Category: Online Education News You Can Use

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

What’s Going Well? – A SAFE Topics Podcast Live Show

Hello and welcome back campus community!

The SAFE Topics Podcast is back at it with our first 2021 release! In this latest episode, we aired our first live recording during the Spring 2021 flex week! Hosts Sean and curry asked a panel of MiraCosta faculty including Himgauri Kulkarni (Biology), Leila Safaralian (Math), Casey McFarland (Kinesiology), Billy Gunn (Film), and Edward Pohlert (Faculty Director, Retention Services): what’s working, what’s challenging, and what should students expect as we all prepare for another semester of remote/online teaching and learning? This is one episode you won’t want to miss!

Ways to Listen!

  1. Podbean – S.A.F.E. Topics
  2. Spotify
  3. Apple Podcasts
  4. Amazon Music
  5. Audible

What to Listen For

  • Introductions from each of our guest faculty members. 
  • What made remote learning easier for students this last semester?
  • The importance of flexibility. 
  • Asynchronous classes working well for entirely new student populations.
  • Opportunities for students to connect with one another.
  • How did the synchronous classes go?
  • Building trust with students from the get-go. 
  • Trying to humanize the online class experience.
  • What has made learning challenging during this time?
  • The lack of instant feedback.
  • Reminding one another that we are all going through this together.
  • Unforeseen challenges that come the student’s way. 
  • The importance of low-stakes meet-n-greets, chats, and online hangouts.
  • The real problem of access and knowledge of technology.
  • Student access to a safe space to learn. 
  • The importance of being more empathetic towards our students.
  • Wrapping up with a one-minute message to students that each of our guest speakers want them to know.

The S.A.F.E. Topics Team

curry mitchell – Faculty, Letters (Co-host)
Sean Davis – Faculty, Sociology (Co-host)
Kelly Barnett – Intern and Music Technology Student (Audio Editor)
James Garcia – Associate Faculty, Sociology (Show Notes, Online)

Connect with Us

PodBean
Safe Topics
S.A.F.E Topics logo

Stay great,

S.A.F.E. Topics Podcast Team

Online News for our Online Spring 2021!

Happy new year! I hope everyone had a good break, despite the weirdness of our world!

Flex workshops launch tomorrow: Friday, Jan. 15

Flex week starts tomorrow with lots of great online ed-related workshops, including some Canvas open lab hours for anyone seeking expert Canvas support. There’s also a workshop on an awesome new communication tool called Pronto, available college-wide this semester, and a workshop to make sure you’re ready for the new Zoom that arrived over winter break. Friday ends with a workshop featuring seven MiraCosta online faculty mentors sharing some of their top tips for online teaching. And there are many more super workshops coming next week!

Online Teaching Tool Updates

  • Check out Pronto, an incredible mobile-friendly and Canvas-integrated messaging platform that’s ready to use in every course now.
  • As you’re hopefully aware, Zoom was updated over break. Many of the changes are seamless but review our updated faculty Zoom support site for details. With the new Zoom comes a new Canvas integration that’s a huge improvement on what we had previously.
  • Accessibility and Universal Design are important elements of equity and inclusion. We have a new, more powerful tool built into Canvas called Pope Tech that helps faculty detect and correct accessibility issues. (This replaces UDOIT, if you had used that.) Another tool, Ally, is here for spring. Ally automatically provides files you share through Canvas in multiple options for students. For instance, PDFs can be listened to (great for those who would prefer to listen). PPTs can be accessed as PDFs (great for those without PPT). Word documents can be viewed as HTML (great for mobile devices).
  • The big change you’ll notice in Canvas is an update to the Rich Content Editor. If that makes you nervous, be sure to attend Karen Turpin’s 10 am Flex workshop tomorrow!
  • Finally, Proctorio is no longer available at MiraCosta, as had been communicated in late fall.

Student Orientation to Online Learning Workshops

In collaboration with the library, I’ll be again offering over two dozen Student Orientation to Online Learning workshops this spring – see all dates and times on the TASC site and in Canvas announcements. These workshops 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.

Student Support Resources to Share with your Students

Campus may be closed, but our amazing array of student support services and resources are just one or two clicks away. Point your students to the Student Support Hub in Canvas. Share the link and point them to the Student Support button on the left in Canvas for 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, and more! The new Help Hut on the MiraCosta website is also a quick way for students to connect with all kinds of support services, and the tutoring hub gives access from the website to all the academic support resources found in the Student Support Hub within Canvas.

Reminder: Merging Canvas Course Sections

This was once again available to faculty starting this fall. See our guide to learn more about merged course sections in Canvas, and if you’d like to request this, see the guide to the SURF dashboard for merging course sections – be sure to do so ASAP!

Don’t forget to refer to our useful Canvas start-of-term checklist to keep you on track as you finalize your spring classes!

See you online!

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

Spring 2021 Online Education Workshops

Registration

MiraCosta faculty no longer need to sign up for Flex activities in advance. After attending a Flex workshop, record your participation on your Flex transcript under the “Record Activities” tab, selecting the “Scheduled Activities or Workshops” activity type. Visit the Flex website for more information.

Archives

After Flex week, go to the Workshop Archives to see recordings and resources from workshops below that were held online.

Spring 2021 Workshops

A full updated list of all Flex workshops – including many other great workshops supporting online education – can be found at:  Spring 2021 Flex Workshops

Friday January 15, 2021

Canvas Open Lab

9:00 AM – 10:00 AM
Karen Turpin
Audience: Everyone
Format/Location: Online via Zoom

This session is designed to give you open time to work with Canvas in a collaborative environment featuring expert staff ready to support all your Canvas questions. Attendees may be online from anywhere, with opportunities to interact with fellow participants and Canvas experts. This is intended to be useful for anyone from beginners to advanced Canvas users, and is open entry/exit – show up anytime and stay as long as you like.

Using Canvas’s NEW Rich Content Editor

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Karen Turpin
Audience: Everyone
Recording: Using Canvas’s NEW Rich Content Editor (Zoom Recording, 49 minutes)

Canvas has a redesigned Rich Content Editor (RCE) for Spring 2021. The new RCE is intended to improve the user experience across Canvas tools. The toolbar includes a condensed, more intuitive look, menus are grouped by common icons and interactions, and generally, more editing area is displayed. Join us to learn all about the new RCE that is now globally available throughout Canvas.

For more information, visit the:

Canvas Open Lab

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Karen Turpin
Audience: Everyone
Format/Location: Online

This session is designed to give you open time to work with Canvas in a collaborative environment featuring expert staff ready to support all your Canvas questions. Attendees may be online from anywhere, with opportunities to interact with fellow participants and Canvas experts. This is intended to be useful for anyone from beginners to advanced Canvas users, and is open entry/exit – show up anytime and stay as long as you like.

Zoom Has Changed: What Faculty Need to Know
and Do

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Karen Turpin
Audience: Everyone
Recording: Zoom Has Changed: What Faculty Need to Know (Zoom Recording, 1 hour and 2 minutes)

MiraCosta College is now hosting our own Zoom, which means there are a number of changes you need to account for. The Zoom link is new, as is your login process. The Zoom LTI (integration tool) in Canvas is new and MUCH improved. Learn the updated ways to access Zoom, create meetings, and share recordings in Canvas with or without the LTI. Learn how to get Zoom help locally. Finally, you must update links manually for existing Zoom recordings and meetings that you want to continue to use and share, and this session will ensure you know how.

Create and Facilitate Better Student Engagement in Canvas with Pronto – Demo & Use Cases

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Matt Baugh (Pronto) with MiraCosta faculty
Audience: Everyone
Recording: Create and Facilitate Better Student Engagement in Canvas with Pronto – Demo & Use Cases (Zoom Recording, 1 hour and 2 minutes)

Learn how to get started with Pronto, an app that integrates with Canvas and enhances communication beyond what Canvas provides, enabling group messaging, file sharing, video chat, announcements, and more in a very mobile-friendly way. Pronto can be used outside of Canvas too, and is open to everyone at the college – student services, clubs, committees, etc. – all can have rich mobile-friendly group synchronous and asynchronous communication through Pronto.

Advice from MOM: MiraCosta Online Mentors Share Online Teaching Tips

3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
MiraCosta Online Faculty Mentors
Audience: Everyone
Recording: Advice from MOM: MiraCosta Online Mentors Share Online Teaching Tips (Zoom Recording, 1 hour and 22 minutes)

A team of MiraCosta faculty provided mentoring support for online teaching to over 60 colleagues this fall. In this workshop, eight faculty mentors will share some of the top tips they have to offer on both pedagogies and tools (Canvas, Canvas Studio, and Zoom). Their advice will help you engage your students more deeply in learning, and will help you to accomplish your online teaching more efficiently and effectively

Tuesday January 19, 2021

Experience the Student Orientation to Online Learning

7:00 PM – 8:15 PM
Jim Julius & Steven Deineh
Audience: Everyone
Recording: Experience the Student Orientation to Online Learning (Zoom Recording, 1 hour and 20 minutes)

The Student Orientation to Online Learning is offered dozens of times each semester to help MiraCosta students to be more prepared for success as online students. The session includes discussion of important habits and attitudes of successful online students, opportunities to gain comfort with Canvas and Zoom tools, a review of key support resources and services online, and a brief librarian-led introduction to the online library. Experience the SOOL for yourself – you will probably learn some things you didn’t know about MiraCosta’s amazing online support for students! We’ll also review how student participation in the SOOL is reported so that any faculty member can incentivize their students to attend.

Wednesday January 20, 2021

Mission Accessible: New Tools for Spring 2021

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Liesl Boswell
Audience: Everyone
Recording: Mission Accessible: New Tools for Spring 2021 (Zoom Recording, 1 hour and 23 minutes)

Canvas provides faculty a foundation and a wealth of built-in tools to create inclusive experiences for all students, and MiraCosta College is also adding a couple new tools in Canvas to enhance accessibility and inclusivity in spring 2021. Pope Tech helps faculty to go deeper into course content than the tools Canvas provides to detect and improve accessibility. Ally automatically converts files faculty add to their Canvas courses into multiple formats for students. Learn how to leverage all of these tools to build an accessible and usable learning environment. Free digital goodies for course development!

Continuing the learning and conversation with Pronto, a new mobile-friendly, Canvas-integrated, powerful communication tool: Demo and Use Cases

4:30 PM – 5:30 PM
Matt Baugh (Pronto) with MiraCosta faculty
Audience: Everyone
Recording: Continuing the learning and conversation with Pronto, a new mobile-friendly, Canvas-integrated, powerful communication tool: Demo and Use Cases (Zoom Recording, 1 hour and 8 minutes)

Learn how to get started with Pronto, an app that integrates with Canvas and enhances communication beyond what Canvas provides, enabling group messaging, file sharing, video chat, announcements, and more in a very mobile-friendly way. Pronto can be used outside of Canvas too, and is open to everyone at the college – student services, clubs, committees, etc. – all can have rich mobile-friendly group synchronous and asynchronous communication through Pronto. 

C3-2-1 Newsletter – End of the Semester Edition

Hello, Faculty Community! 

***You are receiving this newsletter because you are a faculty member at MiraCosta College. I, Sean Davis, am the coordinator of our C3 Teaching and Learning Center***

Lots of local workshops being offered to help us out. People are amazing, right? We just keep going. Pretty remarkable.

3 resources related to teaching and learning, 2 online tips and tricks, and 1 question for reflection

Looking for archived resources, tips/tricks, and questions?

Revisit the past editions of the C3-2-1 Newsletter here. 

Want to share? 

If you have some resources, tips/tricks, and questions to share, please contribute to the newsletter using this C3-2-1 Form.

C321 Newsletter

(3) Resources

  1. Get some rest.
  2. You have done a lot. Celebrate.
  3. Be safe and I hope you stay healthy.

(2) Online Tips and Tricks

  1. Try to limit the time online when possible.
  2. Rest always makes for better work later. Those things you’re thinking about can probably wait.

(1) Question

As we take a moment to look back at this semester to chart a path forward, how can we take better care of ourselves so we can come back stronger and better in the spring?

You have done a lot. Teaching and learning have not stopped – it has simply transformed, and we should be proud of how we have adjusted and persisted this year. 🙂

Stay joyful,

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

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