Uncategorised – Page 2 – Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

UDL Guidelines from CAST

Want to dive a bit deeper into Universal Design for Learning? Well, aside from coming and visiting our own Sue Doner or her website, there are some amazing resources you can check out online. One I am going to highlight today is CAST – the Centre for Applied Special Technology, which just released an updated version of their UDL Guidelines.

“The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.”

Find out more by visiting The UDL Guidelines.

Kaltura Tip: Adding YouTube Videos to My Media with Workaround for Chrome issue

Did you know you can add YouTube videos to your My Media area in Kaltura? This doesn’t mean you are copying the actual video, but you can add links to YouTube videos so that those videos appear as part of your My Media area, meaning you can then embed them in a Content page (through Insert Stuff in the HTML editor). Why pull them in to My Media when you can embed YouTube videos directly through Insert Stuff? Well, if you add them to My Media, you can add them to Playlists in the Course Media gallery area, but most importantly, if you add YouTube videos to My Media, when you embed them in the HTML editor, Kaltura will strip out that annoying final screen in YouTube videos which tempt students to click on another video.

How do you do this? This tutorial will show you how, and in addition, will show you how to embed the videos to avoid the current issue with viewing embedded YouTube videos in Chrome. There are several steps, so please contact desupport@camosun.ca if you encounter difficulties.

This tutorial is designed for faculty who have previous experience using D2L and My Media in D2L and will cover the steps involved when you wish to add a YouTube video to your My Media space in D2L and embedding it in the HTML editor (for example, in a Content page). Note that this is a workaround as viewing a Kaltura YouTube video is not currently working in Chrome (Jan. 2020).

Steps

Go to your course in D2L.
Go to My media (through the link on your Navbar, or in your My Tools drop-down menu, or in a draft Topic in the Content tool).
Click Add New and select YouTube.
Open another tab in your Browser and go to YouTube. Find the YouTube video you want to add and click Share. Then select the video’s URL and click Copy.
Go back to your D2L course, and paste the copied URL into the Video Page Link box. Click Preview.
It will take a few minutes for the YouTube video to completely be pulled into My Media – the longer the video, the longer it will take. If the video appears to be taking a longer time to load than you think it should, pull the play bar across for a little bit and the video information editing area will appear in the main window. If this does not work, wait a little longer (it may take upwards of 20 minutes) and try again.
Edit and add details as needed. We highly recommend adding information to all the listed fields to help you filter/sort media files as you build your collection, and to help your students search for specific media files. Note that you do NOT need to Publish the video for it to be available for use in your course. Click Save. The YouTube video will now appear in your My Media space.
To allow students to see the YouTube video you just set up in My Media, you will now need to embed it in the HTML editor, in whichever tool you are using. In this scenario, we will embed it into a Content page. So, first go back to My Media and click the title of the YouTube video you want to embed.
Scroll down below the video, and click the Share tab.
This next step is the first part of the workaround for embedding YouTube videos in your Content pages. This will require that you have added the Course Media link to your NavBar. Once you have done that, click Course Media, then click Add Media.
Click the select box next to your YouTube video ad click Publish.
Click the Channel Actions menu (top right) and select Edit.
Click Playlists.
Click Create New and select Manual Playlist.
Give your Playlist a Title – for this scenarios, we will use the title of the YouTube video we are going to embed. Then click Add Media.
Click Add next to your YouTube video. Then click Save.
Click Embed.
Copy the Embed code in the Embed Playlist pop-up box (you will paste it into the HTML editor later in the following steps).
Now, go to the Content tool in your course and click on the title of the Module you want to add your video to. Click New and select Create a File.
Give your Topic a Title. Then click in the HTML editor box and add some text to provide a context for the video you will be embedding. For example, explain to your students what the video is about and what they should be watching/listening for. Make sure to hit your Enter key so your cursor appears below the text you just typed in, otherwise your video may not appear where you want it to! Click on the Insert Stuff icon at the top left of the HTML editor.
In the Insert Stuff pop-up, click Enter Embed Code.
Paste the Embed code you copied from the My Media area into the Embed Code box, and click Next.
Once the video appears in the Preview area, click Insert.
Your video will now appear in your Content Topic page, and you can click Save and Close to publish your Topic page. Your Topic will now appear with the embedded video in it.

Things to Remember

When you embed a YouTube video you have added to your My Media space into a D2L page, the video will not show advertising or additional videos as it does when embedding it from YouTube directly.

This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.Icons by the Noun Project.

Creative Commons comes to Work

And now, my 5th assignment for the Creative Commons Certificate!

Adapt, not Assimilate!

And here is my fourth assignment from the Creative Commons Certificate!

Complex Images and Accessibility – Portland Community College Website

When adding images to your documents or web pages/WordPress pages, to meet best practices around accessibility you need to add appropriate descriptive text to your images so that learners who can not see the images have an alternate way to access the images. But adding text to images can be tricky when you are dealing with more complex images like graphs, maps, diagrams, charts, etc.

This Complex image Accessibility site (which opens in a new tab or window) from Portland Community College has some excellent guidelines for how to make complex images accessible to all.

Reminder of where to get help to get ready for January

Looking for help with setting up your final grades, etc.? Getting ready to set up your courses for the Winter term? eLearning is here to help.

We have drop-in times at Interurban in LACC251J on Fridays from 11:30am-12:30pm and in December, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:00am-12:00pm. And don’t forget, you can also schedule one-on -one consults with an instructional designer at either campus.

Email desupport@camosun.ca to book an appointment today!!

License to Creative Commoning

Here is my assignment 3 for the Creative Commons certificate: The Law that we call Copyright!

Managing Attendees in Blackboard Collaborate Ultra (D2L) – Blackboard Collaborate Ultra Tutorial

This tutorial is designed for faculty who have previous experience using D2L and Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, and will cover how you can manage Blackboard Collaborate Ultra (BBCU) session attendees. Information on how to use individual feature is contained in relevant tutorial documents. For further information, please contact desupport@camosun.ca for assistance.

Steps

Go to the location in your D2L course site where you have linked to your Blackboard Collaborate Ultra room (for example, in the Content tool), click on your Blackboard Collaborate Ultra session and enter your session.
Open the Collaborate panel (the bottom right icon).
Click the Attendees icon.
To manage an attendee’s settings, click the Attendee controls icon (the three dots) to the left of their name.
From here you can:
1. Send a private chat message to that attendee.
2. Change the role of that attendee, for example (as shown here) promoting a Participant to Moderator, Presenter, or Captioner status.
3. Mute the attendee’s microphone.
4. Remove the attendee from the session/room.
You can also view an attendee’s Internet and audio connection by clicking the Attendee connection icon (to the left of the Attendee controls).
Finally, you can set the Attendee panel to stay open to make it easier to manage your attendees. Click the More Options icon (the three dots at the top of the Attendees panel) to:
1. Find an attendee (especially useful if you have a large group).
2. Detach the Attendee panel completely to keep it open.
3. Mute all attendees at once.

Things to Remember

It’s a good idea to recommend to attendees/participants that they mute their microphones upon entering the session, and to remind them they will need to unmute them to talk. That way you don’t have to worry about distractions from a lot of background noise.

This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.Icons by the Noun Project.

The Law that we call Copyright

Here is my assignment 2 for the Creative Commons certificate: The Law that we call Copyright!

Once upon a time…the Tale of how Creative Commons came to be

I am currently taking, and getting close to finishing, the Creative Commons certificate course, and as part of this course have been writing blog posts for my assignments on my own blog site. So, I thought I would share some of these with you so you can also learn a bit about Creative Commons, what it is, what it does, and many other exciting and interesting things!

And, without further ado: Once upon a time…the Tale of how Creative Commons came to be !