In This Email

• Webcourses@UCF Support - Holiday Support Hours
• Quick Tip - Copy Your Course Content
  
• What's New with Webcourses@UCF
• Video Tip - Course Home Page Options
• Decommissioning UCF's Due Date Changer
• Sunsetting of Flash
• Transitioning to Obojobo Next
• Quality and High Quality Course Designations
• Design with Quality in Mind - Ensure Your Online Course Content is Attainable
• Kelvin's Corner - "Thrive Online" Book Discussion - Sign Up

Webcourses@UCF Support will provide email response during the holiday break except Friday, December 25 and Friday, January 1. Our regular support schedule resumes on Monday, January 4, 2021. Leave us a message by phone at
407-823-0407, by email at webcourses@ucf.edu, or through our Online Support Form.

To save creation time each semester, you can import your past courses into new course shells. You can import the entire course or selected course content. You can also copy or adjust events and due dates. Keep in mind, you can only copy content from courses in which you are enrolled as a user with instructor permissions.

For more information, visit the Canvas Copy a Canvas Course Instructor Guide.

New Rich Content Editor – Uploaded Media File Placement

Media recorded or uploaded to the New Rich Content Editor will be stored in the Course, Groups, or User Files folder, respectively. This change ensures users can reuse media uploaded or recorded as media content. Previously, newly recorded and uploaded media could not be repurposed without being exported as part of course content.

Pages – Individual Pages Student View

A new Student View button will be displayed in individual course pages in Webcourses@UCF. This allows the instructor to view the page from the student perspective/as the Test Student.

For more information about Canvas (Webcourses@UCF) updates, view the December 19, 2020 Canvas Release Notes.

Your Wecourses@UCF (Canvas) course home page is associated with the Home link in Course Navigation and is the first page seen by students. The home page can have one of five different layouts depending on your preference. Watch the video to learn more.

After importing your old course into your new course shell, you may want to update the due dates for all your course assignments at once. Webcourses@UCF has a new tool called Edit Assignment Dates that is accessed from the Assignments index page. We highly recommend you try this new feature. For step-by-step instructions, visit the “How do I bulk update due dates and availability dates as an instructor?” guide.

This built-in feature duplicates UCF’s custom-built Due Date Changer tool. Because this functionality now exists natively within Webcourses@UCF, the Due Date Changer is scheduled to be decommissioned. For those still using the Due Date Changer, it will be available via the Course Settings Navigation tab until the end of the Spring 2021 semester.

If you have questions, feedback, or need assistance, please contact Webcourses@UCF Support. 

The final stretch for the industry-wide sunsetting of the Flash technology has finally arrived. In two weeks, Flash content will not be viewable in any of the browsers. We hope you found our communications on the subject and the DDL Faculty Technology Showcase offerings over the last three years helpful in transitioning your course content away from Flash. If you still have Flash content, your last chance to convert to a different format is now. For details and options, please refer to the Explore the sunset of Flash technology guide. If you have questions or need assistance, please contact Webcourses@UCF Support.

UCF’s Obojobo has served our campus community for 15 years; the time has come for Obojobo to undergo a transition process to serve faculty and students in new and exciting ways. Thanks to the pioneering work of faculty and staff in recent years, Obojobo will have enhanced capabilities enabling new instructional models to match different teaching and learning strategies. To read more about what this transition means to you, visit Obojobo Update.

The Instructional Design team offers online course reviews to faculty credentialed to create W, RA, RV, and V courses, as well as blended course reviews to faculty credentialed to create M courses. For more information about the Quality and High Quality course designations, visit the UCF Quality Initiative website.

Faculty who have engaged in the review process site smoother navigation, less student confusion, and heightened accessibility of course materials as just a few benefits experienced.

We'd like to recognize the 32 faculty who earned Quality and/or High Quality designations for at least one of their online or blended courses this term this term (August-November 2020).

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.