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New Announcements
AnnotatED 2024 Abstracts Due 2/28
OAT is happy to share this professional development announcement from Hypothesis:
We want to personally invite you and your faculty to share your insights and innovations in social annotation at this year's AnnotatED 2024!
Hypothesis is excited to invite educators, administrators, and innovators in higher education to submit abstracts for our annual event, happening on April 17-18. This is your opportunity to shine a light on how social annotation is transforming learning and engagement in your classrooms and institutions.
Read the full description
Your experiences, ideas, and suggestions can inspire and guide others in the community. Submit your abstract today and be a part of shaping the future of social annotation in higher education!
Learn more about Hypothesis at Stan State
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GoReact Tip: Collect Student Comments on Lecture Videos
Often in an online class, the instructor will create and post a lecture video and require students to watch the video and provide some kind of comment or response. Those responses are then tracked and graded. The issue is how to efficiently keep track of who has submitted the required comment and what grade should they receive?
Let's cut to the chase: GoReact is the perfect tool for this kind of assignment. If you've been using VoiceThread or Panopto to collect these comments, you're going to love GoReact instead.
Using a "Comment Only" Assignment
The Comment Only assignment is one of three assignment "types" offered by GoReact. It's also the one that is best suited to capturing student responses to a lecture video. Comments can be "private" between student and instructor, or "public" for the whole class to see and respond to.
In this assignment, start by uploading your video in GoReact. Then the students watch it and respond to by leaving a comment(s) directly on the time line. Comments can be typed text or multimedia (audio and video). Later, the instructor can filter the view to see only the comments of each student and assign a grade. The grade is automatically transferred back to the Canvas grade book.
Two Simple Steps
- Create a GoReact activity in Canvas
- Choose "Comment Only" and configure the activity settings
Questions? Contact OAT!
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Respondus Training Schedule
Curious to know more about using LockDown Browser in your exams? Or maybe you'd like to go further and use Monitor as well. Finally, did you know about Respondus 4.0 for managing your test banks and quizzes?
Stan State currently has licenses for all three products. Learn more about them at Respondus's upcoming training webinars.
LockDown Browser and Respondus Monitor: Protect the Integrity of Online Tests
This session is perfect for instructors who are new to LockDown Browser and/or Respondus Monitor, or those who want a refresher on how to use these applications to ensure academic integrity during online exams. We'll also be demonstrating the latest new features and enhancements.
Dates: Feb. 8, 14, 20, 29
REGISTER
Respondus 4 and the Test Bank Network: Quickly Create Online Exams
Learn how Respondus 4 allows you to create or convert exams that can be published directly to your learning management system, and how the Respondus Test Bank Network can be used to generate online tests from official publisher test banks.
Date: Feb. 21 at 1 pm ET / 10 am PT
REGISTER
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Canvas Did-You-Knows?
Here are three common items that you might not have known about using Canvas.
1. Custom courses
All instructors can create empty, blank Canvas courses at any time for any purpose. No need to request one from OAT!
Simply click "Start a New Course" on your Dashboard and enter a name for the course. That's it! Your new course is as functional as any other Canvas course, though you must manually enroll other people into it using the People page.
2. User Enrollment
All instructors can generally enroll any other Stan State user into their course from the People page. Just supply the person's email address and specify the role they should have in the course.
Note: Enrolling students into an official course shell may be overridden by the PeopleSoft enrollment data for that section. For example, this will happen if the student had previously been enrolled in the section but then dropped. In that case, the manual enrollment will be overridden by the hourly PeopleSoft update and the student will lose access to the course. To remedy this situation, contact OAT.
3. Merging Sections
Often at the beginning of the semester, instructors wish to combine the enrollments of multiple courses or sections in Canvas. This allows them to post content one time but have it viewable by all their students.
Interested? Learn how to do this.
Note: To adhere to FERPA, students in merged sections in Canvas will not be able to see students outside their own section. If appropriate for a given situation, that restriction can be removed. Contact OAT for assistance.
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Reminders
Hypothesis, GoReact, & VoiceThread Workshop Recordings
Introduction to Hypothesis Annotations
On January 16, Hypothesis users Jey Strangfeld (Sociology), Kelly Cotter (Psychology), and Kyra Pazan (Anthropology) shared their knowledge and experience with this awesome tool.
Watch the recording
Learn more about Hypothesis
Bonus: Hypothesis Academy - Social Annotation 101 is taken enrollments (free) for the February and April cohorts. Learn more
Introduction to GoReact in Canvas
Funding has been secured to make GoReact available again for video submission assignments in Canvas for the remainder of the 23-24 academic year.
On January 17, Profs. Christopher Claus and Joe Carranza from Communication Studies demonstrated how GoReact has become a gamechanger for evaluating student video presentations and providing a way to solicit student comments about course videos.
Watch the recording
Learn more about GoReact
Introduction to VoiceThread Presentations
On January 18, Ronda Munoz (Teacher Ed) shared her experiences using VoiceThread as part of an overall introduction to this versatile and popular tool.
Watch the recording
Learn more about VoiceThread
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(Waitlist Forming) Introduction to AI Tools For Teaching & Learning
The following professional development opportunity is being offered by the Online Course Services division of the CSU Chancellor's Office.
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence tools where guided experimentation empowers participants to understand some of the basics of AI functionality, including its workings and methods for detecting its usage. Learn basic AI terminology, engage in hands-on exploration of AI Tools, learn strategies for detecting AI-generated content, and techniques to address potential misuse of AI tools by students. Participants will apply the knowledge gained to develop a personalized AI use policy for their course, and find resources to maintain currency in this dynamic field.
Course Commitment: 3 weeks, 20-25 hours, online, asynchronous. Seating is limited due to high demand, so register early.
Dates Offered:
Feb 26 – Mar 17, 2024 (Spring 2024)
Mar 25 – Apr 14, 2024 (Spring 2024)
Syllabus
Register for the waiting list
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Use Turnitin With Discussions Plus Activities
Discussions Plus (a.k.a Harmonize) is a tool available in Canvas that enables more engaging discussion activities. Discussions Plus is now better because it includes the option for Turnitin similarity checking on the posts students make in the discussion.
How? When you edit the Post Settings of the activity [1] in Discussions Plus, simply check the box for Turnitin Settings [2]. This new feature is not part of Canvas's own discussions tool.
About Similarity Checking in Discussions Plus
Here are some things to keep in mind with this new feature.
- Only a student's posts are sent to Turnitin. Replies or comments on other students are not checked.
- Only posts longer than 30 words will be checked.
- It's important to let students know to expect Turnitin checking on their posts. Students must accept an authorization agreement shown to them on their very first post in any Discussions Plus activity that has Turnitin enabled. The authorization does not need to be done ever again.
Learn more about using Turnitin in Harmonize
Discussions Plus overview
Questions? Contact OAT!
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Informal QLT Course Assessments for Winter and Spring Courses
All instructors who are teaching asynchronous online courses in Winter and Spring are invited to have their course informally assessed using the QLT rubric. QLT consists of 52 'objectives' spread across 9 categories of best practices in online course design. It was assembled by a collection of CSU instructional designers and faculty members and was most recently updated in 2022.
After requesting an assessment, OAT will review the course with the QLT rubric and send the feedback to the instructor only. A follow-up consultation to discuss the assessment can be scheduled if desired. This is a great way to get a second pair of eyes on your course for constructive feedback!
Email oatsupport@csustan.edu and specify which course you're interested in. Content should be in a regular Canvas shell.
Additional links:
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Canvas Support Options
All Canvas users have access to various support options when questions or problems arise.
Instructors
Options for instructors are:
- Call Canvas support 24x7 (open Help menu)
- Chat with Canvas support 24x7 (open Help menu)
- Email oatsupport@csustan.edu
- Review online documentation
In general, the OIT Tech Support desk cannot help with Canvas issues - all Canvas administration is handled by OAT and it is best to start with one of the options listed above.
Students
Students can get basic support in these ways:
- Chat with Canvas support 24x7 (open Help menu)
- Review online documentation
Any issue that cannot be solved by Canvas support will be redirected to OAT for further assistance.
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Ally Accessibility Gauges
Ally is the automated accessibility checking tool that is installed within Stan State's Canvas system. This tool makes it easy to spot accessibility issues with your course materials and ensure access for all students. There are two main purposes of the Ally tool:
- Scan every piece of content/document/image in a course and gauge its accessibility. Instructors are then guided through steps to address the accessibility issues. The severity of issues (and the lack of issues at all!) are indicated by a color-coded system of gauges.
- Provide students with alternate formats for most content, and even language translations in some cases. Alternate formats may be PDF versions of documents, spoken audio versions of documents, etc.
Gauge Colors & Access
Ally uses a small gauge icon next to each piece of content or image to represent its accessibility status. The colors correspond to those on a traffic stop light:
The gauges are only visible to instructors. Students never see the accessibility status of an item. Instead, they only see a small "download" icon next to each item that allows them to access alternative formats for the item.
More Information
Learn more about Ally and accessibility.
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