Canvas Update (1/18/2020)

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Vendor Updates

On Saturday, January 18, 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.

  • Direct Share Course-Level Features: Instructors can copy individual course items to another course and share individual items with other users.
  • Personal Pronoun feature description: Users can select pronouns to associate with their account in Canvas. The initial set of options will be: He/His, She/Hers, They/Theirs.
  • Postable Submission Comments: Assignments with the “Manual” Posting Policy will now be able to have Comments posted for students to see before entering a grade.
  • New Quizzes – Answer Shuffling: Instructors using the “New Quizzes” tool will now be able to shuffle answers on multiple choice, multiple answer, and matching quiz questions.
    • Please note that “New Quizzes” is still in Beta and UW-Whitewater recommends the use of the standard quizzing tool.
  • Rich Content Editor Update: Instructors can start using the Rich Content Editor update early by enabling it in their settings area. Instructure plans to make the updates on by default in a future update.

UW-Whitewater Updates

Winterim 2020 grades are due 4:00pm, Tuesday January 21. Directions for eGrading are available for instructors who wish to use this process.

Remember to Publish your courses. Spring 2020 courses start Tuesday January 21. It is important to remember that students will be unable to enter the course, and instructors will be unable to us the Inbox to message students until the course is published.

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

Planned Maintenance Outage – Sunday 1/12

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There are two planned outages happening on Sunday, 1/12 that will impact a number of services including Canvas.

  • On Sunday, January 12th between 12:00 AM (midnight) at 8:00 AM, DoIT in Madison will be performing scheduled Network Maintenance. During this window, there may be periods of time where services are not available. This may impact some Canvas and Kaltura logins, as well as other services listed in the DoIT announcement.
  • On Sunday, January 12th between 12:00 AM (midnight) and 1:00 AM, Instructure will be performing maintenance on the Quizzes tool in Canvas. During this window, there may be periods of time where quizzes are not available.

If you have any questions, please contact UW-W Canvas Support.

Join a discussion about adaptive and personalized learning on campus!

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Since 2018, the Learning Technology Center has been exploring adaptive and personalized learning. The LTC would like to invite any UW-Whitewater faculty, staff, or student interested in adaptive and personalized learning to discuss the state of adaptive and personalized learning on campus.

Come join the discussion on adaptive and personalized learning!

These are open discussions. Registration is suggested but not required. There are two meetings this spring 2020 semester. Please feel free to attend either or both:

Friday, February 21, 2020 10:00 AM

Tuesday, April 21, 2020 2:00 PM

Remote attendance for these meetings is possible as well (please just contact icit-techpilots@uww.edu after registering to receive a Webex link to join virtually). If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact the Learning Technology Center.

Spring 2020 Canvas Course Prep Session

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On Friday, January 10th there will be a three hour Open Lab in McGraw 19C, spotted with five-minute mini sessions about targeted reminders on a wide range of topics. The LTC and LEARN Center would like to help you work on anything on your start of semester to-do list. Even if the mini session don’t touch on your tasks, there will be people here to help with anything during the Open Lab times.

  • 1:00pm-1:30pm Canvas 24-7 Support vs HelpDesk followed by Open Lab
  • 1:30pm-2:00pm Transferring content from one Canvas course to another followed by Open Lab
  • 2:00pm-2:30pm What goes into a syllabus, and what resources are available? Followed by Open Lab
  • 2:30pm-3:00pm Gradebook setup followed by Open Lab
  • 3:00pm-3:30pm Designing good assignments in Canvas followed by Open Lab
  • 3:30pm-4:00pm LEARN Center offerings for Spring followed by Open Lab

If the above is too much to keep track of during this busy time of year, just stop in during any time that works for you, and we will be here to help you get done the things YOU need to get done.

While walk-ins are encouraged, if you plan on joining us at any point, please consider signing up in advance so we know to expect you.

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

What’s New in Canvas? (12/21/2019)

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On Saturday, December 21, 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 Announcements: The notifications area for each user now includes a space to set how you would like to receive notifications about a new Global Announcement being posted by Administrators.
  • New Quizzes – Numeric Question Invalid Input Warning: If a quiz question is set up to only accept the Numeric Question, a warning for an invalid entry will pop up if a student attempts to enter an invalid character. The warning should say “only numeric values are accepted”.
    • Please note that “New Quizzes” is still in Beta and UW-Whitewater recommends the use of the standard quizzing tool.

On Wednesday, January 1st, the New Analytics tool will be set to “On” for all of UW-System, making the Old Analytics tool unavailable. For details on the differences, Instructure has made documentation available.

Office 365 / Google Collaborations are now working as expected in Canvas. If you experience any issues using Collaborations, please contact Canvas 24/7 Support.

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

Call for Proposals: Celebrating Teaching and Learning Conference 2020

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As a member of the UW-Whitewater community, you are invited to submit a session proposal for the campus event 2020 Celebrating Teaching and Learning Conference, “2020 Vision for Student Success.”  This special forum is meant to showcase the wide variety of ways we are all transforming the lives of our students through teaching and learning.  The Conference will be held Wednesday, May 20, 2020 on the UW-Whitewater campus.  It is sponsored by the LEARN Center, the Learning Technology Center, and the Office of Academic Assessment.

Proposals are due March 2nd, 2020.

Concurrent presentation sessions will last 45 minutes.  You are welcome to structure time to fit your presentation.  Remember Q&A!  A typical session consists of approximately 35 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for questions and answers. 

We encourage proposals in the following themes:

  • Student Engagement: Topics may include learner engagement strategies, discussing different ways of supporting students in courses, incorporating active learning strategies, measuring student success, or other engaging teaching activities.
  • Integrating Teaching and Technology: Topics may include lessons learned from Canvas, integrating emerging technology into teaching, using mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, etc.) or apps, leveraging analytics to improve teaching or learning, ePortfolio, or preparing students for 21st century skills (e.g., evaluating information, being a digital collaborator).
  • Access and Inclusion: Topics may include accessibility (Universal Design and supporting students with disabilities), access to remote learners, closing the equity gap for underrepresented minority students, meeting the needs of Hispanic-speaking and Latinx students, and supporting non-traditional students.
  • High Impact Practices: Topics may include showcasing high impact practices, community based learning, undergraduate research, collaborative teaching practices, first year experiences, or LEAP projects.
  • Something Else: Have an idea that doesn’t fit into the themes above? That’s okay! Submit your idea using the “Something Else” theme!

Sessions that involve collaboration and creativity are encouraged!

Submit your Proposal Now!

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

[RESOLVED] Respondus Monitor Slowdown

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On Monday, December 9th, 2019, between 9:15 AM and 10:20 AM CDT, Respondus Monitor experienced a slowdown due to a database issue. This was causing intermittent connectivity issues for instructors accessing the LockDown Browser dashboard. It was also causing slowdowns or errors for students trying to start a Respondus Monitor session.  Everything was operating normally as of 10:20 AM CDT.

Please contact Canvas 24/7/365 Support with any questions or concerns.

What is Respondus Monitor?

Respondus Monitor is an additional product that works with Respondus LockDown Browser to use the student’s webcam to utilize video to further prevent cheating during online quizzes.  It is currently licensed only for use by specific courses in the College of Business and Economics.

Are you still using Desire2Learn?

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Are you still logging into Desire2Learn to get course material or using it for your department or organization?  If yes – please reach out to the instructor of that course and inform that that they will need to move to Canvas!

D2L will be flipped into “read-only” mode on January 17th, 2020. Users will still be able to login to save and export content, but they will not be able to create any new content or participate in any courses.

Please contact UW-W Desire2Learn Support with any questions around the retirement of the service.

Canvas Grading Lab

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Have you entered zeros in your gradebook for missing work? Are your assignment groups weighted the same way in Canvas as they are in your syllabus? Have you set your courses Grade Scheme to match your syllabus? Do you need assistance submitting final grades to WINS? During the Fall 2019 final exam period, the LTC will be offering opportunities to work on each of these with local support available.

Canvas Grading Lab 
We will be available to answer your Canvas questions during the sessions below!

DATE/TIMELOCATIONREGISTER
Wednesday, December 18th
1:30 – 4:30pm		McGraw 19c, Whitewater CampusIn-Person Registration
Thursday, December 19th
1:00 – 4:00pm		Allen Hall 03/04, Rock CampusIn-Person Registration

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