Do you need or want help with your online classes over the break?
Faculty Helpers are available to work with you one-on-one on all things online teaching and learning. If you want some help with your class or just want another person to discuss pedagogy, design, accessibility, etc. simply respond to this email or contact a helper directly. Trouble with getting your syllabus to look right? Students won’t participate in the discussion board? Can’t get things organized? Still, making Canvas or Zoom your friend? Looking for some fresh inspiration?
Whether you need help now or over the upcoming break (yes, faculty helpers are available over the break!), connect with a faculty helper now so y’all can collaborate on a short- or long-term plan. Availability will vary helper-to-helper so please reach out to individual helpers to see if your schedules line up!
Contact one of the helpers listed below today – or anytime – for a quick question by email or to schedule a Zoom meeting. They are compensated by the college. You can claim Flex for your time working with them. No strings attached! Free to work with them as much or as little as you need! No forms to fill out – just select one from the list below and contact them directly or respond to this email if you want me to match you up with a helper.
Winter is coming! (That’s a gift, not a threat!) As we finish up, here are some reminders and resources to help you reach the finish line, and perhaps, to begin spring preparation.
Canvas End of Term
After Dec. 31, your fall 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.
MiraCosta Online Mentors and Instructional Designer Support
If you’d like help with any semester wrap-up tasks, or as you begin working on spring classes, MiraCosta peer mentor faculty are available over break (please see the email sent today by Sean Davis for details), and/or you can consult with our Instructional Designer, Nadia Khan (click the link to schedule a time).
Helping Students to SOAR
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 (page will be updated very soon if it’s still showing fall times when you view it). Please feel free to 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 their participation.
Upcoming Professional Learning Opportunities for Online Teaching
We’re planning lots of great online-related workshops for Flex week, with topics including Canvas course design templates, Canvas Studio, Pronto, Perusall, Zero Textbook Cost Course and Program Development, and open drop-in times for consultation with Canvas experts and peer faculty mentors. Also, look for a discussion about Artificial Intelligence and its impacts on teaching and learning, which we expect to be the beginning of a series continuing into spring.
Additionally, MiraCosta Online Mentors will be offering three 4-week @ONE courses adapted for use at MiraCosta this spring: Creating Accessible Course Content, Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning, and Introduction to Asynchronous Online Teaching and Learning. Look for an email coming soon from Nadia Khan with more details about these, which we expect to launch during Flex week.
Faculty Helpers are available to work with you one-on-one on all things online teaching and learning. If you want some help with your class or just want another person to discuss pedagogy, design, accessibility, etc. simply respond to this email or contact a helper directly. Trouble with getting your syllabus to look right? Students won’t participate in the discussion board? Can’t get things organized? Still, making Canvas or Zoom your friend? Looking for some fresh inspiration?
Whether you need help now or over the upcoming break (yes, faculty helpers are available over the break!), connect with a faculty helper now so y’all can collaborate on a short- or long-term plan.
Contact one of the helpers listed below today – or anytime – for a quick question by email or to schedule a Zoom meeting. They are compensated by the college. You can claim Flex for your time working with them. No strings attached! Free to work with them as much or as little as you need! No forms to fill out – just select one from the list below and contact them directly or respond to this email if you want me to match you up with a helper.
These weekly newsletters feature 3 resources related to teaching and learning, 2 online tips and tricks, and 1 question for reflection.
Looking for archived resources, tips/tricks, and questions?
Revisit the past editions of the C3-2-1 Newsletter here.
Want to share?
If you have some resources, tips/tricks, and questions to share, please contribute to the newsletter using this C3-2-1 Form.
(3) Resources
STREAMs of Fun and Learning in the CommUNITY is looking for student volunteers. Our Service Learning Office provides many community-focused opportunities for our students to learn meaningful life and career skills, share what they are learning in the classroom, and have memorable experiences that make a difference in the lives of others. Please consider encouraging students to participate at one of the five community sites in Oceanside. Students can register here.
Librarians Here To Help – Our librarians provide invaluable resources and instruction for our students. If you want to collaborate to create class research guides, they can do that. If you want videos for your specific assignments/projects, they can do that. If you want them to visit your class to walk through the research process and how best to use library resources, they can do that. If you want them to create all of your assignments, explain them to students, and grade all the work….they will not do that. But seriously, reach out to them.
Dolores – Rebel.Activist.Feminist.Mother Film Screening – We kicked off Chicana/o/e and Latina/o/e Heritage Month yesterday. Extending an invitation to this film screening can be a great way to engage students in learning more about the intersections of race, gender, and labor. The screening is on Thursday, September 28, at 6pm in the Little Theater (OC3601). Students can register here.
Here is some more information about the film –
Who is Dolores Huerta? One of the most important, yet least known activists of our time, Dolores Huerta was an equal partner in founding the first farm workers union with César Chávez. Tirelessly leading the fight for racial and labor justice, Huerta evolved into one of the most defiant feminists of the 20th century — and she continues the fight to this day, in her late 80s. With unprecedented access to this intensely private mother of 11, Peter Bratt’s film Dolores chronicles Huerta’s life from her childhood in Stockton, California to her early years with the United Farm Workers, from her work with the headline-making grape boycott launched in 1965 to her role in the feminist movement of the ’70s, to her continued work as a fearless activist.
(2) Tips & Tricks
Adding Some Flare to Your Canvas Classes – Adding some accordion menus or quick link boxes to your Canvas Pages are not just for looks – they can help students navigate your class by making it feel more like other sites they frequently visit and use. You can spruce up your pages with a bit of time, copying-pasting, and creativity.
Here is a preview of a basic accordion menu –
Accordion Screen Shot from Canvas
2. Emojis! 💯- If you’ve seen these slick little icons being used in Canvas and have been wondering how to decorate your class with them, here you go –
On a PC, place your cursor where you would like an emoji and press ⊞ Win + (.) or ⊞ Win + (;). On a Mac, you can press Control + Command + Space.
Have fun! 😎
(1) Question
What does it mean to you to serve at an HSI (Hispanic Serving Institution)?
Tech Support – Canvas options include 24×7 phone and chat support. Just click the Tech Support button at lower left in Canvas! Zoom 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.
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 about 20 of these across the first 9 weeks of fall – see all dates and times on the TASC site and in Canvas announcements. These workshops (formerly known as Student Orientation to Online Learning) help to familiarize students with the resources MiraCosta provides online to support them, as well as to adopt 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 bottom 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 updated form for students to fill out if they need a loaner laptop or hotspot.
Click the link immediately after each bullet for a detailed MiraCosta-specific overview of each item below. This is not intended as a comprehensive review of all technologies for online teaching supported by the college, but rather a quick look at the essentials available to all faculty. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions about these or other resources.
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.
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.
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.
Best wishes for a 😊 🍁
– Jim
Jim Julius, Ed.D. Faculty Director, Online Education
