by Eli Collins-Brown | Feb 16, 2021 | Blog, Canvas
- Spring and Summer 2020 courses have been migrated into Canvas and are available for instructors to get started! Spring and Summer 2020 instructors should have received an email from Dr. Eli Collins-Brown with information on getting started.
- Fall 2020 courses and active student centers and organizations are currently being worked on by the LMS Implementation team and we hope to have a migration date soon; we are targeting March. Spring 2021 courses will be available August 2021, Faculty that want to use these courses for Fall 2021 should import these courses themselves. Here is the how to for exporting from Blackboard and importing to Canvas – Migrating a Course – Exporting a Blackboard Course/Importing to Canvas. Once a course has been migrated, it can be found on your Canvas dashboard which you can access by visiting canvas.wcu.edu and clicking the “Login to Canvas” button.
Canvas training workshops will begin February 18th. We will have workshops available every Thursday and Friday at 11am during the Spring semester; we have included the overview below. Prior to attending the workshop, faculty are encouraged to have started the self-paced training course and required to have completed the migrated course checklist. We are asking that all instructors register for the workshop ahead of time so that we can prepare session information and staffing. To register for Canvas workshops, visit canvas.wcu.edu and click “Register for Canvas Course Workshop”.
Canvas Workshops:
In this workshop, CFC staff will answer questions related to Blackboard course migrations (faculty who seek this kind of assistance should have a completed migration checklist document, to expedite support).
- Staff will also assist faculty who choose to go an alternate route and build a course from scratch.
- For departments interested in requesting a workshop or training for the department or program, a request form is also available on canvas.wcu.edu.
Migration Tips:
- canvas.wcu.edu is the landing page for everything Canvas at WCU, this page has a link to login to Canvas that you can bookmark and valuable information about migration from Blackboard to Canvas.
- All courses will be in Canvas beginning May 17th with the Minimester.
- We have compiled information from our recent Departmental meetings and created an FAQ page. We will continue to add questions and answers as they come up. Visit the Canvas Migration FAQ page to explore our FAQ.
- Canvas is also here to help during the migration. We encourage all instructors to use the help support link within Canvas if you have questions as you are building your courses in Canvas.
- This is the overlap period between Blackboard and Canvas. All faculty have access to Canvas right now.
- A self-paced training course(s) is available in your Canvas dashboard which is the best place to start. All instructors have also been given a development shell to create and copy content into as you are getting familiar with Canvas.
- Canvas Commons is a public resource available from Canvas which offers support, training, ideas from other schools, etc. You can visit Canvas Commons available in Canvas on the global left menu by selecting “Commons”.
- If you want a course prior to 2020 in Canvas follow the steps in from IT Help to export the Blackboard course and import into Canvas.
Canvas Migration Timeline
by Eli Collins-Brown | Feb 9, 2021 | Blog, Canvas
We have been talking to Faculty and Staff across campus and we have been compiling the questions we have received so that we can share the information with everyone. To look at the questions and see the answers, please visit our FAQ page – https://ithelp.wcu.edu/en-us/category/1400336. We will be continuing to add questions as we get them. Do you have questions that you are not seeing? Please take advantage of the 24/7 Canvas support and Canvas training services portal which you can access within Canvas: access it through the ? icon in the left side menu.
- canvas.wcu.edu is the landing page for everything Canvas at WCU, this page has a link to login to Canvas that you can bookmark and valuable information about migration from Blackboard to Canvas.
- All courses will be in Canvas beginning May 17th with the Minimester.
- We have compiled information from our recent Departmental meetings and created an FAQ page. We will continue to add questions and answers as they come up. To visit the page, go to https://ithelp.wcu.edu/en-us/category/1400336 to explore our FAQ.
- Canvas is also here to help during the migration. We encourage all instructors to use the help support link within Canvas if you have questions as you are building your courses in Canvas.
- This is the overlap period between Blackboard and Canvas. All faculty have access to Canvas right now.
- A self-paced training course(s) is available in your Canvas dashboard which is the best place to start. All instructors have also been given a development shell to create and copy content into as you are getting familiar with Canvas.
Canvas Migration Timeline
by Eli Collins-Brown | Feb 2, 2021 | Blog, Canvas
You may have heard students and/or other instructors are using Canvas this semester. We are excited to announce that Canvas pilot groups across all colleges have started using Canvas. The 13 instructors in the pilot group are teaching a course in Canvas; with around 400 students. Feedback has been very positive regarding the ease of use.
- canvas.wcu.edu is the landing page for everything Canvas at WCU, this page has a link to login to Canvas that you can bookmark and valuable information about migration from Blackboard to Canvas.
-
- All courses will be in Canvas beginning May 17th with the Minimester.
- We have compiled information from our recent Departmental meetings and created an FAQ page. We will continue to add questions and answers as they come up. To visit the page, go to https://ithelp.wcu.edu/en-us/category/1400336 to explore our FAQ.
- Canvas is also here to help during the migration. We encourage all instructors to use the help support link within Canvas if you have questions as you are building your courses in Canvas.
- This is the overlap period between Blackboard and Canvas. All faculty have access to Canvas right now.
- A self-paced training course(s) is available in your Canvas dashboard which is the best place to start. All instructors have also been given a development shell to create and copy content into as you are getting familiar with Canvas.
Canvas Migration Timeline
by Eli Collins-Brown | Nov 3, 2020 | Blog, Canvas
We have exciting news for you about Canvas!
All faculty and staff now have access to Canvas! Click on the graphic or go to (https://westerncarolina.instructure.com/) and log in with your WCU username and password.
The entry point is the Dashboard where you will see:
Development Shell – you are the instructor and can use this to experiment with different functionality in Canvas
Growing with Canvas (technical training on how to use Canvas) – you are the student in this course.
All Canvas related information is on the CFC’s website – Canvas Central – canvas.wcu.edu
If you want to get started on your own, the Canvas Community is a great place to find text and video tutorials and self-paced courses. We suggest starting with Growing with Canvas, Preparing to Launch, and Higher Education: First Day Ready. You can access the Preparing to Launch and Higher Education: First Day Ready self-paced courses through the Training Portal. Follow these steps:
- From within Canvas, click on the Help icon in the left navigation menu.
- Then click on the Training Services Portal link. This launches the training portal
- Authorize the portal.
- Go through the Tutorial that is presented if this is your first time accessing the portal. On repeat visits, you can close the tutorial by clicking on the X in the corner.
- Click on the Launch Training button in the upper right corner.
- You can scroll through the courses, search by name, sort, or filter to find a course.
We know this will be an important transition and we are here to partner with you. The CFC has a team of instructional designers working to migrate most of your 2020 courses from Blackboard to Canvas; if you have a 2020 course that will not be auto migrated you will receive an email from us. This will require some work on the individual faculty member to get the course ready for the next time it is scheduled. You will be receiving more information from the CFC about the migration and additional training offerings coming in the spring.
The implementation team is working alongside the LMS Committee to produce a detailed migration plan, allowing for an easier transition among faculty and staff. Transferring classes to a new system is no simple task. To help mediate this exchange, it has been decided that all Blackboard courses will remain accessible for spring 2021, but all succeeding courses after that semester will be transferred into Canvas.
by Eli Collins-Brown | Sep 28, 2020 | Blog, Student Engagement, Teaching and Learning
Author – Lisa Bloom is the Jay M. Robinson Distinguished Professor at Western Carolina University where she has been a member of the faculty since 1989. Her current research interests include using technology to personalize learning environments and to promote creative and critical thinking, problem-based learning, culturally responsive teaching, and the social and emotional well-being of children. She is the author of Classroom Management: Creating Positive Outcomes for All Students published by Pearson, as well as numerous journal articles related to her research interests. She teaches both online and face to face courses in instructional technology, classroom management, and creative and critical thinking.
Navigating Engagement for Online Meetings
I’ve learned through the COVID crisis that I have amazing colleagues at WCU who don’t let a pandemic keep them from prioritizing student learning. Even so, the pandemic has brought some challenges to our instruction. Moving typically face-to-face classes to online and hybrid formats and navigating remote class meetings hasn’t been easy. In August, I sent a survey asking faculty to share their creative ideas and solutions for pandemic instruction as well as their questions and concerns. In addition, a small group of faculty has been meeting weekly to problem solve and share ideas. I want to share a snippet of the strategies that have emerged and invite your input where challenges remain.
Strategies for Negotiating Zoom
Zoom’s Breakout rooms have been a source of frustration for many because of the difficulty with pre-assigning groups. If there’s no need to strategize team membership, the automatic group assignment randomly put students into breakout rooms. However, for pre-assigned groups, if students use the Zoom link, the assignments will disappear.
Some of us became accustomed to sending students links for our zoom rooms. For pre-assignments to function students must log into Zoom with their WCU Zoom account and the meeting id instead of entering through the link for the professor’s Zoom meeting
As an alternative, Dr. Adrienne Stuckey came up with a creative solution. She has students change their user name to start with the letter she assigned based on the breakout room she wants them in. Think Aardvark Nan or Bobcat Derek. In this way, she can arrange students in strategic groupings by quickly transferring all the students that start with A to the A room, B to the B room, and so forth. Providing students with a set of easy to follow directions for changing a Zoom name allows this method of breakout room assignment to work efficiently.
Personally, I’ve found it difficult to monitor a large group of students on Zoom. Faculty have debated whether it is best to ask students to have cameras on or off during Zoom meetings. There are pros and cons to each side. Perhaps if delivering a lecture, cameras off is sufficient. But for active discussion, I found that cameras on as optional added an intolerable level of discomfort. Students were less likely to ask questions and add to the discussion. Hence, I ensured students had a quiet place on campus to access Zoom during our meeting time. I learned that not only were there conducive spots on campus, but a room had also been set aside at my class time for students to access Zoom. With this information, I then asked students to go to one of those locations on campus or an appropriate place in their own apartments and dorms to be ready to have cameras on. What an improvement!
In addition to my new cameras on policy, I asked students to sign up for roles, including class manager and note taker. The manager keeps time, monitors the zoom text chat for questions and comments, and watches for students raising their hands. Hence, I can devote full attention to the discussion and learning activities without the added stress of monitoring the screen. Similarly, a note-taker who uses a shared document to make notes of important points that arise during class discussions allows students to more fully engage rather than diverting attention to their notebooks. Roles rotate so that all students take their turn at each.
Dynamic Instructional Videos
Dr. Candy Noltensmeyer makes instructional videos using her smartphone, laptop connected to her TV, and a circular light. She displays a PowerPoint on the TV screen. The circular light aids with lighting and visibility. The PowerPoint then becomes her backdrop as she uses her smartphone to video herself narrating the PowerPoint. She keeps the narration informal and lively. She loads her instructional videos directly to her You-tube channel for easy student access.
Dr. Niall Michelson uses Numerade. This free online education platform provides access to a wide range of previously recorded lessons and a platform to create videos on any topic.
The tool provides the ability to track student engagement and offer lesson recaps.
Other Tools
Instructors are finding useful tech tools and apps for supplementing and facilitating remote learning. Dr. Kristy Doss uses Microsoft Teams for her students to collaborate on class assignments. She says that Teams “Provides a platform for easy and quick communication, a collaborative place to express opinions and explore ideas that are a tad easier to access and navigate than the Blackboard discussion forums.”
Other tools and strategies for student access and engagement in course content mentioned in the survey include lockbox activities, Zoom jigsaw, case studies, online simulations, home lab kits, home art kits, mini-lecture videos, and mini-quizzes.
Flipped Classrooms
For hybrid classes, many faculty such as Dr. Pam Buskey are using the flipped classroom concept where students access and learn content prior to class. Face-to-face time is then used for clarification and discussion. An anonymous survey respondent said, “I have split 3 of my courses into cohorts of 7-8 students, and my 4th course in half. Despite social distancing guidelines, I don’t believe that my classrooms can safely hold 25 students at a time. I will be performing a flipped classroom model, in which my students learn at home asynchronously and come to class to discuss their process, engage in peer feedback, get one-on-one instruction from me, and otherwise engage in an in-person community. Away from class, students will utilize Microsoft Teams for ongoing discussion and peer support.”
Concerns and Lingering Questions
Amongst faculty concerns are students who disengage and do not complete home assignments, keeping ourselves from being overwhelmed, the difficulty of demonstrating clinical skills online, too much screen time for students and faculty, dealing with students who fall ill, and the uncertainty of what spring term will bring.
One of the survey respondents reminds us of the need to take care of our own emotional well-being. Yoga and other exercise options can certainly help. Equally as important to ensure that we all flourish during these difficult times are the camaraderie, and support that comes from engaging with our colleagues. No one has all the answers, yet there are many untapped possibilities and innovative solutions that we can share.
If you are interested in sharing your ideas, solutions, or seeking support or solutions for your concerns, please join the Teaching Innovation Group on Microsoft Teams at https://teams.microsoft.com/l/team/19%3a36a11d49a475436dac08dbbcbc09d05c%40thread.skype/conversations?groupId=4e777b88-66fa-4d31-b002-b9118b09e714&tenantId=c5b35b5a-16d5-4414-8ee1-7bde70543f1b. If you are interested in attending meetings of the Teaching Innovation Group contact Lisa Bloom at Bloom@wcu.edu. I invite you to join one or both options.
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