What Did We Learn From Can•Innovate?

Through the leadership of California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initiative (CVC-OEI), all 114 California Community Colleges have adopted Canvas as their learning management system. Our systemwide move to Canvas enables our colleges to leverage the economy of scale and utilize resources more effectively. Moreover, part-time faculty who teach at more than one campus can now focus more of their time on teaching, as opposed to designing courses in multiple platforms. And, most importantly, our students who learn at more than one college will have a more consistent experience, which is particularly important as CVC-OEI expands access to online courses through cross-campus enrollment. Furthermore, our systemwide adoption of Canvas unites all of us — CCC faculty, staff, administrators, and students — to work towards the common goal of learning how to best utilize Canvas to support the needs of our diverse student population.

Last year, in pursuit of this goal, American River College in the Los Rios District in partnership with CVC-OEI and Instructure, hosted Can•Innovate 2017, a conference for faculty, staff, and administrators who use Canvas. Roughly 237 CCC educators attended that event. This year, on October 26, 2018, @ONE (The Online Network of Educators), which serves as the professional development arm of CVC-OEI, hosted the 2nd annual Can•Innovate —this time in the form of a free online conference.

Why a Free, Online Conference?

The decision to design Can•Innovate with a virtual program was made to support the needs of our CCC educators, comprised of 60,000+ faculty (70% of which are part-time) and approximately 30,000 classified staff and administrators. Leveraging what we learned from CCC Digital Learning Day, we designed the day to ensure everyone with a desire to learn and grow had the opportunity to do so.

In partnership with an advisory committee of faculty and staff, a robust online program was designed and delivered entirely through ConferZoom. The final program consisted of 19 sessions presented by 29 speakers including CCC faculty, staff, and administrators; national thought leaders; representatives from CVC-OEI ecosysystem, Instructure, and CCC supported tools; as well as a student keynote speaker, Natalie Miller. Attendees were provided 3 options to participate:

Online — from one’s own device
On-Campus — from one of the 32 group viewing rooms across the system
On-Campus -- from one of the 5 regional hubs

The Outcomes

Can•Innovate 2018 was well-attended by faculty, staff, and administrators from across the state. Some highlights of the attendee data are:

5,870 advanced online session registrations (duplicated headcount)
3,285 session attendances (duplicated headcount)
1,131 people attended.
The large majority of attendees (87%, n=982) participated online from their own device, while 7% (n=76) attended from an on-campus group viewing room, and 6% (n=41) attended on-campus at a regional hub.
Attendees represented 108 out of 114 California Community Colleges (94.7%).
The event attracted a diverse group comprised of: 76% faculty — split by full-time 42% (467) and part-time 34% (374) 12% classified (127) 7% administrators (78) 1% students (7) 4% other (46).

A 4.4 Star Event

A total of 270 attendees (40%) responded to the evaluation survey, providing us with rich user experience data from which we plan to learn and improve. Most of the evaluation responses (226 or 83%) came from those who attended online. The large majority (76%) online attendees indicated that convenience was the main reason they chose to attend from their own device, followed by “it is how I learn best” (6%), I live too far from a hub (6.6%) and my campus did not coordinate an on-campus viewing room (5%). Overall, attendees (all types) were very satisfied with their experience. Attendees gave their overall Can•Innovate experience an average 4.4 out of 5 stars. The distribution is shown below (all attendee types included):

★ ★ ★ ★ - 155

★ ★ ★ - 85

★★ ★ - 24

★ ★- 4

★- 3

Online attendees were slightly more satisfied (average 4.46 stars, n=226) than group viewing room attendees (4.28 stars, n=38) and hub attendees (3.85 stars, n=7). The data collected from the open-ended questions support high satisfaction levels. Those who attended online cited flexibility, the ability to learn without traveling, and efficiency as the top drivers of satisfaction. It is worth noting that these similar to the reasons students site for taking online classes.

Participants who attended from on-campus sited an appreciation for being able to converse with colleagues during and between the sessions, and on-site subject matter experts expand upon the presentations. Below are excerpts from the open-ended comments:

What did you like best about attending online?

It is the most convenient way for the PT faculty to be included in P-Dev., so thank you for offering it online.
I was paying full attention unlike face to face where you can fall asleep.asy to schedule and sign up for the classes that fit time schedule.
While there were many in attendance the facilitators and moderators made the experience feel very singular and personal.
I loved the fact that online was not just an afterthought; it was the point of the conference!
I like learning and as an online teacher/ remote worker having a sense of community meets a need.
I did not have to commute.
I liked the on-demand expectation of online events and seeing questions by my peers answered in real time during the event!
I didn't have to miss work, I just picked sessions to fit in my schedule.
No waste of time / money / carbon traveling to a conference (or even my campus), and the efficiency of the Zoom presentations that were all business and well moderated
Such dynamic presenters with innovative ideas to spark our imagination.

What did you like best about attending in a group viewing room?

We added other sessions and an open lab. Faculty liked being able to choose. We also held our event in 3 classrooms with glass windows that faced a center gathering space. It helped to be able to look in each room to see what was going on, how many were in there, etc. We could see if the webinar had started even from outside the room.
Having the opportunity to discuss the material with my peers as we watched it.
Getting out of my office! Camaraderie, opportunity to explain/assist things with others, and pizza.
Networking with my school's Canvas admin and her input during the different presentations.
We were able to use the 15 minute breaks to review the session content for participants, clarify, answer questions, and describe how we can help with whatever was being presented.
I think our participants really enjoyed being able to participate in a communal setting and be able to ask questions.

What did you like best about attending at a regional hub?

Well organized.
Being at home and in good hands for hand-on training Being with my colleagues.
Chance to connect with others.

What did we learn?

For all the talk about student equity, it's also really nice to have opportunities for Teacher/Instructor equity as well. Online Conferences without exorbitant fees or limiting travel arrangements are the way to go - Thank you! — Elli England (@Toxicgrin)

Free, online conferences are a new form of professional development provided by CVC-OEI/@ONE. With each event, we seek to learn and improve. Can•Innovate has reconfirmed the value of untethering professional development from a time and place. By granting faculty, staff, and administrators the opportunity to learn and grow without needing to travel, more people are served and more students will benefit. Here are some of our key takeaways:

Most of those who responded to the survey indicated that they learned about Can•Innovate from a campus announcement, which stresses the importance of building relationships with those who coordinate professional development across the system.
Just over a quarter (27%) of respondents indicated this was their first time participating in an @ONE professional development offering, reinforcing the widespread impact of untethered professional development.
Nearly half (46.5%) of respondents said they received flex credit for attending the sessions, which was a preference we identified from CCC Digital Learning Day and the reason we required registration at the session level for Can•Innovate. This granular registration process creates more steps for users and more links to manage, but there was no evidence in the conference evaluation data that suggested this process was problematic.
Use of a Twitter hashtag (#CanInnovate18) proved to be an effective way to enable connections across campus. More than 700 Tweets were sent with the hashtag, promoting the sharing of feedback and resources, photos of viewing experiences, and reflections about the day. We hope more of you join in on Twitter in the future (follow us @ONEforTraining).
Sharing across campuses opens eyes to new ways of thinking and breaks down silos. Professional development must utilize technology to deliver content and connect people. Professional networks are central to professional growth.
Professional development must be designed with equity in mind. Attending traditional conferences is a great way to learn and connect with peers, but proportionately few educators in our system have the resources to fund conferences. Part-time faculty play a critical role in supporting the needs of our students and are often unable to attend on-campus professional development events.
This untethered professional development model lightens the load of those on campus who coordinate professional development while providing attendees with options to participate in a way that suits them best.

If you have any thoughts about our Can•Innovate findings, we’d love to hear from you! Please leave a comment below or reach out to me directly.

… and mark your calendar for our next untethered event, CCC Digital Learning Day, which will be held on Thursday, February 28, 2019! Let us know what topics you’d like to learn about by contributing in our social upvoting forum, which is open until November 30!

Humanizing My Online Teaching with Informal Videos

In the 6 1/2 minute video below, Wendy Bass discusses the value of using weekly, informal videos in her online teaching. The videos provide students with a brief preview of the new module and a sense of who their instructor really is, promoting her social presence.

Additional resources:

3C Media Solutions
ConferZoom
Humanizing Online Teaching & Learning, a 4-week online professional development course

Canvas Speedgrader + Your Voice = A Win for Students

Please click the play button below to listen to Don Carlisle reflect on how and why he records audio feedback in Canvas to enrich his online students' learning. Or read the transcript below provided or access the interactive transcript.

All right. Hi, everybody. My name is Don Carlisle. I teach economics at Cabrillo College, Modesto Junior College, and also recently at Santa Rosa Junior College. I wanted to take a few minutes, at least for this blog post, to talk a little bit about audio, and hence why I'm doing this as an audio blog post.

One of the things that I find that, as I talk to other instructors, especially on ... that are using Canvas, is that they're not using a lot of audio, which surprises me because I find this such a fantastic methodology of providing feedback to students and interacting with students. How I use audio specifically within Canvas as an instructor are three main areas.

The first one is, I usually give it during Discussion feedback because I use discussions in my course as a way to expand knowledge. Some instructors use discussions as kind of a way for students to connect with each other, which I do that as a large part as well, but the main ideas is we're still discussing a particular topic, which is embedded within the, what I consider kind of the lesson plan, so I try to connect it directly to what we're reading, what we're going over, and I have students do some analysis and do some other things. The feedback to me is a very important grading tool, and also a way to help students kind of move forward and understand something a little bit more about say what they're reading or watching or doing something else within that assignment.

What's great about audio is that this can be done right within the SpeedGrader within Canvas. There is video feedback, which you can do, which I'll talk about in just a second, or you can also do audio feedback. Now, one of the best thins that I actually really, really love about audio feedback is that I can get up at ... pretty early actually, before my kids get up and my family kind of gets going, and I can do some grading. I don't have to be well-dressed, my hair can be disheveled, I can be drinking a cup of coffee, I don't have to get kind of ready to then be presentable within that audio feedback. By doing so, it's very easy, and I can do that very rapidly, kind of no matter what's happening. I don't have to kind of sit down during a video feedback to get presentable and make sure that the room is in order, and the backlight is okay. There are quite a few more steps that need to be in place for video feedback or to do a video than simply doing an audio.

What's great about that ... or I should take one step back and say what's the other aspect that I use audio messages in or audio media in is also during announcements. Now, the only caveat with announcements that you always have to be careful of is that there's an accessibility issue there. One thing with audio feedback on the SpeedGrader, if I know that I have a student that needs an accessibility or has a disability in the course, then obviously I won't use audio feedback with them, I'll just use regular text-based feedback. But if I am sending a message to the class, I have to be careful, particularly if I do have, say, a deaf student in the course or somebody that's hard of hearing or doesn't have the ability to listen to an audio message, then that can be a problem. It's just a caveat there, just pay attention to those types of things and make sure that you cover that base as needed.

The other thing ... So, going back to that, what I found is that audio messages in particular can provide a fantastic connection with students. One of the things that I don't get a lot of but that is fun when we get it and I can go back and forth with the students, when they reply with an audio message back. Now, again, that's typically a fairly savvy Canvas student, somebody that's played around with Canvas and understands it, knows how to interact with it and will reply. But when that happens, it's just fantastic. It's one of those interactions where you have a quiet conversation with a student very much one-on-one, and you can go over issues back and forth, and it just creates a fantastic experience for the student and for the instructor.

The other thing I want to say is that I know students appreciate the audio feedback because I get a lot of really positive responses when I survey them. Now, in my course, I actually do like a, what I would consider, a mini-survey every week with anonymous surveys in the middle and at the end of the course. In the mini-surveys, those ... the students know or they ... that those are not anonymous, those are done directly by the students, and they talk to me kind of directly. In that sense, I still get feedback from the students, saying, "Hey, I really appreciated that audio message. Thank you very much. That really helped me understand it better," or during the anonymous surveys I get a lot of really positive feedback on the audio responses as well.

Obviously, it's never going to replace all the other types of feedback, but I just feel it's one of those venues that isn't used very well or not used enough. I really want to encourage instructors to really, really try to use that audio feedback, try to jump in there when you're doing feedback or when you're giving a reply, or you're doing grading and you want to provide some feedback to the student that may be hard to articulate in writing or may be lengthy in writing. Jump on the audio piece, kind of experiment with it. It will take you a few times to figure out the volume, what kind of microphone are you using, how does it work, how do I make sure that the level isn't too high, and that's kind of the one thing to be careful of is that, as a default, you probably want to say, "Well, I want a little less gain or volume in my recording, so that way people can turn it up as opposed to the other way around, which then can just distort everything and get kind of sideways."

That's really it. I'm not going to talk for too long here, just 'cause it can go on and on. But I just want to stress that there's some really big positives to audio feedback. Number one, the cost as far as getting ready and being ready to go and just being able to do it, is very different than video, and it's much more impactful for students and much more personable if you can do it, especially on a one-on-one basis. I think the absolute best place for that is in the SpeedGrader. So, whether or not you're grading quizzes or essays or discussions, it just is a fantastic place to provide feedback.

One other quick anecdote. During my discussions in my class, actually, the first couple of weeks, I actually take a lot of time to give audio feedback. The first week, I give nothing but audio feedback. I actually go through every single student and provide audio feedback based on their discussion. A lot of it is repetitive, a lot of it is the exact same thing, and it gets to be kind of the same old stuff. But I feel it's such an important connection with the student in doing that audio connection and have them hearing my voice and seeing my picture at least upfront and seeing all of the other videos that I have posted in my Canvas course in the beginning, but to get something a little bit different, and that is me jumping on there and saying, "Hello, Sarah. Hello, Miguel. Whatever it is. I really liked what you did here, but here's some suggestions going forward that would be even better for you to get an even higher grade." That simple connection via audio, whether it be just one minute or even 30 seconds or two minutes, which is about where I like to keep it, students really, really get a positive experience.

My big suggestion to you this week as far as my blog post is just jump out there. Really try to get a good handle on audio. Find ways to use it. Make sure you find a good microphone that you like and you're comfortable using, and really start to use audio feedback, especially during the grading times, in the SpeedGrader because it's so easy to use and I feel it's a really powerful tool.

Okay. Thanks a lot.

Making Your Tables Accessible--In 15 Seconds (or Less)

Tables can be a useful way to organize certain types of content visually. But tables add an extra layer of complexity for students using a screen reader device which means it’s imperative your tables are formatted properly. Never fear! The Canvas Accessibility Checker is here to save the day.