[RESOLVED] Canvas Issue Update

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RESOLVED – Thursday, December 6th:
On Thursday, December 6th Canvas ran a process to restore the Assignment Grade data in courses that were not already manually corrected. At this time, the issue is resolved.  
Please contact Canvas Support if you have any further questions about this issue.

Update Tuesday, December 4th:
As a follow-up to the issue that occurred on Monday, November 26th, UW-System and UW-Whitewater have been working with Canvas as they perform some additional investigation around restoring the Assignment Grade data. Investigation is still ongoing and we will provide an additional update no later than Thursday, December 6th.

Original Message:
Thank you for your patience as we have been working to understand the impact of the Monday, November 26th, 2018 issue which affected course enrollments in Canvas. Canvas was able to determine the root cause of the issue, which was caused by a faulty process in their system that loads course enrollment updates into the Canvas platform.  Canvas, UW-System, and UW-Whitewater are working together to make sure processes are in place to mitigate any future issues.What do you need to know?

Prior to Monday, November 26th, if you had assignments that were assigned to specific students, groups, or sections (basically anything that was not “everyone”) you will need to go back in and update those assignments.  This includes any Due Dates, From Dates, or Until Dates that may have been set for those assignments.

Follow the steps below in any active Canvas courses to check and verify that your assignment grades are visible.

  1. Login to Canvas by going to http://www.uww.edu/canvas
  2. Load the course, and click on the Grades menu from the course navigation.
  3. Check your assignments that you have graded, to verify that you can see the grades.  The image below is from a course where the Grades are not currently visible.
  4. If all grades are visible – that’s it!  Nothing more needs to be done.  Otherwise, continue on to step 5.
  5. For each assignment that is missing grades, click on the assignment name of the top of the grade column.
  6. Once the assignment has loaded, click on the Edit button.
  7. Scroll down to the bottom, and you’ll see an empty “Assign to” section.  Click on Add and select Everyone in the Assign to box.  Alternatively, you can also set this to a group, section, or individual student if that’s how it was configured previously.
  8. Dates are not required – but you can populate those if desired.
  9. Click on Save

  10. Your grades should now be visible for both Instructors and Students.
  11. Repeat steps 5 to 10 on all impacted Grades.

We understand that while this process is fairly straight forward, it is time consuming.  Canvas is investigating if there is anything additional they can do to restore those grades, but we wanted to make sure there was an immediate option available.  We’ll provide an update no later than Monday, December 3rd, 2018.

If you have questions about how to change these settings, or would like assistance with the process, please reach out to Canvas 24/7/365.

Recent LTC Staff Conference Presentations

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Over the last two months, some LTC staff members have made presentations, and co-chaired a workshop, at national conferences.

Learning Technology Center

In October, Director of Learning Technology Nicole Weber co-presented Improving the learning experience through innovative strategic partnerships at the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference in Denver, Colorado.

In November, Learning Technology Specialist Andrew Cole co-chaired a workshop, Playing with Open Educational Resources (OERs): What communication faculty need to know, at the Annual Convention of the National Communication Association in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Also in November, Director of Learning Technology, Nicole Weber and Matt Vick presented Adaptive learning 101: How professors and learning technology centers can collaborate to launch a new adaptive course and
A discussion about adaptive learning and discussion boards: What role can they serve and what value can they have? at the Online Learning Consortium’s Accelerate International Conference in Orlando, Florida.

For more on the Learning Technology Center, please see the LTC website.

TED Tips – Issue 21: Happy Thanksgiving!

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An abbreviated TED Tip this week: I want to take the opportunity on behalf of the Learning and Technology Center to give thanks!  Happy Thanksgiving! I am thankful for the opportunity each week to write these blog posts and explore some of the ideas and themes about which I am passionate.

It has been an honor to explore the themes of Technology, Education, and Design (TED). I continue to examine our technological environment and learn more about the tools available to us. What can they do? How do we use them well to enhance our teaching and learning? What types of things help us to make a difference in our students’ lives? What contributes toward student success? How do we design experiences that support our students in this way?  Please feel free to drop by Learning Technology Center on the Whitewater Campus, leave a comment here, or send me an email!

I plan on continuing to provide tips each week on these themes and am thankful to have a platform to do so! There are a number of planned tips over the next few weeks.  Topics include: how to design successful layouts and content, how to build rubrics in Canvas, and an exploration of additional tools and services.  There are more stories to tell and things to be thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving

The next Workshop in the 2018-19 UW-Whitewater LEARN Center/Learning Technology Center Workshop Series “Back to Basics to Balance Workload” is this coming Tuesday, November 27 from 12:30 – 1:45 in the University Center room 259A. This workshop is specifically focused on “Using Groups to Engage Students and Maximize Instructor Time: A Conversation about How to Use Team Projects in the Classroom.” Eric Loepp from Political Science and Michele Peets in Management will discuss how and why they use group work, what benefits you can gain from using group activities, what strategies work, and practical tips to help you save yourself time.

Well-structured group work can produce a more meaningful learning experience for students. Instructors are the critical factor in facilitating a successful environment for that meaningful work to occur. This workshop will review the benefits of group work in the classroom, the conditions needed for successful implementation, and provide tools to assist in transforming a traditional classroom setting into a thriving group environment

Participants can expect to:

  • Learn why we use group work as a classroom strategy
  • Identify the benefits of group work in the classroom
  • Learn strategies for employing group work in assignments
  • Take away practical tools/ resources for instructors to use

– Ted Witt
Teaching, Learning, and Technology Consultant

RESOURCES:
https://my.uww.edu/signup/Registration/Details/15855

TED Tips – Issue 20: TED Talks

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Our Mission: Spread ideas

I’ve been asked several times where the inspiration for TED Tips originates, so this week I want to explore that source of inspiration. TED Tips talks TED talks. As such, what are TED Talks?

“TED is a nonpartisan nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks. TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science to business to global issues…”

TED logo

https://www.ted.com/

While TED Talks have been around since 1984, they saw a spike in interest and use correlated to the increase in popularity of YouTube. Most TED talks are recorded, of high quality, and the videos are made easily accessible. Another feature of TED Talks lends itself well for internet consumption. TED talks follow strict guidelines and adhere to high quality standards. No talk can exceed 18 minutes in length… According to TED Talks curator Chris Anderson, 18 minutes is “short enough to hold people’s attention, including on the Internet, and precise enough to be taken seriously.”

I have named this blog TED Tips for similar reasons. I cannot resist a good pun and acronym – so basing the blog name off of my name “Ted” made sense in the context of my job in the Learning Technology Center as a Teaching, Learning, and Technology Consultant. My job title can apply directly to the use of TED as “technology, education, and design” as it applies to higher education. Finally, I find affinity with the mission of the original TED Talks, exploring all ideas and sharing those ideas with others. I hope that this blog lives up to those standards and source of inspiration.

I want to share a couple of my personal favorite TED talks and some of the ideas worth sharing. I recently discovered the following talk on the TED Radio Hour. NPR produces a radio version of the show and the accompanying podcast works wonders during my commute. Podcasts and radio broadcasts keep me thinking and engaged while I can focus driving.

Recently, I was visiting with my goddaughter – a spunky, somewhat awkward, still discovering herself twelve year old. She likes cooking, acting, polar bears, and obsessed with the band BTS. Like many pre-teens, she struggles with confidence and overcoming perceived obstacles, social barriers, and school drama. A version of Megan Washington’s talk entitled: “Why I live in mortal dread of public speaking” played on the TED Radio Hour. I immediately connected some of the themes and strategies outlined in the talk to the struggles of my goddaughter.

The synopsis of her talk reads and I’ll share the embedded link.

Megan Washington is one of Australia’s premier singer/songwriters. Since childhood, she has had a stutter. In this bold and personal talk, she reveals how she copes with this speech impediment—from avoiding the letter combination “st” to tricking her brain by changing her words at the last minute to, yes, singing the things she has to say rather than speaking them.”

The second TED talk I want to highlight is Steven Johnson’s entitled “Where Good Ideas Come From”. I have often share this with students when hoping to provide time for creativity to develop. Contrary to the notion that inspirations strikes in a flash or “Eureka!” moment, good ideas take time to develop and often require clashes with other ideas. Steven Johnson elaborates on this idea in a corresponding book, TED talk, and an even shorter animated version is worth the multimedia experience. I’m including a link to that animated version here:

 Finally, I want to share one final TED Tip: There’s a TED app that builds personalized recommendations based on your preferences delivered directly to you. I’d encourage you to check it out and explore more ideas worth sharing.

– Ted Witt
Teaching, Learning, and Technology Consultant

RESOURCES:
https://www.ted.com/

TED Talks referenced:

Why I live in mortal dread of public speaking by Megan Washington. TEDxSydney April 2014 https://www.ted.com/talks/megan_washington_why_i_live_in_mortal_dread_of_public_speaking

Where good ideas come from by Steven Johnson. TEDGlobal 2010
https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from

Winterim 2019 and Spring 2019 Courses

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Canvas Users: Winterim 2019 and Spring 2019 Courses are now available in Canvas.  Now that you have your course – here is what’s next:

  • Courses are Unpublished.  By default, all courses that are created in Canvas will come across as unpublished.  When a course is unpublished, it’s only visible to you – and students will not see the course.  Once you have your content loaded up into the course and ready to go, simply hit the “Publish” button in the top right corner on the course home page.  For more information see: Canvas Guide: How do I publish a course?
  • Course Combinations.  Do you want to combine multiple sections of the same course into a single Canvas course?  Follow the steps in the Cross-Listing/Merging Canvas Courses guide.  If you need to combine courses that you are not the teacher for or if you have any questions please contact Canvas support.
  • Import your content (Master Course).  If you have been working in a Master (Blank) course inside of Canvas – great!  You can easily copy that content into your semester course and then you’ll be ready to go!  Follow these steps to Copy Content from an Existing Canvas Course.
  • Import your content (Desire2Learn).  If you want to pull content directly over from Desire2Learn into your Canvas course – we got you covered!  Follow these steps to Export your Desire2Learn Course and Import it into Canvas. Keep in mind, there will be some adjustments you need to make – so don’t want until the last minute.  Check out the D2L Course Complexity App for more information.
  • Canvas Support.  As a reminder, with Canvas we do have 24/7/365 Phone, Chat and Email Support (links on the login page)!  Please direct all questions to Canvas support.  If they cannot assist you, they will escalate the issue to local support at UW-Whitewater.

Desire2Learn Users: Winterim 2019 and Spring 2019 Course Requests are now available.  You can request for your course at: http://my.uww.edu/d2lrequest  Contact Desire2Learn Support with any questions.

As a reminder, starting in Summer 2019 all courses must be taught in Canvas and Desire2Learn course requests will no longer be available.

Celebrating Teaching and Learning Conference 2019

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Save the date: Wednesday, May 22, 2019 from 8:30am-3:30pm

Celebrating Teaching and Learning, May 22, 2019

This special event is meant to showcase the wide variety of ways we are all transforming the lives of our students through teaching and learning.

Themes will include:

  • Integrating Teaching and Technology
  • Student Engagement
  • High Impact Practices
  • Civil Discourse and Diversity
  • and other topics

TED Tips – Issue 19: Quality Matters

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“Grounded in research. Driven by best practices. A community that puts learners first.”

As I mentioned last week, I was recently at the annual Quality Matters Connect conference in St. Louis. Quality Matters is an inter-institutional peer review process dedicated to the continuous improvement of online and blended course design. This week TED Tips explores Quality Matters (QM). I serve as a Quality Matter Coordinator for the University of Wisconsin Whitewater. I am an official liaison between UWW and Quality Matters and am a go-to person for anything related to it. Please contact me if you have questions!

online course design is at the heart of quality matters

Quality Matters (QM) is a faculty-centered, peer review process designed to certify the quality of online courses and online components through a continuous improvement process. QM promotes and improves the quality of online education and student learning. It does so through the use of current, research-supported, and practice-based quality standards and appropriate evaluation tools and procedures. It supports professional development in the use of rubrics, tools and practices to improve the quality of online education. A QM-Certified Course is an online or blended course that has met QM Standards for a QM Rubric in an Official Course Review. Quality Matters is supported by the non-profit MarylandOnline. The QM Certification Mark is more than an achievement for online course design — it is evidence of an interconnected, continual process provisioned with tools, support and professional development that helps you develop and provide successful experiences to your learners.

Quality matters is best known for its review process for online or blended courses. Four underlying principles guide Quality Matters:

  • Continuous: The Quality Matters process is iterative and committed to continuous quality improvement. Given review, revisions, and support, all reviewed courses will eventual meet expectations.
  • Centered. Quality Matters is supported by national standards of best practice, research literature, and instructional design principles.
  • Collegial. The process is faculty driven; peer reviews are diagnostic and collegial, not evaluative nor judgmental.
  • Collaborative. Reviews are flexible and offer constructive feedback. They are not prescriptive.

The three main elements of Quality Matters are the QM Rubric, the peer review process, and professional development. It is important to emphasize that Quality Matters addresses only the course design of online classes. Quality Matters does not address the delivery (how instructors actually teach courses).

Quality Matters does not address other factors that may impact the quality of online courses such as faculty or learner readiness, and our digital learning environment. Many of these other factors are themes we explore each week in this TED Tips Blog. The Learning Technology Center offers additional faculty development opportunities to learn about Canvas or methods to improve your online and blended teaching effectiveness through programs like the upcoming Winterim Online / Blended Teaching Institute. Quality Matters addresses one aspect of online course quality – course design.

 

The most recent QM Higher Education Rubric, Sixth Edition, released July 2, 2018. The Quality Matters Rubric is designed to provide a rigorous set of Specific Review Standards that can be applied to online courses as part of a commitment to continuous quality improvement . While the emphasis is on online or blended courses, many of the design principles could also apply to traditional face-to-face courses.

These General Standards are:

Quality Matters Sixth Edition Rubric Workbook

  1. Course Overview and Introduction
  2. Learning Objectives (Competencies)
  3. Assessment and Measurement
  4. Instructional Materials
  5. Learning Activities and Learner Interaction
  6. Course Technology
  7. Learner Support
  8. Accessibility and Usability

QM courses use a faculty driven peer review process. There are several options for reviewing a course ranging from formal official course review following QM processes and protocols, an internal review, or more customized consultations. Internal reviews can guide and improve existing courses. Quality matters standards can be introduced to help scaffold the development of new online classes.

The review process is faculty driven and starts with a self-reported worksheet that lists basic information about the course that is useful to the review team, such as the delivery format, instructional materials, and supplemental materials that may require review. A formal peer review team is comprised of three faculty members includes a course representative. Each team includes a master reviewer that manages the process to ensure consistency and rigor; a Subject Matter Expert to advise the team about disciple-related materials and practices, and an External Reviewer outside our school to assist in providing helpful recommendations. The recommendations are constructive, specific, sensitive, and balanced to the course being reviewed. There is opportunity for revision to the course based on that feedback. Only official QM-Managed reviews can lead towards official QM Certification.

If you are interested in learning more about Quality Matters in Online Learning, exploring additional professional development opportunities, or would like to discuss other factors of the design and delivery of online courses please contact me at wittt@uww.edu.

– Ted Witt
Teaching, Learning, and Technology Consultant

RESOURCES:

https://www.qualitymatters.org/
https://www.qualitymatters.org/sites/default/files/PDFs/QM-Overview-Booklet-digital.pdf

TED Tips – Issue 18: Four Book and a Blog from St. Louis

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Last week, I attended the Quality Matters Connect Conference in St. Louis, Missouri last week and was not able to pull together my normal weekly TED Tip. I had intended to write about Quality Matters and how the QM framework can be used to help guide and design quality courses…but conferences can provide you with so much information that it is easy to get lost or distracted in that information. And so I was.

Instead, I wanted to share a few recommendations, and a blog that I discovered at the conference. I am often looking for new and interesting books and articles to read, blogs to peruse, and podcasts to fill my commuting time. Attending the conference provided me with some interesting ideas to explore!

Four Books and a Blog:  What follows are titles and authors from a handful of books that were recommended from within the context of various other presentations. A couple of them are newly published. For full disclosure, I have no connections or interests to any of the authors or publishers. All came up either directly in the presentations or in conversations at the conference. Each struck me as interesting and connected to Technology, Education, or Design … and could be springboards for further conversations and explorations.

Blog post: Catalytic Conversations with Dr. Mark David Milliron
Dr. Milliron was the keynote speaker at the annual Quality Matters Connect Conference. Ge serves as the Co-Founder and Chief Learning Officer of Civitas Learning. “Civitas Learning Space is a digital community designed to engage education leaders as they explore key trends, issues, challenges and solutions in the use of analytics to improve student success.” The blog is a collection of thoughts, research, and stories that are intended to help faculty inform their practice. One of the key themes was the predictive analytics movement in higher education.

Reality is Broken: Why Games Make us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal. While “gamification” has been used in higher education, the book was recommended in the context of a conversation around authentic assessment and solving real world problems. The claim that playing games can help boost global happiness is intriguing. The book description reads: “we can leverage the power of games to fix what is wrong with the real world – from social problems like depression and obesity to global issues like poverty and climate change.”

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker. At one point in the conference, a comment was made about how divided and divisive the world seemed today. The speaker at the time was a civil war historian…Enlightenment Now was his counter argument to divided times.  I knew I needed to learn more!  The book asks: “Is the world really following apart? “ and makes the claim that it is not. Pinker shows that “life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise… Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress”

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina.“In Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina, a molecular biologist, shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work. In each chapter, he describes a brain rule—what scientists know for sure about how our brains work—and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives.”

High-Impact Practices in Online Education: Research and Best Practices by Kathryn Linder (Editor). This volume offers the first comprehensive guide to how high-impact practices (HIPs) are being implemented in online environments and how they can be adjusted to meet the needs of online learners.

I am always interested in what people are reading and some of the latest books and research for trends in technology, education, and design. If you have a recommendation or suggest for me, please feel free to contact me at wittt@uww.edu.
– Ted Witt
Teaching, Learning, and Technology Consultant
RESOURCES:

https://www.qualitymatters.org/
https://www.civitaslearningspace.com/
https://www.civitaslearningspace.com/CatalyticConversations/

Still time to apply for the 2019 Winterim Online/Blended Teaching Institute

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The UW-Whitewater Learning Technology Center (LTC) is pleased to announce that registration remains open for the Winterim 2019 Online/Blended Teaching Institute. The Online and Blended Teaching Institute is a series of interactive workshops focusing on best practices for teaching online and blended courses.  The structure of the Institute allows participants to explore new instructional and course design methods, and participate in learning activities similar to what a student would experience. To apply, click here. The URL for registration is also available at the bottom of this post.  The deadline to apply is Monday, November 5. Participation in the Institute is competitive, as typically more applications are received than can be accepted. Expect that incomplete application forms will be rejected. Accepted participants will be notified following confirmation from their respective college.

Dates for the 2019 Winterim Online and Blended Institute:
January 4: Face-to-Face meeting, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
January 11: Face-to Face meeting, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
January 18: Online using WebEx, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Submission of final Institute content February 1st

This institute provides you with a foundation in the pedagogy of online and blended instruction focusing on key terminology, principles, and practices. You will explore practical guidelines for teaching online and blended courses, designing content for online and blended courses, and utilizing technology, tools and strategies to facilitate active, participatory, and engaging online learning experiences.

By the conclusion of the institute, you will have created an online or blended learning module which will include pedagogically-appropriate assessments, discussions, and additional learning materials. This module will be developed with feedback from the institute facilitators and your colleagues, and demonstrate what you have taken away from this institute.

If you have any questions about this workshop, contact the UW-W Learning Technology Center.

Application Link: https://uwwhitewater.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3f0THo4dRBWqqm9