11/21/2024

• Webcourses@UCF Support - Winter Break Support Hours
• CDL Connecting with Faculty
• Semester Startup Reminder - Faculty Webcourses Manager
• Quick Tip - Disable Quiz Options
  
• Video Tip - How to Meet the Academic Engagement Requirement
• What's New with Webcourses@UCF
  
• BigBlueButton - Subscription Change
• 2022 Dziuban Award Recipient
• Faculty Multimedia Center - Panopto Orientation
  
• Upcoming Event - AIM High Registration
• Design with Quality in Mind - Multimedia Easy to Access and Use
  
• UCF's Quality & High Quality Course Designations - Faculty Recognitions
• Spring 2023 Pilot Demo Opportunities - Yellowdig, Nearpod
• Kelvin's Corner - Spring Cleaning
  

Webcourses@UCF Support will provide services over the winter break, except for December 24-25, and January 1, 2023.

You can contact the Support team via phone, email, online support ticket, or live chat during regular business hours. Visit the Webcourses@UCF Support page for winter break support hours as they become available.

The Spring semester will be here before you know it. Before you take that holiday break, go to the Faculty Webcourses Manager (FWM) and create your courses. From the FWM you can also combine multiple sections, set an early release date, and enable the syllabus preview tool. If you run out of time, do not worry. Generally, academic courses are automatically generated 15 days prior to the first day of each semester.

For more semester start-up reminders, visit CDL’s Semester Start-up Guide.

At the end of each semester, your course is automatically concluded on the course end date. You can find the course end date inside your Webcourses@UCF course under Settings >> Course Details. After a course has concluded, students can see Modules, Discussions, Assignments (including Quizzes), the Gradebook, as well as their contributions to the course. If you allowed students to see their quiz responses, students will be able to view all quiz questions after the course is concluded. To disable this feature, go back to the quiz options and uncheck “let students see their quiz responses.”

For more end of the semester tips, visit CDL’s End of Semester Guide.

In this video, learn how to meet the academic engagement requirement in your course. These steps will assist toward ensuring you are in compliance with the Federal Student Financial Aid regulation that states that in order to receive federal aid, students must be actively academically engaged (according to a federal definition) in each course in which they are enrolled. Learn more about UCF's academic engagement requirements including 2023 semester timelines for verifying academic engagement.

This month’s Canvas update primarily features enhancements to New Quizzes: the Rich Text Editor in now available in New Quizzes, an option allowing students to clear multiple-choice answers, and improvements for creating fill-in-the blank questions.

There are also two notable user interface changes:  

Rich Text Editor - The Rich Text Editor now displays a word count – a great addition for minimum word count discussion posts. When you click on the Word Count, a pop-out window displays more details, including character count.

Grades - In the Grades page, the score column now displays the assignment score and total score in a single column. Additionally, students view an unread indicator (blue dot) on the feedback button when a new comment is added to an assignment or a rubric, and comments display in a pop-out comment tray.

For more information, view the December 17, 2022 Canvas Release Notes.

Beginning January 1st, 2023, UCF will no longer be using the paid version of BigBlueButton, the default conferencing tool within Webcourses@UCF (Canvas). This means that going forward, all users of the default conferencing tool will be using the free version. The tool will continue to work as normal, but all recordings will only be saved for seven (7) days. If you would like to retain your recordings for longer than 7 days, we recommend using the Canvas Zoom integration. You can find more information on the Canvas Zoom integration or by contacting Webcourses@UCF Support.

The 2022 Honorable Mention was awarded to Martha Garcia-Stout, PharmD, JD, Health Sciences, College of Health Professions and Sciences.

The Faculty Multimedia Center (FMC) is offering Panopto Orientations on the following dates for faculty interested in using the platform.

• Wednesday, December 14, 9-10am
• Thursday, December 15, 3-4pm
• Friday, December 16, Noon-1pm
• Monday, January 2, 9-10am
• Tuesday, January 3, Noon-1pm

The FMC is in CB1-Room 202. Each session is one hour with time for Q&A afterwards.  If you would like to attend, please email the Faculty Multimedia Center at fmc@ucf.edu.

Register to attend the 4th annual AIM High event hosted by The Office of the Provost and Academic Affairs, the Division of Digital Learning, UCF Libraries, and the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning.

This event will be held in person at the UCF Live Oak Center on main campus on Wednesday, February 1, 2023, from 1:30-3:30 pm.

Join us as we celebrate faculty and staff who have made an effort to keep textbook costs low for students at UCF through the affordable instructional materials (AIM) initiative.   

Multimedia, such as video, audio, and graphics, can be used to support student engagement in digital learning, and it is important to ensure that multimedia are accessible and usable for all students. Check out Multimedia Easy to Access and Use for tips for ensuring that multimedia in your online course are easy for students to use, understand, and operate.

As you continue to look for ways to improve your online and blended courses, check out the other posts in Design with Quality in Mind, a growing collection brief articles based on UCF’s Quality and High-Quality Course Reviews, that describe ways to support all students to succeed in your online courses. 

We are pleased to recognize the August 2022 – November 2022 UCF faculty who have earned a Quality and/or High Quality designation for at least one of their online or blended courses. Faculty who engaged in the course review process cite smoother navigation, less student confusion, and heightened accessibility of course materials as just a few benefits experienced.  

Get Real Time Insights with Nearpod

Do you want real-time insights into your online learning? Do your students thrive with interactive lessons and videos?

Fill out this form to join us for a live demo in January 2023.

Over time online LMS “course shells” can become cluttered with artifacts of the past. This month, Kelvin recommends “Why We Might Want to Clean an Online Course,” a 37-minute episode of the Lasallian Way Online podcast from the Center for Digital Instruction at Christian Brothers University. In this episode, instructional designers discuss methods for cleaning up online courses, keeping them tidy, and why it makes sense to do so

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.