DO NOT attempt to add anyone to Canvas using a Student or Teacher role. Students and Instructors are automatically enrolled from SURF to your Canvas course several times a day.
It is possible to add MiraCosta College employees to your Canvas course with the Canvas TA role when appropriate – see this set of instructions. This should only be used for employees who have full permissions to edit your course and access your gradebook. Do not add users described on this page to your course as TAs.
For the roles called out below, follow the specified directions to have the user enrolled within your course with the appropriate role.
Faculty Evaluator: Contact Heidi Willis at (760) 795-6827 or hwillis@miracosta.edu in the Office of Instruction when you need to provide access to a peer, your chair, etc. to conduct an evaluation. On the People roster, within Canvas, the user will be assigned the ‘Evaluator ‘ Canvas role. The Evaluator Canvas role has the same permissions as the student role.
The Learning Centers (TLC Staff)
STEMLC & ASI: 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.
Writing Center: Contact Sarah Pultz at (760) 757-2121 ext 6320 or spultz@miracosta.edu in the Writing Center. 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: Work with your dean to provide access to Canvas for the substitute. Approved substitute instructors are handled by your dean through the Office of Instruction’s procedures. The substitute instructor will be added on SURF and uploaded to Canvas for the period of time they are subbing. During that time, the substitute instructor will have the Teacher Canvas role .
Please download a PDF or download a Word version of this guide for future reference as you develop and teach merged Canvas courses.
Faculty may request to merge Canvas courses when they are teaching multiple sections of the same course in order to more efficiently share the same content across course sections, freeing up time for other instructional activity. This must be done prior to the start date of the course sections. For detailed steps on how to request combining of course sections, download the Combine your Class sections in SURF for Canvas guide. However, there are critical privacy issues faculty must be aware of if they choose to combine sections in Canvas.
*NOTE: If instructors combine multiple sections in Canvas, they are not able to offer an Honors Contract in that course.
According to Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations, students cannot have access to student information (including the fact of their enrollment) of students in course sections other than their own (with the exception noted below). Because of this requirement, students are not allowed to interact within a Canvas course with students from another course section.
Canvas limits the visibility of students from other sections in a merged Canvas course. However, this does not cover all Canvas tools, so if you request to merge Canvas courses, you’ll need to take additional steps to protect your students’ privacy, as outlined in this document.
NOTE: FERPA restrictions do not apply to a merged Canvas course if students physically meet in the same classroom at the same time (i.e. “true cross-listed courses”). Course sections that meet simultaneously typically are combined in Canvas by default, and this document is not relevant for those merged courses.
What Canvas Does for You
In Canvas courses merged upon faculty request, students are prevented from seeing students in sections other than their own in
the full roster view of the People tool,
and the Inbox (Conversations).
[Technical note: MiraCosta enables this by setting the limit_section_privileges field to true In the enrollments feed file for students in sections being combined in Canvas.]
What You Must Do to Maintain FERPA Compliance in a Merged Canvas Course
Click Settings in your course menu and:
Under the Navigation tab, be sure that the Chat and Conferences items are hidden from students. If they are active (appearing in the top grouping of navigation items), drag them to the lower grouping or click the gear icon at the right of each and click Disable. Be sure to scroll down and click Save at the bottom.
Under the Course Details tab, scroll down and click more options. Make sure that: Let students create discussion topics is NOT checked Let students organize their own groups is NOT checked Disable comments on announcements IS checked
Click the Update Course Details button at bottom.
Ensure that each section has its own separate discussion
For graded discussions, restrict each discussion to an individual section using the Assign to option. See Canvas guide for details. See further details on section restriction under the What You May Do section below.
For ungraded discussions, use the Post to option (immediately below the discussion description) to select an individual section for the discussion.
Note – if you want each section to engage in discussions about the same topics, simply Duplicate the original discussion and modify it so it is available to a different section of students.
If/when you create Groups
Select the option to Require group members to be in the same section when creating a group set. See Canvas guide for details.
If/when you create Collaborations
Be sure to add students to Collaborations who are enrolled in the same course section. The Collaboration setup screen doesn’t display section information for students, so you will need to refer to the People area.
If/when you send a Canvas Inbox message to students from multiple sections
Select the option to Send an individual message to each recipient. This will send a separate copy to each recipient and hide the names of the recipients in the message header. You may also compose messages addressed to all members of a specific course section.
If/when you offer synchronous (live) online sessions (e.g. use Zoom)
If a synchronous meeting is required, hold separate synchronous meetings with each section. If a synchronous meeting is optional, you may hold one meeting for both sections, but make sure students understand how to participate anonymously. If you record a synchronous meeting where student identities are revealed, share the recording only with the section that participated in the meeting. If you wish to share a recorded synchronous meeting more widely, you must ensure that student identities are not revealed. Please review the Guidance for Synchronous Instruction at MiraCosta College to Protect Student Privacy document for more details.
What You May Do: Setting Calendar Events and Assignment Due Dates by Section
Note: This section is not required for FERPA compliance but may be helpful for managing a merged course if you would like to create differentiated events/activities for different sections.
The following Canvas Guides will help you create Canvas activities/assignments specific to a particular section within a merged course:
(Discussions must be separated by section – see notes in the What You Must Do section above.)
Note that when creating events/activities that are differentiated by section, you will need to select the section name in the Assign to area, which displays only a few options and is not scrollable. If your desired section is not displayed as an option, you will need to type in the section name until it shows up as an option to select.
Section names can be seen if you click Settings in the Course Menu and then the Sections tab. You may also click People in the course menu to see which section each enrolled student is assigned to. Sections with students have names ending in -SURF; to include your test student account in any differentiated activity in a merged course, you would also need to include one of the -OTHER sections available within the merged course.
Acknowledgements
Portions of this document are adapted from material originally developed by Seattle University and modified by the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College district. Additional portions are adapted from material developed by Indiana University and modified by Cornell University.
Get Support
If you have any question or need assistance with combining courses in SURF for Canvas contact the MiraCosta College Employee Helpdesk at (760) 795-6850 or open a helpdesk ticket in the portal.
Though cheating is certainly not unique to the online environment, many instructors have reasonable concerns about opportunities for students to cheat online. These concerns may include:
inappropriate access to resources when completing an online assessment
copying answers or text found online
sharing answers with other students
contracting with a third party to complete online classwork
There are many approaches to decreasing the likelihood or ability for students to cheat in the online environment.
Course Redesign ideas:
Consider including more formative assessments and activities, and making high-stakes objective assessment a smaller portion of the overall course grade.
Get to know your students to help them be more personally invested and to help you recognize individual student voices.
Integrate and encourage student use of institutional support resources such as tutoring as part of the learning process.
Design assignments that enable/require students to include unique, personally meaningful perspectives and details.
Consider combining or replacing objective tests with other methods of assessment, such as projects, collaborative work, writing assignments, and personal reflections.
Consider designing tests as open note/open resource so that you do not get caught in an “arms race” with students.
Multiple choice and essay questions requiring application of skills and knowledge rather than simple factual recall are harder to cheat on.
Consider requiring students to turn in drafts of projects and written work (for feedback from instructor and/or peers) well in advance of a final due date.
Include a variety of student-to-student interactions and group activities. For group work, ensure that assessment practices don’t allow non-contributing students to receive the same grade as other group members.
Alter assignments and tests from semester to semester.
Proctoring: For objective assessments critical to the learning outcomes for an online course, consider using the MiraCosta Proctoring Center. For students at a distance, the Proctoring Center can help to establish proctoring in other locations. [Note: during spring 2021, the Proctoring Center will have limited availability. Consider using Zoom to proctor objective online assessments yourself.]
Code of Conduct and Instructor Leadership: Discuss with students the reasons why academic integrity is important. Emphasize the benefits (and pleasures!) of truly engaging with course material and learning, rather than focusing on grades. Have students sign or even jointly develop a statement summarizing the expectations and requirements for academic honesty. You might also refer to MiraCosta’s
Academic Integrity policy, BP 5505 MiraCosta College highly values academic integrity. At the core, this means an honest representation of one’s own work. MiraCosta College also promotes the approach that education is best accomplished as a cooperative, collaborative enterprise in which students are encouraged to work with and learn from each other. The line between academic integrity and collaborative education is not always easy to define and may vary from one discipline to the next and from one instructor to the next. Many aspects of cheating and plagiarism are universally recognized, while others are subject to debate. This policy provides some broad, general guidelines and allows instructors to be more restrictive according to their preferences and practices. Examples of academic dishonesty include but are not limited to: A. Cheating: Copying from another student or using unauthorized aids or persons during an examination. B. Plagiarizing: Copying someone else’s work or ideas and misrepresenting them as one’s own. C. Falsification: Making up fictitious information and presenting it as factual or altering records for the purpose of misrepresentation. D. Facilitation: Helping another student to cheat, plagiarize, or falsify.
You might include a question on exams that has students agree to the code of conduct and/or that has students indicate that they have completed the exam on their own without using prohibited resources.
Making Canvas Exams More Secure
When conducting tests through Canvas, the following methods can further reduce the risk of cheating. Note that as of fall 2020, Canvas has two different tools for conducting tests – Quizzes (the original) and New Quizzes. New Quizzes is still being developed; at this time it has both advantages and limitations (view a comparison and/or a New Quizzes FAQ) compared to the original Quizzes tool, but it is expected to eventually fully replace the original Quizzes. Canvas guides for both Quizzes and New Quizzes are given for each item below as applicable.
Availability Window – Restrict the availability of the test to a specific date/time range. Quizzes | New Quizzes
Time Limits – Limit the time a student can spend on a test once they start it. Quizzes | New Quizzes
Disallow Multiple Attempts – Multiple attempts is a great option for a “mastery” quiz where you want students to retake it until they achieve a certain level of proficiency; this isn’t typical of a summative, high-stakes assessment. Quizzes | New Quizzes
Delay Per-Question Feedback (Quizzes only) – Providing students feedback on each question can help them learn; delaying the availability of this feedback until after the test availability window is over can help ensure the integrity of the exam. Quizzes [As of spring 2020, if feedback is built into a New Quizzes assessment, it is provided to students immediately and cannot be delayed.]
Answer Randomization – Answers to multiple choice questions can be randomized/shuffled so they are presented differently for different students. (Note: In Quizzes this is one setting for the entire quiz; in New Quizzes this is a per-question setting.) Quizzes | New Quizzes
Present Questions One at a Time – This can make it more difficult for students to “collaborate” if questions are also randomized. An additional option can prevent students from going back to previous questions, which can further strengthen the integrity of the exam, but can also frustrate students who legitimately realize they made a mistake on a previous question and wish to correct it. Quizzes | New Quizzes
Shuffle Questions (New Quizzes only) – This will present the quiz questions to students in random order. New Quizzes
Question Randomization with a Question Group/Item Bank – Drawing questions randomly from a pool (or pools) can make it even more difficult for students to productively share questions during an exam. Keep in mind that if your pool contains more questions than the number of questions you are drawing from the pool to go into the exam, you need to be careful about maintaining consistency of the questions within the pool (both in terms of outcomes measured and difficulty of the questions). Quizzes | New Quizzes
Calculated (Formula) Questions – Formula questions can include a range of values for one term/variable. Thus, the same question will have unique answers across different quizzes, but the question can still be auto-graded. Quizzes | New Quizzes
Require Presentation of ID – if you are not using a physical proctoring center, but you would like students to demonstrate that the person taking the test is the person enrolled in your class, one suggestion is to have students record a brief video holding a picture ID next to their face. If you use Proctorio, this step can automatically be included when enabling video proctoring; if you don’t, you could add an Essay question that directs students to access their webcam through the Rich Content Editor and record this. Of course, this requires students to have a webcam (and still wouldn’t prevent the student from doing this, then having someone else complete the rest of the exam). Quizzes | New Quizzes
Restrict Computer Activity DuringExam – Technology such as Proctorio enables faculty to require that student’s computer and browser are “locked down” during an exam, preventing students from opening other browser windows or applications, taking screen captures, etc. This requires specific technology on the student computer. Note that Proctorio works only with Canvas Quizzes, not New Quizzes.
The following steps will to assist you with changing your sample student account password. Your password is reset two times a year at the same time your employee password is reset. Follow these directions after your employee password is reset, or when you need to reset the password for security purposes.
Notice that the title of the web page is MiraCosta Password Management
System Employee Password Information.
Part B: Changing Your Password
Enter your sample student login into the Staff/Faculty Active Directory Your sample student account is the same as your MiraCosta faculty account with a –student at the end.
Example: kkorstad-student
Click the Continue button.
Enter your current password in the box. This is the password you have used prior to the password reset. If you do not know this password, call the Employee Helpdesk at 760-795-6850 for a temporary password.
If you answered the Security Questions during a previous session in the password reset tool that option will display here and you can use those instead of a password to verify your identity.
Click the Verify password button.
Click the Change passwords link.
Enter your new password in the New password box, then type it again in the Confirm Your password must meet the requirements listed below. Use the drop-down to view example/suggested passwords.
Click the Change passwords button.
View the results of your password reset.
Successful Password Change
Congratulations, you have successfully changed your password and may now log on to Blackboard as a sample student with your sample student login and password.
Unsuccessful Password Change
You will be prompted to enter the new password again. A reminder about password format requirements will display in the red box at the top of the page.
As you have likely heard, MiraCosta College will be transitioning to the Canvas course management system over the next two years. This decision was finalized on Friday by the College Council, concluding an in-depth and inclusive process this spring. The attached 6-page document summarizes the evaluation process and provides an overview of the transition timeline and support over the next two years
Some important highlights:
Blackboard and Moodle will continue to be available through spring 2018; only Canvas will be supported for MiraCosta classes starting in summer 2018.
MiraCosta’s Canvas system will be available to all faculty starting this November.
For fall semester instruction, we have a limited license for Canvas, allowing for 400 total users (faculty and students), meaning that we likely can have 10-15 instructors using Canvas for one class each in fall 2016.
Faculty who wish to try out Canvas prior to November but who are not part of the fall pilot group may access Canvas for free via https://www.canvaslms.com/try-canvas.
See the MiraCosta TIC site with many links for Canvas training and support.
I am planning to soon send out a call for interest in being one of the 10-15 fall pilot faculty using Canvas for one class. The intent is that this group would be involved over several semesters, and thus this opportunity is open only to full-time faculty. The expectations and support of these faculty are to be negotiated by the district and Faculty Assembly, but if you would like to let me know of your interest in this opportunity, please feel free to let me know. Once the structure has been determined for the pilot group, I will send a message to all full-time faculty.
It is worth noting that over 70 other California Community Colleges have also made the decision to transition to Canvas, including several of our SDICCCA neighbors.
Finally, my thanks to the faculty, staff, students and administrators who participated on the CMS evaluation task force. They accomplished excellent work in a very tight timeframe, and MiraCosta should be confident in the quality of the decision-making process.
