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Last March the world, but specifically the world of education took a hit. Every school was faced with the dilemma of advancing their students through the remaining few weeks of school without having them in the classroom. The irony? Few schools, globally, were equipped to do so, and many teachers (and students) felt the burden of a mandated shift in teaching style. I was approached by a Chemistry professor back around 2003 or 2004. He wanted to make his lectures more engaging. He told me that he spent 45 minutes of his 50-minute lecture time with his back to his students as he filled 24 feet of whiteboard with diagrams and sequences. He purchased an icon set of Chemistry symbols that was thorough enough to do what he needed to do for Chemistry and Organic Chemistry. He knew that it would be labor-intensive to redo his lectures...making each diagram accurate for each slide - in each lecture - for each course. It was daunting, but he felt that the investment and the visual accuracy was well worth it. The next thought looming over his head was that online courses had become of interest to our school and we already had a fully online MBA program and the administration was looking for more. All professors were being encouraged to start building courses that could be used to build online programs, but the direction was still pretty soft. He knew it would be most advantageous to try to work one solution for in-class student engagement as well as generating online content. 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 Go back and envision the chemistry professor with his back to the lecture hall, hand-writing complex diagrams and symbols on the whiteboard. At the start of the next semester, he was able to stand facing his students with a small Fujitsu tablet PC in his hand (with Camtasia recording his screen in the background). Although it was tethered to a VGA cable, he was finally able to engage his students as he advanced the slides. Also, he intentionally didn't fill out every detail on the slides. Instead, he would leave certain items blank and he would draw them in with a stylus and make notations "live" on the screen. Furthermore, everything he said was being recorded by Camtasia. Every slide, every stylus notation, and every word was recorded. At the conclusion of his lecture, he would tap the "stop" button floating near the bottom corner of the monitor and a .swf or .mp4 file would be generated (in about 15 minutes). He would then upload the file into Blackboard so that students could review - if they chose to do so. He told me that he kept his attendance policy in place, and the students knew that the lecture would always be available to them, but they still had to show up. To this day, students ADORED him for this. They didn't try to skip the lecture, knowing it will be available online. Instead, it allowed them to focus in class, knowing that they could review later, on their own time. This instructor has some of the highest ratings at this university. Whether you are using a tablet with PowerPoints, or a Smartboard, you can move forward with this scenario. In fact, you may not have nearly the amount of effort in redesigning anything. As you already know, PowerPoint has screen-by-screen notation possible, so that may even be an option. Learning to convert face-to-face experiences into a hybrid or online standalone asset has been crucial over the last year, and hopefully some knowledge-share will be beneficial in helping each other reach our goals - to help students succeed. ... View more

I mean no disrespect to anyone who has been negatively impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. My wife lost a work colleague, our close friends lost their pastor, and so many people have lived in fear for over a year, unsure about their health or the strength of their immune system. We all went through some sort of major transition, and that is what I'd like to focus on here. I entered the field of Academic Technology in the year 2000 when it was only starting to be a thing. Very few schools were doing anything. "Best Practices" wasn't even a phrase yet, but technology was beginning to allow us so many opportunities. One thing we have known all along is that we could work from home. Not everyone could, and often times the infrastructure was not in place to allow us to be able to consistently work from home. There were trainings and workshops that were simply necessary to conduct in person (and still are). We made a lot of mistakes back in those days. We assumed a lot, being stuck in a crossfire of Academic mastery, IT policies, and financial questions around whether or not pricing should be the same price for an online class when compared to its face-to-face counterpart. We really got lost in the weeds on some issues that we now realize aren't all that important, and we were tasked with making decisions that other people and departments should have. But one school after another started getting on board, whether it was online programs, or simply using an LMS to enhance traditional instruction. Depending on a school's size and endowment, the department's size and funding, and how the individuals are perceived are all vastly important details. By now, most of us have had at least some experience working from home. I would say the lucky among us have had remote gigs in the past. The Covid-19 pandemic culture failed in so many ways by forcing everyone home, usually without any sort of guidance of initial expectations, or even any advice on even how to work from home. So many families felt the stress of having to ignore the parent who was now in the guest bedroom, trying to ignore the commentary of the house, or the banter of the children, or the projects that were now apparent. No one received any training for setting up the necessary boundaries of a work-from-home employee. So many people in leadership roles were not advocating for their people to have that freedom leading us to 2020, and when it was forced on them, it was a devastating adjustment time. I have read many stories and emails from those adjusting to the new culture of isolation, and the dark cloud of work-oversight that still loomed over them. My challenge is to those who have direct reports; Support Supervisors, Managers, Directors. Trust your employees. Give them space. Encourage them. Be real with them. No one responds positively to threats, but everyone blossoms with candid conversations. During your web meetings, are you giving deadlines and threats, or are you allowing for community and kudos? One thing I have learned in all my years is that people learn by engagement. Technology shouldn't be the driving force, it is merely a tool. There are many tools that can bring us together, and many tools can help us learn. Look for collaborative solutions rather than hunting down the guilty party. Focus on the person and not the problems. ... View more

So I just headed over to the "Answers" area. This came after spending several minutes on the home page typing a plethora of variations into the search engine, with no results to answer my predicament. I began asking my question to you luminaries, far and wide (no, that's not a fat joke). I began providing screenshots, workflow issues, and carefully formulating my query as to why Canvas didn't know what I wanted it to do. I am sincerely glad I went to such lengths, because as I tried to ever-so-thoroughly build my case, I solved my own problem  :smileysilly: ... View more