Canvas Fall 2020 semester wrap-up

Canvas instructors,

 

Hope your semester went well. To wrap it up and prepare for next semester, please note the following:

1. Here’s how course access at the end of a semester works in Canvas:
   1. You will have full access to your course until Jan. 8 at 11:59 p.m. After that, you will only have read-only access. However, you will be able to export your course. At that point, get to the course by clicking Courses – All Courses. It will be listed under Past Enrollments.
   2. Students will have full access to your course until Dec. 18 at 11:59 p.m. (unless you have changed the Term end date and time). After the Term end date and time passes, students will have read-only access. They can get to the course by clicking Courses – All Courses. The course will show under Past Enrollments.
   3. If you want students to have full access after the Term end date and time, go into Settings, increase the Term end date and time, then check the box that says: Students can only participate in the course between these dates.  
   4. If you don’t want students to have any access to the course after the Term end date and time, scroll down in Settings, and check the box that says: Restrict students from viewing course after end date.
2. For each class, check the accuracy of your grades, then DOWNLOAD YOUR GRADEBOOK AND COURSE SEPARATELY!
   1. For students who do not complete assignments by the deadline dates, manually give them zeros in the gradebook. If you leave their grade cells blank, those missing assignments won't count against them in Totals when they check grades.
   2. Make sure you don’t have any grade columns that show as hidden when they shouldn’t be hidden.
   3. If you incorrectly gave a student extra attempts on quizzes by adding that student’s name under Assign To in the quiz settings while removing Everyone, you will need to add Everyone back in. You’d notice this in the gradebook if you have a quiz column with only one student’s score while the rest of the students have no scores. Once you add Everyone back in and click Save, all of the scores will show.
   4. When you are finished with grading, download your Gradebook by clicking Actions - Export. Keep your exported Gradebook on your computer and/or external/online drive.
   5. To archive your course and save it for safekeeping (in case anything bad happens to Canvas…and it has happened!), go to Settings – Export Course Content – make sure Course is chosen under Export Type, then click Create Export. Once the process is finished, click New Export to download the file to your computer and/or external/online drive.
      
      Exporting, downloading, and saving your Gradebooks and courses are critical! We have had incidents in the recent past where entire courses and class grades were lost. Don’t get caught without backups.

 

3. When moving from one semester to another, you can either copy a previous semester's course content or export the previous course and import it into the new course. You can do either of these by going to Settings and choosing Import Course Content. If you then select Copy a Canvas Course, you might have to check the box to "Include completed courses."
   1. Learn how to copy a course.
   2. Learn how to export a course.
   3. Learn how to import a course.
      
      If you use the Hypothesis annotation tool, be sure to read Canvas Course Import and Hypothesis for special instructions.
      
      
4. Also when moving from one semester to another, do not remove assignments from the Calendar. If you need to remove assignments, do this from the Assignments area. If you need to remove quizzes or discussions, do those from their respective areas, too. This pertains to both the course from which you are copying and the course into which you are copying.
   
   
5. Students will be put into their Spring courses Jan. 4.
   
   
6. If you are teaching during the Spring, you should send a welcome letter to your students a week or so prior to the first day of classes. We offer a welcome letter template for your optional use, along with an online syllabus template, and an entire model course template.
   1. View/download welcome letter template
   2. View/download syllabus template
   3. If you are interested in viewing or using the model course template, complete this request form.
      
      
7. If you want to merge next semester’s sections in Canvas and have not already done so, read the Merging Sections in Canvas page, and follow the instructions carefully.
   
   
8. The New Rich Content Editor will be implemented enabled in Canvas on Jan. 5. View a video on the new RCE. The assignment submission interface for students will also be implemented that day. If you detail steps for students on how to submit an assignment, you will want to update those instructions. View a student tutorial titled How do I upload a file as an assignment submission for a course using Assignment Enhancements?

1. If you want to see what is upcoming in Canvas, go to the Canvas Release Notes page.
   
   

9. The Web Accessibility Course (WAC) that you have access to in Canvas will be getting a refresh over the break. Essentially, Module 5 of the OCDP, which contains the latest information on web accessibility, will be copied into the WAC, and the existing content in the WAC will be removed. This allows us to maintain consistency in our training on accessibility.
   
   
10. Reminder: Student and faculty support available through Canvas will be changing Jan. 1. Neither students nor faculty will have access to calling Canvas directly. Instead, both will have access to a new “self-service” support page by clicking Help in the global navigation menu. On the page, in addition to 24x7 live chat for students and faculty, there will be 24x7 email support. The self-service page will be powered by LPC’s Knowledge Base that will give students and faculty answers to popular college- and district-specific questions.
    
    
11. Reminder: As of 5 p.m. Dec. 18, I will be gone for the next two weeks, returning to work Jan. 4. Wanda Butterly will be available Dec. 21-23. Both of us will be unavailable during the holidays. Wanda will be off the week of Jan. 4 and will most likely return to part-time hours beginning Jan. 11.
    
    

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and enjoy your time off (you deserve it)!

Scott

 

Upcoming Canvas support

If you didn't already know, Canvas student and faculty support available from Canvas will be changing Jan. 1. Neither students nor faculty will have access to calling Canvas directly. Instead, both will have access to a new "self-service" support page by clicking Help in the global navigation menu. On the page, in addition to 24x7 live chat, there will be 24x7 email support. The self-service page also contains LPC's Knowledge Base that will give students and faculty answers to popular college- and district-specific questions.

None of the above affects the student support provided by the LPC Computer Center, nor does it affect faculty support provided by me and Wanda Butterly. Speaking of us, as of 5 p.m. (hopefully) Dec. 18, I will be gone for the subsequent two weeks, returning to work Jan. 4. Wanda will be available Dec. 21-23. Both of us will be unavailable during the holidays. Wanda will be off the week of Jan. 4 and will most likely return to part-time hours beginning Jan. 11.

Happy Holidays, 🎅
Scott

 

Captioning update

Dear Faculty,

 

The state chancellor’s office recently delivered a memo to all CCCs prioritizing how it will pay for closed captioning. For LPC, this mainly concerns the use of 3C Media for captioning because that is the only paid service used here. If you do not use 3C Media and instead use the auto captioning feature in either Canvas Studio or YouTube to generate captions and edit them for accuracy, only the last paragraph of this email might impact you.

 

Because the pandemic has driven up the demand for video captioning, and because the state chancellor’s office is forecasting budget problems, the state is prioritizing the requests for captioning of videos submitted through 3C Media. If you have a student in your class with a documented Academic Accommodation Plan (AAP) through DSPS who requires closed captioning services, your request will receive the highest priority in 3C Media. To receive this priority, you will need to clearly state that the captioning request is to allow an academic accommodation per the AAP of a student enrolled in your course. Please mention this in the Notes section of the 3C Media captioning form.

 

Conversely, if you do not have a student with an AAP, your request will receive a lower priority in 3C Media. In the latter case, you might be better off using Canvas Studio (or even YouTube). Needless to say, all videos—whether you have students with an AAP or not—still have to be captioned and edited to ensure accuracy.

 

If live captioning or an ASL interpreter is needed for a synchronous class per a student's AAP, please contact the DSPS staff immediately so that they can help arrange for the needed accommodation.

 

Scott

 

Spring 2021 Canvas courses info

Canvas instructors,

 

Your Spring 2021 courses are now in Canvas (a little earlier in the day than I anticipated). If you do not see your course under Unpublished Courses on your Dashboard, it’s most likely because your name hasn’t gone through the official channels to become the instructor of record yet. At this early date, there are many of these. Once you become official, Banner will process you into the Canvas course.

 

Some notes:

 

1. If you plan to merge courses or sections, you will do that in Canvas, not in Class Web. Please read Merging Sections in Canvas, and follow the instructions.
2. When moving from one semester to another in Canvas, you can either copy a previous semester's course content or export the previous course and import it into the new course. You can do all of these by going to Settings in a course. While in Settings, DO NOT click the Copy this Course button on the right side; this tool creates a new course that your students will not be able to access.
   1. Learn how to copy a course.
   2. Learn how to export a course.
   3. Learn how to import a course.
3. As an online instructor, you have the option to use the Canvas model course template as a starting point. The course is based on the Academic Senate-approved OEI’s Course Design Rubric and provides organization and structure for your course. If you want to view or use the model course, complete this form.
4. The OEI’s Quest for Online Success tutorial is the student readiness tool used for DE courses at LPC. There is a Canvas version to which you can have students self-enroll. You can even have students complete assignments based on the tutorial. Learn more about Quest.
5. Remember that everything in your course must be made accessible to students with disabilities. To learn how to do this, complete the Canvas tutorial called Web Accessibility Course.
6. Students will be inputted into their courses in early January.
   

Scott

 

Reminder: Spring Canvas courses

This is a reminder that Spring 2021 course shells should be arriving in Canvas on Tuesday…probably in the evening.

 

Scott

New Rich Content Editor workshops

As a reminder, the implementation of the New Rich Content Editor, which has been postponed twice by Canvas, is scheduled to become the default in Canvas in early January. To prepare for this, the TLC is conducting workshops on it Oct. 29 from 3-4 p.m. and Dec. 4 from 11 a.m. until noon.

 

If you want to participate, sign up on the TLC Workshops page.

 

Since the New RCE is already an option for your Canvas classes, some of you are using it in your Fall classes. If you want to play with it in your sandbox, go to Settings – Feature Options, and toggle the Off switch to On for RCE Enhancements.

 

Watch a Canvas video on the New RCE.

Read the Canvas guides about the New RCE for step-by-step tutorials.

 

If you have already registered for these workshops, please do not do so again.

 

Scott

Canvas updates

The Canvas update that was supposed to change the interface students see when submitting assignments created with the Assignments tool never happened Saturday as planned. Canvas was contacted, fixed it, then offered the option of not deploying that enhancement right now. After consulting with Chabot, we have decided to leave the interface as it currently is but will update it between semesters. This way, students won’t see something different in the middle of the semester. Apologies to those who already notified your students.

 

Also, I’m giving you a heads-up that I plan to enable Canvas shells for Spring 2021 courses on Nov. 3. Students won’t be added until early January.

 

Scott

Regular effective contact reminder

In an effort to ensure that the state- and federally mandated regular effective contact regulations are being met in online and hybrid courses, the LPC Distance Education Committee has asked me to send a Mid-Semester Regular Effective Contact Checklist to you. These mandates include instructor-initiated interaction with students and fostering student-to-student interaction.

Links to more information are included at the bottom of the checklist.

If you have any questions, let me know.
Scott

 

Two more Canvas enhancements

Canvas will be rolling out two more enhancements Saturday. The first changes the interface students will see when submitting assignments created with the Assignments tool. The second makes Math equations more ADA-compliant.

 

Student Assignment Enhancements

Current Interface

 

 

New Interface

 

Students can now drag and drop a file to submit or click Upload File to navigate to a file to submit. More Options will allow them to submit a file that they had previously uploaded to Canvas, access Canvas Studio and even their Google Drive. Once they do any of the above, they will have to click the Submit button.

 

If you have students who are confused about the new interface, or if you just want to be proactive, you can send them this link: How do I view an assignment in a course using Assignment Enhancements as a student? This page probably gives them more detail than they need to know, but it does go over everything.

 

Nothing changes on your end while creating an assignment using the Assignment tool. You might want to take note that students now have a link to your rubric (if you use one) instead of seeing the rubric below the assignment.

 

Math Equations

This change is behind the scenes and improves accessibility for equations throughout Canvas. Previously, equations were treated as an image and included title attributes and alternative text and were not available to keyboard users. Additionally, image views varied by browser and screen readers, equations could not be copied, and alternative text could be inadvertently changed or removed.

Canvas enhancements

I wanted to let you all know about a couple of enhancements Canvas is scheduled to make to our system Saturday:

 

1. There will be a new History icon in the global navigation menu on the far left. Clicking it will display the most recent pages viewed in Canvas up to the last three weeks.
2. The Notifications page that you access from the Account icon will be updated to match the design of the course-level Notifications page. There will be a banner stating: “Account-level notifications apply to all courses. Notifications for individual courses can be changed within each course and will override these notifications.”

 

Scott

New evaluation link in Canvas

LPC Faculty,

 

The District recently purchased a tool called EvaluationKit that will be used to conduct the FA-negotiated student survey in Canvas as part of the official evaluation of online instruction process. The tool was installed today, and there is one thing of which all instructors need to be made aware:

 

In every course, you will notice EvaluationKIT Course in the top box in Settings – Navigation. This allows the survey to be deployed to courses, so please do NOT disable it by clicking the three dots to its right or by dragging it to the lower box. Just ignore it. The link is not visible to your students unless you are being evaluated, and even then, it will only be visible for the duration of the evaluation.

 

I wish the installation didn’t put the link there, but nonetheless, thank you for your cooperation.

 

Scott

 

Canvas maintenance and downtime Sept. 15

Canvas sent a notice last night that it will undergo maintenance at 12:10 a.m., Tuesday Sept. 15. The maintenance is expected to last up to 10 minutes, and Canvas expects our system to be down for less than 5 minutes of that time. Please plan accordingly. I will post an announcement to students as we get closer to that date.

 

More Canvas Studio maintenance - Saturday night

Canvas just sent another email about emergency maintenance for its Canvas Studio tool. This will happen at 10 pm Saturday and has a window of one hour, though Canvas says it expects to only need a portion of that time. It added that Studio could be down for up to five minutes during that window.

 

Scott

Canvas Studio maintenance tonight

Canvas just sent an email saying that it will be performing emergency maintenance on its Studio tool tonight at 10 pm. It added that maintenance for Studio will last for up to 10 minutes, and users might experience downtime for up to 5 minutes during the event.

 

Scott

Final Fall Canvas reminders

LPC faculty,

 

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

 

1. View Canvas faculty notes and tips. These new features will be enabled in Canvas on Aug. 15:
   1. The Section column can be hidden from students in the People page when more than one section exists in the course. This change prevents students from viewing sections for other students when they have access to view the People page. This can be particularly beneficial if you have merged a non-credit section of a course with a credit section, and you don’t want students to see who is in the non-credit section. To do this, go to Settings in your merged course, click More Options in Course Details, then check the box in front of Hide sections on the People page from Students. Click Update Course Details at the bottom.
   2. Multiple pages can be deleted at one time in the Pages Index page. Multiple pages can be deleted at one time in the Pages Index page.
   3. If you want to see what is upcoming in Canvas, go to the Canvas Release Notes page.
      
      
2. Publish your courses by the beginning of the day your class starts so students can access them. To publish your course, go to the course home page, and click Publish.
   
   
3. 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. I notified DE students by email, and many have already self-enrolled. A reminder from you would be good, especially since students who added late did not receive the email notification. Here are instructions you can copy and paste for your students:
   
   

1. Go to https://clpccd.instructure.com/enroll/KDENL6. If necessary, copy and paste the URL (without the period at the end) into your browser.
2. 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.
3. Click the button "Enroll in Course".
4. Click the button "Go to the Course".
5. Complete the modules.
   
   

4. 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. The LPC Academic Senate has endorsed the rubric as the standards to strive for in DE classes. View the Senate’s resolution. Examples that meet the rubric’s criteria can be found in the Online Course Design Resources course.
   
   
5. 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 Module 5 of the OCDP course. If you don’t have access to the OCDP and want access, email me.
   
   
6. All online and hybrid courses must show evidence of an instructor’s regular effective contact with students, as per Title 5 and accreditation requirements. Title 5 adds that regular effective contact must take place among students, too. For hybrids, both types of contact are required in the online portion of the class. Read Hybrids @ LPC. When contacting students by email, online and hybrid instructors should use the Canvas Inbox for all of your email correspondences with students. The Canvas Inbox will automatically save the emails. Emails sent from Outlook will be archived, but they will not be available from a central location. Read more about regular effective contact. Also, view the CVC-OEI’s Student-Student Interaction Guide (contains concrete examples).
   
   
7. The implementation of the New Rich Content Editor that was supposed to occur for the summer will now take place Dec. 19. The TLC will offer workshops on it this fall. View a video on the new RCE. If you like the New RCE and want to use it for fall classes, it's up to you to enable it. Just access a course, go to Settings – Feature Options, and toggle the Off switch to On for RCE Enhancements.

 

8. If you want to learn how to pronounce students’ names, you can create a Page and turn it into a wiki by allowing students to edit so they can phonetically spell their names.
   
   
9. If you need to give students extra time or extra attempts on a quiz in Canvas, use the Moderate Quiz feature. Too many instructors are editing their quiz and adding a student’s name under Assign To in the quiz settings while removing Everyone. The result is that only that one student’s score goes into the Gradebook, while the rest do not. Learn how to moderate a quiz.
   
   
10. If you want students to have access to your class before the first day of the semester, go into Settings, change the Term start date and time, then check the box that says: Users can only participate in the course between these dates.
    
    
11. 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.
    
    
12. The LPC Online Learning web site includes a link called Faculty Resources, which was created for you. It provides information and resources for instructors online learning at LPC. The section also includes the DE Handbook.
    
    
13. For financial aid and auditing purposes, you should record the last day of attendance for students who drop DE courses. This can be done easily in Canvas. In your course, go to the People page, click on the three dots on the right side for a student, and select User Details. This brings you to the student’s Profile page. Simply enter the date in the box under Last Day Attended. If a student dropped prior to Census, you can't enter the student's LDA into Canvas because that student simply disappears from the course. The best you can do is note the date elsewhere after monitoring your class roster in CLASS-Web.
    
    The last day of attendance is not the last day a student logged into your course; it’s the last day a student actively participated in class. Read Federal Title IV and Last Day of Attendance.
    
    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 Canvas 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.
    
    
14. If you need (or want) a banner for the home page of your course, the attached file is a template to use. Just open it in PowerPoint, modify it, save it as a .PNG file, then upload it into Canvas.
    
    
15. If you plan to use the online proctoring tool Proctorio, you need to understand how it works. View a faculty web page on Proctorio. You should put information about Proctorio into your welcome letter and syllabus. Here are links to an example welcome letter and an example syllabus. Both contain student language about Proctorio. Feel free to use it.
    
    
16. If you want to learn more about Canvas Studio, the video platform in Canvas, go to the Canvas Studio page on the Online Learning web site. There’s also a page for students that you can pass on to your class.
    
    
17. You might want to export your gradebook on a consistent basis, such as every week. Every week might seem like overkill, but you never know what can happen, and nobody wants to jeopardize student grades. One note: When students switch sections in the middle of a semester, their grades and assignments do not automatically move to the new section. Exporting the gradebook from the students’ old section helps mitigate this issue.
    
    
18. If you want to merge sections in Canvas and have not already done so, read the Merging Sections in Canvas page, and follow the instructions carefully.
    
    
19. Canvas now offers a Training Services Portal that is available from the Help icon in the global navigation menu. Resources include live webinar trainings, recorded videos, and actual courses.
    
    
20. The TLC workshop schedule for the fall will be released soon. There will be an Intro to Canvas workshop on Sept. 1 (12:30-1:30) via Zoom, followed by a workshop on Hypothesis on Sept. 3 (1-2).
    
    
21. Wanda Butterly and I will provide faculty technical support. You can also call Canvas directly at 1-833-300-3467 or use the live chat that is available in the Help menu of Canvas.
    
    

Good luck with your courses!

Scott

 

Corrected link

Sorry for the incorrect link to the Canvas Studio for students page. It’s http://www.laspositascollege.edu/onlinelearning/canvas_studio.php

 

Scott

Canvas Studio for students page

For those of you planning to use Canvas Studio in your courses, I have created a new web page for students. It contains a video and tutorial links for students on how to complete tasks requiring Studio. Feel free to include this link in any instructions to students:

http://www.laspositascollege.edu/onlinelearning/faculty/canvas/merging.php

 

Scott

 

 

Links to Canvas Guides

As some of you know, Canvas migrated its user guides to a new platform last week. These Canvas Community links to individual pages in the guides were supposed to work again after the migration. Well, many of those links work, but many also do not. The web addresses are not supposed to change, and according to Canvas, they haven't.

 

Of course, a week later, it is still a work in progress. I was told today that all of the links should work by Monday. This might be a problem for those of you who include such links within your courses to serve as technical instructions for students. If you want to wait for Canvas to fix the links, that's up to you. If you don't, you can use the links at https://guides.instructure.com/​.

 

You can always check the status of Canvas at https://status.instructure.com/.

 

Scott

Canvas Summer 2020 wrap-up

For those of you teaching this summer,

 

To wrap it up the Summer session and prepare for Fall, please note the following:

1. Here’s how course access at the end of a semester works in Canvas:
   1. You will have full access to your course until Aug. 14 at 11:59 p.m. After that, you will only have read-only access. However, you will be able to export your course. At that point, get to the course by clicking Courses – All Courses. It will listed under Past Enrollments.
   2. Students will have full access to your course until Aug. 6 at 11:59 p.m. (unless you have changed the Term end date and time). After the Term end date and time passes, students will have read-only access. They can get to the course by clicking Courses – All Courses. The course will show under Past Enrollments.
   3. If you want students to have full access after the Term end date and time, go into Settings, increase the Term end date and time, then check the box that says: Students can only participate in the course between these dates.  
   4. If you don’t want students to have any access to the course after the Term end date and time, scroll down in Settings, and check the box that says: Restrict students from viewing course after end date.
2. For each class, check the accuracy of your grades, then DOWNLOAD YOUR GRADEBOOK AND COURSE SEPARATELY!
   1. For students who do not complete assignments by the deadline dates, manually give them zeros in the gradebook. If you leave their grade cells blank, those missing assignments won't count against them in Totals when they check grades.
   2. Make sure you don’t have any grade columns that show as hidden when they shouldn’t be hidden.
   3. If you incorrectly gave a student extra attempts on quizzes by adding that student’s name under Assign To in the quiz settings while removing Everyone, you will need to add Everyone back in. You’d notice this in the gradebook if you have a quiz column with only one student’s score while the rest of the students have no scores. Once you add Everyone back in and click Save, all of the scores will show.
   4. When you are finished with grading, download your Gradebook by clicking Actions - Export. Keep your exported Gradebook on your computer and/or external/online drive.
   5. To archive your course and save it for safekeeping (in case anything bad happens to Canvas…and it has happened!), go to Settings – Export Course Content – make sure Course is chosen under Export Type, then click Create Export. Once the process is finished, click New Export to download the file to your computer and/or external/online drive.
      
      Exporting, downloading, and saving your Gradebooks and courses are critical! We have had incidents in the recent past where entire courses and class grades were lost. Don’t get caught without backups.

 

3. When moving from one semester to another, you can either copy a previous semester's course content or export the previous course and import it into the new course. You can do either of these by going to Settings and choosing Import Course Content. If you then select Copy a Canvas Course, you might have to check the box to "Include completed courses."
   1. Learn how to copy a course.
   2. Learn how to export a course.
   3. Learn how to import a course.
      
      
4. Also when moving from one semester to another, do not remove assignments from the Calendar. If you need to remove assignments, do this from the Assignments area. If you need to remove quizzes or discussions, do those from their respective areas, too. This pertains to both the course from which you are copying and the course into which you are copying.
   
   
5. Students have been inputted into their Fall 2020 courses.
   
   
6. If you are teaching during the Fall, you should send a welcome letter to your students a week or so prior to the first day of classes. We offer a welcome letter template for your optional use, along with an online syllabus template, and an entire model course template.
   1. View/download welcome letter template
   2. View/download syllabus template
      
      
7. These new features will be enabled in Canvas on Aug. 15:

1. The Section column can be hidden from students in the People page when more than one section exists in the course. This change prevents students from viewing sections for other students when they have access to view the People page. This can be particularly beneficial if you have merged a non-credit section of a course with a credit section, and you don’t want students to see who is in the non-credit section. To do this, go to Settings in your merged course, click More Options in Course Details, then check the box in front of Hide sections on the People page from Students. Click Update Course Details at the bottom.
2. Multiple pages can be deleted at one time in the Pages Index page. Multiple pages can be deleted at one time in the Pages Index page.
3. If you want to see what is upcoming in Canvas, go to the Canvas Release Notes page.
   
   

Scott

 

Turnitin update

LPC Faculty,

It appears that Turnitin is working again in Canvas. If you had written assignments using Turnitin due the past four days or so, though, you might have to go into the Speedgrader for each student, and click Resubmit to Turnitin.

Scott

 

Fall Canvas students to be inputted tonight

Canvas instructors:

 

I wanted to let you know that Fall 2020 students are scheduled to be inputted into their Canvas courses tonight. If you don’t want students to access your courses until the start of classes, please keep your courses unpublished.

 

Scott

 

Turnitin

For those of you currently trying to use Turnitin, you have, obviously, noticed that it’s not working. District ITS will be working with the vendor today to remedy this situation.

 

Scott

Regular effective contact reminder

For those of you teaching this summer,

In an effort to ensure that the state- and federally mandated regular effective contact regulations are being met in online courses, the LPC Distance Education Committee has asked me to send a Mid-Semester Regular Effective Contact Checklist to you. These mandates include instructor-initiated interaction with students and fostering student-to-student interaction.

Links to more information are included at the bottom of the checklist.

If you have any questions, let me know.
Scott

 

Video in Canvas

LPC faculty,

Canvas sent out a message to system admins around the state saying that many instructors are asking to increase the quota for their courses. It seems that they are uploading videos directly into their Canvas courses. The assumption is that they are recording their ConferZoom sessions and uploading those videos into Canvas.

For those of you new to online courses, keep in mind that we do not do this. Not only do videos eat up your course quota because the file sizes are so big, but they also take a long time for students to download and watch. More importantly, perhaps, it's difficult to get the videos captioned.

We promote the 3C Media Solutions app in Canvas, but also tell instructors that they can use YouTube if they want. You can even link to a ConferZoom cloud recording and transcript.

If you are not familiar with how we do video in Canvas, please read the following page on our Online Learning web site: Instructional Uses Of Video In Online Courses.

Thank you for your adherence.

Scott

Canvas videos/new Rich Content Editor

LPC Faculty,

 

If you use the 3C Media app in Canvas to post and caption instructor-created videos, you might already know that the funds allocated to 3CMedia for this purpose have been exhausted and won’t be renewed until July 1, 2020. This means that faculty will not be able to request captioning through 3C Media until then. The DE Committee on Friday wanted me to inform you that in the meantime, you should either use YouTube and edit its auto captions or simply refrain from posting instructor-created videos until July 1.

 

Using YouTube

 

Follow these steps to upload your video:

 

1. Log into YouTube or Google with your Google login credentials (if you don’t have a Google account, you will need to create one). If you log into Google, click the Google Apps icon at the top right, and select YouTube.
   
   
   
2. On the upper right, click the camera icon, and select Upload video.
   
   
   
3. Select your video file, or simply drag and drop it onto the screen.
4. Give it a title, then click Next.
5. Select Yes, it’s made for kids, then click Next.
6. On the following screen, just click Next.
7. Click Publish Now – Unlisted – Done.
8. Close and log out.

 

After waiting for YouTube to auto-caption your video, you are now ready to edit those captions to fix spelling, grammar, etc.

 

View a video on how to edit auto captions in YouTube.

 

 

New Rich Content Editor in Canvas

 

If you are interested in testing the new Rich Content Editor in Canvas, you should enable it in your sandbox course by going to Settings – Feature Options and toggling the switch for RCE Enhancements. Canvas is supposed to make it the default beginning June 20; therefore, it will become our default in time for summer courses. If the June 20 date changes, we might postpone making it the default.

 

The new RCE will have the same tools and functionality as the current RCE, but the icons and interface have changed. One notable change is that when you add content like an image, you have to click on it to bring up an Options button. Those options allow you other functionality.

 

 

View a video overview of the new RCE.

View tutorials on specific tasks in the new RCE.

 

Register for a TLC workshop on the new RCE that is scheduled for March 31 from 12:30-1:30 p.m.

 

Scott

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canvas dropped students update

The issue with the dropped students still in Canvas courses appears to be resolved. If you have students lingering in your Canvas courses who are not on your Class Web rosters, let me know their names, W numbers, and courses, and I’ll forward that info to District ITS. Thanks again for your patience.

 

Scott