CTL Blog
Throughout the month of March, faculty and staff professional development will be available at Maricopa campus and district locations in a number of formats including day, evening and online. Each week, a different region of locations will be offering learning events, i.e. games. Faculty and staff are encouraged to not only attend games (sessions) in their own regions, but also travel to other regions of the Valley. MCC’s CTL is offering a variety of in-person and webinar sessions for this series. View the MCC Spring Training professional development schedule. We hope to see you soon!
How to access MCC webinars:
- Go to ctl.mesacc.edu
- Click on the calendar icon on the top right side of the page.
- Click on the webinar event that you would like to attend.
- On the calendar description, click on Join video call.
Maricopa Community Colleges are pleased to extend CTL services across the district to faculty and staff. Bookmark the CTL Near You website to access a calendar of events for all of the MCCCD Centers for Teaching and Learning. The CTL mission is to serve the faculty and staff through a commitment to exceptional teaching and learning. We offer in-person and virtual workshops, events and programming to promote excellence in teaching and learning inside and outside of the classroom.
The Spring 2017 Spring Training professional development event starts on February 27th. Workshops and trainings for this series are posted on the CTL Near You website.
Save the Date: Maricopa Digital Badging Dialog Day
Submitted for approval of 3 clock hours of non-academic advancement. If you are submitting for Faculty Professional Growth (FPG) hours, please print this announcement as you will need it to submit with your FPG application.
Join the MCLI, the “CTL Near You” and the Canvas LMS Core Group for a day focused on Digital Badging in Higher Education. Discover the valuable and growing role of digital badging in capturing student learning, motivating learners to new learning while also supporting competency-based education and industry/employer needs.
What is digital badging? Check out this article from Educause and then check out the event to dive in and learn more.
Hands-On Sessions
During the hands-on sessions, participants will get a chance to begin developing a badging model for their course or program, discuss the practical and fantastical strategies for using digital badges, and learn how to quickly and easily create and award badges using a web-based system.
Keynote Speaker
Digital badging expert, Veronica Diaz from Educause, will present the keynote session about digital badging including best practice examples from colleges and universities around the country. She will talk about how educators can leverage badges to motivate learners while transforming the education and credentialing landscape.
| Thursday, April 6
12:30 to 4:30 P.M.
Registration begins at 12 noon.
Chandler-Gilbert Community College –Pecos Campus
Agave (AGA) Bldg,
Rooms 1240 – 1242
Lunch on your own. Brown bags welcome. |
|
Grant proposals are now being accepted for OER Development Grants. For more information regarding the OER Development Grant program, please visit our website .
Proposals are due by 5pm Wednesday, November 9th, 2016.
OER (Open Educational Resources) hold great promise for reducing costs and increasing access to required course materials. Community colleges around the country (Washington, California, Virginia) have joined in with national efforts to increase the production and use of OER materials. Washington’s OER project saved students over $1.25 million in just the 2011-12 academic year, and over $5.5 million since 2011.
The main goal of the Maricopa Millions Open Education Resources (OER) Project is to reduce educational costs for students. Spending less money on textbooks and materials will foster greater access to materials for students, which may enable them to stay on track with completing their courses.
The Maricopa Millions OER Project includes developing a strategic, sustainable OER infrastructure that would include: awareness, professional development, OER development and technical support, marketing and technical structure. In order for OER to be successful at MCCCD, we have established an OER strategic planning and implementation team to establish and oversee specific OER outcomes over the next 5 years.
The driving objective for the project is to save MCCCD students $5 Million Dollars over the next five years through the use of OER materials. And we’ve already reached our goal in 2 1/2 years, but we’re not stopping there.
This Maricopa Millions OER project, through an internal grant process, supports the adoption, adaptation, and development of complete OER course materials for high enrollment courses in the MCCCD. The final product will be OER course materials that can be easily adopted and modified by other faculty (including adjuncts) teaching that course. Phase 1-3 targeted high enrollment courses. In Phase 4-6 we welcomed all courses to be submitted for the grant.
In Phase 7 we continue to welcome all courses to be submitted for the grant with emphasis on courses that meet degree completion requirements for CS, Oral Communication, Critical Reading, H or G. Keep in mind, most math courses and the following courses (ENG091, ENG101, ENG102, RDG091, CHM130LL, GBS151, PSY101, PSY230, BIO156,BIO160, CHM130, CHM150/151/152, HES100, SPA101 and SWU292) are not eligible, as they have already been funded and/or developed.
Proposals are due by
5pm on
Wednesday, November 9, 2016. Group proposals will be accepted and are encouraged.
For more information regarding the OER Development Grant program, please visit our website.
This program is open to residential and adjunct faculty teaching at the MCCCD and will be open to all courses in Phase 7 of the grant program.
We loved Gold Star – it ran over 5 years and many of you designed amazing online courses using Quality Matters as your guide. Like any program though, it had a life span and in its last semester we had only three applications to the program. So we revised and started a new. We did not abandon QM though – designing a QM course is still a possibility in the new program but we transitioned to eVenture. This program is designed to champion and foster some college initiatives around teaching and learning including: Flipping the classroom for a more engaged class time, OER to reduce textbook costs for students and allow faculty more freedom to design their course specific to their preferences rather than a publisher preference, and many more.
eVenture is intended to be a personal action research project for faculty. The 
idea being we engage in at least 10 hours of professional development around a topic and then create something for our course(s) based on that new knowledge. This can be learning about Flipped and how to flip (technically) then designing your course and making your online lectures. One of the culminating milestones for our project participants is our eVenture Showcase.
One thing we often heard about previous programs was time to put into the project so each eVenture session includes some summer time to allow for more time without so many teaching responsibilities. The program runs January – June 15 and July 1 – Dec. 15. We just finished our first eVenture program session.
If you did not get a chance to stop by and see the amazing projects our eVenturers undertook be certain you do next time. In the meantime enjoy some photos and be on the watch out for our short eVenture interviews as faculty talk about their work. Whats your next eVenture?
We are pleased to inform you that the UDOIT Canvas accessibility inspection tool is now available to scan and address accessibility issues within your Canvas course!
Please review the following resources to assist you in accessing and using UDOIT to improve the accessibility of your courses:
As always, contact us with any questions you may have and we will be happy to assist.
What is UDOIT?
The Universal Design Online content Inspection Tool, or UDOIT (pronounced, “You Do It”) enables faculty to identify accessibility issues in Canvas. It will scan a course, generate a report, and provide resources on how to address common accessibility issues.
What does it do?
UDOIT will identify “errors” and provide “suggestions” in the following areas of your course:
- Announcements
- Assignments
- Discussions
- Files (i.e., .html files)
- Pages
- Syllabus
- Module URLs
It will check for the appropriate use of the following:
- Use of headings in page structure
- Alternative text for images
- Table headers
- Color contrast
- Descriptive link text
- Video captions
It’s only Tuesday!
There are many more fun activities to engage in at the CTL this week! Here is a quick look:
Wednesday 9/14
- 2:30-4:00 9 Formative Assessment Techniques for Online Courses – Hosted webcast in the CTL
- 4:00 – 4:45 Communicate with Google Email: Come and discover some tips to optimize your communication via email by using labels, filters, customizing your inbox, and so much more.
Thursday 9/15
- (12:00-12:45) Lunch n Learn: Spanish: Do you want to learn basic Spanish? ¿Si habla un poco de español y quiere practicar o aprender más? All MCC faculty and staff are invited to engage in an informal learning experience to practice fundamental Spanish. Speakers of various levels may join the workshop at any time. You are welcome to bring lunch.
- (1:30-2:15) Canvas Commons: Canvas Commons is Instructure’s learning object repository for Canvas cloud customers. It has been turned on for MCCCD starting in Fall 2016. Commons allows you to share parts or all of your course content and to use lessons, quizzes, and even entire courses shared by other Commons users in the Canvas community.
- (1:30-2:30) Explore: Flipping the Classroom: Log in and discover what it means to “Flip the Classroom.” This webinar will cover an overview what Flipping is and how it can be valuable and encourage engagement in the classroom.
Friday 9/16
- (2:30-4:00) Lesson Design Series: Collaborative Learning: Would you like to design engaging lessons for students to construct knowledge through authentic learning experiences? Do your lessons and assignments align to course competencies? In this 5-part workshop series, participants will apply knowledge of effective lesson construction to refine or create content-based lessons. Participants who complete all five workshops will receive a badge and certificate of completion. Collaboration in the classroom offers opportunity for students to interact with content and peers to make-meaning of new knowledge. Practice and apply learner-centered approaches for students to solve problems and make-meaning of course content in work groups.
Register or show up – we don’t care – just join in the new experiences and contribute to the conversation!
MCC’s CTL will offer several workshops to support faculty and staff with best practices for instruction and work routines. Topics include Foundations of Course Design, Canvas tools (beginner and intermediate), and Change in Practice with Google applications. This fall the CTL will also offer accessibility training for all faculty. Departments have been designated two training dates in a given week for all residential and adjunct faculty to attend one training. Techniques from this training should be applied to all instructional design and will be useful during the Canvas course audit for accessibility. Workshop details are available on the CTL calendar.
Join us for Lunch & Learn: Spanish on Mondays and Thursdays this semester starting on August 29th in AS191. This informal workshop is offered to all MCC faculty and staff. Drop-in anytime and bring a sack lunch to learn and practice conversational Spanish.
The CTL will be closed
Tuesday July 26th at 12:00 noon
For department planning.
Thank you for your patience as we strive to plan how we can best support you this upcoming year!
The CTL Team
On June 30, Maricopa launches a new teaching and learning tool within Canvas called Commons. A team faculty, library, eLearning and Center for Teaching and Learning staff from across the District collaborated to bring this new learning objects component to Canvas.
What is Commons?
Commons is an addition to Maricopa’s current Canvas license that allows the sharing, discovering, and reusing of learning activities and objects in a seamless and easy-to-use environment. Using Commons, faculty (and users with teacher and designer access to Canvas courses) will be able to search for relevant materials from personal, institutional or public learning object repositories. This means they can design courses and activities (modules, assignments and quizzes) without creating materials from scratch or pulling them from external sources.
Commons will also offer a platform to share resources and content expertise within Maricopa and a wider educational community, a tremendous asset for sharing template courses, assignments, and more.
As an added student benefit, Commons will deepen Maricopa’s commitment to the Open Educational Resources (OER) Maricopa Millions project by providing a platform where Maricopa Millions OER resources can be shared and showcased.
Learn more about Commons (Overview Video).
Will this change Canvas?
The Commons feature is very unobtrusive and will not change how faculty design or teach courses in Canvas. For users who have teacher or designer-level access to Canvas, a new global navigation menu will appear that says “Commons.” Students will not see the Commons option.
Where can I learn more?
There are great resources to get you ready for this exciting tool.
Commons Community
Commons Guides
Subscribe to the Commons Newsletter
Enroll in the Welcome to Commons Course
Will training be offered?
MCC will offer training on how to use Commons, as well as best practices for sharing and using Commons materials (copyright and content licensing). Please look for additional campus announcements from the MCC Center for Teaching and Learning and via the MCC Intranet for more information about training opportunities.
If you have any questions, contact the MCC Center for Teaching and Learning: ctl@mesacc.edu or 480-461-7331
