Author: eschudel

Captioning for Teaching & Learning Video Resources

What are Captions?

Captions are the text that is synchronized with the audio in a video presentation. Captions are important when people need to see what is happening in the video alongside a text-based alternative to the audio information.

What should you include in captions?

  • ALL speech content
    If there is speech that is not relevant, it is usually best to indicate in brackets that it has been excluded from the captions. Example: [A & B chatted while slides were loading]
  • Descriptions of relevant non-speech audio are also usually provided in brackets in your captions.
    Example 1: [doorbell rings]
    Example 2: [example of music by XXX plays]Background noise that doesn’t have any contextual relevance can be left out of your captions.

Who Needs Captions?

Captions provide comprehensive access to the audio content in videos for students who:

  • Are deaf or hard-of-hearing
  • Are in a noisy environment and can’t hear the audio
    OR
    Are in a very quiet public environment and can’t play the audio
  • Are not a native-English speaker and need written-word format to support understanding

“As a student, I need captions when I watch videos from my instructor because…”

  • “They use a lot of scientific terms and/or proper names that I haven’t heard or seen before”
  • “The audio in the recording is fuzzy/muffled/poor and it makes some of the material really hard to understand”
  • “They have an accent and I don’t always understand what they are saying”
  • “I have to share my space with other people and I can’t always play or hear the audio when I need to watch the content”
  • “They speak too quickly for me and I miss important information”
  • “I have a hearing disability and captions are the only way I can get the content my instructor is talking about”

Types of Videos Faculty are Creating & Uploading to Kaltura (My Media)

Faculty creations include videos of:

  • Introduction to instructor
  • Demonstrations of course concepts (how-to, hands-on, practical examples, etc.)
  • Mini-lessons / mini-lectures
  • Presentations (e.g. narrated PowerPoint)
  • Interviews / Guest Speakers

Commonly asked question: “Should faculty upload recordings of live-class Collaborate sessions to My Media?”

  • It is not necessary for students’ review purposes to upload recordings of your live-class Collaborate recordings to your My Media. Students can access class recordings directly from the Collaborate section on your course site or via a direct link to the recording.
  • Suggestion: only upload the recording of a class Collaborate session if you need to provide an improved version of the recording by adding captions – and can commit the time to editing any major errors created by the auto-captioning.

How Do I Provide Captions with My Videos?

Always Available: Auto-captioning in Kaltura (My Media)

When you upload video files to Kaltura (My Media), Kaltura’s captioning algorithms automatically generate captions for your videos.

However, it’s important to know that components like background noise, proper names, specific terms/jargon, and variations in pronunciation can present challenges for these algorithms. Sometimes those challenges result in errors. The auto-captioning in Kaltura is approximately 70% accurate, which is comparable to the auto-captioning in YouTube.

You will need to edit your auto-captions. Because auto-captions may include errors that will negatively affect students’ comprehension, you should be prepared to review and edit the auto-captions before you publish your video to students. This is especially important when your video is the primary or sole means by which students get this particular content; they will have no other text-based representations of the concepts or terminology to refer to for comparison.

Available in 2021: (Some/Limited) Captioning support through eLearning

If you are creating teaching & learning video resources for your course(s), you may be able to access some professional captioning support through eLearning.

The budget we have to pay for this service is limited, so we will begin by considering teaching & learning projects that meet the following criteria:

  1. Video is a re-usable and/or shareable learning object; video is not limited to one single course offering. For example:
  • Demonstrations of course concepts (how-to, hands-on, practical examples, lab demos, etc.)
  • Mini-lessons / mini-lectures / presentations (e.g. narrated PowerPoint, Kaltura Capture video; max. 30 minutes)
  • Presentations (e.g. narrated PowerPoint)
  • Interviews or Guest Speakers
  1. Video is authored by the instructor.
  2. The audio quality of the video is reasonably high. e. the spoken word can be understood without having to work too hard to hear it.

Additional consideration will be applied to teaching & learning videos created with the assistance of Camosun’s Audio Video Services.

Out of scope: We will not be able to provide professional captioning support for recordings of live-class Collaborate sessions, or student assignments.

Wondering if your videos might be eligible for some professional captioning support?

If you are creating teaching & learning video resources for your 2021W course or are planning to develop video resources as part of your Scheduled Development plans, you may be able to access help with creating accurate captions.

Please contact Sue Doner [doners@camosun.ca] and Bob Preston [prestonb@camosun.ca] with your inquiries.

 

How to Release an Individual Submission Assignment to a Specific Group of Students in D2L

If you are an instructor in a D2L course site containing multiple instructors where each instructor is responsible for a specific group of students in the course, or if you are working in a D2L site with merged sections where you want to create separate assignments for each group/section’s students, this post is for you!

In this tutorial post, we will cover the steps involved with setting up Release Conditions in an assignment when you want an Individual Assignment Type assignment folder available only for a specific group of students (you will need to create Groups in your D2L course first to use this feature – see the various Groups tutorials for more information.)  For more general information about Conditional Release see the Conditional Release – Setting up Release Conditions tutorial under Course Admin.

Note that this tutorial will show how this process works in the new Assignment Creation Experience interface. If you are using the old interface, the steps will be similar, but you will find all of the Release Conditions functions under the Restrictions tab. For information on how to turn on the new Assignment Creation Experience, see the tutorial Creating an Assignment in D2L in the New Assignment Creation Experience.

For further information, please contact elearning@camosun.ca for assistance.

Steps

  1. Go to the Assignments tool in your course.
  2. Open an existing assignment folder, or click on the New Assignment button to create a new assignment folder.
  3. After adding an assignment Name, and any other settings in the main assignment creation area, click Availability Dates & Conditions to open that part of the right side panel.

    Click Availability Dates & Conditions

  4. Click Add Release Condition. Select Create New. NOTE: Once you have created a release condition, you can click Add Existing to use it again.

    Click Add Release Condition and select Create New

  5. From the Create a Release Condition pop-up, click the Select Condition Type drop-down, and for this tutorial, we will choose Group Enrolment. (For information on all the various Release Conditions, see the tutorial What Release Conditions are Available in D2L under Course Admin for more information.)

    Click Select Conditional Release and select Group Enrolment

  6. Click the Condition Details drop-down, here, a Select Group drop-down, and select the Group you wish to attach this assignment folder to. Then click Create.

    Select group and click Create

  7. Finish setting up your Assignment, and click Save and Close.

    Click Save and Close

Things to Remember

Note that connecting an Individual Assignment folder to a group is NOT the same as creating a Group Assignment folder. For a Group Assignment folder, every student in a group can see everything submitted into their group folder – it is set up for group submissions. Conditionally releasing an Individual Assignment folder to a Group means each student in that Group only sees their own individual submissions.

Once you create a Group Assignment folder you can NOT change it back to Individual. You have to delete it and start over.

eLearning workshops for Spring Schedule Development

Are you a faculty at Camosun College planning for your Scheduled Development for Spring?  Here is a list of  eLearning online learning opportunities coming in May/June 2021.

Note that we have not yet finalized a schedule, and more workshops may be added, but this will give you an idea of what you could plan for during your SD.  For planning purposes, faculty can assume that most of these eLearning workshops will be 1 to 1.5 hours, with the exception of the 5 week and 2 week  FLO courses.

Questions?  Email Emily Schudel at schudele@camosun.ca.

Beginner

Intermediate

Advanced

D2L
Getting Started with D2L Setting Up Your Gradebook Working with Master Courses
Content Management in D2L Quizzes in D2L Advanced Quizzing
Managing Assignments Using Rubrics to Streamline Your Assessment Process
Creating Discussions Designing for Engagement: Moving Beyond Text and Images (HTML Templates)
Spring Cleaning

Accessibility
Text-to-Speech Support for Students: An Orientation to the ReadSpeaker tools in Your D2L Course Introduction to the ALLY tool in D2L: Designing for Accessibility &  Inclusion Using the Accessibility Reports in D2L: What should I do first? (And how do I do it?!)
Take the First Steps in Creating Accessible Content for your Online Classroom

Collaborate
Introduction to BBCU

 

 Increasing Your Proficiency in BBCU Engaging with Students and Using Breakout Rooms in Collaborate
Supported Practice Sessions

Kaltura
Enhancing Your Courses with Video (Kaltura Intro) Going Deeper with Videos and Kaltura Creating Great Kaltura Capture Videos

Open Education/OER
Intro to Open Education and Open Educational Resources (OER) H5P Workshop
Intro to Creative Commons Integrating Creative Commons Material into your Course(s)

Pedagogy
Online Assessments FLO Synchronous (2 weeks) Ethical Dimensions of Educational Technology
FLO Asynchronous (5 weeks)
Flipping the Classroom (blended – asynchronous for  week culminating in a synchronous workshop)

 

Re-post from the TRU Digital Detox

Seems a bit lazy, but I thought this was definitely worth the re-post (or re-blog, whatever you call it – let’s call it sharing!)

In this week’s Digital Detox post (if you don’t know about the Digital Detox, check it out), Dr. Brenna Clarke Grey talks about e-proctoring in a post aptly called E-proctoring Sucks, So Why Won’t It Go Away?

The thing I appreciate the most about her post is her comment that while she does think cheating is a problem, she thinks “it’s largely a structural problem, not an individual one,” which I completely agree with.  Automatically assuming students are going to cheat online and forcing them into invasive proctoring solutions is not addressing the larger issue(s) – we need to examine why students cheat (and yes, there are many, many reasons) and think about our institutional role in pushing them there.

So, I encourage you to check out Dr. Clarke Grey’s post, and join in on the discussion!

Digital Detox #3: E-proctoring Sucks, So Why Won’t It Go Away?

eLearning Drop-ins for Winter 2021

A new year has begun, and what?  January is almost over??  Time to set up our new term’s eLearning Drop-ins!

The eLearning team will be offering scheduled drop-in sessions for faculty needing support with D2L, Collaborate, Kaltura, Assessments, and Final Grades. Come to the sessions with your questions, curiosities, and dilemmas and we will be happy to help you with them. These sessions are not formal workshops; instead, sessions will respond to the needs of those who participate. No registration is needed.

You can join the sessions through the Collaborate link on the navigation bar in the D2L On-Demand Training course.  If you have any questions about these sessions or how to access them, email eLearning@camosun.ca.

Tuesday, February 2, 10:00-11:00 am, eLearning Questions, Curiosities & Dilemmas

Thursday, February 11, 2:00-3:00 pm – eLearning Questions, Curiosities & Dilemmas

Thursday, February 18, 2:00-3:00 pm – eLearning Questions, Curiosities & Dilemmas

Tuesday, February 23, 10:00-11:00 am – eLearning Questions, Curiosities & Dilemmas

Thursday, March 4, 10:00-11:00 am – eLearning Questions, Curiosities & Dilemmas

Wednesday, March 10, 2:00-3:00 pm – eLearning Questions, Curiosities & Dilemmas

Thursday, March 18,  2:00-3:00 pm – eLearning Questions, Curiosities & Dilemmas

Tuesday, March 23, 10:00-11:00 am – eLearning Questions, Curiosities & Dilemmas

Thursday, April 1, 2:00-3:00 pm – eLearning Questions, Curiosities & Dilemmas

Tuesday, April 6, 2:00-3:00 pm – eLearning Questions, Curiosities & Dilemmas

Tuesday, April 13, 10:-00-11:00 am – Final Exam Set Up

Thursday, April 15, 2:-00-3:00 pm – eLearning Questions and Curiosities

Tuesday, April 20, 11:-00 am -12:00 pm – Calculating and Releasing Final Marks

Thursday, April 22, 10:-00-11:00 am – Calculating and Releasing Final Marks

Tuesday, April 27, 10:-00-11:00 am – Calculating and Releasing Final Marks

Reporting Collaborate Issues (Chrome Freezing, etc.)

If Camosun College faculty are having a problem during a session in Collaborate, either in Chrome or Firefox, please do the following from within the session, while the issue is happening (or immediately after logging back in, in the case of Chrome freezing).

First:

Immediately after you encounter your issue (during your Collaborate session if possible,) click Report an Issue to outline your problem directly to Collaborate.  This will give Collaborate all the info about the session including exact time of the issue, right down to connection speed and servers involved.

Second:

Then, after your Collaborate session, email the session name and time, along with an outline of the issue, to elearning@camosun.ca and we can escalate it, if need be, with a formal support ticket. We want everyone who is having the Chrome freezing issue in particular to report it in the moment. It is best to define the issue in the little text box so they know the exact issue. This way Collaborate will be aware of exactly how often certain issues are happening and hopefully find solutions.

Thanks!

Reminder of where to get help with D2L, Collaborate, and Kaltura at Camosun

Well, it’s a new year, and we are one week into the first term of 2021.  Time for a reminder of where you can get help at Camosun College with all your D2L, Collaborate, Kaltura, and online teaching and learning questions.

First stop, contact eLearning@camosun.ca.  They can help you if you have technical issues with the tools we support.  And they can also forward your questions to an instructional designer in eLearning if your questions require a more detailed meeting.   Note that we will be adding workshops (for Winter and Spring) and drop-in sessions for Winter to our CETL calendar in the next week or two, so stay tuned for more information about these virtual offerings.

Next stop, check out all our eLearning tutorials.  We have a wide range of documents covering D2L, Collaborate, Kaltura, as well as pages dedicated to faculty support for teaching online, and student support for learning online.  Just a reminder, that if you are fairly new to any of our tools, we recommend booking an appointment with and instructional designer to get the basics down (as well as those hidden tips and tricks) and then using the tutorials as refreshers and reminders.

And finally, want to talk more about your course and teaching online?  Contact eLearning@camosun.ca to book an appointment with an instructional designer who will be happy (and thrilled) to talk to you about your course and how best to support your students!

 

Grading Assignments Using Rubrics in D2L

Starting to use Rubrics in D2L?  This tutorial is for faculty who have previous experience using the Assignments tool in D2L, and will walk through attaching a Rubric, grading using a Rubric, and showing you what students see as well. NOTE: Make sure you have created your rubric(s) in the Rubrics tool first!

Steps for Attaching Rubrics to Assignments

  1. Go to the Assignments tool in your course.
  2. Click the down arrow next to the title of the Assignment you wish attach a Rubric to, and select Edit Folder.Select Edit Folder
  3. In the Edit Folder area, scroll down to the Evaluation and Feedback area, then click Add Rubric (NOTE: we advise creating your Rubrics in the Rubrics tool first, then attaching them to other tools).Click Add Rubric
  4. In the Select Rubric pop-up, select the Rubric you wish to attach, and click Add Selected.Select Rubric and click Add Selected
  5. Your Rubric will now appear under the Add Rubric Finish editing your Assignment, and then click Save and Close.Click Save and Close

Steps for Grading Assignments Using Attached Rubrics

  1. Go to the Assignments tool in your course.
  2. Click on the title of the Assignment you wish to see submissions for.Click the Assignment title
  3. Click the Evaluate link for the student you wish to assess.Click Evaluate
  4. Click the Rubric link under Evaluation and Feedback.Click the Rubric link
  5. In the Rubric’s pop-up, click the cells for the feedback you wish to leave (checkmarks will appear indicating you have selected those cells), click Add Feedback for any criteria you wish to add custom feedback for, then click Close.Select cells and add feedback, then click Close.
  6. For Points rubrics, the rubric will then automatically generate a grade for the Assignment. Click Publish or Save Draft, and move on to the next student’s assignment.Click Publish or Save Draft

What Students See when Viewing Rubrics in Assignments before Grading

  1. Go to the Assignments tool in your course.
  2. Click on the title of the Assignment.Click the Assignment title
  3. Click Show Rubrics to open the Rubric.Click Show Rubrics
  4. The Rubric will then appear for students to review.Rubric appears for review

What Students See when Viewing Rubrics in Assignments after Grading

  1. Go to the Assignments tool in your course.
  2. Click link under Feedback in the Evaluation Status column (here the link is Unread).Click the feedback link
  3. The Rubric will open and students can review their feedback, then click Done.Review feedback and click Done

Things to Remember

Only Points and Percentages rubrics will adjust the score in an Assignment. Text only rubrics will only generate text-based feedback, and you will have to add a score manually in the Submissions area if the Assignment has a grade.

Re-Introduction to the Open Edtech Collaborative (OpenETC)

Today I am beginning a series of posts about the Open EdTech Collaborative (OpenETC). I’ve posted about OpenETC before, but as people settle into what is turning into a new realm for teaching and learning at post-secondary institutions in B.C. (not just pandemic panic, but the realization that teaching and learning online is viable and worth the investment in time, training, and resources) you should know that the OpenETC offers services and tools that can help you enhance your courses, as well as open them to the world. So, in this first post, I am going to re-introduce you to the OpenETC.

To lift the excellent description from their main site, the OpenETC is “a community of educators, technologists, and designers sharing their expertise to foster and support open infrastructure for the BC post-secondary sector. No contracts or agreements are required to join us, just a willingness and ability to actively participate in our collective endeavor to:

  • encourage technological autonomy and provide ways for students, faculty and institutions to own and control their own data.
  • lower the barrier to participation on the open web for BC faculty and students.
  • provide a more sustainable ed tech infrastructure to BC higher education that gives institutions more control over their tools.  Institutions are currently at the mercy of vendor pricing, upgrade cycles, and exit strategies.  This puts institutions at a certain degree of risk when there are changes to any of the variables beyond their control.  Open-source approaches reduce the risk to institutions in this regard.
  • assist BC faculty in evaluating and making informed pedagogical decisions around open-source teaching and learning applications.”

If you are associated with a post secondary institution in BC (faculty, staff, student), you can sign up for an Open ETC account and try out the tools they support, like WordPress, Sandstorm (a collection of open source applications) or Mattermost (an open-source messaging platform), which are hosted on BC servers, and thus FIPPA compliant. Make sure to review their Code of Conduct and Terms of Use (collaboratively created by the OpenETC community) before joining, and if you would like to become a more active member of the OpenETC community, you can join their Mattermost channel.

I’ll be talking more about their tools, as well as about the folks and institutions that support them, in subsequent posts. And just so you know, this blog, as well as our Camosun Tutorials site, is on the OpenETC WordPress instance!

If you work at Camosun College and want to know more about OpenETC and its tools (in particular, WordPress as we are beginning to point faculty to the OpenETC WordPress instance for their blogs and websites), contact Emily Schudel, instructional designer, eLearning (as well as an institutional lead for OpenETC) (schudele@camosun.ca).

Allow Students to Retake Incorrect Questions Only in a Quiz

There is a new setting available in Quizzes, which allows you to set an additional attempt on a quiz to only show students the questions they answered incorrectly in the previous attempt. New Attempt feature in Quizzes (to only do incorrect answers). And cautions (about grade export and conditions).

When this setting is selected, learners who attempt a quiz more than once can only answer questions that were incorrect on the previous attempt.  You will find this setting under the Assessment tab when editing a quiz, and here is what this setting looks like:

Retake Incorrect Questions Only setting

Some things to note:

First, if you are sending the grade from the quiz to the Grades tool, choosing First Attempt will ensure that the grade does not change when a student completed a second (or third, etc.) attempt. If you choose Highest Attempt, the system will add the grades from the first and second attempt (etc.) together, for example if the student received 2/5 on the first attempt, and answered 2 more questions correctly on the second attempt, they will receive 4/5 in the gradebook. If you choose Average of all Attempts, each subsequent attempt will mean a new average will be generated, for example if the student received 2/5 on the first attempt, then answered 1 more question correct on the second attempt, their grade in the Grades tool will change from 2/5 to 2.5/5.

Second, if you conditionally release other activities to a Quiz grade, that condition will be dependent on how you have set the grading for the attempts. So, if a student gets 2/5 on their first attempt, and the First Attempt is set as the overall grade for that quiz (whether or not it is sent to the Grades), and if a release condition is set for completion of that quiz with a mark greater than 60%, this student will never be able meet that condition, even if they eventually get a 4/5 on a subsequent attempt.

Third, if you include Written Response questions, they will be marked as 0 and included in future attempts until they are graded manually.

Finally, while this may seem like a good setting for self-assessment quizzes, sometimes it’s better to let students do all the questions multiple times as they may have gotten an answer correct accidently the first time, and this setting will not present that question again.

Questions?  Contact eLearning@camosun.ca to book an appointment with an instructional designer