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