Category: Featured

Adding Faculty Evaluators, TLC Staff, Community Ed Students, Substitute Instructors, and TAs to Canvas classes

Students and Instructors are automatically enrolled from SURF to your Canvas course several times a day.

For the roles called out below, follow the specified directions to have the user enrolled within your course with the appropriate role.

  • Faculty Evaluator: Contact Heidi Willis at (760) 795-6827 or hwillis@miracosta.edu in the Office of Instruction when you need to provide access to a peer, your chair, etc. to conduct an evaluation. On the People roster, within Canvas, the user will be assigned the ‘Evaluator ‘ Canvas role. The Evaluator Canvas role has the same permissions as the student role.
  • The Learning Centers (TLC) ASIC, STEMLC, & Writing Center: Contact Amy Paopao at (760) 757-2121 ext. 6389 or apaopao@miracosta.edu. On the People roster, within Canvas, the user will be assigned the ‘TLC Staff ‘ Canvas role.
  • Community Education Student: Contact Karen Turpin at kturpin@miracosta.edu. Include the confirmation of student enrollment through community education. On the People roster, within Canvas, the user will be assigned the ‘Student Other’ Canvas role.
  • Substitute Instructors & TAs: Work with your dean to provide access to Canvas for the substitute instructor or TA. Approved substitute instructors and TAs are handled by your dean through the Office of Instruction’s procedures. The substitute instructor or TA will be added on SURF and uploaded to Canvas for the allowable period of time. During that time, the substitute instructor will have the ‘Teacher’ Canvas role and the TA will have the ‘TA’ Canvas role.

Reset Your Canvas Course Content

Overview

From time to time, you may want to delete all of the content in a Canvas course site. This is most typically needed early in the course building process. For example, after importing content from another course, you may realize that you imported from the wrong course. The directions described below will delete all content from your course site, but leave the course roster intact.

Warning about Deleting All Course Content

WARNING: This step deletes all existing content from your course. Take steps to preserve any content you want to keep (for example, copy and paste to a Word doc, copy select course elements to a sandbox course, import the course into another empty shell, etc.) before proceeding. DO NOT complete these steps in a current term course that is currently in process!

Reset Course Content in a Canvas Course

Canvas Guide: How do I reset course content?

1. Navigate to the course with the content you wish to delete.

2. From the course navigation menu, click the Settings link.

Settings

3. In the sidebar, click the Reset Course Content link.

Reset Course Content

4. Click the Reset Course Content button.

A completely new course shell with a new ID (the number following “https://miracosta.instructure.com/courses/…”) will be generated. All users previously enrolled in the course will remain enrolled.

Made a Mistake?

If for some reason you reset your course and it was a mistake report it as soon as possible. We have Test and Beta instances of Canvas we may be able to refer to for the content and/or to restore the original course.

Contact Karen Turpin, Instructional Technology Specialist at kturpin@miracosta.edu or Canvas Faculty Support 24/7 at 1- 833-345-2890 for assistance.

Turnitin for Canvas LTI 1.3 (new standard)

MiraCosta College has an unlimited license to Turnitin, GradeMark, and Peer Review, and Turnitin is available within Canvas. No separate login or password is required for faculty or students. 

The primary difference between the two tools is that the Turnitin 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.

Create a Turnitin LTI 1.3 Assignment in MCC Canvas:

  1. Click on Assignments from the course navigation menu.
  2. Click on the 3 Dots Assignment Settings button.
  3. Click on Turnitin in the menu.
Turnitin LTI 1.3 in MiraCosta College Canvas

Turnitin LTI 1.3 Resources

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.

Additional information

SensusAccess – Alternative Media Made Easy

Sensus Access Notices & Flex Workshops Recordings

Sensus Acess Logo

SensusAccess offers two ways for MiraCosta faculty, classified professionals, and students to convert all kinds of documents and files into alternative and more accessible formats:

SensusAccess is available now.

  • A website that allows anyone to upload files including Word or PPT documents, scanned images, PDFs, or web pages and generate accessible alternative types of files and media, including audio, e-books, Braille, and large print. This helps meet accessibility standards and enhance inclusion by supporting diverse preferences and needs of users.
  • A Canvas integration that automatically enables conversion of files uploaded into Canvas into alternate file and media types and languages. (This replaces functionality that was previously provided in Canvas through Ally.)

Key Features

  • Automated conversion of files into a range of alternative media and file formats
  • Remediation of inaccessible documents such as image only PDFs into accessible formats
  • Language to language translation with a high degree of accuracy

For more information on SensusAccess and its use check out the SensusAccess website and one-page Canvas LTI description.

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.

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