CETL Blog

Reminder: Open Education Week is Next Week!!

Next week is Open Education Week. What does this mean, you are undoubtedly asking yourselves. Well, let me tell you!

First, a quote from the Open Education website:

“Founded in 2013 by the Open Education Global (previously Open Education Consortium), the goal of Open Education Week is to raise awareness and showcase impact of open education on teaching and learning worldwide. Open Education Week has become one of the most foremost global events recognizing high achievement and excellence in open education.

The week-long event spotlights amazing work from over a dozen categories including live, face-to-face events, webinars, projects, and resources.  The Best-of-the-Best participate in Open Education Week. “

So, here we are in year 8 of this amazing event. Institutions around the world are running face to face and online events, and all online events are free so you can attend from your own desk.

The Events page on the Open Education website lets you know what is happening, and where, but it’s a little tricky to navigate.

Open Ed Week events page screen capture

Interested in an event? Click on it to find out more. And then you can click on Event Schedule to see a complete calendar of events taking place next week.

Event Schedule screen capture

Click on the date to see all the events, Online Events are listed first, followed by Local (on-site) Events. If it is an online event, click on the event title and then you can click Join Webinar to connect to the session once it begins. The Events page does not have an option to automatically add calendar events to your calendar of choice, so you will have to do that yourself. Just make sure you have the time right, as these events are originating from all over the world.

Next week I’ll be blogging some more about Open Education Week as it happens!

New Quiz Building Experience in D2L

There is a new “Quiz Building Experience” in D2L. What does this mean? It means you have the option right not to opt a new Add/Edit Questions interface when you are creating a quiz. Here’s how to opt in, and how to navigate this new interface:

  1. Create a New Quiz, or Edit an existing one.
  2. Make sure your Quiz has a Name, then click Add/Edit Questions.

    This new experience brings the Add/Edit Question interface in line with the design you have already seen in several of the Question types, as well as adding the drag and drop option for reordering which is already present in other D2L tools.

  3. At the top, right (right above Settings) you will see a little down arrow – click this.

    Click the arrow at top right

  4. Click Turn it on. If you decide you want to go back to the original experience, you can click the down arrow and the Turn it off button that will appear. Note that eventually, this will be the default experience so it’s a good idea to try it out now!

    Click Turn it on

  5. On the “Ready to begin adding quiz content?” screen, click Import and select Browse Question Library (you could also click Add, but we recommend you create your questions in the Question Library first, then Import them into a quiz.)

    Click Import and select Browse Question Library

  6. Use the arrows to open sections in your Question Library, and the select boxes to select sections or questions to add to your Quiz. Once you have selected the questions you wish to add, click Add.

    Select questions and click Add

  7. If you then click on a question, you will be able to edit it (and you will be asked if you want to save it to all the places the question is being used). And if you hover your mouse on a question, and then hold down your mouse on the dots on the left side, you can drag questions around to change their order.

    Click to edit or drag questions

  8. Once you are done adding and editing your questions, click Back to Settings for “Quiz Title” (at the top left).

    Click Back to Settings for Quiz

  9. You can now finish editing your Quiz (Restrictions, Assessment, etc.) and click Save and Close.

    Click Save and Close

This new experience brings the Add/Edit Question interface in line with the design you have already seen in several of the Question types, as well as adding the drag and drop option for reordering which is already present in other D2L tools.

Any questions?  Send a note to desupport@camosun.ca to book a consult with an instructional designer.

Camosun Faculty: Please share this message with your students! (time-sensitive)

Dear Camosun College Students,

** Do accessibility-related challenges impact your student life at college? **

Accessibility challenges for students at college can be the result of a mismatch between what you need to succeed as a student and how components of college experiences & environments have been designed.

For example, you may have experienced accessibility-related challenges associated with a physical or learning disability, or associated with speaking English as a second language, or associated with financial limitations, or associated with the use of technology at the college.

The 2019/2020 “Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Project: Phase 2” is a faculty/student-partners project at Camosun College. Our project team is interested in hearing your stories about accessibility-related challenges in college life, learning what would help to minimize those challenges, and creating learning tools out of your stories that will help our college community better understand how we can all help design experiences and environments that are more accessible for everyone.

** What does our college community need to know about accessibility-related challenges? What do you want us to know? **

We invite you to share your stories with us between February 24 to March 16, 2020 in small groups (Sharing Circles) or anonymously (Online Form).

Questions about this project may be directed to: Sue Doner, UDL Project team leader, in the Centre for Excellence in Teaching & Learning (doners@camosun.ca).

Information about this project and a schedule of opportunities for you to participate may also be found on the project website “Practical Applications of Universal Design for Learning”

Educause

If you don’t already know about Educause, you need to check it out.

Educause is “a non-profit association and the largest community of technology, academic, industry, and campus leaders advancing higher education through the use of IT.” And you can find all kinds of resources, research, and connections at the Educause website.

For example, last December Educause published a 2019 Study of Faculty and Information Technology. While the data comes from 119 US institutions, much of the information collected is likely also reflective of trends in Canada.

I encourage you to take a look around the Educause site and let us know if you have any questions or want to find out more about any of the issues discussed there.

Adding Links to your D2L Course Navbar

A quick tip for you today.

Wanting to add links to your D2L course Navbar (for example, a link to My Media to enable Kaltura for your students)? Here’s a quick way to do that.

  1. Go to your D2L course
  2. Hover your mouse over the Navbar, and click on the three dots that appear at the top, right, and select Customize this Navbar (note, if you have already customized your Navbar, you will select Edit this Navbar).

    Select Customize or Edit this Navbar

  3. In the Create a Copy? box, click Yes! I’ll work with a copy of the navbar. (Note that if you have already customized your Navbar, you will not see this box and can move to the next step).

    Click Yes! I'll work with a copy of the navbar.

  4. Change the Name of your Navbar if you like, then in the Links area, click Add Links.

    Click Add Links

  5. In the Add Links box, find and select the link(s) you wish to place on the Navbar, then click Add.

    Select links and click Add

  6. Move the new navbar link as needed (click and hold your mouse button on the new link and move around the navbar), then click Save and Close.

    Click Save and Close

  7. Your new link will now appear in your navbar.

    Navbar with new link

BCcampus Calls for Proposals for Creating OER

In case you missed it, BCcampus has posted a new set of Call for Proposals for creating Open Educations Resources (OER). Find out more at:

If you have any questions about OER or Open Pedagogy, check out these BCcampus resources, or contact Emily Schudel (schudele@camosun.ca).

Festival of Learning – Program and Registration

The Program for the Festival of Learning (May 11-13) is now up.  Register now so you don’t miss out – it’s going to be amazing!

https://festival.bccampus.ca/

Celebrate Learning and Teaching in B.C. post-secondary education and explore the theme of Disruption and Transformation

Held every two years and welcoming 500 attendees, the Festival of Learning is B.C.’s largest conference about learning and teaching in higher education. This is a great opportunity for faculty, instructors, students, leaders, librarians, learning designers, educational technologists, and accessibility educators/professionals to network and learn together.

eLearning May/June Workshops – Lansdowne

eLearning Lansdowne Workshops

For Lansdowne workshops, click the Register link for the workshop you wish to register for. Questions about Lansdowne workshops? Contact Emily Schudel.

Blackboard Collaborate Ultra: Engaging in Real time

Day/Time: Tuesday, May 6, 2:00-4:00pm
Room: TBD
Register

Blackboard Collaborate Ultra is a synchronous classroom tool, which means that faculty now have an online tool with audio, video, chat, and whiteboard/desktop sharing capabilities to support their teaching in real-time, either from a classroom or from the comfort of your own laptop. Come find out more about Blackboard Collaborate and see it in action!

Kaltura: Streaming Media at Camosun!

Day/Time: Thursday, May 7, 9:00am-12:00pm
Room: TBD
Register

Kaltura is Camosun’s a streaming media tool (we sometimes call it Camosun’s YouTube). This means faculty and students now have a place to create, edit, and house their course-related videos. Kaltura also integrates with D2L. This half-day hands-on workshop covers the technical consideration of integrating multimedia into a D2L course using Kaltura. Time will be set aside for you to integrate and test your multimedia components in D2L. Basic familiarity with D2L is recommended for participants interested in this workshop.

Articulate 360: An Overview

Day/Time: Thursday, May 7, 10:00am-12:00pm
Room: TBD
Register

Come explore ways to increase interactivity, learner engagement and satisfaction within online learning environments. A series of multi-disciplinary templates have been developed to address instructional challenges and support interactive and authentic online learning experiences in 3 key areas including: content management, quiz games and scenario-based learning (choose your own adventure). This workshop will provide an overview of the templates and for those interested in creating their own learning objects can get a sense of what is involved.

Designing for Inclusion with the Help of a New Ally!

Day/Time: Friday, May 8, 10:00-11:00am
Room: TBD
Register

To support Camosun’s commitment to a more inclusive student experience, the eLearning team is introducing a new tool within D2L that will help all of us to prepare course content that meets Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and automatically generate alternative formats of the content for students. The tool comes from the Blackboard company and is called “Ally”.

Ally doesn’t change how anything works in your course, and won’t affect your course files. It provides you guidance on how to correct technical accessibility issues with your digital course content, which means your learning materials will work better on mobile phones and tablets as well as with assistive technologies.

Your students will also be able to download “alternative formats” of your files by clicking the dropdown icon next to the file name, and choosing a version of the file most appropriate for their device and need.

Attend this info session to learn more about how Ally can support accessibility in your D2L courses.

First Steps in Creating Accessible Course Content

Day/Time: Wednesday, May 20, 1:30-3:30pm
Room: TBD
Register

Take the first steps to make your digital course content more accessible to a diverse population of students.

Improving the technical accessibility of your course content will not only help students with disability-related challenges to access your materials, it will also improve course content access for students who use mobile devices, need ESL assistance, want options for engaging with content during long commutes, or have unreliable Internet access off-campus.  When you prepare D2L content to meet the technical standards defined by Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), you give your students meaningful options for accessing content how and when they need it.

With the help of a new tool in D2L called “Ally”, this hands-on session will help you assess the current accessibility status your own D2L content. In addition, this session will guide you through some key steps you can take when creating Word documents, PDFs, PowerPoints, and web pages to ensure they are as technically accessible as possible.

Getting Started with ePortfolio in D2L

Day/Time: Tuesday, May 26, 9:00am-12:00pm
Room: TBD
Register

Looking for options for your students to collect and share documents, assessments, presentations, etc. with other students and faculty across their Program? Come find out how ePortfolio in D2L might support you!

Flipping Out over the Flipped Classroom (Blended)

Day/Time: Wednesday, May 27, 10:00am-12:00pm. Online pre-course activities open Tuesday, May 19th. NOTE: You must complete the online activities BEFORE May 27th!
Room: TBD
Register

Wonder what all the hype is around the “flipped” classroom? Come experience one way to flip a classroom in our blended workshop. NOTE: in this flip, the online component will run first, taking 1-2 hours to complete over a week, and will be followed by a 2 hour face to face session. In this workshop, you will:

  • Learn about what it means to flip a classroom
  • Discuss your own ideas for flipped classroom activities with Camosun colleagues
  • Learn about the pros and cons of flipping the classroom

Text-to-Speech Support for Students: An Orientation to ReadSpeaker in your D2L Course

Day/Time: Thursday, May 28, 10:00am-12:00pm
Room: TBD
Register

If you use D2L to share content files with your students, you have probably noticed the presence of the “webReader” and “docReader” tools at the top and/or bottom of the content-display pages. These tools (from the ReadSpeaker company) are designed to convert text into speech, without requiring students to download and install additional software.

Text-to-speech technology is especially valuable to students who have learning disabilities, reduced vision, or who are coming to English-as-a-second-language. The ReadSpeaker tools that we have integrated into our D2L system will read text aloud while simultaneously highlighting it so that readers can easily follow along.

In addition to the two readers that are automatically available in D2L Content, we have a third tool in our ReadSpeaker collection: TextAid. This tool has been in limited pilots to date but is available for any instructor to add to their D2L courses. In addition to providing text-to-speech support for external websites and students’ own documents, TextAid also has potential to support students with their own written composition work.

In this hands-on session we will look at webReader, docReader and TextAid in our D2L environment, sample the readability of current course content in participants’ courses, and explore the writing-support possibilities of TextAid.

Integrating Informal Assessments Using D2L

Day/Time: Thursday, June 4, 10:00am-12:00pm
Room: TBD
Register

Unlike formal assessments, informal assessments allow you to observe the progress of your students regularly throughout the term of your course. In this session we will look at ways you can use D2L and other eLearning tools, to support informal assessments for your students.

Creating Community in the Online Classroom (Blended)

Day/Time: Tuesday, June 9, 10:00am-12:00pm. Online pre-course activities open Monday, June 1st. NOTE: You must complete the online activities BEFORE June 9th!
Room: TBD
Register

What does it mean to create an online community for your students? What considerations do you need to keep in mind when developing online activities to support that online community? This blended workshop will give you the opportunity to engage in online community building, and to work with your peers face-to-face to develop strategies for integrating online community-building activities into your course. NOTE: the online component will run first, taking 1-2 hours to complete over a week, and will be followed by a 2-hour face to face session.