Tag Archive: training
Don’t Miss Out! Canvas Conversations: Creating Your Masterpiece Program Announced
Hosted by Gateway Community College
Gateway Community College, Copper Room
Friday, January 31, 2014
9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Register Today: http://mcli.maricopa.edu/events/canvas-conversationsconference
Description: Please join us for the 2nd Annual Canvas Conversations. Now that nine colleges have officially migrated to Canvas, it is time to reflect on our experiences, learn best practices and fine-tune your Canvas courses. Faculty will present their lessons learned, engage in round-table conversations and dialogue with Canvas experts.
Conference Program:
| Time |
Event |
Location |
| 8:15 am |
Registration Begins |
Outside Copper Room(IE 1302) |
| 9:00 am – 9:15 am |
Welcome from Gateway Community College |
Copper Room |
| 9:15 am – 10:00 am |
Webinar from InstructureHear about Canvas updates from the Instructure crew. |
Copper Room |
| 10:15 am – 11:00 am |
Concurrent Sessions |
Reference Schedule Below |
| 11:15 am – 12:00 pm |
Roundtable Topics |
Copper Room |
| 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm |
LunchLunch generously hosted by MCLI and SMCC |
Copper Room/Outside(your choice) |
| 1:00 pm – 1:45 pm |
Concurrent Sessions |
Reference Schedule Below |
| 2:00 pm – 2:45 pm |
Concurrent Sessions |
Reference Schedule Below |
| 2:45 pm – 3:00 pm |
Closing remarks and raffle prizesTurn in your name badge at 2:45 in the Copper Room for a chance to win great prizes, including a massage, lunch at the PC Cafe Oso and Canvas swag. Must be present to win! |
Copper Room |
Important Canvas User Semester Start Notices
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.
- Don’t wait around! – Depending on the size of your course, the copy process can 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.
- Error Check – Canvas added a copy error notice this Fall. 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 – After the course copy review all the dates and time to make sure that they are accurate. Canvas automatically adjusts for Daylight Savings Time. Because Arizona does not observe DST, some assignments dates and times may change incorrectly. Canvas is working to resolve this problem, but until then be sure to check and correct any issues. Learn more from the November 19 Update.
Course Publish
Don’t forget to publish your course to make it available to students. 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.
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Important Notices
Check Your Course Deadlines!
Most of the United States observes a custom know as Daylight Savings Time. Software is often adjusted to account for these changes, making it easier for course information to transition when the clock does. In Arizona we do not observe Daylight Savings Time and this can be a challenging exception when programming software. Currently users have been experiencing a change in times throughout Canvas where time deadlines are concerned. Users may experience issues with assignment due dates, release deadlines, module locks and other time specific operations within Canvas.
What is happening?
Deadlines may shift by 1 hour earlier then scheduled. This will most likely occur during a course migration/copy process from Fall to Spring when using the Adjust Events and Due Dates Feature. It may also occur when creating assignments with deadlines past March 10.
What is Canvas going to do about it? When will it be fixed? This is not acceptable!
Canvas is aware of the issue and their engineers are working on it. There is currently no ETA for the fix, but we are continuing to follow-up and monitor the issue to make sure it is resolved quickly.
What should I do?
For now it’s simply a matter of making sure the dates and times are correct and fixing those that displaying the wrong date/time manually. Any adjustments made to the incorrect deadlines should remain fixed and you should not experience additional time changing issues. If you need assistance with this process, please contact the MCC Center for Teaching & Learning at ctl@mesacc.edu.
Time to Transition to the New Calendar
Canvas will be slowly removing support for the old calendar. This means that you may experience issues with dates appearing wrong on the old calendar even when you make adjustments. Learn more:
Old vs. New Calendar Overview
Video Tutorial: Using the New Calendar
Chrome 30 Blocks Mixed Content
Chrome has recently updated their security to block mixed content. This means that unsecured multimedia content within Canvas will not display without user action. Learn how to allow blocked content .To keep up with all the latest browser updates visit the Canvas Browser Support Guide. This guide will be continuously revised and is a great resource to share with students.
Canvas Update Cycle
Canvas is on a 3-week update-release cycle. The beta release notes for this next cycle were available on 11/25, production notes will follow on 12/02 with the release and documentation to follow on 12/07. For information about Canvas updates follow the release page.
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Mark Your Calendars
Mark your calendars and plan to join MCCCD for the 2nd Annual Canvas Conversations event January 31, 2014 from 9 am to 3 pm at GateWay Community College.
This all day event will focus on all things Canvas. Opportunities for everyone – from beginner to advanced! Participate in:
- Roundtables
- Hands-on workshops
- Show and tell
This event is open to all Maricopa faculty and staff. Don’t delay – take a minute to register today!
Submit a Proposal to Present
In addition, we know you are doing awesome work in Canvas; please consider submitting a proposal today to share your ideas and expertise!
C.A.F.E. (Cafe = Colloquy for Adjunct Faculty Experience) is an Mesa Community College Adjunct Faculty Development program sponsored by the Office of the Vice President of Academic Affairs and Coordinated by the Center for Teaching and Learning.
Who is Eligible for C.A.F.E.?
You must a adjunct faculty member currently teaching at Mesa Community College to be eligible for the C.A.F.E. Program. You must also submit the C.A.F.E. Program Form.
Earning C.A.F.E. Credits & Payment Information
Participants may earn up to just shy of $300 per academic year (a maximum of 11 credit hours) based on attendance at C.A.F.E. approved sessions offered by the MCC Center for Teaching & Learning. Funding is limited and priority will be given to first-time C.A.F.E. participants until funding for the year is exhausted. Payment for accumulated credits will be made toward the end of the fall and spring semesters (based on the availability of funds). Attendance at eligible sessions will be verified via the CTL and/or District online registration systems and signup sheets. You must sign-in attend an entire session to receive credit. Learn more about the Program.
Applying for the Program
Persons interested in earning C.A.F.E. credit must submit a form to receive payment based on the eligibility criteria. Forms submitted after the deadlines above will not be considered for credit. Credit cannot be carried over from one semester OR academic year to another. For the Fall 2013 application, sessions designated as C.A.F.E. from August 10 – September 13 may be included. Repeat attendance will not be considered for funding. Applicants must be currently teaching as adjunct faculty at MCC to receive payment under the program conditions. The deadline for C.A.F.E. program forms for the Fall semester is Friday, November 16, 5:00PM.
To be considered for C.A.F.E. Program funding you must complete the C.A.F.E. Credit Form by Friday, November 16 at 5:00PM.
You can view your training summary (training transcript) in HRMS (Time & Labor). Any training you have taken with the CTL is listed as part of your Learning & Development Training Summary under Self-Service. Verify your training is designated as C.A.F.E. in the CTL Schedule. Only sessions attended from August 10 – September 13 will be considered in the Fall application cycle.
Important Notices
Try the New Canvas Conversations
Canvas has released a New Conversation Inbox to make it easier for students and instructors to communicate as easily and intuitively as possible. The New Conversation is a beta feature that you can opt into. To try the new interface, from the question mark on the far right side of the inbox, choose Try New Conversations from the menu.
The new interface is cleaner and clearer to navigate behaving more like email. Some of the new and improved features are:
- a new composition window in the middle of your screen
- course labels for messages to filter recipients by course
- subject lines for messages
- message search by user name
- quicklinks to compose or sort from messages
- customizable course drop down menu to organize inbox messages
See these Canvas Guides for basic conversation help:
Inbox organization.
Compose a new message.
Filter messages.
Canvas Update Cycle
Canvas is on a 3-week update-release cycle. The beta release notes for this next cycle were available on 9/23, production notes will follow on 9/30 with the release and documentation to follow on 10/5. For information about Canvas updates follow the release page.
Recent Updates
Group Assignments
Managing Group Assignments has just gotten easier. When downloading a group assignment, Canvas will download ONLY one copy of each group submission. In addition the assignment file name will include the group name making it easier to identify. Comments and re-uploads of group assignments will be sent to each member of the group making it more efficient to provide valuable feedback. These group assignment options do not apply if instructors choose to assign grades to each student individually.
Quick Reference on using the Canvas Group Feature.
Downloading assignments from Canvas.
Quiz Regrade
Instructors can now edit quiz questions and tell Canvas to update grades for students who have already taken the quiz. When changing the answer on a multiple choice or true/false quiz question for quizzes in progress, instructors will have one of four additional options:
- Award points for both corrected and previously correct answers (no scores will be reduced)
- Only award points for the corrected answer (some students’ scores may be reduced)
- Give everyone full credit for this question
- Update question without regrading
Canvas Conferences – Recording Feature Available!
Canvas now offers a free tier of BigBlueButton conference hosting to all customers. As part of this plan, conferences can be recorded and will be available for 14 days after the conference is completed. This free conference tier also provides users with the latest features of BigBlueButton which include:
- Recording of all activity in a session
- Simplified interface for users
- Layout manager to easily switch layouts
- Text tool for whiteboard
Learn more about Canvas Conferences in the Canvas Guides:
What are Conferences?
Creating Conferences.
Recording Conferences.
Upcoming Features Preview
Grade One Question at a Time
Instead of grading quizzes student-by-student, instructors will be able opt to grade quizzes by quiz question. This will make it easier in grading essay and short answer quiz questions when the rest of a quiz is self-grading. This new feature will be the first of several planned improvements to SpeedGrader™. Question grading will be an opt-in feature. Learn more about this and other upcoming features.
To try question grading and other upcoming features, login to the MCCCD Canvas Beta Environment at http://maricopa.beta.instructure.com with your MEID and MEID Password.
Remember that the Beta environment is where Canvas tests out new features without interfering with the production or live software. If the tests go well the features are added to the production version of Canvas. You can interact with your course in Beta to see how upcoming changes may look and feel when released in production.
Did You Know?
New Canvas Tutorials Available
Canvas has released some new and exciting training videos.
New Instructor Videos
The Instructor overview course video is designed for people who are new to Canvas and want to get started. The concepts are presented in the order that new users often have questions about.
Student Videos
Canvas is continuing to update the student orientation video series this week. Look for one or two new videos everyday.
Canvas Guides
Canvas continues to expand its library of online guides for assisting students and instructors with Canvas features. The guides are organized by feature for example Assignments, Quizzes, Conversations, etc. Topics are presented as common questions and a search feature makes it easy to find a guide on a particular subject. The guides include both written step-by-step instructions as well as illustrations. The topics are broken down into manageable bite size lessons.
Best Practice Tip: Include a link to relevant student guides throughout your course to help students with “just in time” support. For example, in a discussion topic include the link to the relevant student guide that assists them in posting discussion replies.
Here is a quicklink to the Canvas Guides:
Student Guides
Instructor Guides
Video Guides
You will also find mobile phone and tablet guides for instructors and students.
Canvas Learning Opportunities
CanvasLIVE
CanvasLIVE is a free webinar series designed to give Canvas users additional training and an opportunity to share their knowledge with the community. Each session includes a brief tutorial on a Canvas tool or feature, focused demonstration, and a short Q&A with Canvas experts.
Upcoming Sessions:
- 10 Things Instructors Should Know About Assignments, Thursday, September 26 9:00am MDT (Register)
Canvas assignment activities (a.k.a. graded activities) can come in the form of quizzes, discussions and assignments. When creating assignments for your class, you have many options from which to choose. This session will address the 10 things you should know about assignments. Facilitator: Biray Seitz, Instructure
- Open Q & A on Assignments, Thursday, September 26, 2:00pm MDT (Register) This session is a Q & A related to assignments. A Canvas trainer will address any questions related to the assignment tool in Canvas. Facilitators: Canvas Trainers
- 4 Ways Rubrics Can Enhance Student Feedback, Tuesday, October 15, 9:00am MDT (Register)
Rubric is an assessment tool for communicating expectations of quality. They are a way to set up custom or Outcome-based assessment criteria for scoring. This session will address ways to set up and administer rubrics in your course in an effort to enhance student feedback. Facilitator: Biray Seitz, Instructure
Webinars are open to everyone. Click here to see all upcoming CanvasLIVE sessions.
MCC Learning Opportunities
Mark your calendar for our 2nd Annual Fall Tech & Teach week October 21 – 25, 2013. The Fall Tech & Teach fest is a week of activities to support teaching & learning at MCC. The week will consist of sessions, discussions and other events that address excellence in education, technology, teaching and learning.
MCC Center for Teaching & Learning How-To Documents – Review our helpful how-to guides including Getting Started with Canvas in 10 Steps.
Are you interested in just-in-time training for yourself or your students?
Lynda.com is the premier resource for online software training. Their comprehensive catalog includes a variety of software such as the Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.), Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, etc.), Google (Gmail, Calendar, etc.) and much, much more!
Learn more about Lynda.com for campus learning solutions.
This trial will help Mesa Community College determine if Lynda.com can meet our just-in-time needs for software training including supplemental tutorials for students and more.Trial participants will be expected to provide feedback to the college on their experience with Lynda.com via a survey. The trial is expected to last 2 weeks and may be extended.
Contact the Center for Teaching & Learning for more information, ctl@mesacc.edu.
Take Our Learning Survey
Please help the MCC Center for Teaching & Learning plan our session offerings for the 4th Annual Camp Innovate and the Summer 2013. Please take our Learning Opportunities Survey which includes a list of teaching and technology resources, programs and activities that the CTL may offer. Please review each category and let us know what type of learning opportunities you are most interested in. Thank you!
Upcoming Opportunities in the CTL
Register through HRMS (Time & Labor System)
Registration Instructions
Microsoft Office Excel
In this brief overview of the advanced features of Excel, learn how to use formulas to create dynamic datasheets that calculate sums and convert data to charts to visualize your data in new ways. Sessions available:
Tuesday, April 9
3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
MS Excel Pt. 2, Basic Formulas & Creating Charts
CTL Workshop Room, Course/Session#: 001770/0003
Wednesday, April 10
3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
MS Excel Pt. 2, Basic Formulas & Creating Charts
Red Mountain Campus; PV 209, Course/Session#: 001770/0004
Special Session: Lesson Design & Delivery (C.A.F.E. Eligible)
Friday, April 12
11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
CTL Workshop Room
Course/Session#: 001767/0003
This session will explore research-based instructional techniques to implement in any lesson design to support your learners of the 21st century. Components featured will be learning objectives, Bloom’s Taxonomy, scaffolding content to build background, increasing student interaction and integrating digital tools.
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Canvas Conversations
Please join our Maricopa Canvas Training Team for a fun, informative day of open learning sessions to assist you as we continue our transition to Canvas. The Canvas Conversations Day event is at South Mountain Community College, March 29th, 9:00am – 2:00pm. Come and go as you please, as you learn from your colleagues and MCCCD technical training team about everything Canvas!
Event Agenda
| Topics |
Room # |
| Canvas Overview9:30am-10:00am, 10:30am-11:00am, 11:30am-12:00pm, 1:00pm-1:30pm |
L162/L163 |
| Canvas AssessmentGrades, SpeedGrader, Rubrics, Quizzes, Assignments, Crocodoc |
BE151 |
| Canvas Communication and CollaborationConferences, Collaboration, Conversations, Announcements, Discussion Boards |
SMCL208 |
| Canvas Course DesignModules, Pages, Files, Instructional Alignment |
TC157 |
| Bye-Bye BlackboardGrade Center Backup, Content Retrieval, Export Quizzes, Export Content Collection |
L101Beginning at 11:30am |
| Odds and Ends – (I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know)Any general Canvas questions – Basic to Advanced |
BE150Beginning at 12:00pm |
| Birds of a Feather – Tips, Tricks, and FAQs |
SMCL235 |
Please review the attached flyer for event details, as well as a SM Campus Map, and restaurant ideas.
I Love Learning Week! February 9 – 15, 2013
Explore our love of all things teaching and learning here at Mesa Community College. From exciting Canvas Tools to teaching techniques that engage and motivate students, the Center for Teaching & Learning is your support and resource for innovative education technology and pedagogy. So skip the flowers and chocolates this Valentine’s Day and treat yourself to this fun and informative week of learning sessions!
Register Now Registration Instructions
Watch Our Ad!
Saturday, February 9, 2013
8:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Discovering Your Teaching True Colors (C.A.F.E. Credit, Weekend)
HRMS Course #001802, Session #0002; CTL Workshop Room AS Building
Discover your True Colors, a personality assessment based on the Myers-Briggs Inventory. This fun and interactive session will help you shape your classroom environment and activities to meet the needs of the full spectrum of students.
Monday, February 11, 2013
11:00a.m. – 12:00p.m. A Place for Games in the Online Classroom (C.A.F.E. Credit)
HRMS Course #001797, Session #0002; CTL Workshop Room AS Building
In this session, participants will learn how to incorporate games in the online classroom environment. Explore they way games can build student to student connections as well as student to instructor and content connections.
2:00p.m. – 3:00p.m. ShareStream: Integrating Rich Media into Your Classes (C.A.F.E. Credit)
HRMS Course #001847, Session #0001; CTL Workshop Room AS Building
Learn how MCC will use ShareStream to make media (rich video and audio files) easy to store and share with your classes both inside and outside of Canvas.
5:00p.m. – 7:00p.m. Working Together in Canvas: Peer Review & Groups (C.A.F.E. Credit, Evening)
HRMS Course #001841, Session #0002; CTL Workshop Room AS Building
Student-to-student interaction is critical to the learning experience in both face-to-face and online courses. Explore the tools in Canvas to build a variety of group experiences (informal study, projects, wikis) and allow students to provide valuable feedback to each other. The pedagogy of Group and Peer Review Assignments will also be discussed.
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