Hello everyone!
Welcome back to another semester. This newsletter has several resources to help you prepare for the coming semester. You’ll find tips and resources for preparing your Canvas site, lecture-capture policies and procedures, as well as other helpful information to help you feel confident starting the coming semester.
Fall 2021 Canvas Prep
This semester it’s important to know that your students have already been added to your Canvas sites. This is a change from prior years where there was a short period of time between when you published your Canvas site and when students were enrolled. What this means for you is that the moment you publish your site your students will instantly have access. Just as before, if you do not publish your site, your students will not be able to access any of your course materials.
Canvas “Before You Publish” Checklist
Use my “before you publish” guide as a reference as you’re preparing your Canvas sites for the coming semester. There’s a quick start guide that goes over the bare minimum you should do to get your course ready for the semester. There’s also a more in-depth guide that covers other common things you may need to do in order to further enhance and prepare your Canvas site each semester.
Guides for common tasks
Setting up a syllabus-only site – This video covers how to set up a bare-essentials Canvas site. If all you’d like to do is post your syllabus and make sure your students have access to it, then you can watch this video to learn how.
A quick guide on publishing all of Canvas’s content options – If you’ve ever been confused about whether or not something you’ve added to Canvas is published and available to your students, this guide will help.
You can find more helpful tutorial videos on the BC Law Ed Tech YouTube page.
Panopto Information
By default, your course will be recorded and recordings will be made available to your students. If you would like to control when your students see your class recordings, then you can change your course Panopto folder permissions to only allow recordings to be viewed when you choose to make them available.
I’ve also created a resource for more information about room capabilities and special scenarios not covered by the lecture capture request form.
Finally, I’d like to remind everyone that the rooms equipped with lecture capture capabilities all have posted signage alerting you to the possibility that a room will be recorded, as well as indicator lights that turn green when a recording is in progress. The Videotaping policy is included in the Student Academic Policies and Procedures Handbook.
Classroom Technology Information
If you missed my workshop on using classroom technology, you can review it here. I covered a wide variety of topics including:
- Logging in to the classroom computer and A/V system
- Panopto lecture capture
- Using Zoom in the classroom
- Virtual Whiteboarding tools using the Wacom monitor
- Common presentation tools like PowerPoint and Google Slides
- Poll Everywhere
Zoom Information
Although all courses are being held in person this semester, there may be a few circumstances in which utilizing Zoom will be useful—for example, bringing in guest speakers for a lecture. If you are new and haven’t set up your BC Zoom account, you can learn how to do so here. You can find other guides and resources to help you make the most of your Zoom account below. Please note that you will need to log in with your BC credentials to access your Zoom account. If you need help logging in to your BC account, please contact the help center at 617-552-4357.