On your mark…
Welcome back to the beginning of another school year. Many of you have been hard at work all Summer, and your hard work is paying off. Your Canvas courses are looking better than ever! It’s exciting to see all the improvements being made and we appreciate all the time and effort you put in to improve your courses for students.
As you all work on making sure everything is ready in your classroom and labs, we have a few reminders for tidying up your online class as well. Please review the New Course Review section below and reach out to otlhelpdesk@mtec.edu if you have any questions.
If you are teaching an introductory course with new students, you may have noticed some new student orientation materials. We realize many programs have their own materials, but OTL has created some generic MTECH materials for any course that needs it. Additionally, you may notice in some courses a new link for a New Entry Student Survey. This links to a Qualtrics survey for new students that is meant to help us better understand the student enrollment experience. Please take some time in the first weeks of your courses to encourage new students to complete the orientation materials as well as the new student survey.
New Course Review ✔
Johnny Vargas has been hard at work making sure all the newly requested Canvas courses are ready to go. As you get ready to welcome your students, here are a few things you might want to review:
- Set your course start/end dates in Course Settings.
- Click on Lockdown Browser in course navigation to ensure that the right settings are there for testing security. Watch this video for instructions.
- One day after your course has been created, click on Simple Syllabus in course navigation and make sure it is filled out correctly. Make sure you click “Submit” when you’re done!
- Validate all links, and make sure the right content is published by running Link Validation.
- Conduct a quality evaluation using the “Student View” feature before enrolling students.
Welcome Camellia Hill!
Camellia Hill joined the OTL team back on July 5 of this year and many of you have already had the chance to see Camellia in action. We’re excited to add another Instructional Designer to the team!
Camellia Hill is an innovative educator with over a decade of educational involvement. She has been employed as a teacher in the Ukraine, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, and now the United States of America. Camellia has a combined BA in Kinesiology and Education, MA in Pedagogy, & MS in Instructional Psychology & Technology. She is presently CEO/ Co-founder of DeMolder Hill Design. Camellia is involved in professional development as an instructor, organizer, & participant. She has recently presented & published on Blended Learning as well as Online Badges. She is thrilled to join MTECH to continue to add to MTECH’s impressive success in education.
Course Highlights
While working with the EMT program to add updated materials from their new textbook, Camellia Hill was also able to help upgrade the course appearance to help students navigate through the new material.
Autumn Krogh has also recently developed an interactive activity for Medical Assisting to help students study how to correctly administer injections.
Both of these are examples of ways OTL is working to help support our instructors and improve the learning experience at MTECH.