Tuesday, August 4, 2020

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

 

Monday, August 3, 2020

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 If you don’t want students to access your courses until the start of classes, please keep your courses unpublished.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

Tuesday, July 7, 2020

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

 

Thursday, April 30, 2020

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


Monday, March 2, 2020

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday, February 3, 2020

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