eLearning Newsletter Comic, Transcript below

Comic Transcript

eLearning recently came into possession of a top secret document, not meant for the public: Rejected Spokane Colleges Branding Ideas.

A piece of paper is labeled "INTERNAL DOCUMENT, DO NOT DISTRIBUTE."

Branding Option #201: Just Feet
The letters S C, spelled out using blue feet, marked with a red "Rejected" stamp. A note reads, "Focus group was very uncomfortable.

Branding Option #202: CTCLink Sponsorship
The logo is blocked by a cascade of Multi-factor authentication dialog boxes. It's marked with a red "Rejected" stamp.

Branding Option #203: Even-Scarier Skitch
A fuzzy blue Sasquatch mascot. Its face is blacked out with a "Redacted" box. It's marked with a red "Rejected" stamp. A note reads, "gave focus group nightmares."

Deep Dives Logo

Introducing eLearning
Deep Dives and Bits & Bytes!

These two new video series from the Instructional Designers in eLearning offer asynchronous instruction and support in both new and commonly used tools such as Canvas, Panopto, and Zoom. While Deep Dives takes an in-depth look at tools and processes, Bits and Bytes provides quick task-based tutorials and fixes based on frequently encountered questions.

You can find both Deep Dives and Bits & Bytes in the Modules!

Tech Talks for Winter 2025

We're sometimes frustrated with the pace of Canvas' requested feature updates... but not this quarter! We're excited to talk about some major feature improvements to the way students submit assignments; the way you build and manage rubrics; and We've got a full slate of tech talks planned for this quarter, with some great topics! First up is a three-part series on practical, actionable tools and techniques to increase the accessibility of your Canvas courses and content. Then, by popular request, we'll look at some alternatives and replacements for the late, great, Google Jamboard. Then we'll wrap up with two episodes on incorporating iterative student feedback into your courses. You can find session descriptions, dates, and links under the Professional Development tab below!

Professional Development
Tom's Educational Technology Updates
Contact eLearning

Tech Talks

Tech Talks Logo

Tuesdays at 1:05pm we host short (20 minutes, give or take) discussions on an eLearning technology or technique. We will be live-streaming on Zoom and YouTube. If you'd like to be part of the recording, join the Zoom session. If you'd like to view the presentation and interact on chat, visit the live YouTube broadcast. You'll also be able to watch the YouTube recordings at any time after the broadcast.

January 21 @ 1:05pm: Hello, Assignment Enhancements!
Starting in Spring Quarter, the new Assignment Enhancements workflow for students will be turned on for all courses. Learn more about how the look and feel of submitting an assignment will change for students, and how to experiment with Assignment Enhancements right now, so you'll be ready for the change in Spring.
Join the Jan. 21 conversation on Zoom
Watch the Jan. 21 conversation on YouTube

February 4 @ 1:05pm: Editing Videos in Panopto for beginnersYou recorded your lecture or demonstration in Panopto -- now what? In this session we'll cover the basics of video editing in Panopto: captions; minor video edits like cutting out extra material or flubs; and inserting clips/YouTube/links.
Join the Feb. 4 conversation on Zoom
Watch the Feb. 4 conversation on YouTube

February 11 @ 1:05pm: Adding Graded Quiz Questions to Panopto
When reviewing your online lecture content it can be a challenge to figure out how to engage your students. With the help of embedded quizzes, we can provide students with immediate feedback within quick formative assessments that organically lead a student through material. When used in conjunction with best practices around video content, we can create online experiences that put learner engagement in the driver seat.
Join the Feb. 11 conversation on Zoom
Watch the Feb. 11 conversation on YouTube

February 25 @ 1:05pm: Rubrics Part 1: Theory and Pedagogy
Rubrics can be a powerful teaching tool, providing transparency and substantive feedback, while also saving time in grading. But where do you even start? In this session we'll talk about the theory and pedagogy behind rubrics, and explore some best practices for effectively designing them.
Join the Feb. 25 conversation on Zoom
Watch the Feb. 25 conversation on YouTube

March 4 @ 1:05pm: Rubrics Part 2: Enhanced Canvas Rubrics
Canvas has been developing an updated Rubric interface, and it's now available as a Feature Preview! We'll take a look at the new interface, and walk through building, connecting, and using Rubrics for grading.
Join the Mar. 4 conversation on Zoom
Watch the Mar. 4 conversation on YouTube

Educational Technology Updates

Changes to Canvas Course Creation and Enrollment

Student Enrollments in Canvas

Prior to Winter 2025, student enrollments were deleted from Canvas if the student dropped the class before the sixth instructional day of the quarter. If a student dropped the course, they were still visible to instructors in the course, but the students were marked with an inactive flag.

As of Winter 2025, student enrollments will be deleted from Canvas only if the student drops the course prior to the first day of the quarter. Any student who is enrolled in a course on the first day of instruction will still be visible to instructors in the course, regardless of what day of the quarter the student drops the class.

This change will make it easier for instructors to respond to attendance inquiries from administrative offices like Financial Aid and Registration.

Course Creation for Lab/Lecture Courses with Non-Enrollment Components

Currently, all lab/lecturecourses have a course shell created in Canvas for each course component. Usually, these courses are set up in ctcLink so that the lab is the enrolling component, with credit attached to it, while the lecture is a 0-credit, non-enrollment component for the course, where the enrollment in the lecture is a direct duplication of the enrollment in the lab component.

Most instructors request that their labs and lectures be merged together in Canvas, or they disregard one of the course shells, leaving it unpublished and unused.

Because of a problem with the way that ctcLink reports enrollments for non-enrollment course components, when a student drops a lab/lecture course after census day, the student enrollment is not dropped from Canvas for the non-enrollment lecture component. This leads to problems with these courses if the lab/lecture is merged, or if the class is only being conducted within the lecture course, and the lab course shell is left unused.

Starting in Spring 2025, we will no longer create course shells in Canvas for course components that are coded as non-enrollment in ctcLink. This will resolve the issue with student enrollments, reduce the number of merge requests that instructors need to make for lab/lecture courses, and reduce the clutter of unpublished duplicate sections for most instructors.

If you have questions, or need to think through how your courses are organized, please contact eLearning to set up a consultation.

Canvas Improvements and Changes

Changing: Pearson MyLab and Revel Connectors

As of December 1, Pearson is replacing their old Canvas MyLab and Revel connectors that allowed instructors to integrate Pearson content directly into Canvas. Courses that are configured using the old connectors will continue to function, but you will not be able to link new courses to Pearson through the old connectors after December 1.

These connectors are being replaced with a new connector: Access Pearson. This is already available to you in Canvas and should be used when setting up new courses for the Spring2025 term. DO NOT TRY TO CHANGE THE CONNECTOR YOU ARE USING FOR WINTER 2025 COURSES. If you aren’t using Access Pearson, yet, please wait until you set up your Winter courses to make the change.

Pearson has sent email directly to impacted instructors. Read more about the Pearson LTI connector update here.

New Canvas Feature: Discussion Checkpoints

The Checkpoints feature allows instructors to set two different due dates for graded discussions.

If you choose to use the feature for a particular discussion, you must:

set the discussion to be graded
assign separate point values for the two segments of the discussion
set separate due dates for the two segments of the discussion
enter a separate grade for each segment of the discussion

Currently, a discussion with checkpoints only supports a single rubric, and the rubric cannot be used for assignment grading.

Discussions Checkpoints are scheduled to be released into production on January 18, 2025. Assuming this happens, we plan to enable this for all classes prior to the January 28 Tech Talk that is focused on this new feature.

While the feature will be available in all classes, instructors will be able to decide on a discussion-by-discussion basis whether to add and configure checkpoints for graded discussions.

UPDATED--January 23, 2025: There were significant issues with the release of Discussion Checkpoints. Instructure executed a partial roll-back of the feature to do some additional work on it. We're hoping that it will be sorted out in time for us to turn on the feature during Spring Break.

New Canvas Feature: Preserve Group Set During Assignment or Discussion Copy

If you use Groups in your courses and you’ve ever had to reconstruct Group Sets and reassign all of your Assignments and Discussions to the correct group sets after you’ve copied your courses to the next quarter, this is for you.

“When copying a group assignment or discussion topic to another course, a group set with the same name is created in the destination course if no matching group set exists.”

In the past, all group assignments and discussions would be assigned to the default “Project Groups” group set, regardless of how they were originally configured.

Note that this new setting does not create the groups in the Group Set, nor does it assign students to those groups. The major benefit here is that you no longer have to update the group settings in each group assignment or discussion.

The new featureis turned on for all classes. If you don’t want Group Sets preserved when you copy a course, you can turn the feature off in Course Settings, under the Feature Options tab.

Canvas Feature Option Enforcement: Assignment Enhancements – Student

Assignment Enhancements for students have been available for several years as a course-level feature option. For Spring 2025, we will be turning on Assignment Enhancements for all courses in Canvas.

We have to implement this change to resolve an ongoing error with the Microsoft One Drive integration in Canvas. Currently, the One Drive submission tab can’t handle file type limitations when used with the current assignment interface. Use of Assignment Enhancements resolves this problem.

Read more about how Assignment Enhancements changes the assignment submission and feedback workflow for students. Or attend the January 21 Tech Talk on Assignment Enhancements.

Improvement: Zoom-to-Panopto Course Folder Mapping

The Zoom Meetings integration in Canvas has been available for several years, but we have recently made some improvements to the configuration that will make managing your Zoom class recordings easier.

Zoom meetings that are

started or scheduled from the Zoom Meetings tab in a Canvas course and
recorded to the cloud

will now automatically have their recordings uploaded into the Panopto Recordings folder for that course.

Meetings that don’t originate from a Canvas course will still have their cloud recordings automatically uploadedto your Meeting Recordings folder in Panopto.

Optional: Rubric Enhancements

Rubrics are being redesigned to make them easier to use and manage. Several enhancements are available, like

the option to have ratings run from low-to-high, rather than high-to-low
different layouts in SpeedGrader, so that your rubrics don’t have occupy half the screen to be usable
better management and editing tools

You can read more about Rubric Enhancements in the Canvas Guides, though it is a bit limited. You can also join the Canvas Community Group for Enhanced Rubrics. If you’re interested in exploring the updates, you can activate Enhanced Rubrics on a course-by-course basis now, in your course settings, under the Feature Options tab.

Rubric Enhancements are still in development, so expect to see them change over the next few months.

eLearning Department Contacts

Instructional Technology Support
Tom Gibbons LMS Administrator I can help with eLearning technical support and software training Tom.Gibbons@ccs.spokane.edu	Rick Suhr Instructional Media Specialist I can help you create video and other media for your courses and projects Rick.Suhr@ccs.spokane.edu 509-533-3443
Instructional Design Support We can help faculty with course design and instructional strategies
Caleb Hutchins Instructional Designer Caleb.Hutchins@ccs.spokane.edu	Nick Taylor Instructional Designer Nick.Taylor@ccs.spokane.edu
Dr. Cassy Dame-Griff Instructional Designer Cassy.Dame-Griff@ccs.spokane.edu
Student Support We can help online students solve problems and reach their academic goals
Julie Hands Online Success Coach Julie.Hands@ccs.spokane.edu 509-222-8522	Karen Sandall Online Success Coach Karen.Sandall@ccs.spokane.edu 509-808-0935
Shay McConnell Online Success Coach Shay.McConnel@ccs.spokane.edu	Tara Hardman Online Success Coach tara.hardman@ccs.spokane.edu
Administrative Support We help launch, implement, and support eLearning projects and initiatives
Ben Whitmore Director of eLearning Ben.Whitmore@ccs.spokane.edu