Canvas Learning Opportunities
As you’re hopefully aware, MiraCosta is transitioning to the Canvas course management system. Keep an eye on the TIC Canvas page for great resources from our faculty Transition Team, including workshops, screencasts, and open Canvas classes for you to explore. For those of you at San Elijo, Sean Davis is holding open “Canvas Office Hours” on Tuesdays/Thursdays from 1:20-2:20 pm in SEC 513.
Online Teaching Conference – want to go?
Every June, the California Community Colleges holds the Online Teaching Conference featuring dozens of faculty-led presentations. MiraCosta typically sends 15-20 faculty to this excellent event, which this year is in Anaheim from June 19-21. The Online Education department has funding to cover conference registration fees for about that many faculty, including pre-conference workshops if desired. Early bird registration deadline is April 15, and it’s important not to wait – last year several MiraCosta faculty couldn’t attend because registration was completely filled well in advance. Please reply to me (Jim Julius) if you are interested in attending.
Open Educational Resources Updates
Did you know MiraCosta has received about $150,000 in grant funding over the last year to help faculty develop more classes that use Open Educational Resources (OER)? Did you know that SB 1359 requires all CSUs and CCCs to denote zero-textbook-cost classes in the online class schedule by 2018? If you’d like to learn more about OER, there are many online events this week, which is designated as Open Education Week. Here’s a list of select community college-focused online events this week – you can receive Flex credit for attending these types of webinars.
Student Orientation to Online Learning – final two this week
I am running two final Student Orientation to Online Learning sessions this week – today (Tuesday 3/28) from 12-1 pm and tomorrow (Weds. 3/29) from 5-6 pm. Both are online and both are Blackboard-oriented. These are especially aimed at students in online late start classes but are open to anyone. Feel free to refer your students to the TASC workshops page for the workshop sign-ups and access information.
Captioning Opportunity
Please look for this morning’s email from Robert Erichsen, MiraCosta Access Specialist, on captioning videos you provide in your online class materials. This is important for compliance with federal and state regulations, as well as simply to ensure that all students are able to fully access the information you are providing.
Online Tutoring – outage
Hopefully you know that MiraCosta provides free online tutoring for all students (see http://miracosta.edu/etutoring for subjects and schedule). The eTutoring site will be updated on Wednesday, 3/29, meaning that online tutoring will be unavailable that day – if you encourage your students to use eTutoring, please let them know about this.
Happy Spring!
Jim Julius, Ed.D.
Faculty Director, Online Education
Vice President, Academic Senate
