Canvas Update (02/20/2021)

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On Saturday, February 20, 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.

  • Courses – MathJax Equation Enhancements & Text Field LaTeX Characters: LaTeX equations can be entered in any Canvas text field, and MathJax is loaded if Canvas detects an equation image added by delimited LaTeX characters. 
  • Rich Content Editor – Pretty HTML Editor: The Rich Content Editor includes a pretty HTML editor in addition to the raw HTML editor.

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

2021 Cisco/Presidio Teaching with Technology Honorarium

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The Cisco/Presidio Teaching with Technology Innovator Honorarium is a recognition that will be bestowed upon an instructor who displays an outstanding commitment to leveraging learning technologies to solve common teaching challenges related to creating rich learning experiences to increase student success.

For 2021, finalists for this award need to be willing to present an interactive virtual session at the Celebration of Teaching and Learning on Wednesday, May 19, 2021.  The instructor selected as the Teaching with Technology Innovator will receive a $1000 honorarium.  The other finalists will receive $250 honorariums.  These awards are paid for by private donated funds.

Eligibility and Expectations

There is an open call for applicants for this recognition. Any individual who applies must have taught at least six credits for the past year to be eligible. If selected as a finalist for the Teaching with Technology Innovator, the individual will receive a $250 honorarium and must agree to present an interactive session at the Celebrating Teaching and Learning Conference (May 19, 2021), where they will also be recognized.

The individual selected as the 2021 Teaching with Technology Innovator will receive a $1000 honorarium (instead of the $250 for finalists) and must also agree to the following conditions:

  • Have their name and picture highlighted in a Learning Technology Center blog post and in the ConnectIT newsletter;
  • Have their name and photograph displayed in the Learning Technology Center
  • Partner with the Learning Technology Center to highlight their work during the Fall 2021 and/or Spring 2022 semester.  

Please note: this honorarium counts toward the 20% base salary overload maximum. 

Submission of Application Materials

  • Application packages must include a: Personal reflection (1-2 pages) that includes the applicant’s teaching philosophy and the role technology plays in it, specifically discussing how they have demonstrated the innovative and effective use of learning technologies to create rich learning experiences for students that work to increase retention and success. 
  • Portfolio of 3-5 items that serve as evidence of their teaching philosophy and the role technology plays in it, as well as ways their use of technology contributes to student learning and success. Possible items include, but are not limited to: 
    • Letters of support from students, colleagues, or leadership.
    • Course evaluation data. 
    • Evidence of student impact (e.g., grades, learning, etc.) after trying a technology intervention. 
    • Examples of how the instructor contributes to their college, campus community, and beyond related to teaching and learning with technology.

Materials must be submitted through Qualtrics (http://uwwhitewater.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3eflnjKb810emUt) by March 5, 2021 March 14, 2021. If materials are missing, an individual’s application may not be considered.

Selection Process

Application packages will be reviewed by a committee composed of Learning Technology Center (LTC) Staff and members of the LTC Advisory Group (which is composed of 1-2 instructors from each college) after the deadline.  Notifications of the selected finalists will be made by March 31, 2021.  Finalists will be expected to submit a description of an interactive, synchronous virtual session to be presented at the Celebration of Teaching and Learning event.

About the Sponsors 

This award is sponsored by Presidio and Cisco Systems in conjunction with UWW’s Division of Instructional, Communication, and Information Technology (ICIT) and iCIT’s Learning Technology Center (LTC). Presidio and Cisco are proud of their work with institutions of higher education to inspire learning and connect campuses to enhance student outcomes. ICIT and the LTC are dedicated to working with instructors to understand teaching challenges, explore solutions, implement strategies, and evaluate their effectiveness.

Questions? If you have questions, please reach out to the Learning Technology Center

Spring 2021 LTC Training and Workshops

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The LTC is offering a full roster of learning opportunities ranging from training on Webex and Canvas to rethinking the possibilities of learning, teaching, and working with technology. Please visit the LTC’s calendar to see all sessions, descriptions, and dates.

Can’t join at scheduled times? No problem, email ltc@uww.edu to request a personal or department session. Links to previously recorded sessions are also often available.  

Don’t see a session on something you’d like to learn? Let us know! We look forward to meeting your needs as best we can — email ltc@uww.edu with your request. And, don’t forget, LinkedIn Learning offers on-demand classes on many topics!

Instructional Workshops:

Webex:

Canvas:

General Campus Technology:

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

Online Teaching Institute Spring 2021 Applications Open

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Let's look forward to spring and computing
The Call for the Spring 2021 Online Teaching Institute is now open.

The UW-Whitewater Learning Technology Center (LTC) is pleased to announce that applications are now open for a Spring 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 online/hybrid teaching in future academic terms.

This Spring Institute is designed to be fully asynchronous and completed over a ten week, work at your own pace, timeline. The course models a fully online course including readings, materials, and short homework assignments. Participants will be required to build a fully online unit of a course they could teach. There will be several optional synchronous workshops, including an orientation, student panel, and peer review session.

We will be accepting up to 25 applicants. Preference will be given to those faculty and full-time instructional academic staff in a first come, first serve basis. To ensure we can serve the entire UW-Whitewater community, we will also prioritize individuals who have not previously completed the Online / Blended teaching Institute since the summer of 2018.  Approved applicants will be emailed regarding their acceptance on Thursday, February 4th, 2021 and be enrolled in the Canvas course site.  Rolling applications will be accepted until March 1st . The Canvas course will open for participants on Monday, February 8th and final submission of work will be due April 16, 2021. 

The application takes approximately 10 minutes to complete. We recommend completing the application on a computer, as some questions involve typed responses.

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_9BQ4lxejeFD0A0C


Documentation Updates from the LTC

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We are in the process of moving our documentation, tutorials, and how-to pages from spaces.uww.edu into ServiceNow. As the pages are moved and complete, a redirect message with the updated link will be placed on the old pages. The old pages will continue to work through the Spring 2021 semester.

Example image of the redirect links

You can browse and search through the documentation pages by going to http://uww.service-now.com/kb

Image of the Service Now knowledge base.

What is ServiceNow?

ServiceNow is the help desk platform that is available on campus. Canvas support request should still be routed through the Canvas 24/7/365 support.

Why are we moving the pages?

Moving the content into ServiceNow will allow for a better overall user experience, and more robust search feature.

Can I still link to the pages in ServiceNow?

Yes! Follow this guide to copy the link to place in your own materials: Linking to a ServiceNow KB Article.

Please contact the Learning Technology Center if you have any questions about this change.

Poll Everywhere Activities Change

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Poll Everywhere strives for continuous product improvements and we’re committed to keeping you in the loop on key changes in your account. Starting on Monday, January 25th, 2021, activities in the Trash folder will be automatically deleted after 30 days.

After deleting an Activity, you will have 30 days to restore it from your Trash. Otherwise, it will be permanently removed. Once an Activity has been permanently removed, it will no longer be recoverable by you or the Poll Everywhere team. 

Thank you for using Poll Everywhere to engage students in your classes. We hope you’ve been enjoying the new features designed to support remote teaching and learning!

If you have any questions, please contact the Learning Technology Center at ltc@uww.edu.

Canvas Update (01/16/2021)

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On Saturday, January 16, 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.

  • Notifications – Push Notification Types end of Life: When users open their Notification Preferences page or notifications in a Canvas app, Push notifications are only supported for specific notification categories. Users can adjust their notification preferences by setting up additional supported communication channels.
  • Settings – Feature Option Management: The buttons to manage feature flags at the account, course, and user levels have been updated in design and functionality. This change aligns design consistency with other areas of Canvas (specifically the Permissions page) and allows admins to better manage subaccount- and course-level feature defaults.

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 has been 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.
  • Respondus LockDown Browser – Chromebook compatibility: Chromebooks will soon be able to launch Respondus LockDown Browser, enabling their use for monitored quizzing across campus. More information to come soon!

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

What Students Want in Canvas

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There are many good ways to set up a Canvas course, but how can you know which things students want in every one of their courses? Well, to help you the LTC asked them! Based on multiple student panels, here are the most common requests for your Canvas course:

  1. Match your Assignments and Grades area to your course syllabus.
  2. Reorganize Modules to a chronological layout.
  3. Populate assignments and tasks to student calendars.
  4. Utilize the description area of Quizzes and Assignments.
  5. When deciding between timely feedback and deep feedback, choose timely.
  6. Keep grades up to date, including entering 0s.

While each of these require additional work, none of them are outside of your reach. The recording below will walk you through making adjustments in Canvas to address the first four points.

Students understand their instructors can feel crunched for time, just like they do. When this occurs they’ve found that timely feedback best helps their progress through the course. They asked that if you are put into a position where you need to choose between providing timely feedback versus deep feedback, that you choose timely. Too often, by the time they received feedback on an assessment they had already moved on to the next lessons, building on a foundation they later found out isn’t as solid as they thought.

Keeping grades up to date ties in with providing timely feedback. Students want to know how they are doing, and when each instructor handles their grades differently, it means the only system that is going to feel intuitive to your students is an up-to-date grades area. This includes entering 0’s for any assignment that counts against their final grade. As a benefit, entering 0’s by setting a default grade at the time the assignment is being graded means less work for you.

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

VBrick Rev (Streaming.uww.edu) Video Cleanup

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VBrick Rev (streaming.uww.edu) videos that were created prior to 2019 AND have not been accessed since 2019 will be removed on February 1st.  Please review the videos associated with your account using the link below.  If the videos are still in use, please mark them accordingly in the application and they will not be removed.

https://www.uww.edu/apps/ltc/rev-cleanup

The Fall 2020 semester saw an increase in video usage, and we are proactively cleaning up unused videos to make sure we have adequate space for the Spring 2021 semester.

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

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.