The Law School Educational Technology Newsletter | August 14, 2023
Hello everyone!
How time flies! I hope you’re enjoying these last few weeks of summer. Before you know it, students will be back on campus! As we gear up for the start of fall classes, I wanted to share some technology updates to help you prepare. In this newsletter, you’ll find tips and resources for finalizing your Canvas site, lecture-capture policies and procedures, as well as other helpful information to help you feel confident starting the coming semester.
Emailing Your Class
With classes beginning soon, we’d like to remind you of the two most common ways to email the students registered for your course below.
Send an Email to All Students in Your Class
ITS creates and maintains campus group email lists for all courses. For up-to-date information on how to email your entire class, click here. If you do not see your class in your list of campus groups please contact academic services and make sure you are registered as a teacher in EagleApps.
Alternative to Emailing All Students in Your Class
Use Canvas announcements. The added benefit of using the announcements feature is that it sends an email and adds a post at the top of your Canvas homepage. If you frequently use announcements, you may want to limit the number of announcements that appear at the top of your Canvas homepage. Limiting the number of announcements to 2-3 is a good starting point.
CTE Training Opportunities
If you happened to miss any of my workshops I wanted to share some additional training and workshop opportunities around campus. The Center for Teaching Excellence is hosting a range of workshops meant to help you prepare for the coming semester. Topics include pedagogy and student wellness, teaching technologies, generative AI, and more. You can view their announcement and sign up for workshops here.
Fall 2023 Canvas Prep
BC Law Canvas Template
In partnership with the Center for Digital Innovation and Learning, we’ve developed a Canvas course template that provides you with pre-built modules, assignments, and a nicely designed homepage. This thoughtful design saves you time when setting up new courses while ensuring alignment with best practices for course design. The structured yet customizable format enables you to easily tailor materials to fit your specific needs and teaching style. To learn more and get started using this time-saving course template, explore the following resources:
- How to import the Law School templates
- How to edit the template homepage
- Full template tutorial
- Workshop recording on how to import and make use of the Canvas template
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 something you’ve added to Canvas is published and available to your students this guide will help clear up any confusion. You can find more helpful tutorial videos on the BC Law Ed Tech YouTube page. You can also watch previously held workshops covering various Canvas and course-related topics here. I suggest starting with the troubleshooting FAQ video, as it covers the most common questions I receive each semester. There are timestamps in the description to take you immediately to the question you have. If I’ve missed anything let me know and I’ll create another video with your submitted questions.
Panopto Scheduling and Support
BC is moving from an opt-out to an opt-in model for lecture capture. Given the number of changes to both Panopto and classroom A/V support this semester, there will be a separate email outlining the specifics of how you can get the best support possible for those needs.
As you are probably aware, artificial intelligence is a rapidly evolving field that has many applications for teaching and research in law. In addition to several workshops I gave over the summer on this topic, I’ve been scouring the web and attending countless other sessions to find ones you may find interesting as well. Here are some of the resources that you might find helpful as you continue to think about how to approach this topic with your students:
- A series of workshops that I conducted on generative AI tools, prompting techniques, and machine learning for educational applications. You can find all of the recorded sessions along with any resources mentioned on the Ed Tech summer workshops page.
- A five-part video series from Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton Business School, where he explained how AI can transform various aspects of education. This series introduces AI concepts that can be helpful for both you and your students to learn how to use these tools, what their pros and cons are, and how to create policy around using them in an educational context.
- A webinar hosted by the Bar Association, where they showcased some of the latest legal AI technologies and their implications for the profession. You need to supply your email address to view the recorded session.
I hope you find these resources useful and informative. If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to contact me.
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.