Fall 2023 tools and support for online success

Welcome back! Please see below for quick reminders of great MiraCosta resources to help you enable your students to succeed in online environments! If you use Pearson tools in Canvas, please be sure to see the final bullet in the first section for a critical update that occurred this summer.

Support for You

  • Our Canvas start-of-term checklist can help you prepare your classes.
  • The MiraCosta Online Class Quality Guidelines provides MiraCosta requirements and recommended practices for online instructors.
  • Ongoing faculty support – You can set a meeting with our Instructional Designer, Nadia Khan, any time. Note: the Online Mentor program has not yet been renewed – I will keep you informed if/when that becomes available again.
  • Tech Support – Canvas options include 24×7 phone and chat support. Just click the Tech Support button at lower left in Canvas! Zoom and other MiraCostatech support for faculty is available through the MiraCosta employee help desk
  • NEW Panda Pros are Canvas experts who provide free 45 minute 1-1 consultations as well as weekly live “Dear Panda Pros” webinars on particular Canvas topics.
  • MiraCosta technologies supporting online teaching and learning – please see the last section of this email for an overview, with links to learn more.
  • Pearson users! The integration between Pearson and Canvas had a major update following the spring term. MyLab is now called PearsonAccess. Links to Pearson MyLab tools from copied courses will no longer work and must be updated. Please see the Pearson Canvas integration guide for instructors and Pearson Transition guide to learn more, and reach out to your Pearson rep if you need assistance.

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 during the first two weeks of summer – see all dates and times on the TASC site 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 Hubin 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! NEW: The Ask the Spartan chat integrated into MiraCosta’s website provides both automated responses and (brand new!) the opportunity to connect to Live Chat with staff from many student support areas.
  • Tech Support – 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 to borrow a laptop or internet hotspot
  • 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.

MiraCosta’s Online Education Tools

Click the links for a detailed MiraCosta-specific overview (and often, recorded Flex workshops) for each tool below. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions about these or other resources.

  • Canvas 
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Pope Tech helps faculty detect and correct accessibility issues within Canvas. NEW: the PopeTech dashboard tool added to Canvas this summer provides a course overview for addressing all accessibility issues in a course in one place, rather than having to go item-by-item through Canvas.
  • SensusAccess is a NEW tool added this summer to provide multi-format course material accessibility and file type conversion options for students, replacing Ally. If you notice an S symbol next to your page title and next to items in the Modules view, that’s SensusAccess.
  • 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 types of interactivity to add to your videos, PlayPosit is great. 
  • Turnitin – help students learn to properly cite sources and avoid plagiarism. Also provides grading and peer review tools for written work. Turnitin includes an AI detection capability for instructors at this time, but please beware of false positives should you use it.

Best wishes for a fantastic fall!

– Jim

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

New ‘S’ symbol showing up in Canvas

Hello, all –

Sensus Access Logo S

You may notice a new ‘S’ symbol showing up next to items listed in the Modules view of Canvas and next to the title of most Canvas pages.

Clicking the ‘S’ enables the alternate media conversion provided by a new tool just added to Canvas, SensusAccess. I described a bit about this tool in the recent email below. This tool is primarily for the benefit of students who may wish to generate alternate ways to accessibly interact with content. We are still in the process of refining the implementation and expect to be developing more faculty- and student-facing instructions for using SensusAccess soon.

For now, feel free to ignore or mess around with it!

– Jim

———–

On 6/27/23, 11:35 AM, “Jim Julius” <jjulius@miracosta.edu> wrote:

Happy summer, MiraCosta faculty! I have a few quick but important updates that will help us all increase the accessibility and inclusion of our course materials!

NEW! Pope Tech Accessibility Dashboard in Canvas

Hopefully you’re familiar with the Pope Tech tool that has given you page-by-page checking and support for accessibility in Canvas. I’m happy to announce that in early July, we’ll be adding the Pope Tech Dashboard to Canvas. This will add a new item visible only to you in each Canvas course menu – Pope Tech Accessibility – which will bring you to a course dashboard where you can review and correct accessibility concerns throughout your entire Canvas course, rather than needing to run page-by-page checks. See our Pope Tech guide for more info!

NEW! SensusAccess Alternate Media Converter (replacing Ally)

Also coming in early July to MiraCosta is SensusAccess. This tool will provide a way to convert files on demand into other file types, media types, and languages, compliant with accessibility standards. We’ll also have the tool embedded in Canvas, providing students with more inclusive access to content by enabling conversion on demand. Similar functionality was previously provided by the Ally tool, which is being removed from Canvas at the end of June. See our SensusAccess guide for more info!

Video Captioning News and Reminders

Most of you probably use video tools that have excellent auto-captioning and easy-to-use caption cleanup tools, such as Canvas Studio, Zoom, or YouTube. For anyone who may use the professional captioning service available through 3C Media Solutions, please know it will be unavailable for 6-10 weeks starting July 1. If you need professional captioning support, please reach out to Aaron Holmes, Access Specialist with Student Accessibility Services (aholmes@miracosta.edu).

– Jim

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

MiraCosta Online tech inclusion and access updates

Happy summer, MiraCosta faculty! I have a few quick but important updates that will help us all increase the accessibility and inclusion of our course materials!

NEW! Pope Tech Accessibility Dashboard in Canvas

Hopefully you’re familiar with the Pope Tech tool that has given you page-by-page checking and support for accessibility in Canvas. I’m happy to announce that in early July, we’ll be adding the Pope Tech Dashboard to Canvas. This will add a new item visible only to you in each Canvas course menu – Pope Tech Accessibility – which will bring you to a course dashboard where you can review and correct accessibility concerns throughout your entire Canvas course, rather than needing to run page-by-page checks. See our Pope Tech guide for more info!

NEW! SensusAccess Alternate Media Converter (replacing Ally)

Also coming in early July to MiraCosta is SensusAccess. This tool will provide a way to convert files on demand into other file types, media types, and languages, compliant with accessibility standards. We’ll also have the tool embedded in Canvas, providing students with more inclusive access to content by enabling conversion on demand. Similar functionality was previously provided by the Ally tool, which is being removed from Canvas at the end of June. See our SensusAccess guide for more info!

Video Captioning News and Reminders

Most of you probably use video tools that have excellent auto-captioning and easy-to-use caption cleanup tools, such as Canvas Studio, Zoom, or YouTube. For anyone who may use the professional captioning service available through 3C Media Solutions, please know it will be unavailable for 6-10 weeks starting July 1. If you need professional captioning support, please reach out to Aaron Holmes, Access Specialist with Student Accessibility Services (aholmes@miracosta.edu).

– Jim

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

Canvas Release (2023-06-17): New Feature: Bulk Publish and Unpublish Module Items

New Feature: Bulk Publish and Unpublish Module Items

Summary

In Modules, instructors can bulk publish all modules or individual modules. Instructors have the option to publish all modules and items, publish all modules only, or unpublish all modules and items. Additionally, the publish icon on individual modules is updated to include a Module status menu. This menu includes the options to publish module and all items, publish module only or unpublish module and all items for individual modules.

Note: The ability to select multiple specific items to publish is not available.

Change Benefit

This change provides instructors additional options and improves efficiency when publishing Modules.

Feature Workflow

Modules Publish All ButtonModules Publish All Button

In the Modules page, click the Publish All button [1] and select an option [2].

Individual Module Publish Options MenuIndividual Module Publish Options Menu

To view the module status menu of individual Modules, click the Module Status Menu [1]. Then, in the drop down menu, select the desired option [2].

Additional Details

Bulk publish is only available when File Copyright is enabled and set or disabled in a course. Bulk unpublish is not available for any Files. Additionally, an unpublished module overrides the state of individual module items. If an item is published within an unpublished module, students cannot view the item on the Modules page but can still view the published items in other areas of Canvas. However, they will not be able to interact with the item until the module is published.

Canvas Release (2023-06-17): Feature Update: RCE in New Quizzes & New Quiz Updates

Update 1: Rich Content Editor in New Quizzes

Featured Video: Release Screencast: 2023-05-20 New Quizzes Rich Content Editor in New Quizzes

Summary

The Rich Content Editor (RCE) is available in New Quizzes on Production Canvas

Change Benefit

This update provides instructors the ability to utilize the accessibility checker on questions and instructions, add media recordings within New Quizzes, and change the view between the HTML editor and classic view for advanced users. Users can also access a math editor. Additionally, this update provides students with the ability to record audio and video within the RCE of a New Quiz.

Feature Workflow

New Quizzes Build Page with Rich Content EditorNew Quizzes Build Page with Rich Content Editor

When building a New Quiz, instructors can use the Rich Content Editor.

Student View New Quizzes Rich Content EditorStudent View New Quizzes Rich Content Editor

When taking a New Quiz, students can use the Rich Content Editor.

Additional Details

This update completes phase one and phase two of the Rich Content Editor integration in New Quizzes. For more information on the Rich Content Editor integration, see the Re-enablement of the Rich Content Editor (RCE) in New Quizzes blog.

Update 2: Rich Content Editor Supports Third-Party Apps in New Quizzes

Featured Video: 2023-06-17 New Quizzes Rich Content Editor Supports Third-Party Apps

Summary

In New Quizzes, the Rich Content Editor supports adding content using third-party apps.

Change Benefit

This update allows users to easily include third-party tools to provide content in New Quizzes.

Feature Workflow

Rich Content Editor App MenuRich Content Editor App Menu

To insert content using a third-party tool, click the App link [1] and select the desired tool [2].

Rich Content Editor Insert App View
Rich Content Editor Insert App View

When a third-party tool has been selected, users can select  content to insert in the Rich Content Editor.

Update 3: Zero-Point New Quiz in Gradebook Checkbox

Featured Video: 2023-06-17 New Quizzes Practice Zero Point New Quiz

Summary

Instructors can choose to not display a column in the gradebook or student page when creating a zero-point practice New Quiz.

Change Benefit

This change allows instructors to remove unwanted content in the gradebook and prevent confusion for students related to zero-point practice quizzes.

Feature Workflow

New Quiz Do Not Display in Gradebook or the Student's Grade Page Checkbox
New Quiz Do Not Display in Gradebook or the Student’s Grade Page Checkbox

When creating a New Quiz worth zero points, select the Do not display in gradebook or the student’s grade page checkbox. 

Additional Details

When the Do not display in gradebook or the student’s grade page checkbox is selected, the Do not count this assignment towards the final grade checkbox becomes unavailable. If the Do not display in gradebook or the student’s grade page checkbox is not selected, a column displays in the Gradebook and student grade page as the default.

1 … 7 8 9 10 11 … 70