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Announcements
Reminders
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Announcements
Panopto Assignments
Panopto is the university's official video storage tool that instructors can use for all classes. Beyond storage, did you know that Panopto is interactive? Instructors can set up two kinds of Canvas assignments based on a video stored in Panopto.
Assignment #1: Inline Quiz
In the editing mode, the instructor adds a quiz placeholder at a specific point in the video time line. The quiz can have multiple questions (multiple choice, etc.) and is auto-graded. For students, the video playback pauses until the student completes the quiz. Additional quizzes can be placed at later points in the time line. The total score of all the quizzes is reported back to the Canvas grade book automatically.
Curious to know more? Learn more about adding a quiz...
Assignment #2: % Viewed
This is based solely on how much of the video the student watches until the due date of the assignment. The final score is calculated as a percentage of the total possible points. The score is reported back to the Canvas grade book automatically.
Curious to know more? Learn more about grading on viewer completion...
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Padlet Assignments
A Padlet is an online visual bulletin board. In a typical Padlet activity, all students in a course add posts onto a Padlet. Posts consist of basic text or can include an audio/video recording or an uploaded file. Students can also reply to other students' posts. A Padlet can also be used by instructors as a 'home page' for a collection of course resouces.
The format of the Padlet can be a blank 'wall' for all the posts to reside or a series of columns that act as categories for different kinds of posts. It can also be a world map where the posts are pinned to geographic locations or a time line where posts are pinned do a specific date.
Assignment #1: Student Contributions to Shared Padlet
In a Canvas assignment that has been connected to Padlet via the External Tool setting, the instructor creates a new blank Padlet and gives instructions about what the student posts should cover. Students access the Padlet from Canvas and click the "+" button to make their posts. Grading is done by the instructor in Padlet. Grades can be based on the highest score a student receives in a post or an the average score given to each of their posts.
Curious to know more? Learn about adding Padlet to Canvas...
Assignment #2: Students Create Padlets
In a Canvas assignment that has been connected to Padlet via the External Tool setting, the instructor creates a new blank Padlet that will be used as the template and copied for the student Padlets. The students work on their Padlets to add the required posts and items as specified by the instructor. The Padlets are not visible to other students unless shared. To grade, the instructor opens each student's Padlet and grades the posts within it.
Curious to know more? Learn about adding Padlet to Canvas...
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Annotation Activities
Stan State instructors have access to two tools for activities where students annotate on top of a course reading: Hypothesis and Harmonize (a.k.a. "Discussions Plus"). Both tools do the same thing: provide a way for students to highlight text in a document and write a comment about it. Often the comments are visible to the other students as part of a graded social reading activity, with posts and responses, as in a threaded discussion.
Learn more about Hypothesis
Learn more about annotations in Harmonize
Activity #1: Private Note-Taking
Did you know that the students can keep their comments private?
What if the instructor created an ungraded annotation link for each reading in a course? Readings would need to be in the form of a PDF document for Harmonize, but can be expanded to include more content types if using Hypothesis. The idea is the same though: students do all their course reading from Canvas, marking and annotating as they go in whatever fashion is most helpful to them. By keeping the annotations 'private', everyone can share the same file while still doing their own work.
Assignment #1: Social Reading & Discussion
Both tools can be configured as graded assignments in Canvas using the External Tool feature. In this kind of assignment there are two basic pathways: 1) instructor 'seeds' the document with prompts that the students reply to; 2) students are given explicit instructions on the number and kind of annotations to make, as well as a number of replies.
It's not recommended that students be left without guidance on how to structure their annotations. Instead tell students to structure their annotations in a 3-2-1 fashion: annotate 3 things they learned (briefly explain what they learned for each), 2 things that confirmed what they already knew (briefly explain the context of the prior knowledge), 1 question they still have (this will be a good thing for others to respond to).
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Accessibility Office Hours
Once again OAT and A4L will offer drop-in assistance with using UDOIT and TidyUp to improve the accessibility of Canvas course materials. No registration necessary!
Sessions will run every Friday from Feb. 1 until May 1. Times will alternate between 9 am and 12 pm each week.
Drop In Schedule
Fridays at 9 am: Feb 6, Feb 20, Mar 6, Mar 20, Apr 3, Apr 17, May 1
https://csustan.zoom.us/j/81979601642
Fridays at 12 pm: Feb 13, Feb, 27, Mar 13, Mar 27, Apr 10, Apr 24
https://csustan.zoom.us/j/81320593671
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Reminders
January Workshop Recordings
Below are links to workshops OAT held recently:
- Better and Easier Peer Review with Harmonize
- Social Reading with Harmonize
- What's New in Canvas (Spring 2026)
- Topics covered:
- Graded surveys in New Quizzes
- Schedule grade and feedback release to students
- A.I. question creation in New Quizzes
- A.I. rubric creation
- Turnitin update to Full Inbox assignment type
- Training Recording
Questions? Contact OAT Support!
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Regular & Substantive Interaction in Online Courses
Federal regulations require that online ("distance") courses, primarily those that are asynchronous in their delivery, contain adequate opportunities for regular and substantive interaction between the instructor and the students, as well as between students.
How to get started
OAT has developed a template module that can be downloaded and installed into any Canvas course through the Canvas Commons tool. Once added to a course, all of the content in the template can be modified. The template is also a starting point - its content does not conform to an officially sanctioned body of requirements. However, it's a great way to get started!
On Canvas, click the Canvas Commons icon and then search for "Regular & Substantive Interaction". Click the "Download" button to choose the course where the module will be added.
Review the module contents
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Turnitin A.I. Detection FAQ
Stan State provides access to Turnitin's A.I. Detector tool for all instructors. Normally, the detector is used as part of a Canvas assignment that uses Turnitin in some way. However, it is possible to have a stand-alone file uploaded to Turnitin for analysis.
When submitted to Turnitin, a paper is given a 'score' that corresponds to the percentage of long-form prose (i.e., sentences contained within many multiple paragraphs) that the detector has high confidence was not human-produced. Longer submissions are more accurately scored, while shorter submissions may be more frequently incorrectly flagged. The A.I. detector does not reliably detect AI-generated text in the form of non-prose, such as poetry, scripts, or code. Nor does it detect short-form/unconventional writing such as bullet points (short, non-sentence structures) or annotated bibliographies.
Remember: Turnitin's A.I. score is a flag for further consideration, not an accusation of misconduct in and of itself.
How does it work?
What parameters or flags does Turnitin’s model take into account when detecting AI writing?
What does the percentage in the AI writing detection indicator mean?
If students use Grammarly for grammar checks, does Turnitin detect it and flag it as AI?
If students use Grammarly’s paraphrasing tool, will it flag their content as AI-generated?
How should instructors interpret the results?
Complete FAQ
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A4L Accessibility Hot Tips
Design & Remediation Hot 🔥 Tips
1. Downloading PDFs from Canvas Shells with UDOIT and Submitting for Remediation
AI Video Demo and directions for downloading PDFs from course shells:
Open your Canvas shell, look for 'Check Accessibility With UDOIT' on the left side*, open UDOIT, grant it access to scan your course. After scanning is complete, click on 'Home' at the top and scroll down to find/open the high impact scorecard, click on "PDFs", review your PDFs and download any that present with an error such as "File lacks tags needed for navigation by assistive technologies" or "Image-based file detected."
The error of "File is missing a title element" is very simple to fix on your own so we recommend you stick to submitting those with the more complex errors as listed above.
To submit PDFs for remediation, simply open our TDX form and submit a ‘Accessibility Work Request - On-Demand File Remediation’. Our student team will take care of the technical part! After your files are remediated and returned to you, simply go back to the Course Files tab in UDOIT and individually replace them by clicking "Replace file with an uploaded file" and UDOIT will do the rest for you!
* Students cannot see UDOIT or TidyUp links
2. Be Careful When Using with Tables in Canvas | Tables Are Not For Layout
Tables are sometimes used to create visual layouts on a web page, such as text arranged into two "columns", or to position an image next to a block of text. Back in the early days of the web, this was a common work around for the lack of regular HTML to do fancy page layout kinds of things.
We do not recommend this practice anymore. Tables should be used only for tabular data or content. Using tables to lay out regular page content will cause problems for screen reader users. For example, tables on web pages (i.e., Canvas pages) must have header rows and/or header columns so the screen reader can navigate through the table structure. If you're using a table to do page layout, your "table" doesn't have a structure like that, and that's confusing.
Have questions about how to lay out pages or images without tables? Contact OAT!
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Exam Integrity in the Age of A.I.
Upcoming training schedule
Respondus is offering training sessions throughout January. Check it out!
Dates: January 22, 27, 29
REGISTER HERE
About Respondus
Did you know Stan State has a site license for Respondus LockDown Browser (LDB), and it can be required for the completion of any Canvas quiz? If you are concerned about students generating quiz answers by copying and pasting your quiz questions into ChatGPT, then requiring the use of LDB to complete the quiz may worth considering.
What is LockDown Browser?
LockDown Browser is a custom web browser that restricts the user to just their Canvas account. Within a course, LockDown Browser locks down the testing environment for a quiz. It prevents students from capturing screen content, opening other tabs or websites on the Internet unless those sites are part of a quiz question, and using any other programs on their computer. Only after the student submits the quiz are they permitted to quit the browser. At that point, all normal functionality on the computer is restored.
Watch an overview of LockDown Browser
How is LockDown Browser enabled?
- On the settings page of the Canvas course, open the Navigation list and enable the LockDown Browser tool. It will appear as a link in the course navigation (hidden from students)
- Open the LockDown Browser link to view the LockDown Browser dashboard
- Open the configuration arrow for the specific quiz that will require use of the LockDown Browser and click "Settings"
- Enable the LockDown Browser requirement
- Review the "Advanced Settings" if desired
- Click "Save + Close" to complete the set up process. No other changes need to be made to the quiz itself.
What is the student experience?
First, students generally must use a standard laptop or desktop computer to take a quiz that requires LockDown Browser. Mobile devices are not supported except for iPads and then only if the instructor enables that setting (not recommended). All campus computer labs have Respondus LockDown Browser installed.
Second, students will be prompted by the exam to download and launch the LockDown Browser application if they access the quiz using a regular web browser.
When launched, LockDown Browser goes directly to Canvas and the student logs in the same way they do in a regular web browser (including the Duo authentication). The student then opens the course and proceeds to the quiz. The usual "Start the Quiz" button appears and the rest of the quiz experience operates as normal.
Share this student overview video with your class: https://web.respondus.com/lockdownbrowser-student-video/
Things to consider:
- LockDown Browser makes cheating on a Canvas quiz harder and more time-consuming but not impossible. In an unproctored environment, LDB cannot prevent actions that occur on other devices that students might have in their possession.
- Enable the recording settings of LockDown Browser, Respondus Monitor, if you want to record the student's screen and/or webcam
- Monitor will detect unauthorized activity in the student's environment, such as other individuals, cell phones, etc.
- With Monitor enabled, you can permit students to switch into MS Excel or MS Word during the exam.
- Students must have a practice quiz available beforehand. This allows them to get acquainted with the LockDown Browser process. Do not overlook this! Create a simple quiz with one or two questions, and configure that quiz to require LockDown Browser.
- Idea: consider using Canvas's module requirements feature to make the practice quiz a formal prerequisite for taking the real quiz. Learn more.
- Canvas quizzes with LockDown Browser enabled cannot accommodate an "open note" or "open book" quiz policy if those materials are only stored in Canvas. However, specific web domains can be allowed if configured in the LockDown Browser settings. Remember, the point of LockDown Browser is to "lock down" the environment to just the quiz.
Resources for more information
Have more questions? Contact OAT!
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