Learning a new skill is like climbing a mountain: it takes lots of energy, and you might stumble and trip along the way. But hopefully if you bring a friend along, you can enjoy the journey and bask in a beautiful view together at the end. We hope your teaching journey is continually rewarding as you help students climb their mountains!
Our goal is to help improve teaching and learning and to make technology work for you and your students. We have some exciting new things coming to OTL this month, please read carefully!
Upcoming Events
- Canvas Q & A Webinar: Thursday October 8th at 10:45 am
- OTL Webinar: Using Technology in the Classroom Effectively Wednesday October 14th at 2:45 pm
- Online CanvasCon: Thursday October 15th (all day)
Help Needed! Canvas Quizzes Changing
Canvas Quizzes are a crucial component to our use of Canvas. In July 2021, Instructure is phasing out the quiz engine that you are used to (Classic Quizzes), and bringing in New Quizzes. The Office of Teaching and Learning needs your help to comment and vote on important feature ideas for New Quizzes to make it the best it can be. Follow the steps below to vote on things that will be critical to keeping the functions you are used to with Classic Quizzes, and improving for the future.
- Visit community.canvaslms.com and click "Sign In" where you will be directed to log in with your MTECH Canvas account.
- Once you are logged in, come back to this page, and click on the following links to vote on and comment on each idea you would like to have implemented:
- To "vote" on an idea, look for the 5 stars underneath the idea, and click on the star that is on the right to vote it a 5-star idea. Then add a comment in support of the idea.
We appreciate you taking time to vote on important feature ideas. Here is another one that you can vote on to improve the gradebook: Keep Gradebook Completely Unfiltered by Default
Canvas Helpdesk 24/7 Chat, Call & Email
We will soon be implementing 24/7 Canvas Helpdesk support. Instructors and students can call, chat, or email Instructure with questions about Canvas 24/7. Stay tuned for the official launch.
Until this is available, please use the "Help" tray inside of Canvas to submit help tickets, as this will be the place where you'll find the chat button and phone number when we officially launch.
the chat and phone number to call for help.
Canvas Quiz Log Auditing
Have you ever wanted to look deeper at a student's attempt(s) on a quiz in Canvas? With Quiz Log Auditing, now you can see greater detail of a student's test attempt. Read full details here.
Testing at Home or Testing Center
Do you have students who need to quarantine and take a test from home? Lockdown Browser has a setting that allows you to let some students take a test from the testing center (with a passcode), while others can use a webcam to be monitored at home during a test. Follow these instructions very carefully when setting up your tests for students to take exams at home:
A few important things to remember:
- Contact OTL to get the link to download Lockdown Browser on personal computers.
- Turn off IP address filtering so students taking a test from home do not get an error.
Simple Syllabus Library
By now many of you know that we implemented a syllabus library. To view the library of published syllabi, visit mtec.simplesyllabus.com and select the term you would like to view (we are working on merging everything in to a 2020-2021 term).
Reconsidering Midnight Deadlines
Canvas often defaults to a midnight deadline for assignments, but that may not be the best strategy for teaching workforce preparation. According to Faculty Focus, "If you place emphasis on preparing students for the workplace, you can employ a philosophy that all assignments should be [turned in during] the business day... as most employers do not schedule projects to be completed or delivered in the middle of the night."
Read the full article here.
Northstar Training Now Online
You may have seen some Northstar training in Bridge. It is now a stand-alone program that instructors get enrolled in as soon as they start teaching. If you'd like a refresher on how Northstar works, you can enroll in the program here.