The SAFE Topics Podcast – Two Episode Release and Semester Finale

Hello campus community!

The S.A.F.E. Topics Podcast team is wrapping up the semester with the release of two episodes! We are finishing up our series on Universal Design for Learning (UDL). In the episode, “Student Voices: Climbing Uphill Both Ways,” we hear from Haillie Hill (Theater) to get another student perspective on UDL. In the semester finale, “Quality and Quantity – Student Voices as Data,” we hear from Kimberly Coutts (Research Analyst) to get their perspective on UDL (*releasing later tonight!). Listen in as we wrap up the Fall 2020 semester with two great releases.

Ways to Listen!

  1. Podbean – S.A.F.E. Topics
  2. Spotify
  3. Apple Podcasts
  4. Amazon Music
  5. Audible

What to Listen For

Student Voices: Climbing Uphill Both Ways

  • Who is Haillie and what are her educational goals?
  • The feeling of anxiousness at this point in the semester.
  • What has made learning challenging during this time?
  • Internalizing the feelings of being an online student.
  • Online group projects, good or bad?
  • What has made learning easier during this time?
  • The importance of communicative professors.
  • Getting assignments in earlier before they’re due.
  • The ability to see updated grades.
  • Recorded lectures are a huge plus to follow along with content.
  • The fear of reaching out to the DSPS office. 
  • Vibing well with professors when they are open in the beginning.
  • Students have feelings too! 

​Quality and Quantity – Student Voices as Data

  • Bias and data.
  • The importance of having an open mind when reviewing your data.
  • “Bad news bias.”
  • Quantitative vs Qualitative data.
  • The reliability of campus wide surveys. 
  • Data over the course of time and comparing it to right now.
  • Success/retention rates are skewed now because of EW’s (excused W’s)
  • Definitions between success and retention.
  • Are we collecting data of the student experience right now?
  • Asking students: what does not help with your learning and success?
  • Asking students: What advice would you give to faculty to improve our courses at this moment?
  • Qualitative feedback for a teacher may be the most important thing for teachers and students to come to an agreement.
  • The importance of maintaining communication.
  • Plug from Office of Research, Planning & Institutional Effectiveness.
  • Kim: Here to answer questions to help drive good decision making. Happy to help and eager to help any time!

The S.A.F.E. Topics Team

curry mitchell – Faculty, Letters (Co-host)
Sean Davis – Faculty, Sociology (Co-host)
Kelly Barnett – Intern and Music Technology Student (Audio Editor)
James Garcia – Associate Faculty, Sociology (Show Notes, Online)

Connect with Us

PodBean
Safe Topics

Stay great,
S.A.F.E. Topics Podcast Team

S.A.F.E Topics logo

C3-2-1 Newsletter – End of the Semester Edition

Hello, Faculty Community! 

***You are receiving this newsletter because you are a faculty member at MiraCosta College. I, Sean Davis, am the coordinator of our C3 Teaching and Learning Center***

Lots of local workshops being offered to help us out. People are amazing, right? We just keep going. Pretty remarkable.

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.

C321 Newsletter

(3) Resources

  1. Get some rest.
  2. You have done a lot. Celebrate.
  3. Be safe and I hope you stay healthy.

(2) Online Tips and Tricks

  1. Try to limit the time online when possible.
  2. Rest always makes for better work later. Those things you’re thinking about can probably wait.

(1) Question

As we take a moment to look back at this semester to chart a path forward, how can we take better care of ourselves so we can come back stronger and better in the spring?

You have done a lot. Teaching and learning have not stopped – it has simply transformed, and we should be proud of how we have adjusted and persisted this year. 🙂

Stay joyful,

Sean Davis
Joyful Teacher in Residence 
Coordinator, C3 Teaching and Learning Center

MiraCosta Online Tech Changes coming your way

To: All Faculty, IS Deans

Some important updates and additions to the tools available for online instruction at MiraCosta are happening starting next week. Here’s a quick overview of what’s headed your way! Look for Flex workshops and follow-up emails early in the new year to learn more about all of these.

New Rich Content Editor in Canvas

The Rich Content Editor (RCE) in Canvas – the toolbar everyone uses when entering content, discussion replies, etc. in Canvas – is getting a major overhaul. The What is the New Rich Content Editor? Canvas guideis a great place to start learning about it. You may also be interested in a comparison of the old and new RCEs. This change happens next week on 12/23, but it’s possible for you to try out the new RCE now if you like. In a course where you want to try it, click Settings in the navigation menu, then click the Feature Optionstab, then toggle on the RCE Enhancementsoption. This will impact any students still active in your course, so it’s best to use a Sandbox course or one where students are done using Canvas for the term.

New Zoom, New Zoom Integration in Canvas

As you hopefully read in Anthony Ginger’s recent email, MiraCosta will soon start managing its own Zoom. If you haven’t read the email and you are a Zoom user, it’s essential that you do. Many aspects of this change will be seamless; however, a major one that faculty need to be aware of NOW is that access to current Zoom meeting reports will be lost following the change occurring Monday evening, Dec. 21. If you need to hold onto meeting reports for any reason, you’ll need to download them before the changeover. Going forward, another point is that all Zoom links for meetings and recordings will change. You MAY need to update links to meetings and recordings if you wish to use them in the future. Zoom is trying to implement a fix very soon that would seamlessly transition old Zoom links over to the new link– hopefully this will work and you will not need to do that manually. We’ll monitor how well that works and update you in the new year.

With the new implementation of Zoom will come a MUCH improved Canvas integration. For those of you that have preferred to use ConferZoom.org directly to manage your Zoom meetings, you’ll now be able to do basically everything using the new Zoom integration within Canvas. If you were using the existing Zoom-Canvas integration tool, it will be replaced next Tuesday following our Zoom account migration. If you’re interested, you may download an instructor guide for the new Zoom integration within Canvas.

Pronto: New Tool for Mobile-Friendly and Canvas-Integrated Communication

We will have an all-college pilot of Pronto this spring. Pronto is an app that integrates with Canvas and really enhances communication beyond what Canvas provides, enabling group messaging, file sharing, video chat, announcements, and more in a very mobile-friendly way. Pronto has already been adopted by dozens of CCCs, and we had a small group of faculty trying it out late this fall. More information will come when Pronto is ready for everyone to start using, but if you’d like a preview of what it looks like in Canvas, check out a 6 minute video.

New Accessibility Support Tools in Canvas: Ally and Pope Tech

Ensuring your Canvas courses are accessible and inclusive is getting easier. This spring, Ally will automatically make course files you’ve added to Canvas available to students in multiple alternative formats that are device- and user-friendly. Pope Tech is a tool available now in Canvas that will help you perform more complete accessibility checks and fixes than our current tool, UDOIT. UDOIT will be removed in the new year and we’ll encourage all faculty to make use of Pope Tech to ensure our courses are accessible to as many learners as possible.

Goodbye, Proctorio

Very few faculty were relying on Proctorio, and with the discontinuation of funding for this tool from the Chancellor’s Office, it will be removed from Canvas over winter break. If you hadn’t heard that this was a likely possibility previously and you are concerned about this tool going away, please reach out to me so we can discuss alternatives.

Now, don’t obsess about all this over break! Disconnect and enjoy some down time!

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

Upcoming District Wide Zoom change : 12/21/2020 9PM : ATTENTION REQUIRED

What is happening to your Current MiraCosta Zoom Account: 

ConferZoom will migrate your current ConferZoom/MiraCosta Zoom user account and saved recordings to the MiraCosta College District Zoom account 12/21/2020 starting at 9 PM. All Zoom user accounts should be fully migrated after approximately 4 hours. 

Why is this happening: 

Currently all California Community College Zoom user accounts are hosted together, causing issues when individual districts require capabilities not appropriate for the entire CCC population. For example, Canvas can integrate directly with Zoom, providing Zoom Canvas calendar access and the ability to create and manage Zoom meetings directly from within Canvas, however with the combined CCC account this integration has been limited and prone to problems. 

How to Access your Migrated Zoom Account: 

Starting 12/22/2020 you will access Zoom via a new login link and with your MiraCosta credentials. 

  1. To access your Zoom account via the web, please click https://miracosta-edu.zoom.us and log in with your MiraCosta College employee account and two-factor authentication (2FA). We will be updating links on the MiraCosta website to reflect this new link. 
  2. To log into the Zoom app(s) both desktop and mobile: 
    1. Open the installed Zoom app. 
    2.  Select the ‘Sign in with SSO’ button or option at the app login screen 
    3. Enter our ‘Company Domain’  miracosta-edu 
      1. The full domain will show as “miracosta-edu.zoom.us” 
    4. You will be directed to our MiraCosta login portal where you will enter your MiraCosta credentials and 2FA. 

What you need to do after the migration: 

  • Re-apply any custom ZOOM security settings that you had previously applied. 
  • Convert any external embedded links, see below. 
  • If you used your ConferZoom account with multiple institutions, please check with them to verify their Zoom requirements and offerings.  

How to Convert your Current Zoom Meeting and Recording Links: 

If you have shared Zoom recording links or meeting links on a website or within Canvas, you will need to adjust each Zoom link on those pages as follows, although please note that Zoom is working on an update that will automatically redirect old links with an anticipated release date of Feb 2021. If you need people to access your recordings and/or meetings before the update is ready, please follow this step. 

In an existing meeting OR recording link replace the prefix  https://cccconfer.zoom.us with https://miracosta-edu.zoom.us 

Current Link Example 1

https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/12345789

Modified Link Example 1

https://miracosta-edu.zoom.us/j/12345789

Current Link Example 2

https://cccconfer.zoom.us/rec/share/G3yfMk5CtzHxhUkieEZWd2K7Abnc.x7ZwjNtbdrgt

Modified Link Example 2

https://miracosta-edu.zoom.us/rec/share/G3yfMk5CtzHxhUkieEZWd2K7Abnc.x7ZwjNtbdrgt

MiraCosta Zoom Resources: 

If you have any questions comments or concerns about this change please feel free to contact me,  

Thank you 

Anthony Ginger 
Infrastructure Systems Engineer 
MiraCosta College 

C3-2-1 Newsletter – Week Fifteen!

Hello, Faculty Community! 

***You are receiving this newsletter because you are a faculty member at MiraCosta College. I, Sean Davis, am the coordinator of our C3 Teaching and Learning Center***

Lots of local workshops being offered to help us out. People are amazing, right? We just keep going. Pretty remarkable.

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.

C321 Newsletter

(3) Resources

1 Faculty Workshop: Hands-On Labs in an Online World – Thursday 12/3, 2 pm – 3pm

Lynne Miller, Anthropology, is organizing and facilitating this workshop. Here is a bit from her – 

The workshop will feature four brief presentations:

  • Barbara Juncosa will share her creative use of GoPro to demonstrate critical lab procedures. 
  • Paul Katson will show a video with the students’ at-home lab activities and associated worksheets. 
  • Scott Fallstrom will teach us how to use digital whiteboards to present material effectively. 
  • Dominique Ingato will share ideas for enhancing Labster simulations using virtual tools and activities.

Following the presentations, we will have plenty of time for discussion and Q&A, and maybe even some hands-on activities of our own. 

Access the Workshop 

And, yes, it will be recorded – I will distribute the link later in the week.

2. Tips and Tricks for Remote Proctoring

Sinclaire Tirona, Testing Services Coordinator, informed me about this workshop. Here is her message – 

The Academic Proctoring Center (APC) will be hosting a flex-eligible workshop next week onTips and Tricks for Remote Proctoring. This workshop will be especially beneficial to any faculty transitioning from Proctorio at the end of the year or who just want to learn more about how we proctor remotely using Canvas and Zoom.

Details:

Tips and Tricks for Remote Proctoring
Tuesday, December 8th from 2 pm – 3 pm
Sign up here: https://forms.gle/D2pFnL2msmxpxVEN9

3. Document Accessibility Training (with an emphasis on Canva Documents)

Aaron Holmes, DSPS Access Specialist, let me know about this workshop he is facilitating next week. Aaron provided the following context and information – 

If you are not familiar with Canva, it is a website that allows for the quick creation of fliers/images. Some departments are using Canva to create content for their social media accounts as well as physical fliers when we are on campus. Unfortunately, the documents and PDF files that Canva creates are not accessible right off the bat. That is where the idea of this training came from. To make sure that our digital content is accessible to all of our students, I am offering training on document accessibility. The training will cover the basics of document accessibility (Canva and Word/PDF will be the focus). The training will allow for a question and answer session and will be recorded so that those who cannot attend in real-time can still access the video.

Date: Wednesday, December 9th
Time: 1:00 – 2:30 PM
Length: 60-minute training, 30-minute question/answer
Zoom Link: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/99254075553

(2) Online Tips and Tricks

  1. 3 Ways to Humanize Your Online Course
    This post provides practical and easy-to-use strategies to humanize your course and increase student engagement with each other and your class. 
  2. Ready Made Canvas Course Templates
    Okay, I did not know this existed. So, there are some fantastic templates that you can easily plug into your course and make it “pop.” I made all my visuals and graphics myself. This resource would have saved me hours and hours. Oh well. I hope this helps y’all. 

(1) Question

How do our students feel as we end this most unprecedented semester? Ask them. 

Stay joyful,

Sean Davis
Joyful Teacher in Residence 
Coordinator, C3 Teaching and Learning Center

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