AI Resources for Faculty – Summer 2024

Dear MiraCosta faculty colleagues,

Generative Artificial Intelligence is on just about everyone’s minds these days. As we head toward summer, I’m sharing some resources and thoughts that I hope you’ll.find helpful for AI-related planning, exploring, and – perhaps – play.

Crafting AI Class Policies

The Academic Senate’s AI Task Force this spring agreed that many students are uncertain about what AI use is acceptable, and that the answer is not a college-wide policy. Every discipline, every faculty member, every course section, every assignment may have different approaches in whether AI use is required, banned, or somewhere in between. It’s important that we as faculty are clear with our students on this matter. In fact, AAC just updated the MiraCosta Syllabus Checklist to add a recommendation about having a class AI policy.

In consultation with the AI Task Force and the MiraCosta Online Educators committee, I’ve created a one-page guide to creating an AI class policy. It offers a range of starting points and considerations for elements to include in your policy, as well as links to sites where you can find examples to draw upon. Please view your class policy as the beginning, not the end, of conversation with your students about AI.

Where to Start with AI Tools

The AI toolset is emergent: constantly evolving and updating. Some tools may be more important in your discipline than others. Having said that, I would urge everyone to spend time exploring. Be playful! Ask questions from serious to absurd. Explore the limits of AI’s capabilities. Try it for non-academic summer things: recipes, travel ideas, event planning, hobbies.

I’ll mention two specific tools that I think are worthwhile starting points in your AI exploration.

1. Microsoft Copilot (when used with a MiraCosta login)

Basic Pros (as of now)

  • Provides free high quality generative AI (GPT 4) access to all MiraCosta faculty, staff, and students, including generation of code, text, and images. It will also analyze images.
  • Provides security and privacy that is uncertain when using non-institutional AI tools.

Basic Cons (as of now)

  • Copilot chats cannot be saved for later reference or shared for others to view, making it less valuable to process-based teaching and learning.
  • Does not accept files as input. Does not run code it generates.

2. OpenAI ChatGPT

Basic Pros (as of now)

  • GPT 4 is now available for free to all users via the new ChatGPT 4o (o = “omni”) release (see Con #1, though)
  • ChatGPT 4o is multimodal, accepting input via voice, text, file, image, and even simply by interpreting what’s on your screen, and providing output via voice, file, image, and code.
  • Chats are automatically saved for future reference and continued exploration, and may be shared with others.

Basic Cons (as of now)

  • Free access to GPT 4 is limited, resulting in inequitable experiences for students who pay for a full account vs. those who cannot.
  • OpenAI’s business practices are questionable.

AI “Detection” Cautions

We will likely revisit this institutionally over the next academic year, but many of you may be exploring how you can detect AI usage in student work over the summer. Short answer: when AI is used in not-very-sophisticated ways, it may be detectable by you or a technology. But relying on that detection will become ever more problematic as both AI and our students become more sophisticated. Some reading:

The Importance of Collegial Conversation

Talking with your colleagues, especially within your departments, about AI is so important. I’m happy to connect with you through the month of June, and our Joyful Teacher, Jim Sullivan (jimsullivan@miracosta.edu), will be available throughout the summer. We’re already planning on developing related faculty support resources to share with you this summer, and ongoing Flex conversations in the next academic year. We’re in this together!

– Jim

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

Online Ed Tips: End of Spring 2024

Dear MiraCosta Faculty, 

Congrats on (just about) making it to summer. Here are reminders and opportunities as you wrap up spring and start thinking about what’s next.

Canvas End of Term

After June 6, your spring Canvas classes go into read-only mode for you and your students. If you wish to remove access to any of your course materials for your current students beyond this semester, you need to do so by then. Review our Canvas end-of-term guide for details. It also discusses what you need to do if you have any students who will receive Incomplete grades.

Support for Wrapping Up Classes and Summer/Fall Class Prep 

Summer Professional Learning Opportunities

  • The Online Teaching Conference is in Long Beach, June 26-28. Early bird registration ends May 24. Contact me if you’re interested in funding to support your registration.  
  • There are some great @ONE online teaching self-paced courses. (Unfortunately, the facilitated summer courses seem to be full.) 
  • free online conference called Cal OER returns for its fourth year, Aug. 7-8. The call for proposals closes June 3. Conference registration ($25) is open now.
  • When’s the last time you explored the TIC website? Start on the tic.miracosta.edu home page and see where it leads you – there are many great resources including workshop recordings, tutorials, examples, and guidelines for online teaching.

Have a super summer!

– Jim

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

Online Ed News You Can Use – Spring 24

Happy almost May! Some quick tidbits and opportunities related to all things online …

Summer and Fall Classes are in SURF and Canvas

Professional Learning Opportunities related to online teaching

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

SensusAccess – Alternative Media Made Easy

Sensus Access Notices & Flex Workshops Recordings


Sensus Acess Logo

SensusAccess offers two ways for MiraCosta faculty, classified professionals, and students to convert all kinds of documents and files into alternative and more accessible formats:

SensusAccess is available now.

  • A website that allows anyone to upload files including Word or PPT documents, scanned images, PDFs, or web pages and generate accessible alternative types of files and media, including audio, e-books, Braille, and large print. This helps meet accessibility standards and enhance inclusion by supporting diverse preferences and needs of users.
  • A Canvas integration that automatically enables conversion of files uploaded into Canvas into alternate file and media types and languages. (This replaces functionality that was previously provided in Canvas through Ally.)

Key Features

  • Automated conversion of files into a range of alternative media and file formats
  • Remediation of inaccessible documents such as image only PDFs into accessible formats
  • Language to language translation with a high degree of accuracy

For more information on SensusAccess and its use check out the SensusAccess website and one-page Canvas LTI description.

Spring 2024 support for online equity and success

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

Support for You

  • Our Canvas start-of-term checklist can help you prepare your classes.
  • 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.
  • Panda Pros are Canvas experts who provide free 45 minute 1-1 consultations.
  • Online Ed Workshops – The Flex week schedule includes many great online-related workshops, starting this morning (Friday 1/12). And you can always view recordings of online education Flex workshops (Flex-eligible, of course).

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.

  • Canvas – we all use Canvas, right?
  • 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

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