Category: Online Education News You Can Use

Updated Tools & Features to Try in Canvas

Behind the scenes, Canvas is updated regularly. Check out some of the updated tools and features available in MiraCosta College’s Canvas. (Note: The list below is intended to highlight the most significant changes – but many smaller updates occur frequently).

Summer 2018

  • New Gradebook – The New Gradebook is a beta feature that allows instructors to view an improved version of the Gradebook. This feature makes grading more flexible and intuitive. As of early fall 2018, each instructor interested in this must opt in; within the next 6 months this is likely to become the default Gradebook.
  • Quizzes.Next – Canvas’s new quiz/test assessment engine. Quizzes.Next will replace the original Quiz function in the near future (late fall 2018 or spring 2019, most likely). Quizzes.Next assessments are a particular type of Assignment rather than a distinct tool.
  • Turnitin LTI 2.0 Canvas Plagiarism Framework – An update to Turnitin available within Canvas that offers a tighter integration between a Canvas assignment and Turnitin, relying on Turnitin for plagiarism checking but using the native Canvas tools such as rubrics and speedgrader for assessment and feedback.
  • UDOIT – The Universal Design Online Content Inspection Tool, or UDOIT (“You Do It”) enables faculty to identify and correct many accessibility issues in their MiraCosta Canvas courses.
  • Dashboard List View – Students and instructors may change the Dashboard view to a list format with to-dos, feedback, and other activity organized by courses. Instructors can now set Pages and non-graded Discussions as to-do items. Students and instructors also may add their own personal to-dos to Canvas.

What is on the Horizon with Canvas?

Countdown to Canvas: 3 weeks to go

Canvas is now MiraCosta’s sole course management system!

Blackboard and Moodle access links have been removed from http://miracosta.edu/online to eliminate any confusion for our summer students.

Faculty who are continuing to access old courses in Blackboard and Moodle may do so until June 30 via:

  • Blackboard: https://blackboard.miracosta.edu/
  • Moodle: http://miracosta.mrooms.net/

If you need to catch up on details about extracting course content and data from the older systems, please see my previous Countdown to Canvas message.

Happy Summer!

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

Countdown to Canvas: 6 weeks to go

Please be sure you have extracted everything you need from Blackboard and Moodle, since access to those systems ends on June 30. See Considerations in Leaving Blackboard and Moodle for more details; for quick guidance on downloading class gradebooks and archives, see directions to do so for Blackboard or for Moodle.

Further, please consider carefully:

  • Are there old courses that you haven’t taught for some time, but you don’t want to leave behind? Don’t forget those!
  • Are there old courses that someone else in your department taught, but that person has since left MiraCosta, and your department has permission to reuse course content? If so, contact Karen Turpin (kturpin@miracosta.edu) for assistance in bringing such content over to Canvas.

Finally, if you are still getting up to speed on Canvas, keep in mind:

  1. The plethora of great locally-developed and selected Canvas resources available to you.
  2. The 24-7 instructor hotline for Canvas support – it remains available throughout the summer: 1-833-345-2890 and is your best option for quick “how do I do this in Canvas” or “why isn’t Canvas doing what I think it should do” types of questions.
  3. The TIC will be closed for its transformation into the brand-new Teaching & Learning Center during the first part of the summer, but Karen and I are working and available to you throughout the summer – feel free to contact either of us with questions that go beyond what the Canvas hotline can provide.

 

Countdown to Canvas: 8 weeks to go

To: All faculty

Blackboard and Moodle will no longer be options for instruction after the spring semester. The official end of our licenses providing access to Blackboard and Moodle is June 30. Please make sure you have extracted all needed content from all classes by then.

Faculty should consider 3 potential issues:

  1. If you have not yet rebuilt all your classes in Canvas, do you have all class content, resources, materials, etc. that you will need from the old system?
  2. Are you prepared for potential grade challenges on classes that were run in an old system?
  3. If you taught this spring in an old system, what would you do if a student needs to resolve an incomplete?

For much more detail on these issues, please see Considerations in Leaving Blackboard and Moodle

For some quick guidance on downloading class gradebooks and archives, see directions to do so for Blackboard or for Moodle.

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

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