Canvas Workshops – September 2019

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During the month of September, the LTC will be offering opportunities to work on and learn about Canvas features. We will continue to offer workshops throughout the fall semester.

Canvas Open Lab (2 Hours)
We will be available to answer your Canvas questions during the sessions below! Whether you are working on your current course, or planning for the future – stop on by!

Date/Time Location Register
Wednesday, September 4th – 2:00pm McGraw 19c In-Person Registration
Thursday, September 5th – 1:00pm McGraw 19c In-Person Registration
Monday, September 9th – 1:00pm McGraw 19c In-Person Registration
Tuesday, September 10th – 2:00pm McGraw 19c In-Person Registration

Canvas Deep Dives (1 Hour) Followed by Canvas Open Lab (1 Hour)
We will focus on a single tool, and dive deep into various options and use cases for how that tool works.  The second hour will be available as an Open Lab.

  • Grades: Weighting grades, Late policies, Muting Assignments, SpeedGrader, setting a default grade, and setting up extra credit.
  • Rubrics: This will start by touching briefly on rubric creation, but will focus on techniques to maximize the amount of value you can get by building rubrics directly in Canvas.
Event Name Date/Time Location Register
Grades Monday, September 16th – 1:00pm McGraw 19c In-Person Registration
Rubrics Tuesday, September 17th – 2:00pm McGraw 19c In-Person Registration
Grades Tuesday, September 24th – 1:00pm McGraw 19c In-Person Registration
Rubrics Wednesday, September 25th – 2:00pm McGraw 19c In-Person Registration

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

Interested in personalized and adaptive learning?

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Are you looking for ways to increase student engagement in your online course? Are you not sure how to best monitor student progress when you don’t see your students in class? Would you like to be able to have resources that more specifically meet the needs of your students, while allowing them to skip things they have already learned? If so, you might be interested in joining the conversation about personalized and adaptive learning on campus! Adaptive learning platforms incorporate analytics with the aim of helping instructors monitor student progress, and use various methods to cultivate individualized pathways to better meet students’ specific needs.

Adaptive learning pathways can function similarly to nodes in a network.

Over the past year, the Learning Technology Center (LTC) has collaborated with instructors around campus to explore adaptive learning. The LTC would like to invite any UW-Whitewater faculty, staff, or student interested in adaptive and personalized learning to our two meetings discussing the state of adaptive learning on campus this fall:

Friday September 27th from 9:30 to 10:15 am in McGraw 19A
Friday October 25th from 9:30 to 10:15 am in McGraw 19A

No registration is necessary! Just stop in and join the discussion!

You can find out more information on adaptive learning from EDUCAUSE’s “7 Things You Should Know About Adaptive Learning.” If you have any questions about these meetings, or adaptive learning, please contact the UW-W Learning Technology Center.

Learn about Respondus LockDown Browser

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Respondus LockDown Browser (LDB) is a secure browser for taking quizzes in Canvas. It allows students to take a quiz in a locked down environment. When students use LockDown Browser, they are unable to print, copy, go to another website/URL, or access other software programs.

Respondus is offering some instructor training webinars this month!  This comprehensive training webinar is intended for instructors who plan to use LockDown Browser and/or Respondus Monitor with online exams. The session provides a detailed demonstration of both applications, including new enhancements that make Respondus Monitor even more effective and easy to use.

Are you ready to learn more?  Signup for one of Respondus led webinar sessions below.

If you have additional questions about Responds LockDown Browser and/or Monitor please contact the Learning Technology Center.

What’s New in Canvas? (07/13/2019)

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KNOWN ISSUE: Some instructors report that Canvas Gradebook columns have been “hidden” from students even through the instructors did not choose that setting. Canvas is working on a fix for the issue. There is a workaround and more information available at: https://kb.wisconsin.edu/dle/news.php?id=10487

On Saturday, July 13, Instructure deployed the latest release to the Canvas environment.  The highlights of this release are listed below.  The full release notes are also available.

New Features

  • Grade Posting Policy.  Located in the gradebook settings, the Grade Posting Policy can be set to automatic or manual.  When set to Manual, grades are automatically hidden (muted) by default.

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

Using Poll Everywhere to Engage Students

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Are you looking for ways to increase student engagement? You might be interested in using Poll Everywhere. Poll Everywhere allows you to receive immediate feedback from your students, who can respond in real-time to polls that you create. Students can respond to Poll Everywhere polls via their computers or mobile devices, thus offering the potential to transform lectures to an active and engaging experience. This service is offered at no charge to instructors and students; all you need is a UW-Whitewater NetID to get started. 

Curious, but not sure how you’d use Poll Everywhere? Check out some of the great ways you can use Poll Everywhere in the classroom. Or, see how professors use these 10 active learning strategies that connect teachers with students. 

This summer, the Learning Technology Center is offering two sessions to help you use Poll Everywhere in your course. Both sessions have the same content, aiming to introduce you to Poll Everywhere and help you set it up in your classes. Lauren from Poll Everywhere will facilitate the training to get you up and running quickly and easily. 

You can join in-person on-campus or remotely via Webex Meetings. The dates/times for the sessions are below, just click on the session to sign up. Webex Meeting information is provided in the individual session description (there is a different Webex Meeting link for each session).

Thursday July 25th, 2019 at 11:00 AM in McGraw 19A or via Webex Meetings

Tuesday August 13th, 2019 at 2:00 PM in McGraw 19A or via Webex Meetings

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

2019 Celebrating Teaching and Learning Conference Recap

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On May 22nd, 2019, the LEARN Center and Learning Technology Center held the 2nd Celebrating Teaching and Learning Conference.  We had 107 attendees – with almost 50 presenters and 30 volunteers we really owe it to you for making this a successful event!

There were a number of great talks on a wide variety of topics, and a great keynote presentation “Even Online Students” from Dr. Evie Oregon of Western Kentucky University. If you want to see some of the handouts from the sessions,or view the recording of the keynote presentation – jump on over to the conference site: http://blogs.uww.edu/ctl/schedule

Most importantly, we heard your feedback loud and clear –and planning is underway for the 2020 Celebrating Teaching and Learning Conference, which will be held on Wednesday, May 20th, 2020!  That’s a lot of 20s!  Be sure to subscribe to our blog, and keep your eye out for more information.

Don’t be a stranger in the meantime, look for a great lineup of workshops and events for the next academic year!

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Save the Date

Cisco Webex Education Connector for Canvas

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The Cisco Webex Connector is now available for use in Canvas!  The Webex Connector allows you to interact with Webex Meetings and Webex Teams directly from your Canvas course.  It can be accessed by clicking on “Cisco Webex” in the course navigation menu.

To get started with the Cisco Webex Education Connector, see: https://spaces.uww.edu/x/74I3AQ

This is a replacement for the “Webex (Legacy)” integration which will be removed on Monday, August 19th, 2019 after the completion of the Summer term.

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

Kaltura Media Migration: D2L -> Canvas

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As of May 28th, 2019, all Kaltura media that was created by instructors and accessed with Desire2Learn (D2L) between September 1st, 2018 and May 21st, 2019 has been migrated to Canvas.

This does not impact media material that is located on Vbrick Rev (Streaming.uww.edu).

We have created a Canvas Media Management Tools guide to help explain the best use cases for each of the media management tools available at UW-Whitewater.

If you have additional questions regarding the Kaltura Media Migration, please contact the Learning Technology Center.

What does this migration mean for me?

Inside of Canvas, you can access the “My Media” tool by clicking on the “Account” item on the left global navigation menu, and then by selecting “My Media” from the account menu.  Within this interface, you will be able to create, edit, delete and view all of your Kaltura media that exists within Canvas.

From the editing toolbar in Canvas, you can click on the “More Tools” icon highlighted in the image below, and select “My Media” to embed videos in your content.

Can I still use Kaltura CaptureSpace?

Kaltura CaptureSpace has been discontinued as of June 1st, 2019 and is no longer supported by the vendor.  There is a new tool called Kaltura Capture which has the same functionality as CaptureSpace.  Visit the Kaltura Capture guide to get started.

What if I can’t find all of my media content in Canvas?

If there is video content missing that you had within D2L, contact the Learning Technology Center and we can migrate that over as well. Currently, we only moved over media that was created by instructors and accessed since September 1st, 2018.

Why was it necessary to migrate my media?

With the launch of Canvas, there was also a new Kaltura instance that was put in place by UW-System. This is totally separate from the Kaltura instance that has been connected with D2L.


Canvas Course Templates: Additional Flexibility Available

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On Tuesday May 28th, UW-System approved a change in Canvas to allow for additional flexibility in the Course Navigation area and in the number of Announcements shown.  The following items can now be added or removed from the student view in the following order:

  • Assignments
  • Discussions
  • Grades
  • Announcements
  • People
  • Pages
  • Syllabus
  • Outcomes
  • Quizzes
  • Modules
  • Collaborations
  • Chat
  • Office 365

Instructors are now able to modify the number of recent Announcements that are visible in the Home area.  Announcements were previously set so that the three most recent were visible in the Home area.  This update will allow instructors to choose to allow between one and fifteen announcements to be visible.

These updates will not cause any visible changes in existing courses.  Any instructor wishing to take advantage of this increased flexibility will need to update their courses themselves.

If you have additional questions about Canvas please reach out to Canvas 24/7/365 support by going to http://uww.edu/canvas.

[Resolved] Blogs@UWW Outage 5/8

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The Blogs@UWW service was unavailable between approximately 9:00 AM and ~12:13 PM on Wednesday, May 8th, 2019. The service has now been restored, but any media content (images or files) uploaded to the service between Sunday, May 5th at 11:00 PM and Wednesday, May 8th at 12:13 PM will need to be re-uploaded and linked. We apologize for the inconvenience.

If you have any additional questions about this outage, please contact the UW-W Helpdesk.