Featured – Page 3 – Teaching/Technology Innovation Center

Spring 2023 Online Support for Equity & Success

January 13, 2023 Jim Julius

Please see below for quick reminders of important online-focused resources to help you help your students succeed!

Support for You

Our Canvas start-of-term checklist can help you finalize your classes.
MiraCosta Online Mentor support – MiraCosta Online Mentor faculty are ready to support you with 1-1, on-demand support as well as three different 4-week online teaching courses that launch Jan. 30.
Instructional Designer support – Request an appointment with our Instructional Designer, Nadia Khan, anytime.
Tech Support
- Canvas options include 24×7 phone and chat support. Just click the Tech Support button at lower left in Canvas!
- Zoom and othertech support for faculty is available through the MiraCosta employee help desk.
MiraCosta technologies supporting online teaching and learning – please see the last section of this email for an overview, with links to learn more.
The MiraCosta Online Class Quality Guidelines provide requirements and recommended practices for online instructors; join our accompanying Canvas course to be inspired by (or even copy from) real world Canvas examples shared by colleagues.
Online Ed Workshops – The Flex week schedule includes many great online-related workshops. And you can always view recordings of online education Flex workshops (Flex-eligible, YES!).

Support for Your Students – Please help your students to be aware of and make use of these important services and resources!

Student Online Academic Readiness workshops – With the library, I offer nearly 20 of these across the first 9 weeks of the semester – see all dates and times on the TASC site and in Canvas announcements. These workshops (formerly known as Student Orientation to Online Learning) help to familiarize students with the resources MiraCosta provides online to support them, as well as to adopt habits and attitudes of successful online students. Encourage your students to attend and, if you like, find out which of your students participated in order to incentivize their attendance.
Online Student Support Access Points – the Student Support Hub in Canvas, accessed via the Student Support button on the bottom left in Canvas, gives quick access to online support from the library, STEM & MLC, online tutoring, writing center, counseling, career center, open computer lab staff, student help desk, health services, CARE team, and more! The Help Hut and Online Education webpages are also great starting points for students to connect with all kinds of support services when they’re not in Canvas.
Tech Support – Also at lower left in Canvas is a button for students to quickly access Tech Support options, including 24×7 phone and chat support from Canvas, and our local MiraCosta student help desk.
Technology Needs? – Be sure to share the form for students to fill out if they need a loaner laptop or hotspot.
Class Availability in Canvas – Faculty teaching distance education (online and hybrid) classes are expected to make their classes available by mid-day on the Monday of the week in which they begin. To learn more, please see MiraCosta Distance Education Class Authentication Compliance, Start-of-Term Availability Procedures, and Recommendations.
Zero- and Low-Textbook Cost Course Sections – If you are teaching one of these, please be sure to mark your class in SURF as LTC or ZTC if you haven’t already, so students know that your class has lowered that access barrier!

MiraCosta’s Online Education Tools

Click the link immediately after each bullet for a detailed MiraCosta-specific overview of each item below. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions about these or other resources.

Canvas – the #1 tool for faculty and students
Zoom – if you’re using Zoom, make sure you’re using a pro Zoom account through MiraCosta.
Canvas Studio – enables faculty and students to create videos while inside Canvas. Faculty can create interactive discussion or quiz activities based on video.
Pope Tech helps faculty detect and correct accessibility issues within Canvas. See also Tips for Creating Accessible Course Content.
Pronto is an incredible mobile-friendly and Canvas-integrated messaging platform that’s ready to use in every course.
Perusall is a social annotation tool available within Canvas that makes it easy for students to comment/discuss right on a text, document, or image.
Lab Archives Electronic Notebook is an online notebook especially useful for translating lab manuals and student notes/work into the online environment.
Ally automatically converts content you share through Canvas into multiple formats for students, allowing for listening rather than reading and better access to content on mobile devices.
PlayPosit – This video interaction tool offers more complexity and options than Studio. Studio is a great place to start, but if you’re looking for more question types to add to your videos, PlayPosit is a great option.
Turnitin – help students learn to properly cite sources and avoid plagiarism. Also provides grading and peer review tools for written work.

– Jim

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

Canvas Start of the Semester Instructor Checklist

January 13, 2023 Karen Turpin

Create or Import your Content

Multiple ways to begin to build your class

Copy from another class in Canvas. Your access to classes you have previously taught in Canvas continues indefinitely.

How do I copy content from another Canvas course using the Course Import tool?

Copy in an entire course or portions of one from Canvas Commons.

How do I import and view a Commons resource in Canvas?

Create your content from scratch in Canvas

Attend training and get ideas.

Review Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions

Verify activities to be used in the course are published.
Verify dates. Due dates are added to the calendar and the syllabus and serve as reminders to students. “Available from” and “Until” dates will unlock and lock the activity.
Verify instructions are accurate and well formatted.
Verify the submission type (assignments only).
Verify number of attempts is correct (quizzes only).
Verify assignment groups are set up correctly. See: How to use Assignment Index Page.
Verify assignments are weighted correctly, if using a weighted grading system. See: How to Weight Assignment Groups.
Verify discussions are ordered logically on Discussions list page.
Verify Quiz “Options” are correct. See: Canvas Quiz Options.

Review Course Details

Verify total points possible in the gradebook is correct. To verify Download the Gradebook or within Canvas Student View navigate to Grades.
Review Syllabus for accuracy.
Verify all links. See: How to Validate Links.
Customize course navigation links. Keep only the links that are necessary. For example, in most cases the following should be hidden: Files, Pages, Outcomes, Conferences, and Collaborations. If using Modules you can hide even more links to simplify navigation for students. See: How to Reorder and Hide Course Navigation Links.
Verify Modules are logically ordered and published, if using them.
Verify Module “Lock until” dates are correct, if using them. See: How to Lock a Module.
Verify Module requirements and prerequisites are set correctly, if using them. See: How to add Requirements to a Module and How to set Prerequisites for a Module.
Verify the course home page is setup correctly. See: Home Page Layout Options and How to Change the Course Home Page.
Use “Preview” option in each quiz to check for errors.
Use “Student View” to review the entire course. This is a good time to verify that all of your content is available in an accessible format. See: How do I view a course as a test student and Canvas Student View vs MCC’s Sample Student Account.

Final Preparations

Publish your course when you are ready for students to have access to it. This typically is on the morning of or before the official course start date. See: How do I publish a course? NOTE: Some faculty like to publish their courses well in advance of the start date, but only publish a handful of elements of the course (such as the syllabus). This allows enrolled students to “preview” the class.
For online and hybrid classes, encourage students to attend a Student Online Academic Readiness (SOAR) workshop. You may also wish to share the Canvas Student Orientation to help any students who are new to Canvas to have a resource for learning the basics.
Especially for online and hybrid classes, send an email to your students through your SURF Roster telling them how to access your course in Canvas.

Cautions

Canvas email (Inbox/Conversation) messages will not be sent out if the course is unpublished. Send Email from your SURF Roster instead prior to publishing the course.
Pay attention to the time stamp on anything you have placed a date on. 12:00 means the very first minute of the selected day. For end dates, it is often best to choose 11:59 PM to ensure you are setting it up on the correct date.

Enabling Automated Real-Time Captions in Zoom

August 18, 2022 Jim Julius

Enabling-Automated-Captions-in-Zoom-Updated-F22 Download

Course Evaluations in Canvas

May 5, 2022 Karen Turpin

Course evaluations are integrated within Canvas for both faculty and students. Starting in 2022, MiraCosta uses EvaluationKIT (rather than the previous system, Class Climate) to provide this function. When you have a course section that is part of your evaluation process, this page has information to help you ensure it goes smoothly.

Information to share with your students

These directions are for the SURF enrolled students within your course.

Students can access the course evaluation within Canvas, or through an email sent to them from MiraCosta’s course evaluation survey administrator. Provide the link below to your students to help them with the evaluation process in Canvas.

Student Course Evaluation In Canvas

Students must have cookies and pop ups enabled within their browser for the course evaluation tool to work correctly.

Enable cookies & manage pop-up blocker directions

Advise students to contact the Student Help Desk if they need assistance with course evaluations. The phone # is (760)-795-6655 or they can Chat Live with a Student Help Desk Technician.

*Note for Instructors: The Student Course Evaluations menu item will NOT work with your Faculty Canvas Sample Student account, or the Instructor’s Student View in Canvas, as those accounts are not SURF enrolled users within your course.

Information for Faculty

As an instructor, you can view your course evaluation surveys from the course navigation menu or from the To Do list within your course. It is important to have the EvaluationKIT Course menu navigation tool available in Canvas in order to show the ‘Instructor Course Evaluations’ navigation menu item. Even if this tool is available in Settings > Navigation, this tool will only show up in your course if there is a course survey associated with your course.

If you modified your course navigation menu, you may have hidden the EvaluationKIT Course menu navigation tool. If you are being evaluated, you must enable the EvaluationKIT Course menu navigation tool so that you will see the navigation menu item ‘Instructor Course Evaluations‘, and your students will see the ‘Student Course Evaluations‘ navigation menu item.

Instructor Navigation Menu

If you have not made any changes to your course navigation menu, this is the default location for the EvaluationKIT course surveys. Remember, this tool will only display if you have a course survey associated with your course. The navigation menu item is displayed as ‘Instructor Course Evaluations‘ in the instructor view.

Default location of
Instructor Course Evaluations
in the Canvas course navigation menu

This tool will only display if you have a course survey associated with your course.

Instructor To Do List

On the To Do list within a Canvas course, you can also view your course evaluation survey. In this area you can view the percentage of students who have responded, as well as the start and end date of your course evaluation survey.

NOTE: Courses with a 1/1/3000 date on the Course Evaluation Survey are NOT being evaluated in the current semester.

Course evaluation surveys are located here on the Canvas course To Do list with % responded and start and end dates.

NOTE: Courses with the 1/1/3000 date are NOT being surveyed this semester.

Enabling the EvaluationKIT Course Navigation Menu Tool

If you edited your Canvas course navigation menu, and your course is being evaluated, you may need to add the EvaluationKIT Course navigation tool back to your Canvas course. This is necessary so that you and your students will be able to access your course evaluations in the Canvas course navigation menu.

Click on Settings. You will find this as the last option on your course navigation menu.
Click the Navigation tab.
Find the EvaluationKIT Course option in the bottom list of hidden navigation items.
Drag EvaluationKIT Course from the bottom list to the top list of available items.
Click the Save button

Questions about Course Evaluations

For questions about student surveys and/or the Course Evaluations & Surveys system, associate faculty should contact their school’s Academic Division Administrative Assistant. Full-time faculty should contact human resources at evalsupport@miracosta.edu

If you are having a computer specific issue with a MCC computer contact the campus Employee Help Desk at (760) 795-6850 or Chat with the Employee Help Desk online.

Instructional Design Hub

January 13, 2022 Nadia Khan

Need some Ed-tech support? Want to bounce off some ideas for how to design your courses using the MiraCosta College’s Online Class Quality Guidelines?

Contact Nadia Khan, MiraCosta College’s Instructional Designer, for consultation. You can contact Nadia at nkhan@miracosta.edu or book a consultation with her.