So here's a recipe: Your PowerPoints + Your Blackboard Course(s) + Camtasia (or any other screen capture software with audio capability) + a Tablet or TabletPC

Turnitin is back to deliver our latest teaching resources and product updates for making the teaching process both quicker and easier. Below you may also find the webinars and user summit conducted by our team in collaboration with educational technologists and instructors.

Explore how to create colorful, stylized tabbed content on your Canvas page.  

With some slight modification to your Canvas instance Theme Editor, you can create some subtle (or fancy) drop shadow effects for your Canvas pictures.

With just a little code, tables that lack pizzazz can come to life.

Designing and delivering assessments is an important part of student learning and teaching efficacy. In any environment, but especially in online learning, academic integrity is key to an accurate assessment of student knowledge. When developing your own remote assessments here are a few of the most important elements educators need to consider.

Hello everyone,

It is a monthly update from Turnitin Team. Learn about upcoming webinars and training sessions, discover the most useful resources for remote and distant learning/teaching, and the latest company news.

hidden annotations pop up with mouse

We at Turnitin support education and learning around the globe. To ensure the integrity of global education and meaningfully improve learning outcomes we produce huge amounts of valuable information and resources for instructors and students. Webinars, articles, eBooks, training sessions, infographics are just some of the resources you may find on our website and that we are glad to share with you.

I will be glad to share available resources and upcoming events in this group for you to be able to attend them and learn more about assessments with integrity and how Turnitin products may assist you.

When we go into the moderate on the new quizzes it would be really nice if somehow there could be a sign that we have already adjusted a score.  Either a color change on the attempt or a little symbol somewhere.  It is very time consuming to go through assignments and adjust scores to have kids turn in work late and not be able to see what scores I’ve already looked at. Thank you for considering this.

When I try to open zoom in one of my  canvas courses, an error message appears saying I am an unrecorgnized user. I have a valid zoom account. I have checked to see if I am signed in. I pulled zoom into my navigation area according to the directions from canvas. Now I get the following message: 

Mic & camera

New students are joining every day I do not want to reteach material.

Hey Teachers,

I generally make videos to help faculty learn to use technology and learning management software. However, knowing that there are a lot of parents and students going online or hybrid for the first time this semester, I decided to make a Professor Frazzled video just for them. 

This video shares 5 tips to help students succeed in an online class. And, of course, it also features a puppet. I hope you find this useful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MXpHy0BUY0

Good Luck!

Nate 

This was written with a colleague of mine - Kel McIntosh in regards to technology in general! Gives us the why!

I wrote a (hopefully simple) tutorial on how to create quizzes and exams using R-exams.

Whenever I set my course visibility to public and customize and make my syllabus page public, and share the URL with parents my images are broken.

Need help managing 2 year groups on the same site, particularly with module set up 

How can I create multiple choice answers with a letter preceeding the question.
⨀ A. portray the Soviet Union as an aggressive force that could be controlled only by an alliance of world powers
⨀ B. describe the influence the Marshall Plan of 1947 had on the creation of NATO

The Training Services Portal is where you can find videos, courses, and pathways that you can embark on to learn more about using Canvas. If your institution offers limited or unlimited subscription (webinars) you will also find a calendar full of live training events on the Training Calendar that you can attend. 

We have recently added additional content to the Training Services Portal. 

New Core Content  

Available to clients that do not have unlimited or limited subscription training:

(Essential Implementation)

New Advanced Content

If your institution has limited or unlimited subscription training: 

(Standard & Premium Implementation)

At the end of each of our new course offerings, be sure to claim your badge from our badging partner Badgr!

If you have never visited the Training Services Portal, check out this guide about how to access the Training Services Portal.

Happy Learning! 

Updated 1.5.2021

I use a lot of videos in one of the courses that I am involved with and have spent about 6 weeks adding captions to videos. One of the things that I found missing was a description of the keyboard shortcuts that one can use when watching a video - when using the Kaltura player. I found some information at https://knowledge.kaltura.com/help/508-support-within-the-kaltura-player-toolkit 

But as, usual, if you really want to know - look at the source - in this case, the javascript for 

window.kalturaIframePackageData = {     "playerConfig":{ 	"plugins":{ 		"keyboardShortcuts":{ 

one can find the following:

• Up / Down -- increase / decrease volume by 10%
• F / ESCAPE -- Open / close video fullscreen
• Space-bar -- toggle: Play / Pause
• Left / Right arrow -- Jump back / ahead 5 seconds (when combined with the control key, skip is 10s)
• Home / End -- Seek to the beginning / end of the video
• 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 -- goto 10,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90% of the video

Additionally, if you selected the playback rate selector (playbackRateSelector) when you hit "+" it selects faster and "-" it selects slower. However, on a Swedish mapped keyboard "+" is actually a minus, and the key to its right (typically marked "\") is actually a plus!

Dear Teacher/Professor: 

Let’s be honest, students don’t often notice a missing assignment without some kind of nudge or reminder.  Canvas alerts students to missing assignments, but a glaring “0” score in the Gradebook might be the prompting they need.

However, many educators forget to enter that “missing assignment” zero when they enter gradebook scores, but then a week (or maybe two?) later they go back and fill in the zeroes.  When those zero scores finally make an appearance, it can feel like students come out of the woodwork to address their missing work. Sometimes, that lag may result in lost points or the privilege of submitting the missing assignment(s).

Taking the time to add those zero scores goes a step beyond the automatic labels for any missing assignment in the student’s Grades page. To make it easier on yourself, you can ask Canvas to enter  that zero in the Gradebook if a student does not submit an Online Submission assignment by the due date.  This Canvas guide walks you through creating a missing assignment policy for your course, including entering a zero score (or any score of your choice) for missing assignments. 

Hopefully this little tip helps you leverage Canvas and the Canvas Gradebook to save a little extra time in your day!

Best,

The Canvas Training Team

Dear Teacher/Professor,

How often do you need to adjust or change a due date for an assignment? Canvas has a few easy ways to change due dates!

If you want to quickly change one due date (ie. “Oh we’re not going to be ready for that assignment on Thursday, let's bump it to Friday!”), go to the Calendar and “drag and drop” the assignment from Thursday to Friday.  Canvas will then:

1. Notify the student (if the student has set their Notification Preferences for Due Date Changes),
2. Adjust the assignment information in your course,
3. Adjust the students’ To-Do list on the Dashboard and Course Home Page, and
4. Adjust the Syllabus.

However, that only works if you are worried about a single due Due Date.  You cannot drag and drop the “Available From” and “Available Until” dates.

What if you want to adjust ALL the assignment dates (or the due dates for several assignments) at the same time! You can quickly adjust multiple dates using the Edit Assignment Dates option from your Assignment Index Page.  Just like dragging and dropping, Canvas will then:

1. Notify the student (if the student has set their Notification Preferences for Due Date Changes),
2. Adjust the assignment information in your course,
3. Adjust the students’ To-Do list on the Dashboard and Course Home Page, and
4. Adjust the Syllabus.

Hopefully this tip can help you feel more comfortable and confident using Canvas in your planning!

Best,

The Canvas Training Team

https://spark.adobe.com/sp/design/page/687d0071-c042-410e-bf65-5dc89eeeae62

Online Learning

Teaching in the throes of a pandemic

Can be tricky, because classes are all online

Students reactions ranged from the academic to the eccentric

To suddenly find themselves still in school while in quarantine

Slacking off is not an option,

for classes have assignments with due dates

Zoom meetings to attend, full lecture sessions,

Readings to be done, and in-class debates

Canvas the main LMS, but to navigate

All that’s out there, one must not be stupid

To skip those that help one to communicate

Apps as Padlet, Voicethread, Flipgrid

To be motivated, online find your team

Develop the self-discipline needed to succeed

In a world where one can digitally dream

For learning online can expectations exceed

Dear Teachers,

Canvas has a great (new) feature that can make is much easier to share your content with your colleagues.  It's called DIRECT SHARE.

You can directly share assignments, discussions, quizzes, and content pages with a colleague AND you can also send those same items to a different course that you teach... DIRECTLY (not using the course Import tool).  Take a minute to look at the links attached to see how to share assignments.  Follow the same process to share discussions, quizzes, and content pages!

It's much easier than the Canvas Commons (even though that is still pretty helpful to share Modules and Courses with each other), especially if you want to send something quickly to your Professional Learning Collaborations or just copy a great resource from one course to another!

Hopefully that tip can help you feel more confident and powerful on Canvas!

Best,

The Canvas Training Team

If your course is in a term that has closed grading periods, hope is not lost. We'll show you how to cope with this.

Creating Assignments (& New Quizzes) Outside of Grading Periods

This is somewhat tricky. For example, you have the following grading periods in the Fall 2017 semester:

Sample grading periods for the Fall 2017 semester. I think schools should update grading periods every semester...

Grading Periods

In this example (How do I add grading periods in an account?), assuming equal weight:

However, it's already 2020, and there's got to be a way to create an assignment outside of those boundaries. Although the Add Assignment button still exists, the assignment won't save correctly due to a closed grading period. So what now?

This is only a concept. We wished that we can choose the grading period that we want, especially for overlapping periods.

Go to the Commons (Best Method)

Canvas Commons offers a wide variety of assignments to choose from. Select the assignment you want to import. Then, do the following:

1. If the imported content is marked as published by the original owner, unpublish it to put it out of view.
2. Duplicate the assignment.
3. Erase all the content from the newly duplicated assignment and change the title to "Unnamed Assignment."
4. Click Save, and the assignment should save properly.
5. Duplicate that Unnamed Assignment and edit it as usual.
6. In the Assign header, click Add.
   1. Since there is a closed grading period by default, you must add a due date. Leaving it blank will still make the assignment fall in a closed grading period, and therefore the assignment will not save properly.
      
   2. The due date cannot be earlier than the dates of the previous grading periods.
7. Click Save to save the newly created assignment.

ANY ADDITIONAL ASSIGNMENTS?
Repeat steps 5-7 for any additional assignments you want to create.

Creating Classic Quizzes Outside of Grading Periods

You can still create Classic Quizzes as usual. However, if you want to add a due date, you must repeat steps 6-7 above.

I hope this helps, and remember, anything is possible!

How to Avoid It Next Time...

Check with your local institution if you want the grading periods to be updated on a regular basis (usually every semester). That way, you don't need to click Add in the Assign To field every time you create an assignment.