Course Reviews at Geneseo

The CIT Instructional Design Team offers “Course Review” as a service to faculty who teach online. As with other terms new to Geneseo in the last few years, there is an air of mystery to what a Course Review entails. The review revolves around the Course Readiness Checklist rubric and is a process to support the continuous improvements to the quality and accessibility of courses at Geneseo.

You may have already sought help from CIT’s Instructional Design Team (colloquially referred to as our “Canvas Team”) for assistance. Perhaps you contacted Senior Instructional Support Specialist Alexis Clifton for aid remediating content in your course to make it more accessible for multiple learners, or one of our Instructional Designers, Joe Dolce or Becky Patt to create Pages in your Canvas course, address challenges within a Canvas Assignment, or a myriad of other issues. 

While our team of educational specialists is intended to assist you and your students navigate the challenges of digital learning they also serve another purpose that is often overlooked: to assist in the design and implementation of your course’s online presence. Our Instructional Designers are more than happy to meet with you 1:1 at any point in your course design process to help you meet the needs and expectations of our learners. We usually recommend a series of three meetings spaced over an amount of time our faculty may need to implement the options discussed in the most recent meeting, but we are always flexible in adjusting the schedule to your needs and desires, whether that be more or fewer meetings.

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Canvas: Immersive Reader Enabled

A new feature that allows the use of Microsoft Immersive Reader when viewing items in the Modules and Pages tool has been enabled in Canvas.

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Microsoft Immersive Reader aids English reading comprehension, aids people with reading differences (such as Dyslexia), offers translations of the text, allows for color contrast and font changes, and can read aloud text and equations. A summary of the Immersive Reader implementation for Canvas is available in the Canvas Release Notes.

While we currently benefit from this free-trial, we need your help in understanding the value of this tool. Please share your feedback with canvas@geneseo.edu.

Access Coursera Courses for Free

SUNY recently announced that all SUNY faculty, staff, and students have access to Coursera courses at no cost.

Coursera for Campus provides access to a library of world-class learning experiences aligned with the needs of today’s leading companies. Additionally, professional development courses and course authoring tools are available for SUNY faculty and staff. Complete courses and specializations and add your new credentials to your resume or LinkedIn.

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Coursera offers more than 3,800 cutting-edge courses. Until mid-2021, any SUNY student, faculty or staff has free access to these high-quality courses. 

Sign up with these simple steps to get started

  • Click the “Join for Free” link on the program’s home page.
  • Complete the sign-up process with your SUNY campus email address and join the program.
  • Browse the catalog and select a course in which to enroll.

If you have any questions about how to get started, please contact the CIT HelpDesk by calling (585) 245-5588 or visiting our online service desk.

Canvas Community: It’s Due!

The Canvas Community is a treasure trove of opportunities to see how faculty and teachers at other institutions are leveraging Canvas for their students. All Geneseo users have access to the Community with their Geneseo username and password. Check out the limited resource list below for an idea of how to get started.

A self-paced course called It’s Due! was recently shared in the Mobile Users Group Hub. This blog post caught our eye, and we recommend the course if you’re interested in exploring “every single type of submission available for students in Canvas”.

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To join in, simply Self-Enroll. You will need to share your name, email address, etc.  If you would like to explore ways to apply what you learn in your courses at Geneseo with an Instructional Designer, email canvas@geneseo.edu

Canvas Community Resources

Caption This! Workshop Resources

The EdTech team recently partnered with the Center for Digital Learning and the Office off Accessibility Services in a workshop that discussed captioning options for recorded Zoom meetings and lectures.

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Uploading recorded videos to YouTube for captioning is the quickest way to automatic captioning and transcripts. This guide walks through the steps. Editing YouTube’s auto-captions will ensure that your students have the best experience when watching your lectures.

The attached presentation outlines the importance of captioning, including why, what, and when we caption. You may also find it helpful to read this article on how to make your virtual meetings and events more accessible.

For questions about captioning or other accessibility issues, email access@geneseo.edu

Creating Community in an Online Class

Prior to the first day of class, post some information about who you are as a person. Create a text-based page with one or more still photos or develop a video to show students something about your life and interests. Reveal your personality throughout the semester by interacting with students in your authentic voice. Darby and Lang (2019). Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Create at least one opportunity for engagement during the online period. For example, you might do this through a live Zoom meeting during your regularly-scheduled teaching time, through one or more icebreaker activities, or through discussion questions in a Canvas discussion forum.

CIT Instructional Designers have prepared an introductory module that can be imported into your Canvas courses. Search for “Engagement Materials” in the Canvas Commons, download the import file from Google Drive, or email canvas@geneseo.edu to request assistance. The module contains page templates, discussion ideas, and other resources to facilitate community building.

More Community Building Ideas

Student Success and Retention

The decision to continue one’s pursuit of higher education is influenced by a multitude of factors in the personal and academic realms. It comes of no surprise that the role of faculty plays a primary part in shaping the degree to which students feel connected, or integrated, to academic life at their institution of choice. At Geneseo, where the retention of Knights between their first and second years is a Wildly Important Goal, our faculty hear often about the importance of regular, timely, and graded feedback. This post is, to some extent, an exception.

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What is Instructional Design?

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An internet search for What is Instructional Design? returns over 110 million results. The most relevant websites are hosted by colleges encouraging faculty to leverage the expertise of instructional design professionals. Perhaps you have a difficult time describing the value of Instructional Design. Let’s explore how instructional design can benefit your new and existing courses.

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Commons Craze

Canvas Commons logo

The Canvas Commons is a learning object repository that enables educators to find, import, and share resources. We think of the Commons as a digital library where faculty can store content privately, find materials shared by other Canvas users, and share content with others.

The recent Commons updates are crazy good! If you have not yet used the Commons, this is a good time to try some of the new features:

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