Category: Online Education News You Can Use

MiraCosta Online tech inclusion and access updates

Happy summer, MiraCosta faculty! I have a few quick but important updates that will help us all increase the accessibility and inclusion of our course materials!

NEW! Pope Tech Accessibility Dashboard in Canvas

Hopefully you’re familiar with the Pope Tech tool that has given you page-by-page checking and support for accessibility in Canvas. I’m happy to announce that in early July, we’ll be adding the Pope Tech Dashboard to Canvas. This will add a new item visible only to you in each Canvas course menu – Pope Tech Accessibility – which will bring you to a course dashboard where you can review and correct accessibility concerns throughout your entire Canvas course, rather than needing to run page-by-page checks. See our Pope Tech guide for more info!

NEW! SensusAccess Alternate Media Converter (replacing Ally)

Also coming in early July to MiraCosta is SensusAccess. This tool will provide a way to convert files on demand into other file types, media types, and languages, compliant with accessibility standards. We’ll also have the tool embedded in Canvas, providing students with more inclusive access to content by enabling conversion on demand. Similar functionality was previously provided by the Ally tool, which is being removed from Canvas at the end of June. See our SensusAccess guide for more info!

Video Captioning News and Reminders

Most of you probably use video tools that have excellent auto-captioning and easy-to-use caption cleanup tools, such as Canvas Studio, Zoom, or YouTube. For anyone who may use the professional captioning service available through 3C Media Solutions, please know it will be unavailable for 6-10 weeks starting July 1. If you need professional captioning support, please reach out to Aaron Holmes, Access Specialist with Student Accessibility Services (aholmes@miracosta.edu).

– Jim

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

Summer 2023 Online Teaching @ MiraCosta

For those teaching this summer, please see below for quick reminders of key resources to help you help your students succeed! If you use Pearson tools in Canvas, please be sure to see the final bullet in the first section for recent critical updates.

Support for You

  • OurCanvas start-of-term checklist can help you prepare your classes.
  • TheMiraCosta Online Class Quality Guidelines provides MiraCosta requirements and recommended practices for online instructors.
  • Ongoing faculty support – You can request an appointment with our Instructional Designer anytime.
  • 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 MiraCosta tech support for faculty is available through the MiraCosta employee help desk.
  • MiraCosta technologies supporting online teaching and learning – please see the last section of this email for an overview, with links to learn more.
  • Pearson users! The integration between Pearson and Canvas had a major update following the spring term. MyLab is now called PearsonAccess. Links to Pearson MyLab tools from copied courses will no longer work and must be updated. Please see the Pearson Canvas integration guide for instructors and Pearson Transition guide to learn more, and reach out to your Pearson rep if you need assistance.

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 during the first two weeks of summer – 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.
  • 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 Help Hut on the MiraCosta website is also a quick way for students to connect with all kinds of support services including A&R and Financial Aid.
  • 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.
  • Technology Needs? – Be sure to share the form for students to fill out if they need a laptop to succeed this summer
  • Class Availability in Canvas – Faculty teaching distance education (online and hybrid) classes are expected to make their classes available by mid-day on the Monday of the week in which they begin. To learn more, please see MiraCosta Distance Education Class Authentication Compliance, Start-of-Term Availability Procedures, and Recommendations.

MiraCosta’s Online Education Tools

Click the link immediately after each bullet for a detailed MiraCosta-specific overview of each tool below. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions about these or other resources.

  • Canvas – of course
  • 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.
  • 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. See also Tips for Creating Accessible Course Content. Note – a new PopeTech tool will be added later this summer providing a course overview dashboard for addressing all accessibility issues in a course in one place, rather than having to go item-by-item through Canvas.
  • Ally automatically converts content you share through Canvas into multiple formats for students, allowing for listening rather than reading and better access to content on mobile devices. IMPORTANT: MiraCosta will discontinue use of Ally later this summer, and begin using a different tool called SensusAccess to provide similar multi-format course material conversion options for students.
  • 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 question types to add to your videos, PlayPosit is a great option. 
  • Turnitin – help students learn to properly cite sources and avoid plagiarism. Also provides grading and peer review tools for written work.
  • Productivity Software and other resources for online teaching – this ITS website includes a number of links to helpful resources for being fully equipped when teaching from your home.

Best wishes for summer success!

– Jim

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

End of Spring 2023 Online Ed Tips 

Dear MiraCosta Faculty, 

Hooray, summer is almost here! But first, some reminders and opportunities as you wrap up spring classes and begin 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 

Please Clean Up Zoom Recordings

  • The cloud storage for our Zoom recordings is well beyond contracted capacity. If you can take some time to delete unneeded Zoom recordings, it will help us all out. Log into your Zoom account and click Recordings on the left-hand menu. Select all recordings that you do not need and delete them.
  • If you have any meetings set up for automatic cloud recording but you rarely use the recordings, consider changing that setting so that you only record what you need.

Summer Professional Learning Opportunities

  • The Online Teaching Conference is in Long Beach, June 21-23. Early bird registration has been extended through 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.) 
  • A free online conference called Cal OER returns for its second year, Aug. 2-4. The call for proposals closes June 12. 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 Director, Online Education

Turnitin now tries to detect AI-generated text – Spring 23

Hello, MiraCosta faculty –

Turnitin.com Logo

Turnitin, which is integrated into Canvas and available to all MiraCosta faculty, has just begun providing an additional evaluation of the likelihood of submitted text having been generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). You can learn more about Turnitin through MiraCosta’s guide for faculty, and you can read more about this new AI detection capability, from Turnitin. At this time, Turnitin has automatically made this function available at no additional cost, although they have said that institutions will need to pay for this capability starting in 2024.

This release has been somewhat controversial; you may wish to read an article summarizing concerns with false positives that this technology may generate. In fact, Turnitin themselves provides guides for both faculty and students for dealing with false positives. It’s important to note that the AI detection results are available ONLY to instructors, not to students, if you enable students to do a Turnitin self-check on an assignment. As ever, we recommend that if you choose to use Turnitin with your students, you do so in a positive, formative, process-oriented manner. Please also keep in mind that our AP on Intellectual Property requires certain instructor disclosures and options for students when using software such as Turnitin.

If you have questions about Turnitin, AI, or anything else after reviewing the links above, please don’t hesitate to connect with me.

– Jim

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

Faculty Online Mentors – Connect with the team today: Courses and 1:1 Support

Hello, Faculty Community! 

I hope this message finds you well and full of joy! 🎉

It’s hard to believe that we are already more than halfway through the spring semester, but don’t worry; there are still some amazing opportunities to take advantage of! Have you checked out the professional learning opportunities offered by the MiraCosta Online Mentors? They are fantastic!  You still have time to sign up for one of the three 4-week online teaching courses starting Monday, April 3. Register for one now. Please take a moment to learn more details about these three course options. I highly recommend you register for one of them now!

If you want or need 1:1 support, remember that our peer faculty online mentors are here for you! They are always willing to help, so don’t hesitate to connect with a peer faculty online mentor!

All of these opportunities are Flex eligible. All of these opportunities connect you with your faculty colleagues. All of these opportunities help us provide better teaching and learning for our students. 🙂 

So what are you waiting for? Sign up now, and let’s make the rest of the semester joyful and successful!

Stay joyful,

Sean Davis
Joyful Teacher in Residence 🙂
Coordinator, C3 Teaching and Learning Center
Sociology Department Chair

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