[ARCHIVED] [ARCHIVED] Does your college or university have a minimum usage policy?

[dbarr3]

Does your college or university have a minimum usage policy? If so what is it, and is it different for full or part time faculty?

[kmeeusen]

Deborah:

Could you please clarify for  me? Minimum usage of what? Do you mean Canvas in general, of the minimum use of Canvas for a course?

The answer for both of those would be "No", but I want to make sure I am being helpful.

KLM

[dbarr3]

Yes I meant minimum usage for Canvas. Our institution is proposing a minimum use for all classes and I'm trying to see if other schools have this and if so what is it. Our administration would like to see a syllabus, schedule, instructor information and grades up for every course.

Thoughts?

Sent from my iPhone

[kmeeusen]

Deborah:

We are moving towards that, but not as an official policy. As I mentioned above, we had to create shells and enrollments for 100% of our course schedule to support an online course evaluation tool. We would like to see, and are encouraging, our non-online teaching faculty to upload syllabi and other course policy materials as you mentioned into these shells. We have even created a stripped-down training for these faculty. Part of the driver for this are our students. More than half our catalog already uses Canvas to some degree, and our students have become very used to finding course materials online. And, as may be guessed, our students love the availability of their grades 24/7!

I hope your school can move forward with this!

Agent K

[dbarr3]

Yes I think our students will be driving this as well. I see a survey asking students what they would like to see in our very near future. Thanks for sharing!

Sent from my iPhone

[thomast]

Hi Kelley,

Would it be possible for you to share the stripped-down training course you use with your non-online faculty?

Thank you,

Treva

[kmeeusen]

Hi Treva:

Search "Canvas for Minimal Use" in the Canvas Commons. We just put that puppy up there for you.

I hope this helps,

Agent K

[bgibson]

I am surprised at how little influence Administration has over our faculty regarding making them do anything 100%. 

Maybe you could implement a badge system and faculty earn badges for the more Canvas functions they implement.    Maybe you could require some proof of Canvas usage toward Tenure as an incentive.

[kona]

 @bgibson ​, at least at our Institution our faculty are part of a Union. That means it really is hard to get some initiatives pushed through unless you have the backing of the union (or it's a bargaining year). Personally I felt lucky to get the mandatory training for any faculty member who uses Canvas put in place. In fact the only way I was able to do it was that faculty don't technically "have to" use Canvas. Granted if they want to teach online or hybrid they do, but it's their choice to teach those courses.

[mpilati]

All of our colleges have unions as well, but they also have academic senates that are focused on what's best for students and what's best for the college. Senates can take the lead on efforts focusing on quality - and readily find support for such efforts when they also facilitate compliance with regulations, laws, and accreditation standards. If a student logs into your course and there is nothing there for them, that sure would not bode well if the person logging in was part of an accreditation visit or conducting some sort of audit - and it certainly does not promote student success. I am not saying establishing standards is easy - just emphasizing why it is a worthwhile effort.

Sent by a handheld device.

[DavidAdkison]

Our university monitors the use of almost all resources by students. There were many prohibitions and restrictions at the college, but I tried to ignore them. Educating students is not easy. If you are interested, here https://samploon.com/free-essays/nature-vs-nurture/ there are more materials on this topic and you can study everything yourself. Thanks for the interesting topic and answers!

[kona]

 @dbarr3 ​, if you are talking about minimum use for Canvas, then to start with my answers apply to full time and adjunct/part-time faculty. We don't differentiate between the two for things like this.

For traditional courses faculty can use Canvas as much or as little as they want, and they do! We have some faculty who have completely flipped their classroom and have as much in Canvas as some of our online courses. Yet, we have some faculty who only use the gradebook and syllabus.

For hybrid and online courses faculty have somesome general expectations, but there's nothing "official" written on what has to be used. It's more of does the Instructor use enough of the technology (in whatever way) to pedagogically meet the requirements for the course. We have a rubric we developed in house that is used to assess this before the course is taught and as part of our ongoing peer review process. Ex: Is there enough course content in the course to ensure students spend enough time in and on the course?

Hope this helps!

[thomast]

Hi Kona,

Can you share your in-house rubric you mentioned for assessing courses?

Thank you,

Treva

[kona]

 @thomast , absolutely! My Institutions Online Taskforce (made up of faculty from every division on campus and myself - Director of Online Learning) is the group that developed this rubric. The group reviewed a lot of rubrics from other Institutions and went through a number of drafts (and many arguments over wording of things) before arriving at the current version. The goal was to make something that was user-friendly, easy to use, and easy to understand for the reviewer and the person being reviewed. It is pretty specific to Canvas and teaching online, but that was on purpose.

Hope it helps and don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions!

[dbarr3]

Very interesting Kona, but do you have any faculty who do not use Canvas at all? If so does your institution have plans to require all faculty use it and if so what would be the minimum requirement?

[kona]

 @dbarr3 , per my earlier post, other than for online and hybrid, we do not have a minimum use policy for Canvas. That means that our traditional Instructors can use as much or as little (as in none) of Canvas as they want. We currently don't have any plans to require faculty to use our LMS. As it is right now I'd prefer to lure them in and have done a great job with over 90% of our faculty are using Canvas by their own choice. Those that don't are ones that are close to retirement, so my guess is that as they retire and are replaced by new faculty we'll get our numbers closer to (if not) 100%. 🙂

[kmeeusen]

Hi Deborah:

To follow up on Kona's reply - I hope we are on the right track in answering your question - our state system set definitions for full online, hybrid and and web-enhanced courses that most of our system colleges follow fairly closely, but some have hinked around the hybrid definition.

• Fully Online: all instruction is provided using web based tools, and there is no traditional in-classroom seat time. Proctored exams are a permitted exception to the seat-time component.
• Hybrid Online: A percentage of traditional in-class seat time has been replaced with web-based instruction. No specific percentage is defined for this definition, so some colleges have chosen to more narrowly define this (e.g. minimum of a 40/60 split). Ours has not gone this route.
• Web-Enhanced: no traditional in-classroom seat time has been replaced, but the course is enhanced using web-based tools.

At our college, it is the instructor's choice as to how much of their instruction they wish to deliver using online tools unless they have been hired as an adjunct to teach an established course. In that case they must teach it as described in our catalog.

Our integration creates an online section with enrollments for every course in our schedule to accommodate an online course evaluation tool we use. however, if an instructor want to teach online in either hybrid or full online modality, we require them to be trained to use our LMS (Canvas). We also review all new full online or hybrid courses using a stripped-down version of the QM Rubric before we let the course be released to the students. We have no such requirement for web-enhanced.

Because every course has a shell in Canvas, we do experience some "creep" (faculty who slowly move from web-enhanced to hybrid to full online), we deal with those individually when identified.

I hope this helps.

KLM

[dbarr3]

That is very useful, but do you require that all faculty put up any minimum information such as contact information and syllabus?

[bgibson]

I'm wondering if the Canvas API could be used to automate uploading of  a syllabus, contact info, schedule,  and making each course published without any instructor intervention?   Yes you want faculty buy in,  but if you want these items available to students, automating the process might be just as good.

I've wondered if you could make the discussion board area accessible to students so they could instigate communication.  Yes you don't want an unmonitored discussion,  but if you have motivated students why not encourage their interaction?

[mmoore1]

We are implementing a clear definition of "Regular and Effective Contact", and there will be sychronous activity of the equivalent of normal teaching hours.  However, as it is a on campus course we cannot require online meetings unless the instructor has written that in his her course notes. As for time in the course and data accumulated from that, we do not maintain a minimum set of time.

[dbarr3]

Matthew, do you require all faculty use Canvas for on campus and online?

[mmoore1]

We are moving forward with the Canvas Adoption, and yes the LMS that we provide is required.  We are moving from Desire to Learn for all online and hybrid courses.  Eventually on campus courses will have space in the NEW LMS also.

[dbarr3]

So you currently do not require faculty who teach on campus only courses to use the LMS system. Am I reading that correctly?

[mmoore1]

Yes, we only require online and hybrid courses to use our LMS.  We encourage on campus courses to create what we call a "web enhanced course" in their on campus courses. We have found frequently that encouraging best practices gets better intended results than requiring a minimum use policy.

[dbarr3]

Oh I agree with you Matthew, about the best practicies, but sometimes it doesn't always work. While I am faculty, I think some administrators see the problem differently.

[mpilati]

The CCC Online Education Initiative is in the process of reviewing selected courses from 24 of our 113 colleges using a course design rubric that has many of the elements that someone posted in here already. As a consequence of this work, the need to establish a minimum standard for CMS use was identified. Working with our Steering Committee, a policy was developed that serves to establish a minimum. We emphasized compliance as a means of not running afoul of anyone who might take issue with such a minimum. Our Rubric, and the policy noted, can be found at: http://ccconlineed.org/faculty-resources/

Further discussion is still needed regarding how to most appropriately and effectively use proprietary materials in online courses - and beyond.

[kmeeusen]

Michelle:

First, thank you for sharing!

I especially like your introductory statement, "Well-designed online courses and programs are critical to student success. In the California Community Colleges, resources are not always available to support the development of quality courses and to facilitate the establishment of a distance education program that effectively meets student needs, conforms to existing laws and regulations, and complies with accreditation standards." Your first phrase is key to our college's philosophy requiring faculty to be trained in the LMS, best practices in course design, and online pedagogy.

Putting teeth to this policy has remained a challenge, most specially in buying Dean support. We are beginning to move towards a more data-driven decision-making model that includes some new tools being made available to our department as part of a retention/persistence/completion initiative. Our goal is to use data to demonstrate what we know anecdotally (and from current/past data obtained through horrendous manual systems). that well built and well taught online courses can and do improve retention, persistence and successful completion.

While I have just begun to review your rubric, it is very well thought out. I appreciate that it is CC licensed and that it is intended to be used system-wide, providing a ready guidance tool for all system colleges. I also appreciate that it addresses accessibility and accommodation.

I am suspecting that the rubric's development was a long process, and also suspect that there is still a long road to travel to assure that all online courses in your system meet these standards.

Thank you,

Agent K

[dbarr3]

But what about student grades? Have you found resistence to posting grades, and if so what has been your way of dealing with it?

[mmoore1]

Hey Michelle,

Yes, the OEI project is a different program all together.  We implement their best practices locally here at Ventura College; however, we don't have the same guidelines as the OEI project for our on campus instructors. 

[bdye]

We require All faculty to use Canvas for grades & syllabi.

brian

[dbarr3]

Brian, have you had any resistance to faculty with the grades?

[bdye]

Overall it’s been positive from faculty. Most see a big benefit as students can see all along what grade they have. It seems to cause less headache for the faculty being asked “what if” questions and a time saver when calculating grades.  In regards to the reluctant, students have been requesting those faculty put grades in Canvas.

[seufertc]

Our institution strongly encourages all faculty to use Canvas as deeply as possible. Our math instructors use My Mathlab for the most part, so we have create a shell that integrates MY Mathlab with Canvas. One caveat I would add to this discussion is to make sure that if you are encouraging wide use, you have adequate staff to support instructors who may not be comfortable using a technology that is new to them.

[dbarr3]

Carol, good point, our institution has provided significant resources to help faculty learn and embrace the LMS. Does your institution currently require any minium use such as syllabus, contact information or grades?

[seufertc]

We do not require any minimum use, but we strongly encourage faculty to use Canvas for their contact information and syllabus, as well as course materials and class make up due to inclement weather. For grading, as some others have mentioned, students are pressuring their instructors to use Canvas, so they can access their grades online.

[dbarr3]

When you say "strongly encourage" what doe you mean by that? Are there any consequences for not using it after being strongly encouraged? It seems that grades is the biggest issue for most people, but I'm not sure why. We are preparing to survey both our faculty and our students to find out what people object to with minimum use.

[seufertc]

Hi Deborah,

I will give you four examples of the strong encouragement:

1. One Dean has said that he wants all of the instructors in his department to use Canvas, and keeps track of who has come for training. The others are not quite as aggressive, but still encouraging.

2. A few years back, there was a "Dive into Canvas" campaign which sold Canvas by explaining how much easier it would make life for instructors.

3. Activities on Canvas are an alternative to making up class time when class has to be cancelled due to weather conditions. Many students would prefer this to extra class time, and let their instructors know.

4. I have had many instructors come to me for Canvas training because their students want their grades on Canvas. The grades aspect in my institution is student driven, rather than instructor or administrative driven, if that makes sense.

[dbarr3]

That makes complete senses and is very useful information. I have had many students complain to me about other faculty who do not put their grades on Canvas, but I definitely see that as being a hard place to really push the issue.

[thebert]

Please forgive me; I'm not sure why one would require minimum usage.

If courses are designed that engage students in the use of Canvas, then they will use Canvas according to the amount of engagement the designer builds into the course. Does that make sense?

May I offer these two quick examples?

• Design discussions that post video responses.
• Design assignments that employ the group collaboration features.

If Canvas is simply an assignment depository, a place to submit a paper, if Canvas is merely a place to watch video lectures, if Canvas is an online classroom and not a teaching technology, then we minimize the student's usage and engagement of the pedagogical features Canvas offers. The design minimizes student activity. I personally am working to rid our faculty of this predisposition about Canvas. I promote a design that increases the use of teaching methods in Canvas.

I hope this perspective was helpful. If I have confused the issue, please allow me to clarify or retract.

God bless you!

[kona]

 @thebert ​, it was my understanding from the original question that at some Institutions faculty have to use a minimum number of Canvas features in their Course. This is where the minimum usage is coming from, not from the amount students use Canvas as much as the minimum amount that faculty use Canvas. An example of this is that some Institutions require ALL faculty upload their syllabus, take attendance, and keep grades in Canvas. This is the minimum amount that all faculty have to use in Canvas. If they want to use more, wonderful, but everyone has to use this amount.

Yet, I think you bring up important points that if you don't have a well designed course then students won't use it to it's full potential!