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Media, Education Resources, and Information Technology

May 2021 Summer Update

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Instructional Support Team

The School of Education’s Instructional Support Team is ready and available all summer to support the teaching and learning needs of you and your students.

If you require software or hardware for your course that you don’t already have, please let us know.

Feel free to email us at canvas@education.wisc.edu.

Safer Badger Badge for Face-to-Face Courses

Effective Monday, May 10, access to campus buildings and facilities will no longer be limited to those with a green Badger Badge. Additionally, access will no longer be managed by Badger Wellness Ambassadors. However, as an instructor, you may choose to require a green Badger Badge for students participating in in-person activities.

Virtual Learning Opportunities

The Learn@UW team is hosting a series of virtual events related to the tools that they support including Canvas and Kaltura. Additionally, the campus Instructional Continuity group is hosting additional training on topics related to teaching and technology.

Technology Updates

Blackboard Collaborate Ultra

Blackboard Collaborate Ultra will not be available past June 30. As such, we encourage you to look at other UW-Madison-supported web conferencing tools for your summer courses, such as Zoom.

Zoom

From Vice Provost John Zumbrunnen’s email on April 27:

We recommend that UW-Madison instructors and staff begin using Zoom in place of Blackboard Collaborate starting this summer if they have not already done so. Instructors teaching remote summer courses should plan to use Zoom especially as the Blackboard Collaborate contract will end in the middle of some summer sessions.

There are a number of KnowledgeBase articles available to support your use of Zoom including: Overview of Zoom for Instructors, Overview of the Canvas Integration and How to Archive Zoom Recordings in Kaltura (since recordings in Zoom are not automatically archived). Ongoing updates about the transition will be posted here. 

Additionally, Closed Captioning is now available and turned-on in Zoom by default. Please note, these captions are machine generated and may only be 70-80% accurate. Also note, live captioning can only be started by the host of the meeting.

Summer 2021 Course Shells

Summer 2021 course shells are currently available in Canvas. If you wish to copy course content from a previous semester, you can do so by logging into Canvas and going into your summer course. From there:

  1. Click on Settings in the course navigation bar on the left-hand side of the screen.
  2. Then click on Import Course Content.
  3. On the page that loads, open the Content Type drop-down menu and select Copy a Canvas Course.
  4. Begin typing the name of the course in the text box. Suggested courses will start to appear. Select the course, making sure to select the correct semester.
  5. Select the Content you wish to copy — All Content or Select specific Content.
  6. Click Import.

For more information on importing course content, please see the Canvas Community or email canvas@education.wisc.edu.

Canvas Templates

UW-Madison has a couple of templates that you can import or download. You can use the templates as the basis for your own Canvas course.

General Use Canvas Template

DoIT Academic Services has created a Canvas template for online, blended, and face-to-face courses.

Remote Instruction Template

In addition to the general use template, there is a Remote Instruction Template available to you as well. To get to the template, you must be logged in to Canvas (http://canvas.wisc.edu):

  1. From the Canvas dashboard (canvas.wisc.edu), click on the Commons icon on the left side of the screen.
  2. In the search bar, search Remote Instruction Template.
  3. Look for UW-Madison’s crest in the first few results.
  4. Click to open the template from UW-Madison.
  5. Click on the import/download button on the right side of your screen to import the template into your course site.

Alternately, the Remote Instruction Course Template can be accessed directly, but you must first be logged in to Canvas.

Course Success Self-Review

Campus has created an anonymous Course Success Self-Review survey tool that you can use in reviewing your course. The tool identifies six factors for successful courses and offers recommendations for them.

  • Course Planning
  • Supporting Students
  • Instructor-Student Interaction
  • Student-Student Interaction
  • Materials and Media
  • Assessment and Feedback

Course Accessibility Considerations

Students’ accessibility needs may have changed or newly emerged in response to the current situation. Consider encouraging all students in your course to be in communication with you about how remote instruction may affect their accommodation needs.

If you have students who require captioning and you are planning to hold any synchronous online lectures, please contact the McBurney Disability Resource Center as soon as possible. You will need to use transcription tools to provide live captions for students as the lecture is in progress, and McBurney needs to work with you on this process.

Thinking About Your Students

You might consider sharing the following links for students in an email or within your Canvas course: