MiraCosta Online News – End of 2024!

Dear MiraCosta Faculty, 

Here are a few reminders, resources, and opportunities as 2024 comes to a close!

Canvas End of Term Support and Reminders

After Dec. 31, your fall Canvas classes go into read-only mode for you and your students, and move from the Canvas Dashboard to the Past Enrollments area of Canvas (select Courses at left in Canvas, then All Courses to see Past Enrollment courses). 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 Dec. 31. 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, as well as what to do if you wish to close course access sooner than Dec. 31. If you’d like help with any semester wrap-up tasks, and/or as you begin working on spring classes, you can consult with our Instructional Designer, Nadia Khan (click the link to schedule a time). 

ZTC/OER Support and Reminders

For those teaching spring classes that are Zero- or Low-Textbook Cost, if you haven’t yet done so, please update your course section ZTC/LTC designations in SURF. For folks looking for support building spring ZTC classes or just exploring the use of OER, you can consult with our new ZTC/OER Instructional Designer, Stephanie Kelley (click the link to schedule a time).

ZTC/OER Support and Reminders

For those teaching spring classes that are Zero- or Low-Textbook Cost, if you haven’t yet done so, please update your course section ZTC/LTC designations in SURF. For folks looking for support building spring ZTC classes or just exploring the use of OER, you can consult with our new ZTC/OER Instructional Designer, Stephanie Kelley (click the link to schedule a time).

Propose an AI Session for our January Fifth Friday AI Event

As you’ve likely heard, the college is planning an AI day on Jan. 31. Faculty will have the afternoon to offer sessions to our colleagues. If you have anything you’d like to share, or a discussion you’d like to facilitate, please propose a session!

Professional Learning for Online Teaching – Spring Possibilities

  • In addition to many online ed workshops coming in Flex week, you can review lots of wonderful recorded MiraCosta online teaching workshops anytime (Flex-eligible, of course)! 
  • Mark your calendar: San Diego area community colleges are planning together an AccessAbility Week with online workshops throughout March 10-14. More info to come after break!
  • @ONE online teaching courses are open to all California Community College faculty. Some are self-paced and available anytime. Facilitated spring courses are open for enrollment now, and are completely free. They’ll fill, so sign up now if you’re interested!
  • Take some time from your break to submit a proposal [due Jan. 31] for the Online Teaching Conference [June 16-18, Long Beach]. MiraCosta faculty who are presenting can get all travel expenses covered from the Online Ed budget!

Happy break!

– Jim

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

Filtering Canvas Grades to Only Show SURF Enrolled Students

By default the Grades tool will display all users in the roles Student, Sample Student, Evaluator, and TLC Staff within your Canvas course. This can make grading difficult as the additional roles will mix in alphabetically with your SURF Enrolled students.

For ease of grading, you can filter your gradebook by section to only display SURF enrolled students.

From within Canvas:

  1. Click on Grades
Step 1 Grades Filter
  1. Click the Apply Filters button
  2. Click Sections
Step 2 Click Apply Filters button and Step 3 Click Sections
  1. Select the section number that ends in -SURF
Step 4: Select the section number that ends in -SURF

To display only users in the -OTHER roles 

  1. Select the section number that ends in -OTHER to view only non-SURF enrollment types.
The -other section selection.

To display all users together in the Gradebook

  1. Select the Clear All Filters link on the right side of the Gradebook to view all enrollment types.
Clear All Filters

Custom Filters in Gradebook

It is possible to build a gradebook filter in Canvas that is just right for your grading needs. These custom gradebook filters can be used once or saved for future use.

MiraCosta online success starts with you, faculty! Fall 2024

Welcome to fall, colleagues! Here are some (well, a lot, sorry) reminders to help you enable your students to succeed in online environments!

Support for You

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 a number of these across the first nine weeks of the semester – see all dates and times on the Online Education website and in Canvas announcements. These workshops engage students with resources MiraCosta provides to support them, as well as 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 Hubi n Canvas, accessed via the Student Support button on the 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 form for students to fill out if they need a laptop and/or wifi hotspot to succeed this semester
  • Class Availability in Canvas – Faculty teaching distance education (online and hybrid) classes are expected to make their classes available by mid-day on the Monday of the week in which they begin. To learn more, please see MiraCosta Distance Education Class Authentication Compliance, Start-of-Term Availability Procedures, and Recommendations.
  • Zero Textbook Cost class marking in SURF – If you’re teaching a class which has free textbooks, please be sure you’ve marked it as such in SURF so students can easily find it!
  • Artificial Intelligence class policy – Students want to know the “rules” around using AI in your class. There is not a one-size-fits-all answer to this question so there is not a blanket college policy. Please check out a 1-page guide to help you craft some language to share with your students if you’re still working on that! If you’d like to learn more about AI tools and guidance for MiraCosta faculty and students, please review a message I sent at the end of spring.

MiraCosta’s Online Education Tools

Select the link immediately after each bullet for a detailed MiraCosta-specific overview of the online teaching tools that MiraCosta supports. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions about these or other resources. All of these links take you to the tic.miracosta.edu website – and oh, have you checked out the new theme song I created for it?

  • Canvas – of course
  • 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.
  • Pope Tech helps faculty detect and correct accessibility issues within Canvas. The PopeTech dashboard tool (via the Pope Tech Accessibility course menu item) provides a course-level guide for addressing all accessibility issues in a course in one place.
  • SensusAccess provides multi-format course material accessibility and file type conversion options for students. If you notice an S symbol next to your page title and next to items in the Modules view, that’s SensusAccess.
  • 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.
  • 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, and AI detection (use with caution).

– Jim

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

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