Professional Learning Opportunities related to online teaching
This week: The free online Peralta Online Equity Conference started yesterday and goes through tomorrow. You can still register to ensure you have updates and access to recorded sessions!
Summer:
The CCC Online Teaching Conference is in Long Beach, June 26-28. If you would like support to attend, let me know! Online Ed can cover conference registration but likely not hotel expenses.
All facilitated and self-paced @ONE online teaching courses are free! (Be sure to click the Load More button at the bottom of that page to see all your options, including many related to OER/ZTC.) Enroll now in a facilitated class before they fill up!
The following will help instructors understand how the end of semester is handled in Canvas, and how to update related Canvas course settings if necessary. By default, students who complete a class continue to have read-only access to the concluded class’s course materials, discussions, and grades. If you wish to restrict concluded class access, you must change the class settings before the end of the term, or get a Canvas administrator to help you after the end of the term.
Everything below applies to typical term-based Canvas classes. Canvas sandbox classes and Canvas shells used for organizations, departments, groups, etc. are not tied to any particular terms and thus remain available indefinitely.
Closing your Course
There is nothing you have to do to close your Canvas course; at the term end date (see below), your course will be set to Concluded status and moved onto the Past Enrollments course list for you and your students. By default you and your students will continue to have read-only access to the course.
Canvas Term End Dates
Semester
Date
Time
Spring 2024
June 6
12 am
Summer 2024
August 20
12 am
Fall 2024
Dec 31
12 am
Concluded Course Access
For both instructors and students, concluded courses can be found by clicking Courses in the main Canvas menu, then the All Courses link. Concluded courses are listed there under Past Enrollments. Concluded courses may notbe moved back onto the Dashboard – they must be accessed in this way.
Instructorscan perform the following actions with a concluded course
Access material using visible navigation links (any links that were hidden from students will be hidden in concluded courses)
Instructorscannot perform the following actions within a concluded course (do these before the end of the term!)
Edit course content
Edit Grades
View/download Analytics
View/download Item Analysis within Quizzes
Send a message to the class within Canvas
Change class access settings
Change class navigation
Studentscan perform the following actions by default within a concluded course
View Grades
View course content
View Discussions and Assignments
Send a message to the instructor
Students cannot perform the following actions within a concluded course
View Quiz questions and answers
Submit discussions, assignments, quizzes, and other course activities
Restricting Students from Viewing Some or All of a Completed Course
As described above, by default in Canvas, students have ongoing read-only access to course content in Canvas after the term ends. This can be a great feature, allowing students to review key learning resources from previous semesters. If, however, you wish to limit this access, follow one of the methods below before the end of the term. (If you need to make these changes to a course that is already concluded, contact Karen Turpin for assistance at kturpin@miracosta.edu)
Method 1: Hide Course Navigation menu links
If an instructor would like to limit access to major areas of course content, one method is to hide Navigation menu links. Note that if Navigation menu links are hidden, the instructor will also be unable to access them after the course concludes. This may be appropriate if you would like to leave Grades available to students, yet close off certain course content. The instructor may copy the course into another course to regain access to hidden menu items.
How to hide Course Navigation menu links
Click Settings in the Canvas course menu
Click Navigation in the tabs at the top.
Drag and drop the menu items from the top (viewable) area to the bottom (hidden) area or click the gear icon to the right of the menu item and select disable.
Click the Save button.
Method 2: Hide select course content
For more fine-grained control, certain course content such as files, pages, modules, or module items (but not assignments or discussions where students have participated) may be unpublished. As with hidden Navigation menu links, unpublished items are also inaccessible to the instructor after the course concludes.
If you wish to hide course items where students have participated, such as discussions or assignments, you cannot unpublish those. But there is a trick: simply set the availability date to sometime far in the future.
These options may be useful if you want students to be able to access most course content, but have select content that you prefer not to be accessed/shared in the future. The instructor may copy the course into a current course to be able to revisit/reuse hidden content.
Method 3: Restrict students from accessing entire course after term end date
The term end date is the final date in the current semester as listed in the table above. If an instructor would prefer the entire course and its course materials not be visible to students after the term end date:
Click Settings in the Canvas course menu.
For Participation: Select Term (this should be selected by default)
3. Select the checkbox for ‘Restrict students from viewing course after term end date‘.
5. Click the Update Course Details button at the bottom of the settings page.
This option will completely remove the course from the student’s view in Past Enrollments after the end term date passes. Students will not see the course and will have no access to course materials or grades. Instructors will continue to be able to access the course in Past Enrollments.
Resolving Incompletes
If you have assigned a student an incomplete ‘I‘ grade for the semester, contact Karen Turpin at kturpin@miracosta.edu or as soon as the paperwork is complete with Admissions and Records. Karen will create a new Canvas course section based on the original course. This new section will allow the student access to the course with the ability to submit work, and will give you access to grade the student’s work, for the time allowable by the Office of Admissions and Records.
Working with Concluded Courses to Build New Courses
As noted above, you may always export a concluded course for import back into Canvas (Text instructions), or use a concluded course as the source for copying into a new course (Text instructions | Video tutorial). If you wish to update the content of a concluded course for use in the future, but you do not have a current term course in which to do that, you may wish to request a Sandbox course to copy into and work with, since you cannot edit a concluded course directly.
Teaching a short course and/or need to close your course prior to the official term end date?
You can manually end your course by updating the course end date. This will disable the ability for students to submit any more work, and, if you select the setting enabling students to view the course after the end date, will move the course off of the students’ Canvas dashboard and into the Past Enrollments area. If you do not enable that access for students, the course will disappear from their Canvas altogether.
To change the Course Start and/or End Date
Click Settings in the Canvas course menu.
2. For Participation: Select Course
3. Change the Course Start and End Dates to reflect when you want students to have full access to the course.
4. If desired, select the checkboxes for ‘Restrict students from viewing course before course start date’ and/or ‘Restrict students from viewing course after the course end date’.
In the example below, students will not be able to participate in the course, even if it is published, until Jan 16 at 12 pm. The students will no longer be able to participate in the course after May 30 at 12 pm and the course will not be available to students for viewing.
I hope you had a great break! Please see below for quick reminders of great MiraCosta resources to help you enable your students to succeed in online environments this spring! Note the highlights of NEW items and upcoming workshops!
Expectations and Recommendations for Faculty Teaching Online
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!
The TIC website is a great starting point for all kinds of information and support for teaching with online technologies – see the last section of this email for specific TIC links to MiraCosta technologies supporting online teaching and learning.
Ongoing faculty support – You can set a meeting with our Instructional Designer, Nadia Khan, any time. Also, look for Jim Sullivan’s announcements about the 2x/monthly Teaching With Tech sessions that he, Nadia, and I do on Zoom, Wednesdays at 1 pm.
Tech Support – Canvas options include 24×7 phone and chat support. Just click the Tech Support button at lower left in Canvas! Zoom and other MiraCostatech support for faculty is available through the MiraCosta employee help desk.
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– In collaboration with the library, I’ll be offering a number of these across the first nine weeks of the term – see all dates and times on the TASC site and in Canvas announcements. These workshops engage students with resources MiraCosta provides to support them, as well as 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. I welcome faculty to attend as well!
Online Student Support Access Points – the Student Support Hubin Canvas, accessed via the Student Support button on the 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 Ask the Spartan chat integrated into MiraCosta’s website provides both automated responses and the opportunity to connect to Live Chat with staff from many student support areas. 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 – 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 to borrow a laptop and/or internet hotspot.
MiraCosta’s Online Education Tools
Click the links for a detailed MiraCosta-specific overview (and often, recorded Flex workshops) for each tool below. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions about these or other resources.
Zoom – if you’re using Zoom, make sure you’re using a pro Zoom account through MiraCosta. NEW: Zoom’s integration with Canvas has been updated. Faculty who use this integration must re-enable the Zoom LTI.
Canvas Studio – enables faculty and students to create videos while inside Canvas. Faculty can create interactive discussion or quiz activities based on video.
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.
Pope Tech helps faculty detect and correct accessibility issues within Canvas. NEW: the PopeTech dashboard tool added to Canvas last summer via the Pope Tech Accessibility course menu item provides a course-level overview for addressing all accessibility issues in a course in one place, rather than having to go item-by-item through Canvas.
SensusAccess is a NEW tool added last summer to provide multi-format course material accessibility and file type conversion options for students. If you notice an S symbol next to your page title and next to items in the Modules view, that’s SensusAccess.
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 types of interactivity to add to your videos, PlayPosit is great.
Turnitin – help students learn to properly cite sources and avoid plagiarism. Also provides grading and peer review tools for written work. Turnitin has included an AI detection capability for instructors, but please beware of false positives should you use it. Most experts agree that AI detection tools are extremely unreliable.
Best wishes for a super spring!
Jim Julius, Ed.D. Faculty Coordinator, Online Education
The way that Zoom is integrated with Canvas was updated over the 2023-24 winter break to Zoom LTI 1.3. For all who share Zoom meetings and recordings within Canvas using the Zoom integration, you will need to re-enable the Zoom LTI menu option within your spring 2024 Canvas courses. If you have Zoom recordings, those are safely within your Zoom account and can be accessed once you re-enable the Zoom menu option within each Canvas course.
NOTE: Faculty have the option to share Zoom links to meetings and recordings directly in Canvas courses rather than using the Zoom LTI integration described below.
Enable the Canvas Zoom LTI 1.3 Integration & View Past Meetings/Recordings
Enter your Canvas course
Click Settings on the course menu
Click the Navigation tab
Click the 3 dots to the right of Zoom and select Enable.
Click the Save button
6. Click the Zoom course menu item which will appear in your course menu.
7. Click All My Zoom Meetings / Recordings to view all past course zoom meetings and recordings.
Zoom provides a reliable, easy-to-use, mobile-friendly tool for live, recordable online presentations, meetings, and discussions with audio, video, chat, screen sharing, polling, and more. It can be used within Canvas or independently.
Zoom Pro is available to all MiraCosta faculty and staff at no charge. Students don’t use the Zoom Pro account but can use free Zoom basic accounts. Nobody at MiraCosta should be paying anything to use Zoom!
The version of Zoom that MiraCostans use changed after the fall 2020 semester; MiraCosta Zoom is now accessed at miracosta-edu.zoom.us rather than conferzoom.org or cccconfer.zoom.us. Faculty need to sign in to Zoom with their MiraCosta College login and password to obtain unlimited pro (“licensed”) access to all features of Zoom, including:
Unlimited meeting lengths and very large numbers of attendees
Recordings “in the cloud” so that you do not need to manage large files of your recorded meetings
Auto-transcription of your cloud-based Zoom recordings
This page includes basic technical how-to information and resources on using Zoom in general, and Zoom use in tandem with Canvas. Please see our separate Teaching with Zoom at MiraCosta College page for more detailed tips about teaching securely, effectively, and accessibly with Zoom.
Log On to Zoom at MiraCosta College
To access your Zoom account via the web go to: https://miracosta-edu.zoom.us Sign in with your MiraCosta College employee account and two-factor authentication (2FA).
How do I get a Zoom account? If you had a pro Zoom account through ConferZoom prior to 2021, it should have been automatically migrated to the MiraCosta Zoom, and there’s nothing you need to do. If you did not previously have a Pro Zoom account, and need to create a MiraCosta Zoom account, sign in to the MiraCosta Help Desk in the Portal and select the User Accounts option.
What if I’m having trouble with my Zoom account? Sign in to the MiraCosta Help Desk in the Portal and click the User Accounts button to request help.
What happened to my Zoom recordings made before 2021? They are still in your Zoom account! The old links to Zoom recordings will still work, but a message will briefly appear when people click an old link. If you update an old recording link with the new MiraCosta Zoom URL (replace cccconfer.zoom.us with miracosta-edu.zoom.us in the link) it will work seamlessly.
What happened to my recurring Zoom meetings I set up before 2021? Similar to your recordings, old links to recurring Zoom meetings will still work, but a message will appear when people click an old link. If you go to your Zoom account, you’ll see that your meetings have been migrated in, and you can get a new invitation. You can also simply update a meeting link created before 2021 with the new MiraCosta Zoom URL (replace cccconfer.zoom.us with miracosta-edu.zoom.us in the link).
What happened to Reports from Zoom meetings held before 2021? They are gone, sorry.
How much storage do I have for Zoom recordings? As of spring 2021, there is not a limit; however, this may change in the future if we do not manage our recordings well. Please delete recordings that you do not need.
Zoom Documentation
The following Zoom trainings, documentation, and resources can help you stay informed:
You can schedule and share Zoom meetings and recordings directly within Canvas, using the Zoom integration. To get started and learn more about the Zoom/Canvas integration, see directions below.
Note: You may also share individual Zoom meeting links and recordings in Canvas without using the integration.
Canvas Integration with Zoom
Enter your Canvas course
Click Settings on the course menu
Click the Navigation tab
Click the 3 dots to the right of Zoom and select Enable.
Click the Save button
Click the Zoom course menu item which will appear in your course menu.
Now you can schedule and access Zoom meetings from inside of Canvas.
Viewing All My Zoom Meetings in Canvas
When you first enter Zoom on Canvas you will see only the Zoom meetings associated with the Canvas course you entered from. To see and access all Zoom meetings within your account, click the link ‘All My Zoom Meetings‘.
