Friday, August 11, 2017

Final Fall Canvas reminders

For those of you teaching with Canvas in Fall 2017:

 

Attached is a checklist to help your Fall classes get off to a good start. And here is some information/reminders to help, too:

 

 

  1. View Canvas beginning-of-semester faculty notes. There are a bit too many of these to fit into this email.
  2. You can get your Canvas questions answered by calling Canvas directly. LPC has paid for a license that gives students and faculty 24x7 access to Canvas. The toll-free phone number is 1-844-600-4956. This number is also in the Help menu in Canvas.
  3. Email your students to let them know that your course is in Canvas, not Blackboard.
  4. Publish your courses by the beginning of the day your class starts so students can access them. If you are not teaching an online or hybrid course and want to wait longer to publish your courses, that’s up to you. To publish your course, go to the course home page, and click Publish.
  5. Additions to your Canvas courses since last Spring included an LPC Library icon in the global navigation menu, a chat tool, a Google Drive tool, and YouTube and Films on Demand tools in the Rich Content Editor. If you want to make the chat and Google Drive tools available to students, go to Settings – Navigation, and drag Chat and/or Google Drive from the bottom area to the top area, and click Save.
  6. If you are teaching a DE class, contact your students prior to the start of the semester, and encourage them to self-enroll into the Quest for Online Success Course in Canvas. This is a readiness course that prepares students to succeed online. Learn more about Quest. DE students were notified by email Aug. 1, and many have already self-enrolled. A reminder from you would be good, especially since students who added after Aug. 1 did not receive the original email notification. Here are instructions you can copy and paste for your students:

a.     Go to https://clpccd.instructure.com/enroll/KDENL6. If necessary, copy and paste the URL (without the period at the end) into your browser.

b.     Log into Canvas with your W number. Your password is the first 2 letters of your first name, followed by the first 2 letters of your last name (all lowercase), followed by the last four digits of your W number. If you have already logged into Canvas and changed your password, use that password.

c.      Click the button "Enroll in Course".

d.     Click the button "Go to the Course".

e.     Complete the modules.

  1. Also, if you are teaching a DE class and want to see how your course measures up to the quality standards set by the Online Education Initiative, you can compare it to the OEI Course Design Rubric. Examples that meet the rubric’s criteria can be found in the Online Course Design Guide.
  2. Make sure all of your content is accessible to students with disabilities. Everything you need to know about web accessibility, including “how-to” tutorials, is available in a Canvas course in which you have access. Just log into Canvas, and you will see a web accessibility course in your Dashboard called Creating Accessible Course Content.
  3. The Regular Effective Contact Guidelines, approved by the LPC Academic Senate, state that all Distance Education courses, whether fully online or hybrid, must demonstrate regular effective contact with student. For hybrids, this contact is required not only during on-campus meetings, but it is also required online.
  4. The LPC DE Committee has developed recommendations, along with answers to frequently asked questions, that are intended to aid instructors—particularly new instructors—in determining how many students to add and when to add those students near the beginning of the semester. View the recommendations and FAQs.
  5. Here is LPC’s DE drop policy:

    The instructor may drop students who miss the first meeting of a course. The first meeting of online or hybrid Distance Education courses is the first day of the class as specified in the class schedule listing.  For these courses, instructors may drop students who do not log into their Blackboard course and/or complete indicated activities by the third day of classes. DE instructors may drop students if they have not submitted work and/or accessed the class for two consecutive weeks. For Summer courses, DE instructors may drop students if they have not submitted work and/or accessed the class for one week.
  6. Encourage your students to use the NetTutor online tutoring service. View more information about NetTutor.
  7. The Canvas Teacher mobile app lets you manage your courses via an Android or iOS device. Learn more about the app.

 

 

Good luck with your courses!

Scott

 

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