Category: Online Education News You Can Use

Online Ed News You Can Use – April 2025

I hope you have a chance to enjoy spring 🦋🌼🐝 in the beautiful world around us! In the online world, some important news, reminders, and upcoming opportunities …

Summer and Fall Classes are in SURF and Canvas

  • Course sections assigned to you in SURF for summer and fall now have shells available for you to work with in Canvas (select Courses on the left, then All Courses to see upcoming classes that aren’t yet on your dashboard).
  • If any of your fall (or summer) course sections are Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) or Low Textbook Cost (<=$40), you should designate them as such in SURF using these directions, so that the classes will have the appropriate logo in SURF. And don’t forget to inform the bookstore of your course material details, even if you are using zero-cost resources.

Professional Learning Opportunities related to teaching online

  • Tomorrow and continuing through spring: CVC webinars on Generative AI (also provides access to recordings of previous ones)
  • April 14-16: the free online Peralta Online Equity Conference – register to receive email updates and access to recorded sessions!
  • April 24, 1-2:30 pm: The CCC Accessibility Center is hosting an online workshop, “How to Create Accessible Canvas Courses with PopeTech”. Registration is NOT required – simply use the Zoom link to access. PopeTech is available in our Canvas.
  • April 25, 10 am – 3 pm: Alex Rockey of Bakersfield College is facilitating a free online Mobile Design Unconference. Register to learn more.
  • May 12 – June 8: Perusall will host an online, author-facilitated, communal reading experience (“asynchronous book club”) on John Warner’s book, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI. It has a small cost to cover access to the book. And, you’ll get to experience the social annotation tool, Perusall.
  • May 15: The CCC Accessibility Center has a free Annual Workshop with sessions throughout the day. One registration allows you to attend any sessions.
  • May 19–23: The free online Perusall Exchange conference, “Why Reading Matters to the Future of Learning,” includes some compelling speakers and also an opportunity to learn more about the Perusall social annotation tool, which we have available to use in Canvas.
  • Summer:
    • The CCC Online Teaching Conference is in Long Beach, June 16-18. If you would like support to attend, let me know! Early bird registration ends April 15. Online Ed can cover conference registration but likely not hotel or other travel expenses.
    • All facilitated and self-paced @ONE online teaching courses are free! (Be sure to click through the additional pages to see all your options.) Enroll now in a facilitated class before they fill up!
    • The online Cal OER conference is August 6-8. The call for proposals is open now through June 2.
  • Anytime: Schedule an appointment with either of our wonderful Instructional Designers, Nadia Khan or Stephanie Kelley (who specializes in support for faculty working on classes that use OER or other zero cost materials).

– Jim

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

Adding Faculty Evaluators, TLC Staff, Community Ed Students, Substitute Instructors, and TAs to Canvas classes

Students and Instructors are automatically enrolled from SURF to your Canvas course several times a day.

For the roles called out below, follow the specified directions to have the user enrolled within your course with the appropriate role.

  • Faculty Evaluator:  Work with your dean when you need to provide access to a peer, your chair, etc. to conduct an evaluation. Approved evaluators are handled by your dean through the Office of Instruction’s procedures. The evaluator will be added on SURF and uploaded to Canvas for the allowable period of time. During that time, the evaluator will have the ‘Evaluator’ Canvas role. The Evaluator Canvas role has the same permissions as the student role.
  • The Learning Centers (TLC) ASIC, STEMLC, & Writing Center: Contact Amy Paopao at (760) 757-2121 ext. 6389 or apaopao@miracosta.edu. On the People roster, within Canvas, the user will be assigned the ‘TLC Staff ‘ Canvas role.
  • Community Education Student: Contact Karen Turpin at kturpin@miracosta.edu. Include the confirmation of student enrollment through community education. On the People roster, within Canvas, the user will be assigned the ‘Student Other’ Canvas role.
  • Substitute Instructors, & TAs: Work with your dean to provide access to Canvas for the substitute instructor or TA. Approved substitute instructors and TAs are handled by your dean through the Office of Instruction’s procedures. The substitute instructor or TA will be added on SURF and uploaded to Canvas for the allowable period of time. During that time, the substitute instructor will have the ‘Teacher’ Canvas role and the TA will have the ‘TA’ Canvas role.

Adjust-All tool just added to Canvas: May be useful RIGHT NOW!

Dear faculty and friends,

We’ve just added a new tool to Canvas called Adjust-All. It’s a simple tool that can make life at this time of the year, when copying previous Canvas courses for reuse, a lot easier. It enables you to change all course item due dates and announcement publication dates in one place, rather than having to access each item individually. You’ll find “Adjust All” now toward the bottom of each Canvas course’s navigation menu. Here’s a short (3½ minutes) video to show you how it works!

Couple quick notes:

  • The first time you use Adjust-All, you’ll need to click the blue Authorize button – it’s fine 😊
  • You may see a message that this is a trial subscription – it is, but our purchase is in process.
  • This tool is only available to faculty – students won’t see it in your course menu.
  • The tool does not currently work with New Quizzes, so if you are using New Quizzes, you’ll still need to adjust due dates one by one, the old way.
  • There are a few other things you can do with Adjust-All. Click the gear icon at top right to see options for bulk adjustments to dates or publishing status.
  • See the Adjust-All user guide for more tutorials and guides to using Adjust-All.
Adjust All in Canvas

Happy adjusting!

– Jim

Jim Julius, Ed.D.

Faculty Coordinator, Online Education

Spring 2025 online teaching resources & reminders

Dear colleagues, I hope your break was restorative and you’re feeling as ready as possible for 2025! Please see below for reminders of local resources to help you enable your students to succeed in online environments this spring.

Expectations and Recommendations for Faculty Teaching Online

Support for You

  • Our Canvas start-of-term checklist can help you prepare your classes. New to Canvas? We have lots of resources to help you get started, as well as workshops this week!
  • 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 Instructional Designer Nadia Khan, for help with Canvas and teaching with tech. We have a new instructional designer also available for 1-1 support, Stephanie Kelley, especially for faculty working on use of OER/ZTC course materials.
  • 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 MiraCosta Online 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. Faculty are welcome to attend as well!
  • Technology Needs – Be sure to share the form for students to fill out if they need a laptop and/or wifi hotspot to succeed this semester.
  • 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.
  • Online Student Support Access Points – the Student Support Hub in Canvas, accessed via the Student Support button on the left in Canvas, gives quick access to online support from the library, Learning Centers, 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.

MiraCosta’s Online Education Tools

Select 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.
  • Canvas Studio – enables faculty and students to create videos while inside Canvas. Faculty can create interactive discussion or quiz activities based on video. Auto-captioning and caption clean up tools are high-quality and easy to use, but not automatic!
  • Pronto is an incredible mobile-friendly and Canvas-integrated messaging platform that’s ready to use in every course.
  • Pope Tech helps faculty detect and correct accessibility issues within Canvas. The PopeTech dashboard tool (via the Pope Tech Accessibility course menu item) provides a course-level guide for addressing all accessibility issues in a course in one place.
  • SensusAccess provides 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

Professional Learning for Online Teaching – Spring Possibilities

  • In addition to many online ed workshops this Flex week, you can review lots of wonderful recorded MiraCosta online teaching workshops anytime (Flex-eligible, of course)! 
  • Friday, Jan. 31: MiraCosta is holding a college-wide day for discussing and learning about AI. Please RSVP and consider proposing a faculty-focused session.
  • First and third Thursdays, 12:30 pm on Zoom and in OC T250: Jim Sullivan, Nadia Khan, and I offer regular discussions on teaching with technology. Look for announcements from Jim S, MiraCosta’s Joyful Teacher (aka Capybara guy).
  • March 10-14: San Diego area community colleges are offering a joint online AccessAbility Week with online workshops throughout that week.
  • June 16-18: The CCC Online Teaching Conference returns to Long Beach. Consider submitting a proposal (due Jan. 31)! MiraCosta faculty who are presenting can get all travel expenses covered from the Online Ed budget!
  • @ONE online teaching courses are open to all California Community College faculty. Some are self-paced and available anytime. Facilitated spring courses are open for enrollment now, and are completely free. They’ll fill, so sign up now if you’re interested!

Best wishes for a great spring!

– Jim

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

MiraCosta Online News – End of 2024!

Dear MiraCosta Faculty, 

Here are a few reminders, resources, and opportunities as 2024 comes to a close!

Canvas End of Term Support and Reminders

After Dec. 31, your fall Canvas classes go into read-only mode for you and your students, and move from the Canvas Dashboard to the Past Enrollments area of Canvas (select Courses at left in Canvas, then All Courses to see Past Enrollment courses). 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 Dec. 31. 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, as well as what to do if you wish to close course access sooner than Dec. 31. If you’d like help with any semester wrap-up tasks, and/or as you begin working on spring classes, you can consult with our Instructional Designer, Nadia Khan (click the link to schedule a time). 

ZTC/OER Support and Reminders

For those teaching spring classes that are Zero- or Low-Textbook Cost, if you haven’t yet done so, please update your course section ZTC/LTC designations in SURF. For folks looking for support building spring ZTC classes or just exploring the use of OER, you can consult with our new ZTC/OER Instructional Designer, Stephanie Kelley (click the link to schedule a time).

ZTC/OER Support and Reminders

For those teaching spring classes that are Zero- or Low-Textbook Cost, if you haven’t yet done so, please update your course section ZTC/LTC designations in SURF. For folks looking for support building spring ZTC classes or just exploring the use of OER, you can consult with our new ZTC/OER Instructional Designer, Stephanie Kelley (click the link to schedule a time).

Propose an AI Session for our January Fifth Friday AI Event

As you’ve likely heard, the college is planning an AI day on Jan. 31. Faculty will have the afternoon to offer sessions to our colleagues. If you have anything you’d like to share, or a discussion you’d like to facilitate, please propose a session!

Professional Learning for Online Teaching – Spring Possibilities

  • In addition to many online ed workshops coming in Flex week, you can review lots of wonderful recorded MiraCosta online teaching workshops anytime (Flex-eligible, of course)! 
  • Mark your calendar: San Diego area community colleges are planning together an AccessAbility Week with online workshops throughout March 10-14. More info to come after break!
  • @ONE online teaching courses are open to all California Community College faculty. Some are self-paced and available anytime. Facilitated spring courses are open for enrollment now, and are completely free. They’ll fill, so sign up now if you’re interested!
  • Take some time from your break to submit a proposal [due Jan. 31] for the Online Teaching Conference [June 16-18, Long Beach]. MiraCosta faculty who are presenting can get all travel expenses covered from the Online Ed budget!

Happy break!

– Jim

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

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