sessions within a few hours (typically) of completion of the recording. Zoom’s interface makes it easy to fix up the captions so they are fully accurate.
  • If you have a student who requires live captions and you are using Zoom, please contact MiraCosta SAS.
    • You will need to make a one-time change in your Zoom account settings to enable live captioning, and at the start of each Zoom session with captioning, you will need to assign the captioning role to the proper person in your meeting. See directions for both.

Accurate info about Zoom recordings

To: All faculty, IS Deans

You may have received messages recently indicating that your Zoom recordings may be deleted. This message is intended to clarify what is happening, what might happen, and what we recommend.

  • No Zoom recordings will be deleted imminently. You may hear from colleagues in the CCC system about a message from the Chancellor’s Office saying this would happen next week. That decision has been reversed, and it turns out it wouldn’t have applied to us at MiraCosta anyway, since MiraCosta now has more control over its Zoom account (many colleges in the system still do not).
  • There is, however, a longer-term concern about the storage of Zoom recordings. Cloud storage is not infinite and not free, and Zoom recordings can be large. If we do not manage our individual recordings well, we could face involuntary deletion of recordings in the future.

What should you do now?

  • Log into your Zoom account and click Recordings on the left-hand menu. Select all recordings that you do not need and delete them.
  • If you have any meetings set up for automatic cloud recording but you rarely use the recordings, consider changing that setting so that you only record what you need.

In the future, If our Zoom cloud storage space reaches its limit, users may need to download recordings out of Zoom as MP4s and upload them into other video storage/streaming systems such as Canvas Studio, 3C Media Solutions, or YouTube. This can be a time-consuming process for long recordings, and you may also lose the transcription and chat records, and you would also need to change your links in Canvas courses and elsewhere to reflect the new location of the recording. 

So, it’s in everyone’s interest to make sure we are only keeping Zoom recordings that we really need, and regularly deleting the rest.

If a decision is ever made to automatically delete certain Zoom recordings, the message will come from a MiraCosta College employee. It’s our hope that we this won’t be necessary, or that if it does happen, it would only impact videos that are no longer in use.

If you need assistance with managing your Zoom recordings and/or meeting settings, please contact the employee help desk.

– Jim, in partnership with AIS

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

Department Courses in Canvas

Department courses are manually created courses within Canvas that can be used for communication and collaboration with MiraCostans. Some examples of department courses are special collaboration workgroups, academic senate committees, instructional departments, and student clubs. For further information contact Karen Turpin at kturpin@miracosta.edu

Adding Users to Department Courses

Instructors of department Canvas courses can add any MiraCosta College user to the course with Student, Teacher, TA, or Designer permissions. Department courses are not tied to the SURF registration system.

Directions

  1. Enter your Canvas course
  2. Click People on the left course menu
  3. Click the +People button at far right
  4. Select Login ID
  5. Enter SURF ID of the user in the box.
    • You can enter one user at a time.  Example: jjulius
    • Or multiples with a comma and space between each. Example: jjulius, sdavis
  6. Select the appropriate role for the user. ‍
    • Available role options are Student, Teacher, TA, Teacher, Designer, and Student (see below for details on these options)
  7. Click the Next button
    • Some IDs may already be used in Canvas at other colleges. If you get a prompt about this, select the ID that is associated with MiraCosta College.
  8. Click the Add Users button
Step 4, 5, and 6

Course Roles Explained for Department Courses

Student Role

  • Primary use: Students enrolled in a course site.
  • Permissions: The Student role has permissions to view course content and engage in course activities, including the ability to submit assignments, participate in discussions, and view the course roster.
  • Limitations: Students cannot manipulate settings for a course.

Teacher

  • Primary use: The instructor assigned to teach a class.
  • Permissions: Teachers have all course-level permissions, including the ability to add, edit and delete all
  • content in a course, edit course settings, and manually add individuals with active Canvas user accounts.
  • Limitations: None.

Teaching Assistant (TA) Role

  • Primary use: TAs assigned to a specific class to help the instructor.
  • Permissions: TAs have permissions equivalent to the Teacher role. They have all course-level permissions, including the ability to add, edit and delete all content in a course; grade students; edit course settings, and manually add individuals with active Canvas user accounts.
  • Limitations: None.

Designer

  • Primary use: Department staff, content providers, and other instructional support staff.
  • Permissions: Create course content, discussions, announcements, assignments, quizzes, and other content features.
  • Limitations: Designers cannot add other individuals to a course and cannot access grades.
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