Category Archives: Announcements & News

Announcements and news on technologies

Canvas Update (12/19/2020)

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On Saturday, December 19, Instructure deployed the latest release to the Canvas environment.  The highlights of this release are listed below.  The full release notes are also available.

  • Student View Changes: The “Student View” button has been removed from the homepage and has been re-added as an Icon to the top right bar of most Canvas screens inside of the course.This change allows instructors to access Student View quicker.
  • New Rich Content Editor – Upload Media File Placement: Newly recorded media and upload media is stored in the Course or User Files folder, according to user role, to ensure that users can reuse media. Previously, newly recorded and uploaded media could not be repurposed without being exported as part of course content.
  • People – Group Import CSV File: The Groups area within “People” will allow for CSV imports to create and assign currently enrolled users to Groups. This will be especially useful for instructors that have created groups in external tools and want to reproduce them in a course.

UW-Whitewater Updates

  • New Rich Content Editor: The New Rich Content Editor is an update to the previous Canvas Rich Content Editor. It provides a condensed, more intuitive toolbar that is grouped by common icons and interactions. We will be enabling the New Rich Content Editor on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2020. For additional details or training schedule, please see our post.
  • Flash – End of Life: Beginning in January of 2021, the Adobe Flash Player will be uninstalled from campus devices. Previously, in July of 2017, Adobe announced that the Flash Player will no longer be distributed or updated after December 31, 2020. Additional information can be found on the Adobe Flash Player EOL General Information Page. We have details available to help you identify if this will impact you.

If you have any questions or concerns about the service pack updates, please contact UW-W Canvas Support.

Winterim Online Teaching Institute application

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winter studying
The Call for the Winterim Online Teaching Institute remains open.

Applications remain open for the Winterim 2021 Online Teaching Institute. The overall goal of the institute is to align quality course design with best practices in online teaching, preparing faculty for online course development, and teaching in future academic terms.

This Winterim Institute is designed in a hybrid modality combining a series of short online workshops and asynchronous materials in Canvas. The course models hybrid and remote modalities including readings, materials, and short homework assignments. Participants will be required to build a fully online unit of a course they could teach.

There are six synchronous workshops M/W/F scheduled from 1:00 pm to 2:00pm in Webex from January 4 through January 15. These will include a student panel discussion and a peer to peer review session to share ideas and collaborate on online course designs in progress. There will also be additional optional Canvas labs. Final course materials will be due January 29th.

We will be accepting 25 applicants into the Institute for Online Teaching this winter. Preference will be given to those faculty and full-time instructional academic staff who fully complete the application in a first come, first serve basis and who have not previously completed the Online / Blended teaching Institute since the summer of 2018. Once we accept 25 applicants, we will close the application.

For any additional information or questions, please contact the LTC.
Learning Technology Center
(262) 472-1004
ltc@uww.edu

Apply here: http://uwwhitewater.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_7NyGyL3OnrRwnop


Professional Development Opportunities

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This winter, the Learning Technology Center staff looks forward to providing professional development opportunities for instructional and non-instructional staff on a wide variety of topics.

Please view all of our workshops and the dates they will be offered.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Multiple sessions on different topics related to Canvas, Webex, HyFlex/Video Enabled Classrooms, and general campus technologies will help you learn new skills, enhance your use of technology, and implement new strategies.

If you have any questions, please contact the Learning Technology Center.

Canvas to WINS Final Grade Submission

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Each semester, grades need to be entered into WINS. While many instructors do this manually, Canvas can help automate some of the steps for you. The Learning Technology Center is providing training on the three steps needed to push grades from Canvas so they can be accepted in WINS.

  1. Finish grading (including entering 0s) and setting the Grade Scheme
  2. Export from Canvas
  3. Verify and accept grades in WINS

The Fall 2020 WINS Grades Roster will be open on December 14 and close at noon on December 22. We have scheduled 60 minute hands on training sessions if you are interested in receiving live support.

Date/TimeLocationRegister
Monday, December 14th
1:00pm – 2:00pm		WebexRegistration
Tuesday, December 15th
2:00am – 3:00pm		WebexRegistration
Thursday, December 17th
1:00pm – 2:00pm		WebexRegistration
Friday, December 18th
2:00pm – 3:00pm		WebexRegistration
Monday, December 21st
10:00am – 11:00am		WebexRegistration
Monday, December 21st
2:00pm – 3:00pm		WebexRegistration

If you have any questions or concerns about this update, please contact the UW-W Learning Technology Center.

Canvas Training: Better Courses Through Better Pages

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pages
use pages to build better canvas sites

Have you moved past the basics of how to get content into Canvas, and looking for a simple way to improve the learning experience for your students? The LTC will be offering synchronous trainings to go with our new asynchronous, self-paced resource designed to help instructors take lengthy modules, and turn them into sleek pages.

Not only is the content of the course about how to create more engaging pages, it also demonstrates simple steps you can take to do this with your own courses, by showing the transition from a typical course design to one based on a more dynamic page.

We have scheduled 60 minute training sessions if you are interested in receiving a live version of the materials offered above.

Date/TimeLocationRegister
Wednesday, January 6th
3:00pm – 4:00pm		WebexRegistration
Monday, January 11th
2:00pm – 3:00pm		WebexRegistration
Wednesday, January 13th
3:00pm – 4:00pm		WebexRegistration

If you have any questions or concerns about this update, please contact the UW-W Learning Technology Center.

Pre-assign breakouts in Webex Meetings!

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Webex Meetings now allows meeting hosts to setup meeting breakout sessions and pre-assign invitees to specific sessions while schedule the meetings. For full details on how to use pre-assignment for Webex Meetings, see Cisco’s article “Preassign Participants to Breakout Sessions.”

Breakout sessions can be assigned in advanced using the web scheduler one of two ways:

Instructors: If you schedule your class virtual meetings in Canvas, you can take advantage of this feature, but it will mean that students will not need to log in to Canvas to join the meeting, thus making the attendance feature less accurate.

  • To use pre-assignment, instructors will need to go to their Webex account and adjust your meeting settings.
  • Instructors can easily download a class list as a CSV file using Canvas, modifying the CSV file to include the necessary elements from the Webex template.
  • By importing a CSV file of your students to the meeting in your account, you will effectively invite them through the web scheduler. This action will send them an invitation email with the meeting link.

Things for everyone to keep in mind:

  • If you currently have a meeting scheduled from your account, you can edit the meeting to include pre-assignment.
  • A meeting previously scheduled through Outlook can not be edited it to allow for pre-assignment.
  • When using a CSV file, download the template (see image below) and enter the names of the breakout sessions as well as the email addresses for your attendees, which will automatically invite these people to your meeting.
Screenshot of where to locate the template to import a list of attendees from a CSV.

If you have any questions or concerns about this update, please contact the UW-W Learning Technology Center.

Increased Security for Webex Recurring Meetings

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Effective immediately, Webex Meetings, Events and Trainings will have a unique Host Key* generated for each occurrence of a recurring series. This means that if you previously made note of the Meeting Number and Host key for your recurring series, you will now need to check prior to each session for the new Host Key.

Why has this change been implemented? To prevent unauthorized use of the Host Key (or PIN), making your classes, meetings, and events even more secure.

What does this mean for you? It may not affect you at all, as most people do not need the Host Key to start and run Webex sessions. If you need to find your Host Key for a meeting, go to your account at uww.webex.com or to Host Information in the Outlook appointment.

Who will be impacted? Anyone who uses a Cisco Webex Control Panel to start Webex sessions in HyFlex Video-enabled classrooms or Video-enabled conference rooms will need to note the new Host Key for every recurrence. Anyone who uses or shares the Host Key for Meetings, Events, or Trainings will want to make note of this change.

When does this take effect? Immediately. It applies to previously scheduled sessions, so any Webex session moving forward will have a new Host Key after the scheduled time ends.

Does this only affect recurring meetings? No, the Host Key for any Webex session will renew when a session ends after its scheduled time.

*A Host Key (PIN) is a six-digit code generated when a Webex session is scheduled. The Host Key may be used to reclaim the host role within a live session, or it can be used to start a meeting from a video system.

Enter your Webex Host Key (PIN) when starting a meeting from a Cisco Touch Panel in our HyFlex Video-Enabled classrooms and conference rooms.

Canvas Update (10/17/2020)

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On Saturday, October 17, Instructure will deploy the latest release to the Canvas environment.  The highlights of this release are listed below.  The full release notes are also available.

  • Global Navigation – Recent History: The Global Navigation Menu includes a Recent History link, which displays recently visited pages in Canvas. This change helps users remember what page they last viewed in one or multiple courses.
  • Notifications – Notification Preferences Interface: The user-level Notifications page has been updated to match the design of the course-level Notifications page. Additional enhancements have been added to clarify notifications between each level..
  • MathJax Equation Improvements: The MathJax JS library has been improved to render equations in a more accessible format and promote ease of use. Math equations created anywhere in Canvas will be rendered as MathML. This change improves accessibility for equations throughout Canvas. Previously, equations were treated as an image and included title attributes and alternative text and were not available to keyboard users. Additionally, image views varied by browser and screen readers, equations could not be copied, and alternative text could be inadvertently changed or removed.

UW-Whitewater Updates

UDOIT Course Accessibility Checker is now available. The tool is designed to identify accessibility concerns and provide suggestions for improving course accessibility. There is an introduction and instructions for use available through the UW-System KB, and UWW trainings are available.

If you have any questions or concerns about the service pack updates, please contact UW-W Canvas Support.

UDOIT Course Accessibility Checker Available!

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We are excited to announce the immediate availability of the UDOIT tool inside of your Canvas courses! UDOIT (Universal Design Online content Inspection Tool) is a cloud based tool designed to identify accessibility concerns and provide improvement suggestions for your Canvas courses.

The tool can be accessed by clicking UDOIT Cloud on the course navigation menu inside of your Canvas course.

Additional details on how to utilize the tool are located at: Canvas (Accessibility) – Using the UDOIT Cloud Accessibility Tool.

We will also be offering 30 minute training courses which will demonstrate how to use the tool in your Canvas courses. Workshop information is listed below.

EVENT NAMEDATE/TIMELOCATIONREGISTER
Creating Accessible Canvas Courses with UDOITThursday, October 15th
1:00pm – 1:30pm		WebexRegistration
Creating Accessible Canvas Courses with UDOITFriday, October 16th
11:00am – 11:30am		WebexRegistration
Creating Accessible Canvas Courses with UDOITMonday, October 19th
10:00am – 10:30am		WebexRegistration
Creating Accessible Canvas Courses with UDOITTuesday, October 20th
3:00pm – 3:30pm		WebexRegistration

If you have any questions about these sessions, please reach out to the UW-W Learning Technology Center.

Managing the HyFlex Classroom (9/24/20)

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If you are currently teaching in a HyFlex/video-enhanced classroom, or are interested in teaching in one in the future, please consider joining the Learning Technology Center for a session on “Managing the HyFlex Classroom” this Thursday (9/24/20) at 9:00 AM.

If you are interested in this session, please register using this link, so that you can receive the Webex Meetings invitation. Please note that you will need to login using your UWW credentials to register.

If you have any questions about this session, please contact the Learning Technology Center.