Site-Wide Activity

 Idea-sharing Workshop – December 4, 2014
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● Entertainment Book 2015 – BC Music Department Annual Fund Raiser
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Several faculty have asked about importing and exporting an entire course in Canvas. If you have a new Canvas site you can populate it with the content from a previously published course with just the press of a few buttons.

Step 1: Go to the original Canvas course, which you are going to be copying from, and select “Settings” in the left menu bar.

 Step 2:  You should see a page similar to the example image below. In the right hand menu select “Export Course Content” button.

Step 3: On the next page choose the type of content to export. If you want to export all the content in a course (images, pages, assignments, quizzes, etc…) then select “course”. If you want to export only the Quizzes then select “Quiz”.

Step 4: Canvas will download the entire course content in the form of an imscc file. You don’t need to be concerned about how to use the file or what the extension means. Simply download the file to your computer, re-upload it to your new Canvas site, and Canvas will do all the work for you .

Note: it may take a few minutes, or even up to 20 minutes, to download the file. This depends on your Internet connection speed and the size of your Canvas course.

Step 5: Go to your new Canvas course. Choose “settings” in the left hand menu bar.  Select “Import Content…” from the right hand menu.

Step 6:  Select “Content Type” and choose Canvas Course Export Package.  Upload the imscc file that you downloaded from the previous Canvas course. It will take a little bit of time for Canvas to un-archive the imscc file. After a few minutes your old course content will be copied. You should see all the modules and pages that were in the old course site.

I spent some time the other day playing with Canvas’s newish “Roll Call” Attendance tool. It has some good stuff and some bad stuff…
Good Stuff
I like that I can enter attendance data one time– in Canvas– and the data goes straight into the gradebook. This saves me a bunch of time over my current method of attendance, which consists of:

In class, students pass around a “sign-in” sheet. Sometimes, students who are actually in attendance forget to sign the sign-in sheet, and once per quarter or so, I actually lose the sheet before it safely gets to my office.
I manually transfer these sign-ins to an Excel spreadsheet that I’ve spent countless hours on refining to compile requisite points, and to give me all sorts of information about class attendance. I occasionally make mistakes in this transfer.
I manually transfer attendance points from my spreadsheet into Canvas’s gradebook. Again, I occasionally make mistakes in this transfer, too.

Each of these three steps provides opportunities for problems, errors, mistakes. This is why I wanted to try out the Roll Call Attendance tool.
Bad Stuff

Two problems: one relatively minor, one relatively major.
The minor problem: most of my classes consist of two separate sections/class codes, and the students do not all appear one list; instead, I have to switch between the two sections via a tabbed interface. That is, half of my students are listed in one tab while the other half are listed in another tab. And, when I switch between tabs, the date always returns back to today, even though I’m entering attendance data for a different day.

But, as I say, that is just a minor inconvenience. The main problem, however
— the killer, as far as I’m concerned– is that the Roll Call Attendance assignment counts 100 points. Period. There is no way to change how many points it counts. No matter how many times the class meets, the attendance column in the gradebook is worth exactly 100 points.

The idea, I think, is that it’s a percentage. So, you must weight your assignment groups. I don’t. Weighting confuses the heck out of me. My gradebook philosophy is “a point is a point. If I want an assignment to count more than another assignment, then I make it worth more points.”

So, no matter how much “good stuff” the Roll Call Attendance tool offers, it simply will not work for me. I’m bummed.

However, if you weight your assignment groups, you really should consider trying it out. If you’re interested, let me know, and I’ll pass along the information you need to enable it in your Canvas class.

It is strongly recommended that faculty add information about Title IX to their course syllabus. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance

TITLE IX

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Legal Citation: Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and its implementing regulation at 34 C. F. R. Part 106 (Title IX)

In accordance with the requirements of the Title IX Education Amendments of 1972 BC’s designated Title IX Coordinator, Rachel Wellman and Deputy Coordinator, Aaron Hilliard, VP of Human Resources shall be responsible for coordinating the College’s effort to comply with and carry out its responsibilities under Title IX.

 Complaints can be made directly to:

 Rachel Wellman, Title IX Coordinator
Aaron Hilliard, Deputy Title IX Coordinator, VP Human Resources

Bellevue College, Rm A220
Bellevue College, Rm A201

425-564-2441
425-564-

rachel.wellman@bellevuecollege.edu
aaron.hilliard@bellevuecollege.edu

Complaints may also be filed with:

U.S. Office of Civil Rights, Region X, 701 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1600, MS – 11, Seattle, WA 98104
Voice Phone (800) 368-1019, TDD (800) 537-7697
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Federal Office Building, 909 First Ave, Suite 400, Seattle, WA 98104
Voice Phone (800)669-4000, TTY (800)669-6820

Rachel
Rachel Wellman | Compliance & Title IX Coordinator
Bellevue College | 3000 Landerholm Circle SE, RM A103, Bellevue, WA  98007

We began developing an online student orientation in 2013.  Actually I should say that Kimberly Hassell, the HCTM Program Manager,  and Dr. Pamela Charney, the Program Chair, started the process over  a year ago. This was always indented to serve as more than just a single welcome page posted to a website. A goal was to create an informative course of material for students entering into HCTM.

After I was hired as the E-Learning Specialist in spring of 2014, we added to what was already built the previous year. By September we had designed a robust online orientation including information about student learning styles, college culture, research methods, and much more.

While I’m proud of the work we accomplished my main point here is to bring attention to the orientation itself as something your program might consider creating.  Aspects of the orientation that I think will prove the most useful are:

An excellent library orientation created by Lisa Lapointe, a Baccalaureate Librarian at the college.
Kim Hassell’s description of  how much work is in a  college “credit.” I doubt most students give this much thought, and my guess is that many faculty don’t realize how much time or homework is recommended for a 5 credit course.
Pam and I utilized the online tool Softchalk Cloud  to build a medical terminology module. With further planning it may eventually work as a 1 credit course.

The orientation was released to new HCTM students  two weeks before the quarter began. They were notified of our expectation that they complete by the 2nd week of the quarter.  Yes- the orientation was a lot of work, but we see it as an investment. We welcomed our students to the program while also setting a tone of high expectations.

Your  program/division could start by developing a simple module with a few pages in a Canvas shell. Maybe include a self-check quiz to assess students’ understanding. This can be scaleable, and your program could add content periodically over the next few quarters.  Eventually you could have an orientation for students that  could last for years, and give them a sense of place as they start their new educational journey.

First week of Fall quarter classes done. The first week of each quarter is nice, because I don’t have any homework to grade, and my classes are pretty much set up– syllabi are done, the quarter’s assignment schedule is done, each class’ Canvas site is done… So, the first weekend is pretty slow. A chance to exhale.

So, I’ve been thinking a bit… Because “the economy” is “better” (whatever the heck that means), enrollment is down for all of my department’s classes. BTS enrollments are all down this quarter compared to Fall 2013. And that’s not good for me, nor for my BTS teacher counterparts, because we are making less money. And, as it is, it’s pretty tough for adjuncts here at BC to make ends meet here in Seattle, where the cost of living is among the highest in the country. Now, of course I’m not complaining, because it could be much worse, and of course I’m grateful that I have a job in the first place, and of course I didn’t go into teaching for the money, blah-blah-blah.

But many people here at BC may not know that, in addition to teaching BTS computer classes here in the IBIT division, I also work part time for Information Resources as a trainer, with Sukirti Ranade in the Technology Learning and Connections Center in A109. If you go to the TLCC website and look under “Peer-to-Peer Faculty Support Hours,” that’s ME! I’m the “peer” for teachers here at BC. As of this quarter, actually, that is only me, whereas for the last couple of years, it was me and Jim Dicus, English adjunct. But Jim is really busy this quarter and didn’t have time for the TLCC, so now I’m the only peer.

I really enjoy working at the TLCC and helping my fellow faculty with their technology needs. During those “support hours,” I just hang out in A109 and wait for the phone to ring or for faculty to walk in. But I also lead several training workshops for both faculty and staff each quarter. Look on the Training Calendar for all the workshops. This quarter, I’m offering Word Accessibility and WordPress trainings. Both of these sessions are great. We’ve been getting positive feedback about the Word Accessibility sessions, as the general consciousness about accessibility grows on campus.

But I’m especially excited about the WordPress sessions, because — well, this blog  is on WordPress, and in fact, ALL BC websites are now powered by WordPress… So, if you are in charge of your department’s website, or if you hope to some day administer an official BC website, or shoot, if you’d just like to use your own personal BC blog, then you may want to attend one of these sessions. And, speaking of accessibility, we will be talking about how to make your WordPress sites accessible too.

And while I’m talking about accessibility, I must tip my hat to BC’s new eLearning Manager, Ekatrina Stoopes. She has really spearheaded the college’s current efforts to “accessify” all documents and web sites. Since Ekaterina has been here, I have learned more about accessibility than in the entire rest of my life. So, thanks, Ekaterina.