Online Education Newsletter
April 2021
|
|
Dear Faculty,
I was recently talking with a good friend about the struggles and rewards of virtual teaching and learning, and he reminded me that "great milers are made in the third lap."
Wonderful colleagues, I believe this is precisely where we are in our semester's journey: the third lap. I did some research, and according to Runners World, "the third lap of mile repeats [...] is the most important lap." As you may know, the first lap is fueled with excitement, the second lap is where we settle in and find our pacing, but the third is where even the best tend to fatigue as the monotony of the course sets in. Even the most seasoned feel the need to conserve their energy for a strong finish, but we must push forward and keep the pace.
With this in mind, let me offer you some virtual Gatorade and a mighty cheer as we all stay the course. The finish line is in sight, and you--and your students-- have made an extraordinary effort!
Stay healthy, remember to breathe, and finish strong... we only have one more lap!
Your Saddleback College OE Team
|
|
- Stories of Success: Positive Pandemic Pedagogy
- Equity in Online Education
- Professional Development & Online Training- New Classes Added
- Canvas Quick Tip: Enhanced Course Settings
|
|
- Canvas LMS Server Migration
- Storing & Deleting Zoom Recordings
- ZTC Stipends Available
- New LTC (Low Textbook Cost) Course Designation
- Faculty Center Hours & Appointments
- Thank you!
|
|
|
Stories of Success: Positive Pandemic Pedagogy
|
|
 |
CTVR Online Success
Saddleback professor Maria Mayenzet recently shared an inspirational story of pandemic success that occurred in her CTVR 7 Cross-Cultural Cinema course.
As Professor Mayenzet empathetically shared "I have been so impressed by the compassionate and respectful dialogue amongst the students in [our online] discussions." Not only are her dynamic efforts of converting her CTVR course into a fully online format recognized by her students, but also by their families!
As one of Prof. Mayenzet's student recently shared, "I really enjoyed my time in your class. Your movies helped bring my family together when we could watch them and my parents could reminisce about old popular movies and gave me new talking points with strangers. I really appreciate what you are doing here and this class has truly increased my love and my appreciation for film and cinema."
Not only does this heartfelt note demonstrate how effective and rewarding online education can be, but it also illustrates how our virtual instruction is bringing families together during one of the more isolating moments in human history.
What a moving story of family bonding and pandemic success. Congratulations Maria!
|
Do you have a Success Story to Share?
If you have a story of successful online pedagogy or online practice we'd love for you to share it with us! Please email Brett Myhren or Bridget Hoida, your Online Education Faculty Co-Coordinators.
|
|
|
|
Equity in Online Education
As we finish our Spring 2021 semester, we are already excitedly looking forward to Fall 2021. As you may know, the focus of our Fall flex week will on equity.
- Create community for and by students
- Meet students where they are
- Create intentional moments for them to get on the soapbox
- Enable intellectual matchmaking
- Let them become barnacles on your whale
- Create interdependency with intentional communities
|
|
|
|
Professional Development: New Sessions Added for Live Online Teaching & Learning
This is a two-week introductory course designed for faculty who are new to synchronous online teaching or for those wishing to learn more about how to create, develop, and deliver inclusive live-online content, lessons, and Zoom learning.
Although there is a $45 fee for enrolling in the course, we are pleased to announce that PT & FT faculty can use their faculty development funding to seek reimbursement for the course fees, which will result in no out-of-pocket expense. Please see below for information and details on this awesome opportunity.
Course Description from @One
Engaging live sessions in online classes don’t just happen. They’re intentionally designed! By the completion of this 2-week course, you will demonstrate your ability to schedule, conduct, archive, and share a live session. You will also develop inclusive community norms and a lesson plan for a live session that uses effective instructional skills to support the diverse needs of community college students. You will achieve these goals by asynchronously engaging with content and completing assignments in Canvas, as well as attending synchronous sessions in Zoom that scaffold your learning.
Attendance at four 60-minute live sessions is required in addition to course assignments. The dates of these sessions are listed on the registration page.
Want to Sign-up?
Please visit the Registration Link available at @One or click the button below to enroll.
How Do I Get Reimbursed?
Have questions about Faculty Funding Requests?
Looking For Other PD Opportunities in Online Teaching & Learning?
There are facilitated courses and self-paced courses. There are several self-paced courses that you might find very helpful, especially if you are prepping online classes for the first time:
The self-paced courses are free for California Community College instructors!
|
|
Canvas Quick Tip: Canvas Course Settings
Course Availability Date Enhancements
Canvas recently updated their course availability dates via their March 2021 release. Accordingly, course availability dates can be selected by term or course date. This change offers clarification for how student participation is managed for a course. When an instructor views the Participation section in the Course Settings page, the Participation section displays a menu that defaults to Term dates for new courses. This option sets student course participation to the start and end dates defined for the term.
If preferred, instructors can change course participation to the Course option, where course participation is limited to the course start and end dates, which can be added in the course. Course dates override term dates; however, section dates that exist in the course override course dates.
|
|
Canvas LMS Server Migration
Currently, Saddleback and IVC share a common Canvas server for all of our courses, which has been the case for the past several years. The pandemic has recently brought to light a need to consider separating our servers. In addition to discussions at DOEC (District Online Education Committee), both colleges’ online education teams have spent the last several months exploring this possibility, weighing the pros/cons, discussing needs with District IT, and inquiring about best practices from colleagues in other institutions.
It was agreed that each college should maintain its own server with the ability to make local decisions best for them. Currently, Saddleback is moving forward with a new server, and IVC will retain the old server for now. Beginning with a pilot group of faculty in Summer 2021, Saddleback will migrate to the new server, with all faculty and students to follow after the pilot period.
An overview of Frequently Asked Questions about the Canvas LMS Server Migration is below. Additionally, a comprehensive Google Doc, with greater detail is also available for those wishing to learn more.
Why separate servers?
-
LIMITED OPTIONS: There tends to be critical limits in installing and making tools available locally at each college.
-
LACK OF AGILITY: There is currently a lack of agility in acquiring tools for local use.
-
DELAYS: When one college requires a change in datafeeds, settings or other administrative access, there is a lengthy process of submitting a districtwide “change log,” holding meetings with both colleges to discuss, and then often several other steps before those changes can be made. Delays can be weeks or sometimes months.
-
LIABILITY: At times when one college creates a change, it impacts the other college negatively, disrupting course content, publisher packs, and links or rubrics.
-
LACK OF SECURITY: Because both colleges share an instance, multiple staff and administrators at both colleges currently have access to all course content at each school. Separating the instances would allow for more security and fewer access points.
What does this mean for faculty?
-
Classes will have to be migrated to the new Canvas server which will not be as disruptive as the move from Blackboard to Canvas, but there will be some effort required to export courses. The plan is to start slowly and request volunteers to be part of the summer migration. The same thing will occur for Fall 2021 with volunteers only. Most likely everyone will migrate over to the new server by Spring 2022.
What will the migration process look like for early adopters?
- The migration process for early adopters will be to export course content from the current server and import it to the new server (using course ID’s, which will be the same in both servers).
- For those using LTI’s there may be additional observation and testing to ensure the LTI’s are working properly.
- Training will be provided, and early adopters will receive individualized support.
- Archived content will remain on the old server, but faculty are asked to download their courses and save to their hard drive to ensure they have a copy; this may also make it easier than going back and forth between the old and new servers.
- The old server will not go away, it will remain for historical access and faculty will have read access indefinitely and the ability to edit content for two years.
What does this mean for students?
- The migration team is currently working through student impacts and making sure students will not have separate dashboard logons, and that they continue to have visibility to classes at Saddleback and IVC on the same dashboard with a single sign-on.
Want to volunteer as a pilot participant for Summer or Fall 2021?
-
Faculty wishing to volunteer for the pilot Canvas LMS server migration for Fall 2021 are encouraged to complete this Pilot Participant Google Form. Thank you!
|
|
Storing and Deleting Zoom Recordings |
Many faculty may have already seen the memo from Barney Gomez, the Vice-Chancellor of Digital Innovation and Infrastructure, regarding the storage of Zoom recordings. In that memo, the Vice-Chancellor notified faculty that Zoom recordings created prior to August 15, 2020, would be deleted.
This document is intended to help answer any questions that you might have about that memo, the process of deleting Zoom recordings, and the recommended steps for you to take.
|
|
|
|
Frequently Asked Questions |
|
When will the videos be deleted?
Initially, the Vice-Chancellor had set March 8, 2021, as the deadline. However, the Vice-Chancellor, after hearing from DE coordinators statewide, has pushed that deadline back to May 31, 2021.
Why are the videos being deleted?
Videos consume a significant amount of cloud storage on servers. During the pandemic, the number of people using Zoom has increased exponentially. In order to make room for continued use of Zoom (and the recording of future meetings), the Vice-Chancellor would like to delete old recordings.
Do I have any control over which videos are deleted?
Other than the creation date, we have not received any guidance about which videos will be deleted first or whether faculty can flag videos to prevent them from being deleted. Thus, our recommendation for faculty is that they backup older videos that they want to save (videos created prior to August 15, 2020).
Which videos should I save or backup?
We strongly suggest that you carefully select which video you would like to backup.
-
For instance, we would recommend that you backup “evergreen” or “perennial” content, especially short videos that you use every semester.
- On the other hand, we would not recommend that faculty backup long recordings of class lectures, which students are unlikely to revisit, consume significant storage space, and may present privacy challenges.
|
|
|
|
How Do I Save or Backup My Videos?
|
|
What should I do when I want to use those saved videos in the future?
We strongly discourage faculty from storing their video files in their Canvas courses. Uploading the video file to the Canvas course dramatically increases the storage required for that class. As we have recommended in the past, uploading the video to YouTube and creating a link to the video on YouTube is the best strategy.
Keep in mind that YouTube has a limit on the length of videos that you can upload. For this reason, we again do not recommend that faculty try to save long videos (more than ten minutes long), definitely not recordings of complete lectures.
|
|
ZTC (Zero Textbook Cost) Program: Flag Your Courses
The Fall 2021 course schedule will go live on April 19th. In addition to submitting your book order, we are asking faculty to ensure that classes that meet the requirements for "ZTC" (zero textbook cost) are properly flagged in MySite. Every semester we work with the Office of Planning, Research, and Accreditation to track ZTC sections and student success metrics in ZTC courses. Data analysis becomes difficult when courses without textbook requirements are not flagged. We are also working on identifying ZTC Pathways. This work can only be done when courses are flagged.
Zero Textbook Courses are courses in which students are not required to purchase a textbook, publisher access code, readers, or other learning materials beyond tuition. If a course requires a material fee, paid at registration, the course can be ZTC. This is common in art courses that require material fees but do not require students to purchase any textbooks.
Flagging courses as ZTC only takes a minute! Log in to MySite, click on "Faculty Services", click on "Current Schedule", and click on "Section Management".
ZTC Stipends Available
Nicole Major and Jennifer Pakula, Co-Chairs of ZTC/OER Work Group sent an email earlier in the semester about a $500 stipend opportunity for converting a course to ZTC. If you missed the email, you can still express interest by completing this Google Doc. The stipend is available for faculty who teach credit courses and who are converting a course from a publisher textbook to no-cost learning materials.
Low Textbook Cost (LTC) Designation for Summer 2021
We are also excited to share that we have worked with District IT on a "Low Textbook Cost" grouping that will be piloted in the Summer 2021 online class schedule. Courses that have a required textbook(s) that total $40 or less (new retail from the bookstore), will be marked as "LTC.” This grouping will be automatic and does not require any additional steps by faculty in MySite.
|
|
Faculty Center Support:
For Canvas & Instructional Technology Needs
Our amazing Faculty Center provides support for Canvas and Instructional Technology. They are available, by appointment, to work with faculty who need assistance before, during, and after building their online classes in Canvas.
(Due to the fact that the Faculty Center is extremely busy, it is best not to email individual staff members or call their voicemails, as they are understandably backlogged). Messages to the main line (949) 582-4515 will be returned by Cora Swanson.
If you have already taught online, hybrid, or have previously completed the Online Educator Certificate and/or are just interested in learning more on your own, you are always welcome to check out the brief self-help videos available on the Faculty Center web page or use these Additional Canvas and Zoom tutorials.
|
|
As always, if you have any questions or concerns about online education, please feel free to contact Brett Myhren or me, Bridget Hoida, your Online Education Faculty Co-Coordinators. We love to hear from you!
Sincerely,
Bridget Hoida, Brett Myhren & the OE Team
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
