Newsletter Archive - Edition 4

Canvas and Zoom Orientation for Students

eLearning offers Canvas and Zoom virtual orientation sessions below for Winter 2022. The first part (30 minutes) will focus on navigating Canvas and the second part (30 minutes) will be for Zoom training and practicing. Also, information about ctcLink and Starfish will be presented during the last 30 minutes of each presentation (11-11:30, 3-3:30 and 6-6:30).

Zoom Link for ALL events: https://tinyurl.com/studentSupportDays

Monday 01/03 @ 10am (Canvas), 10:30am (Zoom), 11am (Starfish)

Monday 01/03 @ 2pm (Canvas), 2:30pm (Zoom), 3pm (Starfish)

Wednesday 01/05 @ 10am (Canvas), 10:30am (Zoom), 11am (Starfish)

Wednesday 01/05 @ 2pm (Canvas), 2:30pm (Zoom), 3pm (Starfish)

Thursday 01/06 @ 10am (Canvas), 10:30am (Zoom), 11am (Starfish)

Thursday 01/06 @ 2pm (Starfish), 2:30pm (Canvas), 3pm (Zoom)

Thursday 01/06 @ 5pm (Canvas), 5:30pm (Zoom), 6pm (Starfish)

Professional Development Opportunity – DDLC Communities of Practice

In November, the District Distance Learning Committee (DDLC) put out a survey to faculty across the Seattle Colleges about how to best spend $40,000 in faculty development funds related to online learning. Based on your feedback, the DDLC has decided on a two-pronged approach for this year: a series of three communities of practice that will begin in Winter 2022, and a two-day conference late in Spring. We will have more details about the conference soon, but want to hear from you: Are you interested in joining or leading one of our three communities of practice? And what topics would you like to explore within community? We’ll be assembling the three communities centered around the topics you pick. Participants will be stipend for 20 hours, with space for five faculty participants from each College. To share your ideas on where the communities should focus, and to express your interest, please fill out this survey! We will be finalizing the details and convening the communities in late January 2022.

December Updates

In December Canvas released a few minor updates including:

• When importing courses Canvas will now retain Late Policy settings in the gradebook

• In the Rich Content Editor, under Image Options, you can enter percentages when changing the size of an image instead of by pixels.

To read more about these and other minor updates please see the update release notes.

Start of Term Canvas Checklist :

Course Set-Up

Import content into your course shell

You can import content into your new shell from a previously created course, or a course export package.

When importing content, you can select what content you want to import. You can leave out old announcements and strip out due dates. These options can save you considerable time.

• How do I import content from another Canvas course?

• How do I import a Canvas course export package?

If using the Adjust Beginning and Ending Dates option end up overlapping the due dates for some assignments, add an extra week for the ending date.

Student Options

Make sure that the options for the following are set up the way that you want them. These are global options for the course, and can be found on the Course Settings page, on the Course Details tab, at the bottom, under “more options” How do I change additional options for students in my course?

• Let students attach files to discussions

• Let students create discussion topics

• Let students edit or delete their own discussion posts

• Let students organize their own groups

• Hide totals in student grades summary

• Hide grade distribution graphs from students

• Disable comments on announcements

Course Navigation

Make sure that the course navigation is customized correctly.

• How do I reorder and hide Course Navigation links?

Pages

• Check to see that all pages that should be published are published.

• Test to see if links are still functional.

• Links to outside content may be dead, and content may need to be replaced.

• Links to internal content should be stable, but it is worth checking them.

Modules

• Check that all modules that should be published are published. If a module is unpublished, all the content in the module will be locked and unavailable to students.

• Check that unlock dates, prerequisites and completion requirements are configured correctly.

• It is worth double-checking Modules in Student View—you will be able to clearly tell what is locked down (it will be grayed-out, and you will not be able to click on it), while unpublished modules will be completely invisible.

• Check that external URLs and external tools are still functioning properly.

Assignments

• Make sure that all assignments are published, are in the correct group, and that group weighting, if used, is configured correctly.

• How do I weight the final grade based on Assignment Groups?

• Check that all due dates are correct.

• Update “Available from” and “Available until” dates if you use them. The date change tool does not change these dates when you import content into a new course shell.

• Delete any empty assignment groups that are called “Assignments.” A new, empty group is automatically created when the course shell is created. This empty group can create a confusing view on the Grades page for students.

Announcements

• Delete previous announcements that you do not plan to reuse. Old announcements are imported from previous versions of a course.

• Change the “Delay posting” dates on announcements that you plan to reuse.

• Note that any announcements that you reuse will still have the original date that you composed the announcement as their posting date. This can create confusion for students.

Discussions

• Delete any discussions that students from a previous course may have started. Student-initiated discussions become a part of the course and may need to be removed.

Files

• Check file availability settings. If you release files based on dates, make sure that the dates are correct.

Groups

• Recreate any necessary group sets. Groups do not export/import as part of your course and must be recreated each time. If you have group assignments, those assignments must be associated with the recreated group sets.

Panopto

• If you have integrated Panopto videos into your course, you may need to change the permissions on your videos or move the videos from the Panopto folder for your old course into your new course.

• How do I move videos in Panopto
  Note that it is better to move videos to Panopto than to copy them. Copying will create an updated version of the video, which takes time. Copying will also require you to update all your links in your course. Moving videos will just shift the permissions of the existing video files to the new course.

• If you are recording a new Panopto video, you must “Publish” your Canvas course first before you are able to record a new video.

Publish your course by the first day of the term.

• Be sure to publish your course. Otherwise, students will not see your course.

• In fact, publishing the course before the first day of the quarter gives the students enough time to get ready with textbooks and so forth. The students will not be able to post or submit until the first day.

• Please note that once courses are published, they cannot be unpublished. Although you may add updated content to your course, students will still have access to any content in the course that you have made visible to them.

Canvas Discussions and Screen Readers: Some Tips

If you saw the title of this segment and had some inkling as to the subject, you’ve likely worked with students, staff, or faculty using JAWS to navigate Canvas. What is JAWS?

JAWS, which stands for Job Access With Speech, is a popular screen reader software that helps folks who are blind and low-vision access and navigate screen content. JAWS integrates with programs such as Canvas to provide speech and Braille output.

Though Canvas is a leader in LMS accessibility and has devoted much effort to being screen-readable, occasionally, we still come across areas where improvements can be made. One such area is Canvas Discussions. Various Canvas users have pointed out that JAWS often has trouble navigating Canvas Discussions.

Scrolling through a long discussion session, keeping track, and staying engaged is difficult for all learners. Blind and low-vision learners are doubly disadvantaged when their screen reader is not able to smoothly scroll and scan for context and points of possible engagement. As one learner remarked: “The major advantage of forums, relies on the user being able to scan the topics and choose which conversations to read or join. When a visually impaired person is given a forum, they get told the date the item was created, the name of the person who opened the conversation, the number of hours since it was updated, the number of times that it has been viewed, and finally, the one or two line description of what the conversation is about. There is no way of knowing if the next conversation is closer to what you are looking for, there is no way of navigating at all. It would be the same as me giving you a book with no paragraphs, or headings, or chapters, just one continuous paragraph with nothing to let you know what the next sentence will contain. Please think about using a less blatantly discriminatory teaching method.”

We’d like to suggest some tips (adapted from a post by Canvas Community member Debee Armstrong and USF’s Student Accessibility Services) for restructuring your Canvas discussions to make them as accessible as possible for learners using screen reader software such as JAWS:

• Tip 1: Simplify the structure of your Canvas Discussions:

• If your learners are discussing multiple topics or answering from a question bank, create separate discussions for each topic or question.

• This allows learners using screen readers to more easily select the topic or question they want to discuss.

• Turn off threaded replies.

• JAWS does not differentiate between the initial post and replies.

• Long threads make it so screen readers have to go from post to post without any context. This makes it hard for users to ascertain what topic or question is being discussed. One may have to scroll until the very end of a long thread to find the topic or question they are looking for.

• If you assign multiple discussion sessions over the course of the quarter, make sure that each is a separate Canvas Discussion rather than having one massive, ongoing discussion.

• Encourage and teach students to use the “search” field as well as the “read” and “unread” buttons to differentiate between posts and to find specific information more easily and quickly.

• Tip 2: JAWS users have to switch from reading cursors and modes when reading on the web. For example, a user has to be in one mode to complete assignments in Canvas and another to read the assignment page.

• If your learner is a beginner user, direct them to resources on reading cursors and modes so they can better figure out which to use when. Keep in mind, this is taxing extra work on a learner, so consider giving them extensions and other forms of support as they go.

• Tip 3: Consider hosting course discussions in a variety of modes. You could offer a live discussion session as well as a discussion session on Canvas. You could also allow students to submit their discussion contributions outside of Canvas at no penalty. The more options students have, the more likely they are to find a method suitable to their needs.

Instructional Designers at eLearning are here to help you with creating accessible courses/content and ready to help with all of your teaching needs. Please contact us at eLearning@seattlecolleges.edu or set up a time with us via our book me site. We can also be contacted individually via email:

• Kathleen Chambers (North): Kathleen.chambers@seattlecolleges.edu

• Sanja Kadrić (Central): Sanja.kadric@seattlecolleges.edu

• Robin Leeson (Central): Robin.leeson@seattlecolleges.edu

• Julian Barr (South): Julian.barr@seattlecolleges.edu

Captioning Support

eLearning has been asked to provide logistical support for captioning pre-recorded videos. So, we have come up with a process for all to follow to request captioning of videos. Note, this process has changed for faculty.

Types of Captioning Requests

Before sharing our new process, we must first clearly share the types of video captioning you might need and how that impacts the information you will need to provide eLearning:

Instructional Videos: Pro-Active Captioning

These are videos used in the academic classroom that faculty wish to have captioned for their students. eLearning currently does have a budget for these requests and encourages faculty to submit requests. We do ask that faculty check out our strategies for creating videos before creating and submitting for captioning.

Instructional Videos: Accommodations

These videos are videos that need to be captioned in alignment with a formal accommodations request. eLearning will require a budget number for all videos submitted for accommodation purposes. Therefore, all accommodation requests should go through your Accessibility Office (North, Central, South) who will submit them to eLearning.

Non-Instructional Videos

These videos include promotional campaigns, all-campus trainings, and other non-instructional videos. eLearning will require a budget number for all videos submitted for accommodation purposes. Therefore, please be sure to follow your locations process for getting captioning funds before submitting your requests to eLearning.

North staff, please contact Dr. Aryana Bates for these captioning requests.

Submitting Your Request

Please submit ALL video captioning requests to eLearning using our new Captioning Request Form. Once submitted, one our Instructional Technologists will reach out if there are questions or additional assistance is needed.

Considerations When Creating Videos

• Create and follow a script when creating videos – this can make captioning easier later.

• Create videos with recycling in mind. Refrain from using specific dates and times to reference information when possible so the video can be reused in future quarters.

• Keep videos short and to the point – chunk content into single-subject, digestible pieces. Research suggests shorter videos are more engaging, with the optimal time of videos being 6 minutes (Guo, 2013).

Resources

• A 5-Step Guide to Making Your Own Instructional Videos

• Make an Appointment with an Instructional Technologist or Designer

• LEAD Video Production Course
  This course will provide information on how to set up a home recording studio, including the ability to check out some studio equipment from the college, planning out and producing instructional recordings, as well as captioning, publishing, and sharing these recordings. Participants will create, edit and caption a video recording for this workshop that can be used in your classes.