Category: Online Education News You Can Use

Mid-Semester Online Updates & Save-the-Dates

Spring break is just about here, hooray! I haven’t been throwing a lot of info at you this spring, so this email has a lot of quick and useful items … please take a look!

I’m offering a final set of Student Orientation to Online Learning workshops the week after break. These are especially to support students starting in 8-week classes but of course are open to all.

Professional Learning Opportunities & Save-the-Dates:

  • MiraCosta
    • Friday, April 30, save the date for a local online event recognizing and celebrating our efforts (especially over the last year) to offer equitable online learning to our students, and deepening our skills, knowledge, and commitment to this ongoing work. Look for more details coming soon!
    • Remember that you can request personal, 1-1 online teaching assistance from peer faculty and/or our instructional designer.
  • CCC system
  • Across all 3 California Higher Ed systems
    • Aug. 4-6 a new free online conference called Cal OER will take place. A call for proposals will be open soon – I’ll send an email with more info when it’s out.

Online technology tips and updates of note:

  • Zoom now offers automatic live captioning/transcription in addition to transcribing recordings. Meeting hosts have to enable this every time you start a meeting.
  • MiraCosta’s Canvas system now includes an Immersive Reader feature at the upper right of every Canvas page (Pages only, not assignments, discussions, or other Canvas tools). Immersive Reader supports Universal Design for Learning by providing tools supporting student comprehension of course material, including language translation options and (high-quality!) reading aloud of content on pages.
  • Office 365 is now available as an integration in our Canvas system. This enables quick access to your OneDrive files for adding to Canvas as content, as well as tools for collaboration and assignments using Office 365 files. To learn more, start with our Office 365/Canvas integration instructor guide on the TIC site . The bottom of that page includes links to resources supporting students as they get started with Office 365.
  • Putting Your Best Self Forward: 6 Keys for Filming Quality Videos has some great tips, most of which also apply to setting up and using Zoom effectively. It’s an easy read with some funny examples of what *not* to do as well.

Best wishes for R&R for those taking a break, and gratitude to all who will be continuing to do the work!

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

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

Misinformation Forum Series

Hello, Campus Community! 

I am excited to introduce a new forum series that will cover a range of topics pertaining to an ever-growing social problem – the spread of misinformation.  Our amazing Web Services & Emerging Technologies Librarian, Lauren McFall, has organized an interdisciplinary faculty lineup to present on intriguing and timely topics.  

Here is more from Lauren – 

Misinformation is an old problem, but technology has manifested that problem in new ways. 2020 only intensified these issues and the exposure to the public at large. From conspiracy theories to science denial to online bias, we are being impacted by a distorted information landscape like never before. In this series of four misinformation forums, we will take a deep dive into some of the recent information issues that have plagued our society alongside the problems that will permeate our future.

My neighbor is a conspiracy theorist! The psychology of misinformation and strategies to dilute the kool aid.
Do I have COVID? Health & Science Misinformation in the Wild
im.not.racist.but Bias in social media, online algorithms, and the bubbles they create
Are you a bot? The future of misinformation

Forum series details – 

We invite you to join these cross-disciplinary discussions and invite your students to participate, as well. 🙂 

Stay joyful, 

Sean Davis
Joyful Teacher in Residence
Coordinator, C3 Teaching and Learning Center

MiraCosta Faculty and Student Online Support

Is spring semester off to a great start? Could it be even better for you and/or your students with a little bit of help? The campus may be physically closed but an amazing array of support for successful online education is a click away! Some quick reminders for all faculty, and especially those launching classes starting this week:

For faculty:

  • Online Mentors and Instructional Design help – To request online teaching and course design support from a peer faculty mentor and/or our instructional designer, please fill out our request form. We’ll get you connected!
  • Tech Support – Canvas tech support options include 24×7 phone and chat support. Just click the Tech Support button at lower left in Canvas! Zoom tech support for faculty now is available through the MiraCosta employee help desk.
  • Proctoring – If you have questions about how best to run your online proctored exams, the Academic Proctoring Center is happy to help faculty, as well as potentially providing makeup exam support for your students. For more information, please visit miracosta.edu/apc or email proctoringcenter@miracosta.edu.
  • OER support – Interested in exploring Open Educational Resources (OER) this spring? The college and the statewide Academic Senate OER Initiative have many resources and projects you can tap into. Just reply to me and I can help you get connected with resources, colleagues, support staff, and/or financial support.

For students

  • Student Orientation to Online Learning – I’m offering five more workshops this week and a couple more for the 12-week classes that start in two weeks. More details are on the TASC site, and you can point your students to the signup form. You can also find out which of your students attended a session via SURF.
  • Student Support Hub – Please remind students about the Student Support Hub in Canvas (the button is at lower left in Canvas). This is a quick way for students to connect with live MiraCosta support folks from the library, tutoring centers, Writing Center, academic counseling, Career Center, computer lab staff and the student help desk. New this spring, the Hub has added connections to health services and mental health counseling.
  • 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.

Happy spring!

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

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