In This Email

• Quick Tips: Supported Browsers for Webcourses@UCF
• What's New with Webcourses@UCF
  
• Chuck D. Dziuban Award for Excellence in Online Teaching
• Kelvin's Corner - A Pedagogy of Kindness
  

Webcourses@UCF (Canvas) is a web-based platform, which means you access your courses using a web browser like Edge, Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. You should always use the most current version of your preferred browser. If you are having a problem in Webcourses@UCF, it could be your browser. For example, Internet Explorer 11 is no longer supported as Canvas considers that browser deprecated. Visit the Canvas Supported Browser page for more information on supported browsers, browser plugin conflicts, known issues, and bowser security settings.

New Gradebook – Student Group Filter

Navigation – Menu Visibility

The Admin, Course, and User Navigation Menus have been updated to include color and visual indicators to define active menu items. Additionally, the Course Navigation Menu includes tooltip indicators to clarify inactive menu items. No functionality has been affected. This change helps improve accessibility in Canvas. Previously the inactive links displayed in light gray text with a light border, which did not fulfill contrast ratios. Additionally, active and inactive links only relied on color to convey information.

Chuck D. Dziuban Award for Excellence in Online Teaching

Do you teach an outstanding “W” course? Consider applying for the annual Chuck D. Dziuban Award for Excellence in Online Teaching, which recognizes one outstanding UCF faculty member and their exemplary teaching of a “W” course. The submission period is September 16th – 29th.

Please note, to be eligible for consideration, each candidate must have a High Quality designation (or a High Quality course review underway) for the “W” course on which the submission is based.  Haven’t had your course reviewed for a quality designation yet?  Then visit “What is UCF’s Quality Initiative?” for more information about the review process.

A Pedagogy of Kindness

As we lean into this new semester, let’s take a moment to reconsider our relationship to our students. Today’s Kelvin's Corner resource is from Hybrid Pedagogy, “an open-access journal of learning, teaching, and technology.” In Dr. Catherine Denial’s (Knox College) article, “A Pedagogy of Kindness”, she reflects upon changes in her own teaching philosophy and invites faculty colleagues to join her in rejecting “transactional models of education.”

Kelvin Thompson is the Executive Director for the Center for Distributed Learning. He is always finding, sharing, recommending interesting and insightful resources about teaching and learning.