Newsletter Archive - Edition 16
Edition 16: June 2023
SPOTLIGHT: ALICE WONG PANEL AND ACCESSIBILITY
On May 19th, the Department of Justice with the Department of Education released a Dear Colleague Letter on Online Accessibility at Postsecondary Institutions. This letter was directed to all colleges and universities in the country and serves as an important reminder of our legal obligation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to provide equal opportunities to disabled students across our modalities. Beyond the legal requirement, accessibility remains one of our key challenges in achieving our mission as open access colleges with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Our Seattle Colleges Book Read along with EDIC (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Community) and District Faculty Professional Development Coordinator hosted a recent panel with Alice Wong, editor of Disability Visibility, which was the Book Read selection this year. The panel also included representatives from the Seattle Colleges including Katie Roberts (faculty, Central), Yuki Tamura (staff, South), and Shannon Donahue (student, Central). The panel offered essential insights on the experiences of disabled colleagues and students here at the Seattle Colleges. We encourage everyone to watch the recording of this panel on the Book Read Canvas Shell. As always, if folks are looking for more support on accessibility in teaching, please reach out to eLearning.
Also In This Edition
Contact eLearning
When to Contact eLearning
8:30 - 7:30 PM – Monday – Thursday
8:30 - 4:00 PM – Fridays
How to Contact eLearning
Phone: 206/934-4000
Make an Appointment with an Instructional Designer or Technologist.
New LEAD (eLearning Education Across the District) Program
The Seattle Colleges eLearning team is excited to relaunch our eLearning Education Across the District (LEAD) faculty development program for the new year! We have been offering a series of workshops in the past few years that collectively built towards a stipend, but we are trying something different for this academic year. Check out our two new paths to complete the LEAD program and register today!
LEAD – Introductory Path: Introduction to Canvas for Faculty
In this workshop, participants will get an overview of our institution’s Learning Management System, Canvas. In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn how to navigate Canvas, create content within a course shell, and effectively use many of its core features including, but not limited to, announcements, content modules, calendar, inbox, gradebook, discussion boards, assignments, and quizzing tool.
Completed fully online & asynchronously
Takes approximately four-to-six hours and pays a $250 stipend
Available now!
Faculty Equipment
The District Distance Learning Committee (DDLC) purchased equipment for lending to faculty. The committee purchased items and distributed them to the three colleges' eLearning departments for distribution. Each campus has a small collection of equipment for faculty to borrow to support teaching across the modalities. Equipment includes laptops, portable document cameras, digital drawing tablets, clip-on microphones, and portable ring lights.
Canvas Updates
Submit Assignment on Behalf of Student: instructors can now submit a file upload assignment on behalf of a student in the Gradebook. The submission includes the timestamp and who submitted the assignment. Additionally, the instructor can submit multiple files at a time for a single student and submit beyond the availability date. This is a major update for instructors to help students that come across technology struggles and need help submitting assignments. While students figure out their tech issues, they can submit work to instructors who can then take it to Canvas to grade like all other students. Please see details on the update for more details on how to submit for students.
Split Student Names in Gradebook: instructors now can split student’s first and last name to have two separate columns. Many instructors know their students by their first name, and this allows for greater control of gradebook organization. You can also sort them by first name. For details, please see the new Canvas guide on splitting names.
Between February and April, Canvas released a few more updates as well including:
Bahasa Melayu (Malay) has been added as an available Language in Canvas
In the Gradebook, instructors can use the Missing Status (mi) keyboard shortcut for bulk marking assignments as missing with the Set Default Grade option.
The Rich Content Editor (RCE) supports pasting and the drag and drop of content. Students can copy and paste an image from a browser or photo viewing app in the RCE. Also, users can copy an image, audio, or video file from a file system directory viewer, such as the macOS Finder or Windows File Explorer and paste it in the RCE. Additionally, students can drag a file from the local filesystem and drop it in the RCE.
In the Rich Content Editor Equation Editor, an Equilibrium button is available.
In the Gradebook, instructors can sort individual assignment columns and rows by excused submissions and unposted grades.
When an assignment, discussion or quiz has student submissions and cannot be unpublished, the green publish icon status is updated to display a muted green color.
To read more about these and other minor updates please visit the Canvas update release notes.
Reminder that students for Summer courses will be added June 12, 2023. Faculty have also already received their Summer and Fal course shells, please contact eLearning if you have not received your shells.
ChatGPT: Teaching, Designing, and Researching
What is ChatGPT? Well according to ChatGPT...
"I am ChatGPT, a large language model developed by OpenAI, based on the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture. I am designed to understand natural language and generate human-like responses to various types of questions and prompts. I have been trained on a vast corpus of text data from the internet, books, and other sources, allowing me to understand a wide range of topics and engage in meaningful conversations with users.”
This response was generated on April 19, 2023
In response to ChatGPT’s popularity eLearning has convened two panels so far discussing how the tool can be useful in teaching while having accessibility and equity in mind. At the heart of these discussions, we want to stress that ChatGPT is a tool for learning. While it can seem like just another way for some to cheat, if used ethically and thoughtfully, it has the potential to help students learn.
In April 2023, eLearning and District Faculty Professional Development hosted a panel discussing ChatGPT and its role in teaching here at the Seattle Colleges. Sanja Kadrić (Instructional Designer, Central) moderated our panel which included: Jesse Hernandez (Instructional Technologist, Central), Nathan Ormsby (Faculty Development Coordinator, District), Shireen Deboo (Faculty Librarian, North), Zola Mumford (Faculty Librarian, North), Julian Barr (Instructional Designer, South), and Johnny Calavitta (English Faculty, South). In May, we hosted a follow up moderated by eLearning Instructional Designers and featuring Nathan Ormsby (Faculty Development Coordinator, District) and Johnny Calavitta (English Faculty, South) going further in depth in the potentials of ChatGPT. Both panel recordings are available on our ChatGPT Canvas Shell.
Polling in Zoom Breakout Rooms
Instructional Technologist, Shawn Rodriguez, discusses polling in Zoom breakout rooms. As usual make sure your Zoom software is up to date for all the latest features: