Teaching/Technology Innovation Center

Enjoying your last hours of summer freedom? Haha! This is the fourth in a series of emails about all things online leading up to MiraCosta’s fall 2020 semester. If you missed email #1, email #2, or email #3 (which, yes, was inadvertently labeled as a second #2 – oops) please check those out!

Thursday updates: all about connecting your students with support for online learning –

• Student Support Services & Resources, Online
• Student Orientation to Online Learning
• Resources to Include in Your Classes
• Pronouns and Preferred Name in Canvas – an important change

Campus Closed. Student Support Open.

Campus may be closed, but our amazing array of student support services and resources are just one or two clicks away. Point your students to the Student Support Hub in Canvas. Share the link and point them to the Student Support button on the left in Canvas for quick access to online support from the library, STEM & MLC, online tutoring, writing center, counseling, career center, open computer lab staff, student help desk and more! The new Help Hut on the MiraCosta website is also a quick way for students to connect with all kinds of support services, and the tutoring hub gives access from the website to all the academic support resources found in the Student Support Hub within Canvas.

Student Orientation to Online Learning Workshops

I’ll be offering over two dozen Student Orientation to Online Learning workshops this fall – see all dates and times on the TASC site and in Canvas announcements. These workshops 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.

Two Highly Recommended MiraCosta CARE Resources

The Reshaping Your School Schedule During Remote Instruction document has great info for students on good habits for online student success, self-care and mental health tips, online learning netiquette, Zoom tech tips, and more. Linking to it from your syllabus and course home page could easily provide students with a wealth of great tips tailored for this unique time. You may also wish to share the CARE form – students who are need of technology resources or have other major life concerns making it difficult to maintain their studies can seek help via this form. You also can fill out the form on behalf of students experiencing hardships.

Ensuring Student Identities are Equitably Presented in Canvas

• Canvas itself now supports pronouns and all Canvas users are able to select their pronouns in their Settings. An announcement in Canvas reminds all users about this. If you previously used NameCoach to support pronouns, note that it is no longer available at MiraCosta.
• Please make sure that students know that if they prefer to be known by a different name from their legal/formal name, they may indicate their preferred name via SURF – instructions are here. Preferred name is used in Canvas, on class rosters, and elsewhere around MiraCosta.

Got your Flex schedule all planned out? See you online!

– Jim

Jim Julius, Ed.D.

Faculty Director, Online Education

Hello Hello! This is the third in a series of emails about all things online leading up to MiraCosta’s fall 2020 semester. If you missed email #1 or email #2 please check those out!

Wednesday updates: all about faculty support and professional learning resources for online teaching –

• Online Ed flex workshop schedule
• Canvas-based online teaching resources for MiraCosta faculty
• Additional workshop archives of interest
• Updates to AP 4105
• Canvas support now available via Chat!

Online Education Fall Flex Workshops

Online Ed and C3TLC have coordinated a number of workshops being offered this Friday and Monday. You can see all of these workshops listed in one place; they are also included on the complete Flex workshop schedule. Please note that there are a number of other superb-sounding online ed-related offerings that are also being offered during Flex week. Of special note this Friday is that in addition to the workshops, there will be four hours of open Canvas support time offered by Karen Turpin and several faculty Canvas power users. Drop into that open support lab anytime to get your pressing Canvas questions answered!

Online Education Canvas-based Resources for MiraCosta Faculty

The MiraCosta Distance Education Handbook and the PROJECT Online Teaching Foundations course are two resources you may not be aware of. The DE Handbook covers all kinds of details about policies, procedures, guidelines, and recommendations for online teaching at MiraCosta. The PROJECT Online Teaching Foundations course was put together this summer and includes many recordings of Zoom presentations made by MirCosta faculty and other online teaching experts this summer, as well as a lot of great activities and resources. While there is still a bit of finishing touch being applied to both of these resources, they are ready for you to begin exploring and using.

More Online Ed Workshop Archives

We’ve been offering online workshops and recording them for years! Explore what’s available in our workshop archives page. We also have a separate page with all the great workshops conducted during our instructional continuity transition week in March. If you’re looking for help with a tool or online teaching topic that’s not on this fall’s Flex schedule, you can probably find a recording on one of these pages to help you out. And viewing those recordings is, of course, Flex-eligible.

Updates to AP 4105

AP 4105 – MiraCosta’s administrative procedure on distance education – was updated in the spring to ensure MiraCosta is aligned with California Title 5 regulations on distance education. Most notably, student-to-student interaction is required for all distance education classes as an expansion of the definition of regular effective contact. You’re encouraged to review this AP and make sure you’re on the right track as you set up your classes.

A New Canvas Support Option: Live Chat

You may be one of the many faculty who loves the Canvas 24×7 phone support. Or, you may be one who (like me) would prefer a chat. If you haven’t clicked that Tech Help button at the bottom left corner of Canvas recently, you may not have noticed that Live Chat with Canvas Support is now an option, for both faculty and students. Just be aware, these days they are BUSY! You may need to be a little patient to get through to a rep, but it’s still a great way to get unstuck on Canvas issues as quickly as possible.

Tomorrow: Student support resources!

– Jim

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