Food for Thought: Best Practices in Online Education from Other Institutions

Facing the prospect of teaching an online course necessarily elicits a focus on the elements of sound online course design. However, the fun isn’t over when the course is built. Face to face courses regularly require instructors to expend time and effort on classroom management; the same is true of online courses. In fact, some instructors find that online courses require more time and effort to facilitate than corresponding on-campus courses.

The links below explain the best practices adopted by a variety of institutions of higher education around the country. Take a look at the resources to mine their ideas and establish proactive procedures and habits to implement in your own courses.

Brown University

Penn State

Oklahoma State

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Canvas: Extending Quiz Time

From time to time, instructors are asked to extend time on a quiz or exam for a student with accommodations. Canvas simplifies this process, allowing instructors to allow extra time on one or all attempts with the Moderate This Quiz function.

See this link to view step-by-step instructions for adjusting this setting.

The In's and Out's of Canvas Inbox

One of the more basic functions of an LMS is to facilitate various types of communication between instructors and students. Below are a few tips for using the Conversations tool, also known as Inbox, in Canvas.

• Publish your course before trying to message students. 
• Prior to the first day of the semester, you will also need to adjust your course settings so that the start date of your course is prior to the day you wish to send the message. You will need to check the box under the Start/End dates to select “Users can only participate in the course between these dates.”
• SVCC Canvas courses will conclude on the last day of final exams each semester; instructors cannot message students from the course after the course has concluded.
• If a student replies to an email notification, attachments will be stripped from the reply as it is passed back to Canvas. Please make students aware of this, and set up Assignment dropboxes in your course for students to send important files.  

·        See the following Canvas guides for step-by-step instructions for using the Inbox.

https://guides.instructure.com/m/4152/l/48299-how-do-i-use-conversations

https://guides.instructure.com/m/4152/l/92750-how-do-i-send-a-message-to-an-entire-class-as-an-instructor

Sauk Tech Talk - Virtual Reality

If you missed this month's  you can review some of the information that was shared below.

Upcoming Tech Talks:

• Sauk Tech Talk - Smart Home / Internet of Things:  July 14^th, noon. Room 1K04
• Sauk Tech Talk - 3-D Printing: August 4^th, noon. Room 2K02.

"Virtual reality (VR) uses visual, auditory, and sometimes other sensory inputs—such as tactile or haptic feedback—to create an immersive, computer-generated environment."  Read more about VR from Educause's 7 Things You Should Know about VRHeadsets. 

Currently, the gaming industry is driving innovation in virtual reality.  Here are a few examples. 

Over 30 Full Games Launching with Oculus Touch this Year

Some Educational Examples

Mona Lisa Room VR Demo (Oculus Rift in-game Demo)

YouVisit Educational Institutions

Download the YouVisit App to visit a plethora of places around the world, including many educational institutions. 

Purchase Google Cardboard to use VR apps on your smart device. 

Tips for the First Day of Canvas Courses

Here are some important facts to know about student access to your course.

Course Starts/Ends Date Guide

View more about these settings on the Canvas Guide https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-1932

Start/End Dates and Publishing Your Course

PUBLISH/UNPUBLISH: (In Moodle this setting was Visible: Show or Hide).  You must publish your course for students to access it.  If it is unpublished, students will not be able to access your course.

STARTS/ENDS DATES: Start and end dates control when students have access to published courses in Canvas. When courses are created, their start and end dates default to the term dates the course is created in.  FaCIT/IS staff have set term dates to coincide with the Sauk Academic Calendar. The start date is set for the first day of the semester.  The end date is set for the last day of Finals Week.

When to Publish

You can publish your course at any time.  Students will not be able to access your course until the the dates set by the term, which is the first day of the semester.

Allow Early Student Access

If you want students to begin participating in your course before the start of the semester, you must both publish the course and manually change the start date for the course in the course settings.  You MUST click the box so that “Users can only participate in the course between these dates.”

Access these settings in the Course>Settings menu.

Publish Your Canvas Course Monday, June 6th

Thanks to all who have invested time in learning Canvas through our Canvas Bootcamps.

The first day of the summer session is coming up on Monday. Please remember to publish your Canvas course right away on Monday.

Students cannot access an unpublished course.

See this Canvas Guide for complete instructions to publish your course.

Orient Your Students to Your Online Course - Best Practices

Your online students need your help.  

Learning to navigate your course online is just one challenge online students face.  Along with learning your course expectations, online students have to learn to navigate your online course.  And just like in your face-to-face class, you have students with varying degrees of ability and experience.  Some may have taken a course in Canvas before,  perhaps even one of your courses.  Others will be new to Canvas or even new to online learning.

A few suggestions to help your students. 

Welcome your students to your online course with an introductory email.  FaCIT has created an email message template you can modify for your use. 

Direct students to the free, online course, Orientation to Online Learning.  This course walks students through the basics of functions of Canvas.  Add a link to the course by copy and pasting this URL, https://svcc.instructure.com/courses/65,  to your Canvas front page and into your syllabus.

Create a few introductory or practice assignments for your students.  Here are a few examples.

• Have students upload a "What I want to learn from this course."  Students will gain practice uploading files. 
• Create an introductory discussion, have students introduce themselves by posting a reply.  Students will then have practice posting to discussions. 
• Create a "Syllabus and My Course Policies" quiz. Ask questions to ensure students know important details about your class.  Students will gain practice with the quiz tool and also learn about your course. (Also, you will have on record that students were aware of due dates and policies.) Here are a few example questions: 
• I accept late work.  True/False
• Weekly assignments are due each week on [INSERT DATE and TIME]
• The best way to contact me is?
• My office number is?
• Quizzes are what percentage of your final grade?
• Assignment {INSERT ASSIGNMENT NAME} is due on what date?
• Pre-assess students.  Use publisher provided test questions to assess your students prior-knowledge of content.  

More ice-breaker or introductory activities for online courses can be found here. 

Do you have other examples of how you acclimate students to your online course?  Please post them in the comments.