ESU Remote Learning Heros - Champions

Posted by ESU Learning Technologies
March 18, 2020


Learning Technologies would like to recognize some of our wonderful faculty champions who have volunteered to assist other ESU faculty during this remote learning transition. These are the unsung Remote Learning Faculty Heros. If you would like to contact them for advice or support, refer to the Teach Anywhere web site.

English Modern Languages & Journalism Dr. Kat O'Meara	Communication & Theatre   Dr. Heidi Hamilton
Biological Sciences Dr. Melissa Bailey	Biological Sciences  Dr. Erika Martin
Art Morgan Willingham	Art   John Decker
Interdisciplinary Studies Mallory Koci	Math & Economics Dr. Brian Hollenbeck
Music Dr. Gaile Stephens	Nursing Lynette Schreiner
Physical Sciences Dr. Marcia Schulmeister	Physical Sciences  Dr. Alivia Allison
Social Sciences  Dr. Michael Smith	Sociology, Anthropology & Crime and Delinquency Studies  Dr. Rochelle Rowley
University Library & Archives Bethanie O'Dell	Elementary Education, Early Child Education Dr. Lendi Bland
Elementary Education, Early Child Education Dr. Lori Mann	Elementary Education, Early Child Education  Dr. Melissa Reed
Elementary Education, Early Child Education Dr. Beth Dobler	Counselor Education  Dr. Damara Paris
Counselor Education Dr. Carrie Boettcher	Counselor Education   Dr. Alice Hinck
Accounting, Information Systems & Finance Dr. Liz Diers	Business Administration  Dr. Joyce Zhou
School Leadership/Middle & Secondary Teacher Education Dr. Amanda Lickteig	School Leadership/Middle & Secondary Teacher Education Dr. Nancy Albrecht
Library Resources Center  Brady Johnson	Health, Physical Education & Recreation Dr. Erin Blocker
Gifted Dr. Connie Phelps	Special Education  Dr. Marj Bock
Special Education  Dr. Kelly O'Neal-Hixson	Special Education    Dr. Catherine Ayantoye

ESU Remote Learning Heros

Posted by ESU Learning Technologies
March 18, 2020

As you are well aware, Emporia State University has transitioned from in-person teaching and learning to remote teaching and learning. However, the university and its faculty have adapted in amazing ways to our current national crisis. As a small gesture to recognize and celebrate some of the success stories, we are launching this weekly series called Remote Learning Faculty Heros. Our first hero is Dr. Don Miller from the School of Business who eagerly embraced the online format. Don was one of the first faculty to stop into Cremer Hall Learning Commons this week to visit with the Learning Design team regarding moving his courses to Canvas. The Designers installed a special 8-week Canvas template into his course shells and taught him the basics of getting up and running. Don is an ESU hero!

Watch this space and follow more ESU Remote Learning Heros over the coming weeks! You can follow us on Twitter and Linkedin as well.

Learning Technology's Response to the Coronavirus

By now, you've heard about the Coronavirus and learned that Emporia State University will be moving all face to face classes to remote access classes starting Monday, March 23rd (for more information, go to ESU's Coronavirus information page). But if you're a faculty member, what does this mean for you?

What if I've never taught online?

Don't panic! Learning Technologies and ESU IT is here to help. We've established a university-wide continuity website that is your one-stop shop for information on how to move your courses online. Here you'll find top tips for this process, some strategies you can use to help you migrate, tutorials on how to use different technologies, contact info for LT staff, contact info for someone in your department who knows how to teach online, and a schedule of upcoming F2F and online trainings being offered by Learning Technologies. 

Focus on quality...but not too much

While we all want our classes to be amazing and utilize best practices and be engaging for students, in situations where you have to change modalities quickly, the emphasis needs to be on getting the material online and usable for students, rather than building out a fully online course. Stop and think about the tools that you're using, your comfort-level with them, your students comfort-level with them, and the amount of time you all have available to put toward learning new technology. There's a lot of great tech out there (trust us, we know!) but don't get so bogged down in trying out new things that you overlook simple solutions. 

Keep communicating with your students!

Any trepidation you may feel about teaching online rather than face-to-face is probably also being experienced by your students. Combine this with stressors from having to relocate mid-semester, lack of access to technology or broadband internet service, illness, food shortages, employment issues, social isolation, and general upheaval and students will be on the edges of their seats...and not necessarily in a good way. 

Keep up a steady flow of communication with your students via email, web-conferencing, chat, text, phone calls, etc. and let them know what's going on in your course. This is especially important if due dates, course requirements or expectations, or course content changes.

Reach out to us

There's lots of ways to keep in touch with Learning Technologies who will be working tirelessly to make this period as painless as possible. Keep up with changes via our LinkedIn page or follow us on Twitter (@esulearningtech) to get our newest updates.

And remember to wash your hands!

 

Why Should You be Using Open Educational Resources (OER)?

Have you checked out the price of textbooks lately? I remember being shocked at spending over $400 on textbooks for four classes my first semester of college and that was in the early 2000s. Now, depending on their major students would be lucky to pay only that much. Some say that renting, buying used, or skipping textbooks altogether is the way to go. But what if there was another option? 

Open Educational Resources (OER) has been a growing trend of late. You may have heard the term in passing, but what are OER exactly? George Mason University, one of the leading organizations in "the creation, curation, and use of Open Educational Resources (OER)" defines them as "freely-accessible teaching, educational, and research materials that either exist in the public domain or are available to users via an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing."

While freely-accessible sounds great, there are usually a lot of questions about the quality of these materials. There are several excellent repositories of these types of resources including OER Commons and George Mason University's Mason OER Metafinder (MOM) that searches through over twenty different OER sources to find resources that match your search. By starting with resources from reputable repositories, individual institutions, programs, and instructors can then choose a quality textbook in much the same way they choose a new "traditional" textbook--by reading and evaluating the options available. 

Instructors can also create their own OER textbooks by attending a March 6th workshop at the Earl Center. More information about this workshop can be found by perusing the workshop informational flier. Emporia State University also provides grants to help aid in this process. Recipients of this grant can take part in workshops provided by the Learning Technologies department where they can learn about Creative Commons licensing, how to use Pressbooks to assemble their own OER textbook, or how to find the best already-existing resources to supplement their courses. 

To sign up for the workshop or learn more about the OER grants, contact Learning Technologies! 

Canvas Automatic Grade Sync with Banner

There's a new Canvas tool that will help make your grading process that much easier. Canvas Automatic Grade Sync with Banner lets instructors push grades from Canvas directly into Banner, rather than entering each grade into Banner individually. 

To use this new feature, you'll first need to choose a Grade Scheme in Canvas. Your department may have a common grading scheme that you can use or you can create your own. Once you've selected a Grade Scheme and completed your grading, you're ready to sync the grades to Banner (the Student Information System). 

When grades are synced, Canvas will immediately initiate the grade transfer but it may take a few minutes before grades appear in Banner. Once the sync has successfully completed, you will see an on-screen confirmation and receive an email confirmation. This process should only take a few minutes. Once you receive confirmation, make sure to verify students received the correct grade and check for any sync errors (these will be found in your email receipt).

Canvas Automatic Grade Sync is a great tool but it's not completely hands-off. If you have a student who withdrew from your course, earned an F, or is receiving an Incomplete, you must manually enter these grades into Banner.

For step-by-step instructions, check out this tutorial on Grade Sync from Learning Technologies.

Creating Accessible Google Docs

Courtesy of Lisa Dickson, Hutchinson Community College

Fonts & Typeface

• Use Sans Serif typeface (eg Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, Trebuchet)
• Use size 12 point or larger typeface
• Left-justify text
• Don't use bold or italics (many screen readers won't announce them). Instead, add the word "Important" or "note"

Color

• Use sufficient color contrast
• We recommend the Colour Contrast Analyzer - a free download
• The color of the page can be changed using the File menu > page Setup > Page Color. Choose a typeface with sufficient color contrast
•  Don't use color alone to convey meaning

Links

• Use descriptive links (eg visit the PBS website) 
•  Don't spell out URLs (eg http://www.pbs.org) or use the words "click here"
• Highlight the text that needs to be linked > right-click and select Link or select the link icon from the toolbar
• If a URL needs to be included for printing, include it in parentheses following the descriptive link, but don't hyperlink (to avoid duplicate links)
• eg, Please visit the PBS website (www.pbs.org)
• Shorten long URLs using TinyURL or Bitly

Headings

• Use Styles to format text as headings
• Don't use large, bold font as a heading
• Highlight the text that should be a heading, then use the Styles menu or the Format menu to select the appropriate heading level

• To change the appearance of a Heading Style, make the formatting changes to the text, highlight that text, and then use the Styles or the Format menu to select "Update heading 'some text' to match"
•  Use Headings in the correct order. Don't skip Heading levels. (eg Heading 1 to Heading 3)
• You can check levels using the View menu > Show Document Outline 

• The Title and Subtitle should only be used for a document with a title page. Normally only one Title and Subtitle per document
• Use Heading Level 1 only once in a document
• Headings go as far as Heading 6

Lists

• Use numbered or bulleted lists from the Format menu. Don't manually type numbers, asterisks, hyphens

 Columns

• Use the Columns option in the Format menu
• Do not use tabs or tables to format text

 
Images & Graphics

•  Always use alternative (alt) text to describe images
• Alt text should be short and descriptive. Don't be overly wordy. 1-2 brief sentences is recommended
• Avoid using the word "image" or "picture" in the alt text because the screen reader will already announce that it's a picture or image
• Select the image > right-click > select Alt text. Enter the alternative text in the Description box
• If an image contains text, that text should be included in the Alt text
• For complex images that cannot be easily described, link to a separate document that descries the image or describe the image using text that appears above or below the image
• Not all screen readers can read Google Docs Alt text, so consider adding a caption in the page as well.
• Image positioning should be set to In-Line
• Color alone should not be used to convey meaning
• If you print the image in B&W, will it be understandable? If not, it is not accessible
• Text within an image should have sufficient color contrast against the image background

Tables

• Tables should be used for data relationships only, not for layout and formatting
• Insert menu > Table > select the table size
• Keep tables small and basic so that they are understandable without Header Rows
• Google Docs does not allow you designate Column and Header Rows which are used to announce table elements
• Still include a Header Row (don't start with data in the first row). Screen readers automatically read the first row as a Header Row
• Table cells should not be empty, including the top-left cell
• Avoid split, merged, or nested cells as they can change the reading order of the table
• Test the reading order of the table
• Click your cursor in the top-left cell and repeatedly press the Tab key. The cursor should move from left to right and top to bottom through the table

Navigation Landmarks

• Landmarks such as headers, footers, and page numbers help readers navigate a document, which is especially helpful for long documents
• Insert menu > Header and Page Number

Table of Contents

• A Table of Contents is recommended for longer documents to improve navigation for assistive technologies.
• If you do this after creating the document and if Heading Styles have been applied, a ToC with clickable links will automatically generate
• Place your cursor where you want to insert the ToC. From the Insert menu > select Table of Contents and select the format

Comments & Suggestions

• Use the Comments & Suggestions tools. Screen readers can jump to them
• Don't write comments or notes within the document itself.
• Comments
• Highlight the text or object on which you want to comment > click the Comment button on the toolbar. Or Insert > Comment
• Suggestions
• From the top-right corner, use the drop-down to select Suggesting. If you don't see that option, ask the file owner to enable the permission

• When you edit document text using Suggestions, you will see your changes in a new color. Anything you delete will appear as a strike-through. Notes of your edits are made in the right margin

Downloading a Google Doc

• Google Docs can be downloaded in multiple other formats
• File menu  > Download as...
• Don't save as PDF or Print to PDF as the tagging will be stripped
• Instead, download as Word and then convert to PDF
• Check the downloaded document for accessibility
• Even if the Google Doc is accessible, the converted file might not be

Math & Science

• Use EquatIO or Mathtype to create accessible math equations.
• Equations cannot be written in an accessible format using the Google Docs Equation Editor

Forms

• Use Google Forms, not Google Docs

Checking your Google Doc Accessibility

•  Use Grackle Chrome Extension

 

Vericite is Changing to SimCheck

Over the 2019-2020 holiday break, ESU will change the Vericite plagiarism detection software to SimCheck (Similarity Check) - created by the parent company Turnitin. Below we've listed a few common questions we anticipate with respect to this change.

• Why is it changing? Vericite was acquired by Turnitin roughly two years ago. As part of that acquisition, the Vericite product has been discontinued and is being replaced with a completely new product developed by the Turnitin company called SimCheck. 
  

• Why does ESU need to change now? The Vericite product is no longer updated and support is limited. It is scheduled for end-of-life (EOL) in a few months. Technically, we could wait until summer to convert, but that delay will likely disrupt courses. We've determined that the transition will be less disruptive if completed over the holiday shutdown when courses are not actively running. The actual change will occur on December 17th.

• Does it integrate into Canvas? Yes. It will work very similar to Vericite. (See video links below.) There will be a checkbox in the Assignment area that allows faculty to add plagiarism detection to student submissions. And just like Vericite, faculty can see similarity reports from within the Speedgrader and the gradebook.

• Can faculty 'direct submit' an assignment? Yes. Unlike Vericite which did not support Direct Submissions (eg submitting papers without creating a Canvas assignment), SimCheck allows submission outside of Canvas. Moreover, faculty can submit multiple files at once.

• How quickly are similarity reports created? That is up to the instructor. Reports can be immediate, after the assignment is graded, after a certain date, or never.

• Where are the papers stored? Similar to Vericite, SimCheck can index student submissions in a university (private) repository that is not shared with other institutions. That was a primary reason ESU switched from the original Turnitin product several years ago. This important feature provides intellectual property protection for student work. Faculty also have the option of storing papers in a "standard" repository which is shared with other universities. Faculty can define institutional repository or a standard repository when creating the assignment. A feature called Submission Indexing gives faculty the option to compare papers to other student papers within the institution.

• What happens to the Vericite Data when we change? Turnitin will make an institutional 'copy' of our data when they convert us to SimCheck. That means we can see historical information related to any assignments dating back to when ESU first licensed the product. This data will be available, but will not carry forward into SimCheck.

• Is SimCheck accessible? Yes. SimCheck conforms to WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility standards.

• How do I use it with Canvas? This USER GUIDE provides step-by-step information regarding using SimCheck within Canvas. Or, you can refer to the videos below.

• How does SimCheck color indexing differ from Vericite? SimCheck Colors are actually easier to interpret than Vericite. They range from light blue (0% match) to dark blue (1-24% match), yellow (25-49%), orange (50-74%), and red (75-100%).  

• Is there information for students? Refer to the SimCheck Student Guide  

• Is there information for instructors? Refer to the SimCheck Faculty Guide

Video Tutorials & Slide Deck:

• Full Webinar Recording

• Reviewing a Submission Recording

• Direct Web Submission Recording

• Canvas Specific Information Recording

• Slide Deck from Recording

For questions about SimCheck, please contact the Helpdesk at 5555 or helpdesk@emporia.edu