CTL Blog

Canvas Updates Feb 9

Canvas Updates Week of Feb 9

SIS (CS9) Go-Live & Canvas

As you may be aware, Maricopa’s Student Information System (SIS) is being upgraded soon!  SIS will not be available to users between Friday, February 13 and Monday, February 16.  This update will have no affect on Canvas and students and faculty will see no difference in their online classrooms.

Alert your students! Accessing Canvas! Some students access Canvas via the My.Maricopa portal “Student Tools”. This will be unavailable during the planned downtime. Canvas will still be accessible from the Mesa Community College web site (top menu) and directly from learn.maricopa.edu or maricopa.instructure.com.

Other issues: Faculty will not be able to view their course rosters in SIS or make changes to student drops/withdrawals during this time. Students will not be able to able to add/drop classes, pay for classes or view financial aid during this time.

Additional information for faculty:

its.maricopa.edu/helpdesk/sis-cs9-go-live-information

Additional information for students:

my.maricopa.edu/sisinfo or the FAQ page.

Update: Canvas Access & Enrollment Issues

On Thursday, January 22nd an outage occurred that affected faculty and student access to Canvas and Canvas courses. The district will soon provide a detailed report regarding the incident including the underlying cause and plans to prevent future issues.

What is important to note is that this was not an issue with Canvas itself. It was a disruption in how our MCCCD systems (SIS) communicate enrollment to Canvas. While MCCCD had lost access to Canvas during this period, Canvas itself was still available outside of our system. Canvas continues to be very stable, with over 99% up-times. 

How can I know if there is an issue with Canvas?
To check the status of Canvas subscribe to Canvas Status Updates. If no issue is being reported it is likely an issue with service at MCCCD. These outages will be communicated via email.

Are all the MCCCD classes and enrollments restored?
Yes, all SIS driven courses and enrollment should be restored at this time. The majority of manually created and development courses should also be restored. If you find that you do not have access to a particular course, please contact the MCC Center for Teaching and Learning at ctl@mesacc.edu.

Is there anything I can do to protect my course materials?
We do not anticipate that this problem will reoccur, however, best practice is for you to back-up your work at least once per semester.

Export your course at the end of the semester.

Download your course gradebook a few times during the semester.

Canvas Update Cycle

Canvas is on a 3-week update-release cycle. The next beta (preview) release is on 2/9, production notes will follow on 2/17 with the release and documentation to follow on 2/21. For information about Canvas updates follow the release page.

Please contact the MCC Center for Teaching & Learning if you have any questions or would like support using Canvas.

What’s New in Canvas?

Here are some highlights of the recent and pending changes to Canvas including a summary of the most recent production release on January 31st and the beta release on February 9th.

February 9th Beta Release

The Canvas beta environment is for trying new features, which are subject to change based on user feedback and the results of testing. In this release look for updates to the gradebook menus, outcomes and files area to make it easier to manage your work flow.

Read the Beta Release notes for details. To try the features, log-in to our beta environment at https://maricopa.beta.instructure.com/login with your MEID/Password.

Remember this is not a live environment so do not teach your course from this site. Note: The beta environment will be more sluggish than production (live) Canvas and resets every few weeks. Not all features in beta are available at MCCCD. Placing a feature in beta does not guarantee it will be part of the upcoming production release. Please view the February 21, 2015 Production Release Notes (published February 17) for complete release details.

January 31st Release, New Quiz Statistics

Canvas has added a new statistic interface to review quiz results and some new settings to make it easier for instructors to structure the options to deliver a quiz. The new features include:

• A statistical summary that shows all score percentages (average, high, low and standard deviation), as well as the average time of completion.
• A clearer statistical interface for reviewing the breakdown the results for each question including bars relating to the percentage of each answer choice.
• A new discrimination index for True/False and Multiple Choice questions and distribution scaling for Fill-in-Multiple Blanks, Multiple Dropdowns and Matching Questions.
• Additional settings for managing quizzes that allow more than one attempt, such as restriction options for showing correct answers after the last attempt.

Learn More:
New Quiz Statistics
Quiz Settings Options

Other Updates & Bug Fixes

Review the full January 31st Production Release Notes for details of all the recent changes to Canvas including the Bug Fixes. Want to ask Canvas to consider a feature option? All Canvas users are encouraged to make feature requests that can benefit the teaching and learning environment of the Canvas tool. Learn more about making Feature Requests.

Canvas “On-the-Go”! – Mobile (Android & iOS) Updates

Review the latest release notes for each mobile platform. Android update featuring sent messages/user bios and iOS update featuring favorite courses management.

Did You Know?
Attend InstructureCon 2015

Each June Instructure, the makers of Canvas, hosts their annual conference – InstructureCon. This dynamic and exciting conference will be held June 16-18, 2015 at the Canyons Resort in Park City, Utah. This year the conference will celebrate its 5th Anniversary!

Who should attend?

The conference is open to K12 educators, college faculty, administrators and IT professionals. In addition to the keynote speakers and general presentations, helpful and informative breakout sessions are offered by educational professionals, vendors and Canvas employees on a variety of subjects including:

• basics
• advanced user tips
• innovative uses
• design strategies
• pedagogy best practices
• technical integrations
• 3rd party tools
• and more!

Attendees can also depend on a fun-filled event that typically includes lots of free Canvas gear, special product announcements, entertainment, networking opportunities, etc. Watch videos from last year’s conference to see what you can experience if you choose to attend the Canvas event of the year!

Will the college pay for my attendance?

Professional Growth dollars are available for all policy groups. Carefully review the options at the MCCCD Human Resource web site. DO NOT register for the event without funding pre-approval.

Can the MCC CTL help me?

Yes! The CTL is happy to discuss the event with you and can direct you to the relevant Professional Growth Resources to help you apply for funding.

Contact the CTL:
clt@mesacc.edu or
(480) 461-7331

Learn more about InstructureCon.

Learn Canvas

Sneak Peak of the Canvas Commons

Share the love with Canvas this week in honor of Valentine’s Day and get a sneak peak at Commons, currently in beta, and available only at select schools. The Canvas Commons is a learning object repository (LOR) where the best ideas, courses and curriculum can be freely shared — all seamlessly integrated into the Canvas LMS environment. This special course will give you an opportunity to share and search Commons, while having some Valentine’s fun! 

Register Now

NOTE: You will be prompted to create a new username and password (regardless if you have another canvas account). To access the course after registering you will need to enter the resources.instructure.com web address.

Course Design Series at MCC

Join the MCC Center for Teaching & Learning for our three-part Course Design Series that focuses on the best practices in course design pedagogy to engage learners and promote student success. Sessions begin February 13th. Take this opportunity to participate in a highly engaging and collegial process of mapping and aligning your course and building informative assessments linked to your learning objectives! Sessions may be taken in a series or as individual stand-alone opportunities! Tips and tricks for designing courses in Canvas will also be explored! Review the full schedule for details!

Course building teams welcome! Faculty Professional Growth (FPG) Approved!

Online Resources, Tutorials & Guides for Faculty

• Canvas 101 is an open enrollment course that will walk you through the basics of setting up a new course in Canvas. To enroll, simply click on the “Join this course” button on the Course Home Page. There is no facilitator, but it is a good series of self-paced exercises for faculty wanting to learn Canvas basics.

• Canvas 102 Demo Videos Pt.1-3 is a comprehensive 3 hour video presentation of all things Canvas for instructors.

• Canvas Guides are available that cover all major features of Canvas by question topic. They are easy to navigate and mostly image-based walk thru demonstrations of how to use a particular feature.

• MCC Center for Teaching & Learning How-To Documents include a variety of helpful how-to guides such as the Getting Started with Canvas in 10 Steps resource.

• MCCCD Canvas Help Area provides how-to documents, and support information to all Canvas users, students and faculty.

CanvasLive Webinars

CanvasLIVE is a free webinar series designed to give Canvas users additional training and a place for members of the Canvas community to share their knowledge. Each session includes a quick tutorial and overview on a Canvas tool or feature, followed by a focused demonstration and a short Q&A. Sessions are archived so if you are not able to attend a live session you can still benefit from the presentation.

• Check out all of the upcoming sessions on the CanvasLIVE Schedule currently featuring the Commons (2/9 – 2/14), Designing Courses with Measurable Objectives (2/19), Feedback (3/5) and more!
• Check out the forum which includes all CanvasLIVE Archives
• Have an idea for a future CanvasLIVE webinar? Click to Suggest a Future Topic

Keep Learning Blog

Keep Learning is an education technology blogging project created by the makers of Canvas, Instructure. The purpose of the blog is to engage educators in meaningful dialog around educational technology. Posts are written by educators and technologists around the world. If you would like to contribute, send an email to jared@instructure.com or just visit the site and Learn. Teach. Share.

Urgent Canvas User Alert

Issue Affecting Canvas

As you may be aware Maricopa’s authentication system to Canvas was disrupted yesterday, which meant that neither students nor faculty could log in to Canvas. First, thank you for your tremendous patience as the district Canvas support team worked to resolve the issues. We know that it must have been a frustrating and confusing time for our students, faculty, and staff.

All login issues have been resolved, so students and faculty should now have complete access to their Spring 2015 courses. If you or your students are still experiencing issues accessing Canvas or current Canvas courses, please contact help support:

Student Support:
MCC HelpCenter at (480) 461-7217

Faculty Support:
MCC Center for Teaching & Learning at (480) 461-7331

Accessing Older SIS & Manual Courses

At this time, users may not have access to:

• SIS courses prior to Spring 2013,
• developmental shells,
• practice courses
• training courses or
• non-academic “courses”.

The MCC Center for Teaching & Learning will have to manually enroll faculty and staff into these courses. To assist us in this endeavor, please follow these steps:

1. Login with your MEID/Password to the Canvas beta environment, https://maricopa.beta.instructure.com  before February 9th. NOTE:  The link provided is for the BETA environment.  You cannot teach from these courses.
2. Take a screenshot or type a detailed list (include entire name) of your developmental, practice, training or non-academic courses. If you want access to older SIS courses (prior to Spring 2013), please include them in the list as well. 
3. Email your course list with your MEID to the CTL at ctl@mesacc.edu.

Because this will be a manual and time consuming process, we respectfully ask that you only send us the name of courses that you must have access to at this time. These would be courses that you still use on a day-to-day basis or are required to support programs.

The deadline of 2/9 is important because on that date beta will reset (you will lose access to the list of those courses as well making it difficult for us to reconnect you). If we determine there is a better strategy for the restoration of manual enrollments, we will let you know.

Again, thank you for your patience.  We do recognize this is terrible timing and inconvenient, but we are asking for your support as we try to resolve this issue calmly and quickly.

Questions? Concerns?

Contact the Center for Teaching & Learning at ctl@mesacc.edu or (480) 461-7331.

Canvas Updates – Spring 2015

Important Semester Start Notices

Welcome to Spring 2015 at Mesa Community College! Canvas is the Learning Management System used by 9 of the 10 Maricopa Community Colleges. Whether you are a first-time or ongoing Canvas User please carefully review these updates for best practice information related to semester start-up, recent updates/fixes and training options.

Please contact the MCC Center for Teaching & Learning if you have any questions or would like support using Canvas.

Course Copy

Copying your course from semester to semester is 1, 2, 3 easy. Please see our copy guidelines to get you started.

• Important Copy Options – Don’t forget to consider your options to Select Migration Content AND to Adjust Events and Due Dates so you can take only what you need and save yourself some time moving assignment dates. You can also elect to remove all dates.
• Don’t wait around! – Depending on the size of your course, the copy process may be ‘Queued’ and take from a few minutes to an hour. Feel free to leave the copy page or logout of Canvas while the copy is being made. To verify the status of the copy return to the Import Page.
• Copy Status – After the course copy, check the status. Carefully review any errors reported and take corrective action. Errors will most often be related to broken links or empty pages found in the copy process.
• Date & Time Verification – Review all the dates (assignment due and availability dates) and times tomake sure that they are accurate. You can use the Canvas Calendar to quickly move due dates for assignments.

Course Publish

Don’t forget to publish your course to make it available to students. You can find the publish dialog box on the home page. To publish the course find Select Publish and follow the screen prompts. Once a course is published you can continue to make changes and updates as needed. Courses cannot be unpublished. Directions for publishing courses.

Canvas Update Cycle

Canvas is on a 3-week update-release cycle. The next beta (preview) release is on 1/19, production notes will follow on 1/26 with the release and documentation to follow on 1/31. For information about Canvas updates follow the release page.

What’s New in Canvas?

Canvas completed a series of production releases in December with new and improved features. Here are some highlights of the new features, including a summary of the most recent release on January 10th.

Canvas Conversations – Assignment Submission Comments Revealed

• Clear indicators for each message (name of the user, the time the message was sent, and the number of messages in the conversation).
• A manual marking of read or unread comments. Messages can also be filtered by course.
• Reply options from the inbox that are also posted to the assignment grading/submission areas.

Learn More:
Filtering Conversations
Replying to Submission Comments

Grades – Last Name First!

Instructors can view names in the Gradebook by a new feature option known as Sortable Name. Sortable name will present student names in the Gradebook by last name then first name. Click the column header to sort names in ascending or descending order. Note: This is a course-level feature option. To enable this feature go to each course and open the Settings > Features > Gradebook – List Students by Sortable Name.

 Learn More:

Enabling Course-Level Features
Sortable Name Feature Option

Learn More:
New Quiz Statistics (Updates on January 31)
Quiz Settings Options

Other Updates & Bug Fixes

Review the December 6th, December 20th and January 10th full Production Release Notes for details of all the recent changes to Canvas including the Bug Fixes. Want to ask Canvas to consider a feature option? All Canvas users are encouraged to make feature requests that can benefit the teaching and learning environment of the Canvas tool. Learn more about making Feature Requests.

Canvas “On-the-Go”! – Mobile (Android & iOS) Updates

Review the latest release notes for each mobile platform. Android update featuring revised navigation and iOS update featuring favorite courses management.

Did You Know? $100k in Grants Available from Canvas

Canvas is offering five grants of $10K for innovative ideas that address lossless learning in face-to-face, blended, hybrid, or flipped classrooms.

Submission Deadline:January 23, 2015.

What is lossless learning?
Loss of quality feedback lowers the quality of learning. In lossless learning the focus is on maximizing feedback so we don’t lose an opportunity to engage and retain learners. Learn more about Lossless Learning.

Ideas for innovative “lossless” projects

Instruction
Using media to capture direct instruction.

Participation
Strategies for engaging and involving all learners.

Engagement
Capturing the attention of students through active learning strategies.

Assessment & Feedback
Giving students opportunities to demonstrate learning.

Grant proposals should demonstrate the:

-Potential for practical application

-Adherence to open standards

-Breadth of application or reusability of submission

-Innovation/Wow! factor

Can the MCC CTL help?

Yes! The CTL is happy to discuss your grant ideas.

Contact the CTL:
clt@mesacc.edu or
(480) 461-7331.

Submit a
Proposal Now!

Canvas Training at MCC

The CTL is your partner as you implement innovative teaching, learning and workplace strategies. From general support, to consultation services, and/or tailored workshops, we are here to help you, your department, program or division reach your goals for student success.The CTL provides day-to-day support for faculty and staff on technology, teaching and productivity issues including Canvas. We offer Canvas services through appointments, workshops and customized sessions for departments or functional groups. Stop by our offices, send us an email or give us a call. We are here for you!

View our learning opportunity calendar.
Visit us on the web at ctl.mesacc.edu.
Email us at ctl@mesacc.edu
Call us at (480) 461-7331

Online Resources, Tutorials & Guides for Faculty

• Canvas 101 is an open enrollment course that will walk you through the basics of setting up a new course in Canvas. To enroll, simply click on the “Join this course” button on the Course Home Page. There is no facilitator, but it is a good series of self-paced exercises for faculty wanting to learn Canvas basics.

• Canvas 102 Demo Videos Pt.1-3 is a comprehensive 3 hour video presentation of all things Canvas for instructors.

• Canvas Guides are available that cover all major features of Canvas by question topic. They are easy to navigate and mostly image-based walk thru demonstrations of how to use a particular feature.

• MCC Center for Teaching & Learning How-To Documents include a variety of helpful how-to guides such as the Getting Started with Canvas in 10 Steps resource.

• MCCCD Canvas Help Area provides how-to documents, and support information to all Canvas users, students and faculty.

CanvasLive Webinars

CanvasLIVE is a free webinar series designed to give Canvas users additional training and a place for members of the Canvas community to share their knowledge. Each session includes a quick tutorial and overview on a Canvas tool or feature, followed by a focused demonstration and a short Q&A. Sessions are archived so if you are not able to attend a live session you can still benefit from the presentation.

• Check out all of the upcoming sessions on the CanvasLIVE Schedule
• Check out the forum which includes all CanvasLIVE Archives
• Have an idea for a future CanvasLIVE webinar? Click to Suggest a Future Topic

Keep Learning Blog

Keep Learning is an education technology blogging project created by the makers of Canvas, Instructure. The purpose of the blog is to engage educators in meaningful dialog around educational technology. Posts are written by educators and technologists around the world. If you would like to contribute, send an email to jared@instructure.com or just visit the site and Learn. Teach. Share.