LabArchives is an electronic lab notebook that can help instructors and learners better manage, share, and publish research notes, data, protocols, and related documents.
MiraCosta College’s institutional license gives all MiraCosta College students, staff, and faculty free access to LabArchives. Log on with your MCC login and password to access LabArchives. Faculty can also integrate Lab Archives with Canvas.
Respondus is a quiz authoring and management tool that allows instructors to create exams, quizzes, and surveys offline that can then be published directly to Canvas. Test questions can be uploaded from a text file, rich text file, or Word document. Existing Canvas tests can be downloaded, saved, and printed.
MiraCosta College has a campus-wide license for the Respondus software allowing installation of the software on any on campus computer or faculty personal computer. Respondus is a Windows application. For MAC users Respondus is available via VMWare.
Download Respondus – You will need your MiraCosta College login and password to obtain the installation password for 2024-2025.
MiraCosta’s Canvas system may be accessed at miracosta.instructure.com – faculty and students log in with their SURF username and password. You’ll also find a button to log into Canvas at miracosta.edu/online. See below for many great resources to help you learn to use Canvas, and earn MiraCosta Flex credit along the way.
MiraCosta Canvas tutorials – locally created guides on key Canvas features and how Canvas works with SURF
24-7 Canvas hotline for faculty: 1-833-345-2890
Questions about how Canvas works specifically at MiraCosta? Contact Karen Turpin, Online Instructional Technologist: kturpin@miracosta.edu / 760-795-6787
Do you think Canvas might be down or experiencing errors? Check the Canvas Status website.
Canvas Course Design (video, 50 min.) 1/13/17 In-person workshop presented by Billy Gunn
Flex Credit is available for viewing MiraCosta workshop videos. This is a pre-approved activity (in the Other Activities category Conferences and Presentations).
Canvas Accessibility Workshops
Please refer to the following resources to assist with Canvas accessibility:
What does a Canvas class look like? Well, there are a number of approaches to designing a class in Canvas. Check out some short videos by MiraCosta faculty. And then go behind the scenes – in Canvas – to learn more!
Canvas Student Orientation – this open Canvas course can also be a good way for faculty to introduce themselves to Canvas from the student perspective. Faculty are also welcome to link directly to this resource within their own Canvas classes to help their students learn key features of Canvas.
Flex Credit is available for time spent engaging with any of the above resources. This is a pre-approved activity (in the Other Activities category Conferences and Presentations).
And often starting with a Google search is the quickest path to finding something really useful!
Again, Flex Credit is available for time spent engaging with any of the above resources.
Canvas Faculty and Student Support
MiraCosta’s Online Education department provides support for faculty using Canvas, and MiraCosta’s Student Help Desk provides support for students in Canvas classes.
When local support is unavailable, including evenings and weekends, Canvas provides technical support for faculty and students at the following phone numbers.
Faculty: 1-833-345-2890 Students: 1-877-884-1673
Canvas has excellent “Getting Started” guides for faculty and for students. See above for more faculty training resources.
Faculty and students can also create a helpdesk ticket for support from within Canvas by clicking on the Tech Help icon and then selecting Report a Problem.
Many other LTI tools (“Apps”) are available – some have been made available institutionally and you can see those in the Navigation tab of Course Settings; others can be enabled by faculty individually; you can see those in the Apps tab of Course Settings. See the Canvas Guide on the App Center to learn more.
Workarounds
Canvas does not have a dedicated journaling tool. It is possible to use Canvas tools to provide students with a place to submit their writings or reflections at various points throughout the semester. This is done by creating a series of assignments within the same assignment group.
MiraCosta College took on a comprehensive Course Management System evaluation in spring 2016 that led to the selection of Canvas. The college then transitioned away from Blackboard and Moodle and to Canvas during 2016-17 and 2017-18. Starting in summer 2018, Canvas is the sole supported course management system for MiraCosta classes.
One of MiraCosta’s early Canvas adopters, music professor Christy Coobatis, says this about using Canvas in spring 2017:
Has been an extremely successful semester because of it!
Both students and I loved the program.
I have more and clearer communication than ever before!
Another, Adult High School professor Julie Cord, says:
I am in LOVE with Canvas and I truly feel it has helped support my students and my teaching already in very substantial ways.
3C Media Solutions is a streaming media server for all California Community College faculty and staff. You can upload audio & video files and make them available securely, privately (if desired), and ad-free. Professional captioning is available at no cost.
3CMedia accepts files in the following formats: mp4, m4v, mkv, flv, wmv, avi, mov, mpg, webm, mp3, m4a, wma, wav
To request professional captioning on instructional videos, first upload a video to 3C Media Solutions. After uploading it takes a little time (up to a few hours) for initial processing. Then:
