Update from Learning Technologies

Good Afternoon ESU Canvas Community!

The latest Canvas update – scheduled for May 12^th - includes one new beta feature that is of particular interest: Customizable Course Cards. This feature was originally developed last summer, but later withdrawn to make improvements. Once enabled by Instructure (Canvas), the instructional designers will review the feature and determine if/when to enable it at ESU.

PRODUCT RELEASE

·         May 12^th Detailed Release Notes

SUMMER UPDATES

Several enhancements are planned for the start of summer courses:

·         We will add Microsoft Office365, OneDrive, OneNote, and Google Drive/Apps capabilities to all courses. We have been testing over the spring term and are now ready to enable them for everyone. Some tools, such as OneDrive, will appear on your course sidebar. Other tools will appear wherever you see the Rich Text Editor.

·         We are planning to pilot a product called Vericite as a possible replacement for Turnitin. There are several reasons for this consideration: improved plagiarism setup, much lower cost, dynamic plagiarism detection, and fewer student copyright/ownership concerns. Vericite is used by Colorado State, the University of Northern Colorado, the University of Washington, the University of New Hampshire, and several other universities. You can watch a video regarding Vericite in advance of our pilot installation - scheduled for the start of the summer term and extending through August 15^th.

CANVAS TIPS/TRICKS: DO MORE WITH ZOOM

Zoom has been one of our most popular instructional technologies to date. In April there were 426 webinars involving 116 faculty, staff, and students. We are now up to 312 Pro accounts at ESU – 4x more than our former webconferencing product in only a fraction of the time.

·         Zoom Tip/Trick 1: Where do your Zoom cloud recordings go? Through work we did along with technologists at the University of New Hampshire, we were able to integrate Zoom Cloud Recording with Kaltura, which appears as ‘My Media’ and ‘Media Gallery’ in your Canvas courses. Look there and you will find your Zoom cloud recordings. If you are unfamiliar with Kaltura, check with one of the instructional designers.

·         Zoom Tip/Trick 2: Did you know Zoom has a polling feature? Watch this short video regarding how to enable a poll in your meeting. You will not see a Poll button in the Zoom client until you have created a poll through the web interface.

BLOG AND TWITTER FEED

If you want more information about anything you read here, check out our blog at http://emporiastate.blogspot.com/ or follow us on Twitter @esulearningtech.