Labster is an online lab simulation software available within Canvas.
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:
To get started with PlayPosit in Canvas, follow instructions found in PlayPosit’s Canvas tutorial. In brief: You start by creating a Canvas assignment, selecting the PlayPosit External tool within that assignment, and then selecting the Enter PlayPosit link that should come up.
The Quick Start Guide provides an overview of many aspects of using PlayPosit, along with many links to more detailed tutorials, including some of the following.
Playposit is an external tool. One of the most common places you will find it is within the RCE (Rich Text Editor).
Perusall makes it possible to have students comment, discuss, and share by annotating a document, image, or video within Canvas. Some possibilities might include:
Perusall has been used independently by a number of MiraCosta faculty for years, but starting in 2022 the college 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. Former MiraCosta instructor and online mentor Lisa M. Lane used Perusall for some time, and provided instructions and videos below to help faculty get started.
To get started, you need to set up a site in Perusall. Perusall calls this a “course”. There are two ways to do this.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Here is a video overview of the Perusall settings for a course:
One big settings choice for scoring or grading is this:
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.
There are two ways this can happen.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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 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.
Students should always launch Perusall from inside of Canvas.
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.
The MiraCosta College Student Helpdesk can assist your students with Canvas and LabArchives.
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:
You may be interested in A Rising Tide: How Closed Captions Can Benefit All Students, an article with solid research indicating how widely used and important captions are for the majority of students today.
