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My Posts
Post Details | Date Published | Views | Likes |
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My institution recently renamed our “Blended” courses to “Hybrid” in the hope of easing perceived student confusion. Following some brief research, I’ve come to the conclusion that students aren’t th... |
07-26-2016 |
1585 |
12 |
Last Stand of the Late Adopters Having supported faculty and students using 3 different Learning Management Systems (LMS) in Higher Education, I've seen the support and training needs of our faculty shift over time. When we star... |
09-02-2015 |
1512 |
7 |
02-24-2021
05:21 AM
We've also used javascript to prevent faculty from changing the dates on the course. It would be fantastic to have a permission entry for "Change course dates"
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02-08-2021
09:16 AM
Isn't one of the primary purposes of the feature flag to allow features that aren't "suited for everyone" to be disabled by those that it is not suited for?
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04-19-2017
07:09 AM
2 Likes
When you change LMS's 3 times in 10 years, using a consistent name and branding makes a big difference in transitioning. Our help desk system is Zendesk but we don't tell people that it's Zendesk, in fact very few companies keep the brandname on the tools that they use to support customers. Customer's shouldn't have to know the names of products that we use to provide them with the services. Unfortunately, the inability to rebrand the Instructure apps resulted in pretty low usage for us initially. We've done some advertising with QR codes and have turned that around over the last year though.
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01-30-2017
09:16 AM
7 Likes
With all of the negativity in this thread around the Student Context Card. I thought I would be the first to say that our group loves this feature and while there are like some things that still need to be worked out, we were very excited to see how our faculty as well as some of our retention staff may use this capability to quickly identify students at risk. I'm not sure how any of the information on the card could be used for "lazy grading". As an enhancement, we would like for students to be able to see their own context cards. It might be more beneficial in place of the ToDo list (which we disabled after repeated faculty requests).
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07-28-2016
12:11 PM
3 Likes
I clicked around the conference pages and never did find it in the community this year. You can thank the budget of the great state of Illinois for current travel restrictions.
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07-28-2016
07:07 AM
2 Likes
Coming from someone who wasn't able to attend the conference in person, in the past, I have enjoyed tuning in live for some of the keynote presentations that were streamed. If they were provided this year, I could not find them. It was nice to be a part of the conference in the past while it was going on even when I wasn't actually there.
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07-27-2016
11:27 AM
1 Like
Kona, Do you have the syllabi available before students register? We haven't done this (yet)
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07-27-2016
07:44 AM
2 Likes
If only we were actually providing that level of detail for our courses instead of meaningless inconsistent labels. Lecture Type: [Face to Face / Pre-recorded Presentations / Live Presentations / None] Textbook: [Paper / Digital / Web] Testing: [Online / Proctored Online / Proctored in-person] Communication Type: [Face to Face / Online Discussions] Faculty Availability: [In-person / Email / Chat / By Phone ]
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07-27-2016
05:35 AM
1 Like
I also dislike the implication that there is something non-traditional about taking a class that requires outside course work. Homework is traditional.
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07-27-2016
05:27 AM
1 Like
Yes, those are your definitions, and we have our own, and so does every school. The problem is, they are not all the same. It is like going to one McDonalds and asking for a BigMac and getting a Fish Sandwich and going to another McDonald's and asking for a BigMac and getting a BLT. Each McDonalds then tries to solve the problem by attempting to educate their customers with orientations and videos and any number of things to explain what is on a BigMac at their school. My point is, do these definitions matter anymore to the students? Does McDonalds need to educate me about the bakery that their buns are baked by and the type of grain that the cattle are fed? Are the specifics about the modality doing us more harm than good at this point?
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07-26-2016
11:55 AM
12 Likes
My institution recently renamed our “Blended” courses to “Hybrid” in the hope of easing perceived student confusion. Following some brief research, I’ve come to the conclusion that students aren’t the only ones confused by the terms used to describe the variety of modern course types. On ground, traditional, face-to-face, web-enhanced, blended, hybrid, flipped and online are just some of the words that educators are using to describe the ways in which they deliver courses. I found many definitions for each of these terms. Some consider “Hybrid” and “Blended” to be the exact same thing, while others describe their “Blended” courses as those where no seat time has been replaced by online course work even though much of the course work is completed online. Using this definition, our “Hybrid” courses have always been mislabeled as “Blended” and around 60% of our “On Ground” courses should actually be labeled “Blended”…or should they be “Web-enhanced”? The only agreement in all of the definitions that I have found are that they all include some description of the amount of time spent in the traditional classroom setting with an instructor present, often called “seat time” or some quantification of the percentage of learning activities that take place outside the classroom. If 50% of the learning activities are online but the college does not reduce the amount of time that the students spend sitting in a seat in a classroom, is this a “Blended” course? If the 50% of the course is online and the time in the classroom has been reduced, then is it a “Hybrid” course? If the course is only 25% online then is it a “Web-enhanced” course? If the instructor only uploads documents but none of the assignments, is it still “On ground”? If there is proctored testing in a physical testing center can we call it an “Online” course? The questions go on and on. I believe that educators are making things unnecessarily complicated for students in order to suit our need to classify what we are doing. With all good intention, we try to educate students on these different course types because educating is what we do. Of course, in this case, we are trying to educate students on a subject that we can’t even agree upon ourselves. We know that instructors (70% of them at our institution) are putting at least some content online for their “On ground” courses. There will soon be a day when this number reaches 100%. By that point, using the previously mentioned definitions, none of our courses would be considered “On Ground”. We don’t really know exactly what percentage of these courses take place in the classroom and online and neither do the students when they register. It could be 1% or it could be 49%. Hasn’t this always been the case? How long has the concept of homework existed? Students have always been expected to complete coursework outside of the classroom. The fact that homework now requires more than a paper textbook and a spiral notebook doesn’t really change anything for the student except for the required access to more advanced technology than a pen or pencil. Some time ago we stopped using the term “Course Sites”. I felt that this was a remnant or the days when having a class website was something very uncommon. We now just refer to “Courses”. The days of going to college and never using a computer are gone. We need to embrace this fact and make sure that it is clear to all of our incoming students, no matter their background. Haven't we also reached the point where we no longer need to categorize and define the type of courses for students? Even if we could agree on what they are, could we ever get our students to understand this mess? I think it is time to end the “Blend” and the “Hybrid” and the “Web-enhanced”and probably even the “Online”. These are all just courses now. Can’t we just say to our students: “Classroom time may be reduced or replaced by outside coursework. Outside coursework may require the use of computers, tablets or smartphones in varying degrees.” I know that there are many additional complications to doing something like this, such as the legacy of fees that some schools (including mine) still charge only the students who take online courses and the ability for the college to continue to ensure that the proper seat time rules are being observed as well as requirements for accreditation. These are all details for us to work out internally. Students don’t need to know how the bread is made, they just need to buy the end product. Welcome students! Some courses meet in-person frequently, some meet a little less, some don’t meet in-person at all. Pick the courses that fit your schedule and learning preference.
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07-05-2016
01:09 PM
2 Likes
Sorry, I don't have any details beyond what you have described. My guess would be that created and claimed have more to do with keeping track of the behind-the-scenes Canvas course creation process.
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06-13-2016
04:35 AM
2 Likes
Yes, this did get resolved. Our courses now have a correct workflow column in Canvas Data.
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01-11-2016
11:46 AM
2 Likes
We don't have any courses that show a workflow other than created or deleted. We have thousands of published courses but none of ours show as available (or completed).
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12-07-2015
09:52 AM
2 Likes
For anyone trying to figure out the side menu tray. This is what instructure is using. I haven't figured out how to use it but atleast it gives us some clues. instructure-react/react-tray-example · GitHub Jeff
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10-26-2015
04:45 AM
7 Likes
Below is the code that I wrote to hide a number of things from faculty such as: the start and end date so they don't go changing the dates after we set them, breaking tools like Dropout Detective; hiding the conclude button, so they don't conclude courses where students still have incompletes to finish; hiding the public course setting after many instructors have made their course public in the intent to publish it for their students. I know the code that Shane posted was only one line (inside of the if statement), but I've found that it is a good practice to have your javascript check which page the user is viewing before running. This way anything inside won't need to run at all when the user isn't on the page where the changes are needed and the code will run a little faster. Shane's code is not only running on every page, but it is also running for students, every time they look at any page. I run the role setup code at the start of my js file so that I have access to the role variable wherever I need it. /* role setup */ var leng = ENV['current_user_roles'].length - 1 var role = ENV['current_user_roles'][leng]; if ((window.location.href.indexOf("details") > 0 || window.location.href.indexOf("settings") > 0) && role == "teacher") { $("a.btn.button-sidebar-wide.delete_course_link").hide(); $("#course_start_at").parent().hide(); $("#course_conclude_at").parent().hide(); $("#course_visibility").hide(); $("a:contains('Conclude this Course')").hide(); }
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09-16-2015
08:05 AM
4 Likes
We are currently holding 1 hour in-person sessions on single topics for faculty. We have not only sent out emails and put up posters and even paper flyers in their mailboxes. Out of 5 sessions, only 2 people attended. This has been typical attendance at these types of events. They just won't come, no matter what we do. We've tried different days of the week and times of day. We've tried offering food. The only thing that successfully brings in people are full-day training sessions in the week prior to the start of courses. As Kona and Jessica have mentioned, smaller bites are better for this group of faculty but they only seem to want the whole pie.
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09-02-2015
01:06 PM
7 Likes
Having supported faculty and students using 3 different Learning Management Systems (LMS) in Higher Education, I've seen the support and training needs of our faculty shift over time. When we started with Blackboard, there were so few adopters, we had the time to work with individuals for as long as necessary for them to feel comfortable. As we moved from one LMS to the next, these instructors adapted quickly to the changes and have needed very little help from us over the years. As we moved to ANGEL in 2008, we found that a massive number of faculty jumped on-board and usage of the system quickly climbed to about 80% adoption. This seemed to be spurred by the fact that it was a new system, as the increase in usage started with a large uptick and then a gradual increase every semester onward. This group, for the most part, needed some initial handholding and a good manual to refer to in those times when they couldn't remember how to do something. Most of these users fell in love with ANGEL, even though it's interface wasn't what I would call simple. A year ago in early 2014, we moved to Canvas. Canvas is very intuitive to use compared to any system that we have used in the past. As I expected, following the change in systems, we are seeing another quick increase in the number of faculty using the system. From all appearances, these are our late adopters, really late adopters, 10 years too late adopters. Some of them are nearly retired, others are "the last holdouts of their department". I think that they thought it was the Alamo and they were making some kind of last stand for a tech-free education. Now their departments or peer pressure or in many cases, the constant haunting moans of their students pleading with them to get with the times have finally broken them down. This brings me to the problem. We're kind of at a loss in how to work with this group. Most of them are impatient about getting caught up with their counterparts (finally) but frustrated and easily discouraged by every minor difficulty that they encounter. They want to jump into using publisher LTI integration when they are not even wet behind the ears in Canvas yet. They require a lot of personal time with support specialists, sometimes needing to be calmed down first. Canvas is so simple to use, but this group of faculty really seem to be struggling. Providing them online resources for self-help is not the answer. This group is used to a simpler life on the plains where nothing ever changed, let alone changed every three weeks. They "Thought this would make everything easier" but I don't think they are seeing how it does. I welcome any thought or ideas about working with this group of faculty. I have a feeing the number of these faculty reaching out to us is only going to grow as those last 20% (now more like 15%) start using Canvas.
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06-18-2015
10:35 AM
20 Likes
A few points about this design: 1. Although I am not saying that setting aside screen space for branding is the most important thing in an LMS, I don't think that it should be completely overlooked either. I would have much preferred to see a design where a branding banner is across the top when the page loads but becomes the small spot above icons as the page begins to scroll in order to maximize the screen space available. 2. We will now have two left panels with terms like "Grades". This was confusing enough before but we could at least specify them by location within our directions. Now they are both on the left. 3. On screens where there is a right panel containing buttons and settings, it seems the center area will be very small. It doesn't appear that the ability to hide or minimize any of the side navigation has been included in the design, other than the responsive creation of a menu. 4. Responsive design does not mean "degrade the desktop experience". I've seen far too many website redesigns of late where the desktop version of the site becomes much more difficult and confusing because of an attempt to create a responsive experience. The graphics get huge because they need to expand themselves across 2000 or 4000 pixels of desktop space. Visible menus get hidden under hamburger dropdown menus. The whole interface looks like something designed for a 4 inch screen. 5. Its great to make pages that load quickly by stripping out all of the dimension and making everything as flat as a pancake, and although the focus should be on the course content and not the interface. Some course content is always going to be visually plain. If the interface lends nothing in the way of interest, the whole thing feels like a plain white sheet of paper. You can have it both ways. You can have a simple design that is also not plain and white and sanitized for your protection. I know that pandas are black and white, but Canvas doesn't have to be.
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04-21-2015
06:51 AM
5 Likes
Great write-up Kona, as you know we do something nearly identical and have had similar results. Are you doing this for students in face-to-face courses as well? We are still only doing this for online and blended course sections.
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