Canvas now open to all MiraCosta faculty

All spring 2017 classes are available to faculty now in both Blackboard and Canvas. MiraCosta will support Blackboard, Moodle, and Canvas through spring of 2018, with full conversion to Canvas by summer 2018. (Faculty who wish to use Moodle for any classes should request those from Karen Korstad – kkorstad@miracosta.edu).

Please see the TIC page on Canvas for lots of great resources if you wish to begin learning about Canvas. A number of MiraCosta faculty have been teaching Canvas pilot classes this fall, including the Canvas Transition Team of Billy Gunn, Curry Mitchell, Gail Meinhold, Leola McClure, and Robert Kelley. They are currently developing training resources to share with all faculty, and we will soon release a list of Canvas introduction/open lab sessions to be held this fall. We are also planning an all-day Canvas workshop for the first day of Flex week in January (Friday the 13th).

You may also be interested in the video of the fall Flex “Goodbye Blackboard and Moodle, Hello Canvas” webinar featuring Billy Gunn and Curry Mitchell.

Finally, if you have not seen the FA’s update on the Canvas transition, it is recommended reading.

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

Nov. 2016 Online Ed News You Can Use

Spring Classes – Blackboard & Canvas

All spring classes are available to faculty now in Blackboard, and will also be in Canvas within the next few days. Remember, MiraCosta will support Blackboard, Moodle, and Canvas through spring of 2018, with full conversion to Canvas by summer 2018. Please see the TIC page on Canvas for lots of great resources if you wish to begin exploring Canvas now; you may also be interested in the video of the fall Flex “Goodbye Blackboard and Moodle, Hello Canvas” webinar featuring MiraCosta faculty Billy Gunn and Curry Mitchell. Also, if you have not seen the FA’s update on the Canvas transition, it is recommended reading.

Online Teaching Conference

After a few years in San Diego, the CCC Online Teaching Conference will be held in Anaheim June 19-21. The call for presentations is open until November 30, and the Office of Online Education will fund travel costs for all MiraCostans who have presentations accepted at the conference.

Blackboard Quiz/Test Bug

If you give Blackboard quizzes or tests that include open-ended questions, and that present all questions at once, please review the details about a problem with students using Internet Explorer 11 to take your quiz or test.

Turnitin Unavailability this Saturday, Nov. 5

Turnitin has scheduled maintenance this Saturday from 6-11 am which means Turnitin will not be available during that time. Please share this with your students if they might be trying to hand in work via Turnitin this weekend.

Blackboard Archive Access

Access to the Blackboard archive server, which contains courses from spring 2015 and earlier, is now restricted to AIS helpdesk staff. You may view directions for requesting an export of courses from spring 2015 or earlier.

Online Education Initiative (OEI) Update

MiraCosta is one of 24 pilot colleges in the OEI. Pat James, the OEI’s first executive director, is retiring in January and recently provided a thorough look back at all the OEI has accomplished and a look ahead at what is to come.

Professional Learning Opportunities

  • Take a 4-5 week online teaching class starting January 9 from @One. The Introduction to Teaching with Canvas course is free for MiraCosta faculty with the OEIfree4U code.
  • Get up to speed on 3CMediaSolutions, a great resource for storing, streaming, and curating instructional video.
  • Watch an archived online Flex workshop led by me or Karen Korstad from this fall or past semesters.
  • Santa Barbara City College is hosting a free event, Pedagogy to Increase Student Success: An Unconference for Online Educators on Feb. 25, 2017.

Jim Julius, Ed.D.
Faculty Director, Online Education
Vice President, Academic Senate

Sept/Oct 2016 Online Ed News You Can Use

Happy fall!

Canvas Transition Update

MiraCosta’s two-year transition to Canvas is off to a good start with about 20 classes piloting it this fall. Among the faculty teaching with Canvas now are the stellar Canvas Transition Team – Billy Gunn, Robert Kelley, Leola McClure, Gail Meinhold,and Curry Mitchell, who will be providing leadership and support for faculty making the transition over the 2016–17 year. You can watch a fall Flex workshop featuring Billy and Curry talking about their experiences with Canvas, as well as me recapping the decision made in the spring.

Please see the TIC page on Canvas for lots of great resources if you wish to begin exploring Canvas now. All spring 2017 classes will be available in Canvas for faculty starting November 1. The Transition Team is working with me to offer many learning opportunities on Canvas this fall – details coming soon. The Program for Online Teaching is offering an opportunity to experience Canvas starting Oct. 3 – sign up at POT’s website.

Accreditation and Distance Education (DE)

With regard to DE, the visiting accrediting team will be looking at our institutional DE planning efforts, how we approve DE courses, what kinds of support services we provide to DE students, and how we evaluate and improve our DE. You may be interested in the slides and/or video of a Flex workshop on this subject that Chris Hill and I did this August, as well as a “cheat sheet” that calls out all the mentions of DE in our institutional self-study. 

The team will look for evidence at the class level as well. Just as they can visit classrooms, they also can enter into our online and hybrid classes. The key things they will likely look for are aligned with many of the “Essential” elements for DE in MiraCosta’s Online Class Quality Guidelines. I provided more details to all MiraCosta instructors currently teaching online and hybrid classes earlier this week; please contact me if you have questions.

Blackboard Outage this Weekend

Please note, AIS will be performing maintenance on Blackboard early this Sunday morning (9/25) from 2-6 AM, and Blackboard will not be available at that time.

Amazing New Resource for Online Professional Learning

The Professional Learning Network was initiated in 2016 to support faculty and staff from the CCC system. Sign up at https://prolearningnetwork.cccco.edu to gain access to the video libraries of Lynda.com and Grovo, containing thousands of tutorials on software (including Canvas and Blackboard) and professional skills. The Professional Learning Network also includes resources (examples and materials shared by colleagues across the state), discussions, and a calendar of professional learning events. Your time spent engaging with these online professional development opportunities can be recorded as Other Pre-Approved Activity in MyFlex. 

Student Orientation to Online Learning 

Nearly 1500 students have attended one of these sessions since 2014. You may pull a report from the SURF Class Roster to see which of your students have attended an orientation session if you wish to require this or offer extra credit, as many instructors do. Two more sessions will be offered on October 18 & 19 – please share the schedule with your online/hybrid students and encourage their attendance. 

Captioning Support

Robert Erichsen of DSPS is coordinating the submission of media for captioning through a special grant-funded program. This is open to all instructors using online multimedia and it’s extremely important that we ensure such material is captioned. Please contact him to learn more: rerichsen@miracosta.edu

More Online Professional Learning Opportunities

    • Take a 4-5 week online class starting October 24 on Canvas and online course design from @One
    • View archived sessions from June’s Online Teaching Conference in San Diego
    • Get up to speed on 3CMediaSolutions, a great resource for storing, streaming, and curating instructional video
    • Learn more about Open Educational Resources at a fall webinar from the Community College Consortium for OER
    • Watch a live or archived webcast about Turnitin
    • Watch a live or archived webinar from the Instructional Technology Council, aimed at supporting distance education in community colleges. MiraCosta has a membership; contact me for details.

In-Person Learning Opportunities of Note

    • MiraCosta faculty have been invited to attend an OER Summit at Santa Ana College on Friday, October 7, featuring David Wiley, one of the key figures in the OER movement. Visit Santa Ana’s OER site for more information, including RSVP details.
  • Save the date: Online Teaching Conference 2017 will be June 19-21 in Anaheim. 

Jim Julius, Ed.D.
Faculty Director, Online Education
Vice President, Academic Senate

Validate your course links in Canvas

It is important to verify that all links are working throughout a course. The course link validator tool can help make this task easy for faculty designing and teaching courses.

The course link validator tool searches through course content and returns invalid or unresponsive external links in both published and unpublished content.

The link validator also includes deleted links. Deleted links are links that are still in the course, but their linked content has been deleted (such as a course files or pages).

Note: Some links flagged as unresponsive are inaccessible by Canvas servers and will still work for students.

From within a Canvas Course

Open Settings

Canvas Settings

Select Validate Links in Content

Validate Links in Content

For additional directions refer to the Canvas guide: How do I validate links in a course?

What are the different assignment submission types in Canvas?

As the instructor, you can decide what kinds of submissions are acceptable. You may allow students to:

  • No Submission: Assignments can be created that have No Submission. These work well for in-class presentations, daily participation points, or other optional activities used for extra credit. This is the only way to create an “ad-hoc” column in the gradebook.
  • Online Submission: Assignments can be created that have Online Submissions. Students can submit work in the form of file or image uploads, URLs, text entry, GoogleDocs, or audio or video recordings or uploads. You may allow one, several or all of these options for student assignment submissions.
  • Upload a File: For example, this would be used to submit a Microsoft Word file. Instructors can also limit the file types (i.e. .docx or .doc) that will be accepted for submission. If these file types limitations are set for an assignment, students will only be able to submit the allowed file types.
  • Submit a Text Entry: This assignment must be typed directly into the LMS, no file attachments can be submitted. It is strongly recommended that you type the assignment in Microsoft Word first and save it to your computer. For example, this would be used to submit text for a Journal Assignment entry.
  • Enter a Website URL: For example, this would be used when students are required to upload a video to YouTube and submit a link to it for the instructor to review.
  • Submit Media for an Assignment: For example, this option would be used when students are required to record a short video of themselves.
  • Submit a Google Doc for an Assignment: This assignment must be submitted as a Google Doc. For example, this option would be used when students are required to collaborate on a paper using the Collaboration tool and Google Docs.
  • On Paper: Assignments can also be delivered to the instructor On Paper. On Paper Assignments are usually evaluated by hand and grades are manually entered in the Gradebook.

Other Options:

  • Group Assignment: You can assign work to a Group Set for an assignment.
  • Peer Reviews: You can require students to review each other’s work.

More information on assignments and step-by-step instructions can be found in the Canvas Guides for Instructors by Instructure.

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