Committed to Your Informed Online Teaching Experience
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In This Email
- Quick Tip - Course Setup Tips
- What's New with Webcourses@UCF
- Old PowerPoint Presentations - Update Your PowerPoints for Student Access
- Online Accessibility - Faculty Resources
- Video Tip from Faculty – Think, Pair, Share
- Zoom Tip – New Semester Tips
- Zoom Cloud Recordings
- Design with Quality in Mind – Help Students Get Started in Your Course
- Kelvin's Corner - Small Teaching Online
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Course Setup Tips
Helping Students to Succeed
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As you polish your course content before publishing for Spring semester, here are some useful tips:
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- Create a Home page for your students. This “Welcome to my Course” landing page should provide students with directions on how to get started and what to do first.
- Hide menu items you are not using in the course navigation bar.
- Validate the links in your content.
- Organize your Assignments by due dates.
- Use the Student View to review your layout.
- Don't forget to Publish your course.
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What's New with Webcourses@UCF
This weekend's update will include the following changes or new features:
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Navigation – Course Navigation Menu State - The expanded or collapsed state of the Course Navigation Menu persists throughout all Canvas courses.
- When a user changes the state of the Course Navigation Menu, the collapsed or expanded state is retained throughout the course until changed by the user. The menu state is applied on a per-user basis and retained for all courses where the user is enrolled.
Gradebook – Missing Status Removal for Manually Entered Grades – When a grade is entered manually for a missing submission, the missing status is removed.
- When an assignment indicates a student’s submission as missing, and a grade is entered manually in the Gradebook, the Missing status is removed.
Modules – “Load in New Tab” State Retained – When External URL and External Tool (LTI) links are added to a module, the state of the Load in New Tab checkbox is retained for all additional link entries.
- When an External URL or an External Tool (LTI) links are added to a module, the Load in New Tab checkbox is not selected by default. However, if the checkbox is selected, the checkbox will remain selected for all additional links added to a module.
- The checkbox will always retain the state of the last added link. If the checkbox is deselected when a link is added to a module, the checkbox will return to its default state.
Speed Grader – Unposted Comment Warning – Graders are notified about unposted comments.
- When a grader creates a text, media, or audio comment and tries to advance to the next student or a previous student for the assignment, the grader is notified that the comment has been created but not posted. Selecting the Proceed button indicates the comment should be saved as a draft for the submission being viewed.
- Users can choose to not be notified for comments that have not been posted by selecting the checkbox at the bottom of the window.
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Old PowerPoint Presentations
Update Your PowerPoints for Student Access
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If you have been reusing your PowerPoint presentations for the last few years, the software version may be out-of-date and incompatible with the newer versions of Microsoft Office, thus preventing students from being able to view the presentation. Give your students the best learning experience by updating your presentations. For self-help, follow the instructions in the KB Support article. If you cannot update your files and you are on a UCF computer, please contact UCF IT for assistance. If you have a large number of files affected, or need help and are not on a UCF computer, please contact Webcourses@UCF Support for assistance.
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Online Accessibility
Faculty Resources for Creating Accessible Course Materials
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To support UCF and President Cartwright’s commitment of building inclusive excellence and a culture of compassion, faculty members are responsible for creating course materials with sound pedagogical design for all students. In his letter to UCF faculty, Interim Provost Michael Johnson outlines this commitment, useful strategies, and identifies UCF resources available to faculty. Work with these offices to discover how to make your courses accessible to all learners:
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Think, Pair, Share
Tips for Faculty, from Faculty – Dr. Julie Donnelly
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In this video, Dr. Donnelly shares her active learning tip for Think, Pair, Share. The benefits include giving students the “opportunity to hear what their peers are thinking to see if their ideas are in alignment with their peer’s ideas. “ |
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New Semester Tips
Best Practices for your First Zoom Meeting
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Are you teaching a V-live course this semester? Here are some best practices to help you have a successful first session in Zoom or other video conferencing platforms:
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- Join your meeting a few minutes before class to ensure your audio and video are working.
- Set aside time to introduce your students to Zoom. Do not assume everyone will be familiar with the platform.
- Prepare an agenda and share the document. This will give students insight into how the class meeting will proceed.
- Tell students how you plan to use Zoom, discuss expectations and meeting etiquette, and provide examples of how the class will engage with each other.
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Zoom Cloud Recordings
Download Recordings for Permanent Storage
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Beginning February 1st, UCF IT will be making a change to the Zoom Cloud Storage that may impact your cloud-saved recordings. Please read the email sent by UCF IT on Wednesday, January 5th titled "Zoom Cloud Recording (information retention)" for more details.
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Design with Quality in Mind
Help Students Get Started in Your Course
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A new semester begins soon. How will students in your online courses know where to begin and how to find the important introduction and overview information? To help make sure your course is designed for students to begin well, check out Help Students Get Started in Your Online Course for tips on helping students feel more acclimated in your course from day one. 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 of 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.
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Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes
Group Book Discussion Dates
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This spring, Kelvin will host three online gatherings to discuss the ideas presented in the book “Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes” by Flower Darby and James M. Lang. From the introduction, the authors write: “Paying attention to the small, everyday decisions we make in teaching represents our best route to successful learning for our students, in almost any learning environment we can imagine.” The book is divided into three sections of approximately 40-50 pages each. The discussion sessions will each focus on one of these sections. Congratulations to Vijay Hariharan, the first teaching faculty to sign-up and Amy Sugar, the first instructional designer to sign-up. Both will receive a free printed version of the book! (Everyone else buys their own copy.) If you haven’t already done so, please order your copy now. (A courtesy link for ordering the book online is included in the sign-up form below.) Dates and times are listed below. To express interest or sign-up, please complete the sign-up form. A courtesy Outlook appointment with a link to the Zoom meeting room will be sent to all who sign up.
Wednesday, Feb 9: 1:00 – 2:00 PM Monday, Mar 7: 1:00 – 2:00 PM Thursday, Apr 7: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
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Tips, Tools, & Resources
Stay connected to the Division of Digital Learning
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