Reading Time: 2 minutesOnce you’ve worked through the tools we talked about in Remote Learning: The Basics, you’re ready for the next step. These items will enhance your course – they make content easier to find for students, grading easier for you, and improve accessibility in your videos. Linking Canvas content together We’re going to start off with one of the coolest features in Canvas: linking to items within the course from a page, discussion, announcement, or anywhere else that the Rich Content Editor is used. This is especially helpful if you’re sending an announcement out to students where you reference a page or assignment – you can link directly to…
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Best Practices for Conducting a Synchronous Session
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhile synchronous sessions can function similar to class sessions (you get to verbally communicate with all your students at once), there are some considerations you should make. From coming into the session with a plan to developing a method for student interaction, these items will help your sessions run smoothly. Prepare and plan ahead Are you planning on going through a presentation? Showing some other program or document via screen share? Have all of those items ready so it’s a simple toggle to the resource. You won’t have to sort through files for folders to find what you need. Consider also having an outline on what you…
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Remote Learning: The Basics
Reading Time: 3 minutesYou’ve survived the first couple days of teaching remotely because of COVID-19 – congratulations! We’re going to use this post to take a pause and review some of the methods that are most helpful for transitioning online. These are the things that will make your course functional. Your course will survive. And later in this transitioning online series, we’ll be covering items that will slowly take you from surviving to thriving. But for now, we’re starting small. If you haven’t checked out the Getting Started with Remote Learning course in Canvas, please do so. We walk through these tips plus best practices, FAQs, and ways to get…
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Using Google Forms for Proctor Registration
Reading Time: 3 minutesWith our sudden pivot to online learning, you may have an upcoming exam where you want to assign proctors. You’ll need to collect some information (e.g., email addresses so you can send proctoring information), and Google Forms is an easy and organized way to collect that data. Dr. McClain created a Google form for this purpose and shared it with the CTL. We’re going to look at how to create the form, add items, preview the form, share the form with your students, view responses, and send information to proctors. Creating the form and adding items This form is simple to create – it’s four short-answer questions…
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How to Use Google Drive More Efficiently with Drive Priority
Reading Time: 3 minutesIf you’re anything like me, you use Google Drive pretty extensively to keep your work organized. Drive is so easy and convenient to use – it doesn’t matter where I am or what device I use. I can always access my files. The tricky part about using a system that extensively is it eventually can take more time to find the file you need. With Drive, the search feature does work well to help you find what you need. But Google has introduced two features that make using Drive even easier: Quick Access and Priority. Quick Access Google Drive now shows a banner of files at the…
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The Future of Education: Mobile Learning in Higher Ed
Reading Time: 2 minutesWhen I started working on this post, I downloaded a PDF to my MacBook. I read a bit of it in my office before heading over to an event. I AirDropped the PDF to my iPad to continue reading and start doing some annotating using GoodNotes. On my way home, I asked Siri to record some notes that I wanted to include in this post. The next morning, I AirDropped my notes to the MacBook, pulled up the annotated PDF on my iPad, and began typing. Then I stopped and thought: I did all of this without thinking. Like it was normal. I was so overwhelmed with…
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TurnItIn: Three Tips for Accurate Similarity Report Assessment
Reading Time: 2 minutesCedarville University (CU) provides all faculty and students access to TurnItIn to help improve writing and prevent plagiarism. TurnItIn accepts user documents and compares them to material located on the Internet and in TurnItIn’s document repository. After the documents are compared, TurnItIn produces the Similarity Report which shows the parts of a student’s paper that are similar to other sources. Here are three tips to help you read the Similarity Report. Tip 1: Familiarize yourself with what Canvas and TurnItIn can do Get up to speed with all of the functionality the Canvas and TurnItIn integration has to offer by viewing or downloading the Canvas Plagiarism Framework…
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Adding External Tools to Your Course
Reading Time: 3 minutesWe’ve previously talked about how to use Ensemble for screen capture and webcam recording. We’ve also talked about how to add annotations, edit, and upload your video. But once you’ve uploaded your video, how do you get it into Canvas? Ensemble is integrated with Canvas as an external tool, so it’s a simple process to add media to your course. We’re going to use Ensemble as an example here, but you’ll follow the same initial process to add any external tool to your course. Add an external tool to a module If you want your video or other item from an external tool to be available directly…
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Best Practices for Webcam Recording
Reading Time: < 1 minuteLet’s set the scene. It’s the early evening, and there was a concept in class today that your students need a little more help with. You decide to record a short webcam video using Ensemble Anthem for them. As you prepare to make this video, there are a few things to keep in mind to make the video a good experience for your students. Check out this video for examples! Video by Jared Pyles Want to never miss a post? Subscribe here!