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)?
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
FLEX Week Revisited – As we move into week two of the fall semester, Flex Week feels like a lifetime ago. It is near impossible to participate in all of the wonderful offerings our professional development jumpstart to the academic term provides. Well, we are in luck! Aaron Roberts (PDP Coordinator / Letters) and the PDP team are keeping that busy Google Doc active so we can go back and watch the recordings of many of the sessions we might have missed or want to revisit. Please remember – time spent viewing these recordings is just as eligible for Flex as attending them live.
A conversation about Flow State – Here, our colleagues Steve Isachsen (CSIT) and Rick White (CSIT) provide a thorough and engaging dialogue on “flow state.” We all know how it feels to be in the groove and pretty much unstoppable when we are fully immersed in something we are doing. Watch and listen for numerous examples of flow state, the science behind it, and how we can tap into this phenomenon to help us in our work and facilitate environments that can potentially get our students “flowing” – or at least steer them away from the “Zone of Delusion.”
A Real World Approach To Deadlines – This quick read (approx. 8 minutes) interrogates commonplace ideas about deadlines and the idea that we are preparing students for the “real world” (isn’t our classroom the real world?). Robert Talbert, a mathematics professor in Michigan, discusses how to use deadlines and create clear policies on extensions effectively. Additionally, he reminds us that “clear communication solves most pedagogical problems.” Thanks to Dean Mike Fino for sending this my way.
(2) Tips & Tricks
Canvas Overview (Students) – While many of our new students are familiar with Canvas, it never hurts to review the basics. For those new to college and Canvas, this short video and the wealth of tutorial resources can clear up a muddy start to the term. You may want to consider embedding this video into your classes, along with links to Canvas Student Guides.
Perusall – Having students work together in the online environment is something we are constantly working to achieve. Perusall is available for us to integrate into our Canvas course to create opportunities for students to annotate the textbook collaboratively, take shared notes on pdf files, comment on videos/images/other media, and more. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to set up Perusall, coupled with a complete explanation of the features, tools, and grading options.
(1) Question
With week one behind us, what are the similarities and differences that we have observed during yet another – but very unique – start to our school year?
