Welcome to the latest OAT Update, produced by the Office of Academic Technology at CSU Stanislaus
Issue Contents
New Announcements
Reminders
Missed an update? Browse all OAT Updates
New Announcements
Take a Workshop, Get Better at Canvas!
OAT is pleased to offer a week-long series of workshops that will get you comfortable using Canvas, the university's primary LMS for course web sites and online teaching. Even instructors with some experience using Canvas can benefit from reviewing the basics and maybe learning something you didn't know the first time!
Five sessions will be offered. Each lasts about one hour and will be held on Zoom. Recordings will be available for anyone who cannot attend live. Simple and free registration is required to aid organizers in planning. Recordings will be sent to all registrants.
1. Your Canvas Account + Modules
Learn to manage and customize your Canvas account and take a first look at organizing a course by adding files and links to Modules.
» Monday, August 5 @ 11 am
Workshop #1 registration
2. Communicating on Canvas + Ally
Learn about announcements, emailing your class, creating content and links using the Rich Content Editor, as well as how to improve the accessibility of course materials using Ally.
» Tuesday, August 6 @ 11 am
Workshop #2 registration
3. Canvas Quizzes (Classic & New)
An introduction to creating quizzes in Canvas. Primary attention will be given to the Classic quiz engine with a brief look at the New quiz engine.
» Wednesday, August 7 @ 11 am
Workshop #3 registration
4. Assignments & Rubrics & Speedgrader, Oh My!
Learn how to build a graded assignment and create a rubric that will be applied using Speedgrader. This session will also show you how to organize course activities to use a weighted grade book.
» Thursday, August 8 @ 11 am
Workshop #4 registration
5. Canvas Potpourri
Discussions, grade book management, tracking attendance, creating custom navigation links, closing courses and handling incompletes.
» Friday, August 9 @ 11 am
Workshop #5 registration
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Canvas Enhancement Workshops
Specialized tools are available to enhance Canvas and improve teaching and learning in an online environment. The tools presented in this series have been purchased by the university and are fully supported by OAT staff.
Five sessions are offered via Zoom, and each lasts about 90 minutes. Simple and free registration is required to help organizers plan. Recordings will be sent to all registrants.
1. VoiceThread
VoiceThread offers a highly flexible and interactive way for instructors and students to create presentations and engage with multimedia content. Generate social presence in asynchronous online courses.
» Monday, August 5 from 1-2:30 pm
Enhancements #1 registration
2. Discussions Plus
Create multiple due dates ("milestones") within discussions, easily add video posts with closed captions, easily create private student journals.
» Tuesday, August 6 from 1-2:30 pm
Enhancements #2 registration
3. Padlet
A digital bulletin board used for curating media and generating collaborative learning.
» Wednesday, August 7 from 1-2:30 pm
Enhancements #3 registration
4. Hypothesis
Place active discussion right on top of course readings via annotation and enable students and teachers to add comments and start conversations in the margins of texts.
» Thursday, August 8 from 1-2:30 pm
Enhancements #4 registration
5. Canvas Enhancements Potpourri
Learn more about Panopto (video storage), Turnitin (plagiarism and AI detection), and Respondus Lockdown Browser (secure test-taking environment)
» Friday, August 9 from 1-2:30 pm
Enhancements #5 registration
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Canvas: Did You Know?
Here are some recent improvements that Canvas has made that may be of interest to instructors.
- Sort students in Speedgrader by submission status
- Sort course list on your All Courses page
- Add pronunciation information to your name
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Hypothesis Academy Courses
Take a deeper dive into social annotation with Hypothesis this summer via free Hypothesis Academy courses.
- Social Annotation 101
Provides the basics technical how-tos for using Hypothesis, but its main focus is on social annotation teaching strategies, including assignment examples and grading strategies. The course is designed for both new and experienced users.
- Social Annotation 101 Cohorts: July 9-23, 2024; August 20-September 3, 2024
- Social Annotation in the Age of AI
Designed to teach you how to use Hypothesis social annotation to navigate the challenges and opportunities presented by AI writing tools such as ChatGPT.
- Social Annotation in the Age of AI Cohorts: June 4-18, 2024; July 30-August 13, 2024
Learn more and register here
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Reminders
Recording Available: Evaluating Papers Flagged by Turnitin's AI Indicator
Turnitin has made the recording available of their recent webinar on evaluating papers that have been flagged by the AI indicator.
Watch Here
About the Session
What happens after the AI indicator has flagged a paper as potentially containing generative AI content? This session is for those who may be reviewing student papers that have been flagged for AI, including student conduct administrators and instructors. If you can benefit from the example of a working model of paper evaluation designed to highlight other signals of AI as part of a contextualized review of student papers, and have experience with the ins and outs of the AI indicator, this session is for you.
Special guest, Marilyn Derby, Associate Director of Student Support and Judicial Affairs at UC Davis, California, will share with us a possible method for evaluating student papers which have been flagged for AI generative content.
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AI Tools for Teaching & Learning Course
The Online Course Services department at the Chancellor's Office is offering three instances of their popular "AI Tools for Teaching & Learning" course this summer.
Summer Session 1: May 27 - June 16, 2024Summer Session 2: June 24 - July 28, 2024- Summer Session 3: July 29 - August 18, 2024
Course Commitment: 3 weeks, 20-25 hours, online, asynchronous.
Cost: Free!
Register now to save your seat.
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Summer 2024 OCS Professional Development
The CSU Online Course Services department is offering several free courses this summer for tenure-track and lecture faculty. All courses are 3 weeks in length, online, asynchronous, and require 15-20 hours.
Registration opens April 1.
Courses:
- QLT Introduction to Teaching Online Using QLT
- QLT Advanced QLT Course in Teaching Online
- QLT Reviewing Courses Using the QLT Instrument
- AI Tools for Teaching & Learning
Course information and registration
Questions? Contact ocs@calstate.edu.
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Generative AI Syllabus Statement
The discussion of AI in education has taken two paths. In one, instructors are exploring how they can actively incorporate some aspect of AI into their teaching and their course design. In the other, instructors are concerned about how students should be allowed (or not) to use AI in their course work.
Providing a statement about AI usage in the course syllabus is important in both cases. The following tool developed by Chris Heard at Pepperdine University aims to help you craft a draft of a statement that works for you.
Generative AI Syllabus Statement Tool
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Moodle End-of-Life Time Line
At the conclusion of the spring 2024 term, OAT will begin winding down the Moodle server currently being hosted by OIT. The following time line was approved by the Academic Technology and Learning Committee on 02/19/24.
- No active courses will be allowed on the platform following spring 2024.
- Moodle will remain available for users to login for document retrieval, grade book retrieval, course backup, etc. through May 31, 2025.
- Moodle will be shut down and unavailable on June 1, 2025.
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Informal QLT Course Assessments for Summer Courses
All instructors who are teaching asynchronous online courses this Summer 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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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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