Category: Online Education News You Can Use

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:

  • A website in the portal (MiraCosta login required) that allows you to upload files including Word or PPT documents, scanned images, PDFs, or web pages and generate accessible alternative types of files and media, including PDF, audio, e-books, Braille, and large print. This helps meet accessibility standards and enhance inclusion by supporting preferences and needs of diverse users.
  • A Canvas integration that automatically enables conversion of files uploaded into Canvas into alternate file and media types.

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

Sensus Access in Teaching and Learning

For faculty, Sensus Access offers an important pathway to one element of Universal Design for Learning – enabling students to access course materials in the format that works best for them. Some examples of how students are likely to benefit from Sensus Access:

  • Conversion of Canvas pages or documents shared in Canvas into MP3 files for listening rather than reading
  • Conversion of course materials into formats that can be viewed offline, if the student does not always have reliable Internet access
  • Conversion of course materials into eBook format for students who prefer use of an eBook reader (such as a Kindle)

Faculty may choose to proactively use Sensus Access to generate alternative formats of course materials. Faculty may also, or alternatively, wish to remind students about the availability of Sensus Access to them, empowering them to make their own decisions about how and when to use this tool. For example, when faculty create an introductory screencast guiding students through the Canvas navigation and organization of a course, simply adding a few moments to point out the Sensus Access function on a Canvas page, and describing what it can do, can be a quick way to raise student awareness and agency!

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

Online News for You: End of Fall 2023

Dear MiraCosta Faculty, 

We’re almost there! Let’s finish strong and (maybe?) think a little bit about prepping for spring online teaching 😅

Canvas End of Term

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). 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.

Finishing Up and Looking Ahead

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). 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.

Helping Students to SOAR this Spring

The SOAR (Student Online Academic Readiness) workshop returns in spring. In partnership with librarians, we’ve already lined up many workshop times for the spring semester. Please recommend this to your students as you build syllabi and welcome pages for your classes! As always, we’ll have Canvas announcements reminding students of sessions each week. And as always, you can check to see if your students have attended one of these workshops in order to incentivize participation.

Finishing Up and Looking Ahead

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). 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.

Helping Students to SOAR this Spring

The SOAR (Student Online Academic Readiness) workshop returns in spring. In partnership with librarians, we’ve already lined up many workshop times for the spring semester. Please recommend this to your students as you build syllabi and welcome pages for your classes! As always, we’ll have Canvas announcements reminding students of sessions each week. And as always, you can check to see if your students have attended one of these workshops in order to incentivize participation.

Happy break!

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

An Option for Sending Out Midsemester Reports

Hi Folks,

Each semester I send out “midsemester grades” to all of my students.  Students appreciate the heads up, and it often leads to conversations that benefit the students.

For those interested in sending out a “midterm report” regarding your students’ current grade in the course…   consider using the message option in the “New Analytics” feature.  With it, you can customize messages to go out to students based on their grade percentage (e.g., between 90% – 100%, 80% – 89%, 70% – 79%, 60% – 69%, etc.).  This is an excellent way to let students know how they are currently doing in the course.

First Step: Grading and the Canvas Gradebook

  • Complete all grading 24 hours before sending out the midterm reports.  The ‘New Analytics’ feature does not read directly from the gradebook… it has a lag of 24 hours before it is updated.  Once you have finished grading… wait 24 hours before sending out the midterm reports.
  • As part of the grading, place a zero for any assignments overdue that are not submitted (otherwise, they are not included in the grade calculations)

Second Step: Enable the New Analytics Feature

  1. Click on the ‘Settings’ option in your Canvas Course
  2. Click on the ‘Features Options’ tab along the top
  3. Click the ‘New Course and User Analytics’ option
Screen shot for Step 1, 2 and 3.

Third Step: Open the New Analytics Feature

  • From the Home Page of your Canvas course, select ‘New Analytics’
New Analytics button

Fourth Step: Prepare to Send Out Messages

  • Click on the ‘Envelop’ icon.
Envelope Icon

Fifth Step: Prepare to Send Out Messages

  • Provide the lower and upper range for grade percentage.
  • Type the Subject line and Message.  Adjust both to be meaningful and helpful to the students receiving the message.  I tend to say ‘Congratulations’ for all passing grades (A, B, and C), and let students with grades not quite passing that making a change now could help them to pass the course.  For students significantly below passing, I share that a bigger ‘mid-course’ correction is needed, but that it remains within their options.  Share resources, provide advice, and cheer them on.
  • Click ‘Send’
  • Repeat this process for each grade range you’ll be using (e.g., 90 – 100, 80 – 89, 70 – 79, 60 – 69, etc.).
Settings screen for Message Students Who.

Sincerely,

Robert

█ Robert G. Kelley, Ph.D.
█ Psychology Department
█ MiraCosta College

Fall 2023 tools and support for online success

Welcome back! Please see below for quick reminders of great MiraCosta resources to help you enable your students to succeed in online environments! If you use Pearson tools in Canvas, please be sure to see the final bullet in the first section for a critical update that occurred this summer.

Support for You

  • Our Canvas start-of-term checklist can help you prepare your classes.
  • The MiraCosta Online Class Quality Guidelines provides MiraCosta requirements and recommended practices for online instructors.
  • Ongoing faculty support – You can set a meeting with our Instructional Designer, Nadia Khan, any time. Note: the Online Mentor program has not yet been renewed – I will keep you informed if/when that becomes available again.
  • 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
  • NEW Panda Pros are Canvas experts who provide free 45 minute 1-1 consultations as well as weekly live “Dear Panda Pros” webinars on particular Canvas topics.
  • 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! NEW: The Ask the Spartan chat integrated into MiraCosta’s website provides both automated responses and (brand new!) the opportunity to connect to Live Chat with staff from many student support areas.
  • 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 or internet hotspot
  • 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 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 
  • 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. NEW: the PopeTech dashboard tool added to Canvas this summer provides a course 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 this summer to provide multi-format course material accessibility and file type conversion options for students, replacing Ally. 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 includes an AI detection capability for instructors at this time, but please beware of false positives should you use it.

Best wishes for a fantastic fall!

– Jim

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

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