Ready to Beautify Your Canvas Pages? Here's How. . .

Pssst! Want a quick way to add some visual interest to your Canvas pages? Don’t let a little HTML code scare you! There’s no reason why you can’t have beautiful callout boxes in your course. In this episode of Byte-sized, I walk you through the steps (it’s simpler than you may think).

Here's a handy cheatsheet with the HTML coding snippets you need for each of the four callout boxes.

Have you heard the buzz about Can•Innovate, the free, one-day online conference we are planning for Friday, October 26, 2018? Can•Innovate is brought to you by the CCC Online Education Initiative (CVC-OEI) and @ONE (Online Network of Educators) with contributions from Instructure. This innovative professional development event is designed for California Community College faculty and staff Canvas users. Registration is open to the general public. 

Free, Untethered Professional Development

Supporting the professional growth and development of our immense system of 90,000+ faculty and staff requires creativity and innovation. Can•Innovate is designed to be an untethered event. The robust online program paired with optional face-to-face interaction providing access to faculty and staff regardless of where they are on October 26. No travel is required and registration for the sessions is completely free. With built-in verification of attendance, Can•Innovate also provides a simple way to expand opportunities for faculty and staff to earn flex credit (check with your local flex coordinator for more information).

3 Ways to Attend:

1. Remotely - If you have access to an internet connected device on Friday, October 26, you have all you need to attend the Can•Innovate sessions of your choice! All remote attendees will receive an automated email verifying their attendance within 24 hours after the session. We encourage attendees to use that verification email towards flex credit (please check with your local flex coordinator to find out if Can•Innovate is eligible for flex at your college).
2. From a Regional Hub College - The following colleges will be coordinating on-campus events in support of the Can•Innovate online program. You are invited to visit and engage in professional networking and learning with your regional peers. More details will be provided soon. Sign up to receive a weekly email update.
   • American River College
   • Clovis College
   • De Anza Community College
   • Mt. San Antonio College
   • Palomar College
3. From an On-Campus Viewing Room - Community colleges across California are coordinating on-campus viewing rooms to support peer-to-peer interaction and discussion around the online program. Take a peek to see a list of participating colleges (or sign up to coordinate a viewing room for your college!).

Register Now!

The full program includes 9 time slots, 20 sessions, and 30 speakers. Whether you are a Canvas novice or a seasoned expert, there's something for you! Just select the sessions that interest you, register online (it's free), and at the time of each session on October 26 click the session link that you received in your email. 

As California Community College students begin their Fall semester, student services departments are gearing up to provide students access to support services. According to the 2017 California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office Distance Education Report:

“Increasing numbers of distance education course sessions, coupled with increasing numbers of students taking these courses, have led to subsequent increases in full-time equivalent students (FTES). Currently, nearly one in three students take a distance education course in an academic year.”

As the number of online students continues to grow, many colleges struggle to provide online students the same type of support and success preparation as they provide their in-person students. The California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initiative (CVC-OEI) understands the struggle that comes with finding the right tools to provide online support services. In an effort to close the equity gap in online education, the CVC-OEI provides colleges a list of vetted online resources that can help distance education programs support their students and at the same time meet accreditation standards. Online counseling is a perfect example of how online tools can help promote an inclusive and supportive online learning environment. Helping students feel connected means finding a way to meet them where they are and providing the support they need during hours that align with their schedules.

7 Questions to Consider When Choosing an Online Counseling Platform

1. Accessibility - has the tool gone through an accessibility audit to confirm that it complies with the WCAG2.1 standards. Students with disabilities must be able to trust and rely on a counseling tool that will provide the best quality services.
2. FERPA, HIPAA & Security- is the tool FERPA and HIPAA compliant? Are there security features integrated into the platform to protect student information? For example: single sign-on authentication and a student consent form.
3. LMS & LTI Opportunities- does the tool have Learning Management System and Learning Tool Interoperability opportunities? Meaning, it allows services like online counseling to integrate with the learning management system, as single sign-on tool. Ultimately can your students access the counseling tool through Canvas- the learning management system used by the California Community College system.  
4. Student Information System Integration- does the online counseling tool connect to the college SIS system in order to keep track of data; reason codes for Management Information System (MIS) reporting needed for state and federal funding.  
5. Group customization- does the tool allow for department/group customization. When colleges provide counseling services there are departments that are also providing counseling services but they are not considered part of the general counseling department. Can the platform separate general counseling from EOPS counseling, DSPS counseling, Veteran Services Counseling and Mental Health counseling?
6. User Friendly-  does tool have features that go beyond a live video stream? A user friendly tool should provide all modes of communication in one single platform, are there opportunities to communicate through; live video stream, chat and email?  Does it allow users to download information and documents in real-time? Is the tool easy to navigate? Does it allow for features that create more interactive sessions like: screen share, document upload and real-time document editing? Does the tool provide options for  “small meetings” and “large meetings” It is important to remember that students seek support from counseling departments depending on the services that are available: will your department offer online counseling appointments? online walk-in sessions? online webinars or online orientations?
7. Surveys- does the tool provide the opportunity to embed an evaluation or survey? It is important to collect data that provides insight on the student experience, in order to evaluate the counseling services along with the counseling platform. Surveys will provide counseling departments the feedback they need to make sure they are aware of their student needs when they create a plan of action.

The CVC-OEI is here to support existing CCC distance education programs. If you are interested in learning more about the online student support resources that have been vetted through the CVC-OEI, please visit our website CVC-OEI.  You may also contact Jessica Hurtado, Program Supervisor-Student Experience for the CVC-OEI at jhurtado@ccconlineed.org or leave a comment below.

Ever been confused by all the options and symbols in the Canvas Gradebook? Well, you’re not alone! In this episode, we’ll zero in on the little dash that shows up in ungraded assignments. Knowing how to deal with it properly will mean you’re headache-free when it’s time to turn in your grades at semester’s end.

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
- Chinese philosopher and reformer, Confucius (551 BC to 479 BC)

In college classes, media is often viewed as a distraction for students, but the reality is that integrating multimedia activities into both online and traditional classes can have an incredible impact on the way students learn. Among other things, it can create context, motivate discussions and lock in concepts to ultimately enhance a students’ learning experience.

A Student’s Journey into Online Learning

I took my first online class in 2017 and I have to admit that I was apprehensive about how it would work out. My initial thought was that I would not be able to grasp different concepts because of the literal distance between myself, my peers and my professor. Surprisingly, I barely felt the distance while taking the course mainly because of how we were able to ask questions and get prompt responses, as well as having additional information being made available to us on the course website.  What made my online experience even better was how my instructor incorporated media into the fabric of the course.

Video: It’s Not Just for Lectures

Other than simply using video to deliver lectures, my online professors incorporated media in various ways to engage me and my peers. These examples ranged from embedded movie clips, to the use of video to provide historical context of reading, to VoiceThread discussions that allows students to leave comments in voice or video. My instructors' various uses of multimedia made my online learning experience incredibly interactive and engaging, which is often lost in traditional classroom settings, especially in higher education. Despite what many think, it’s easy for students to fly under the radar and avoid actively participating in traditional classroom discussions, mainly because there are so many students in the room. In online classes, or traditional classrooms enhanced with online components, students need to participate in discussions because they are graded by their contributions, posts and responses.

Suggestions For Getting Started with Media

I understand that there may be some constraints to implementing multimedia into your course – like understanding how to use the technology and the extra time it requires.  Luckily, there are multiple ways to get started. Instructors could share a film clip from YouTube, a song recording, or an online educational video (from Khan Academy or CrashCourse).  Another idea is to have students create their own media. For example, students could create video presentations or record video comments in an activity designed with VoiceThread. All of these examples are powerful learning tools.

Media can be used to introduce  a concept to give students some context before diving. Or it can be used after learning a concept as a way for students to apply what they’ve learned and develop their analytical skills. It can even be incorporated both before AND after a traditional lesson.

Ultimately, when and where to introduce media depends on where you think will most effectively enhance your students’ learning. If you would like new ideas, ask your students for their input. This would be a great way to not only engage them, but also to empower them.  Incorporating student feedback into your class shows your students that their ideas are appreciated. It could even boost their morale in the class going forward.

We are a pair of community college ESL teaching veterans, world travelers, lifelong learners and former City College of San Francisco colleagues, who continue to collaborate despite our current North-South (San Francisco-San Diego) divide. We stay connected by a daily stream of text messages and social media posts, encouraging one another in our interconnected personal and professional lives. We share everything from our latest workshop and presentation slide decks to shopping selfies, vacation photos and videos of our newest dance steps and gym moves. Last semester we decided to share the love with our students, and expanded our use of a tech tool we both regularly use, Flipgrid, a free tool that enables asynchronous interactions in video using a webcam or a smartphone.

Both of us were teaching a class that fosters listening and speaking skills, Denise with an Intermediate-level Credit class at San Diego Miramar College, and Daya with a Beginning-level Non-Credit class at City College of San Francisco. Both of us were also  using Flipgrid as a tool for our students to record authentic videos to extend course content, build community between students, and practice communication skills. One day after informally sharing what we each doing in our classes, it dawned us that our our classes could collaborate together on one shared Flipgrid!

Quickly, we put together a new grid called “Visit SF/SD”, and we created our first shared topic with the instructions, “Where should we go if we are visiting San Francisco or San Diego? Tell us where to have fun and why you like this place.”

Excited students!

When we announced this to our classes, they were immediately excited to share places in their city and learn about one another. Denise knew it would be a hit when she recorded a group hello from her class at San Diego Miramar College.

As the posts began rolling in, we realized how this provided an excellent opportunity for students to “show off” their city and their speaking skills with other students outside their own classroom walls. Students posted about favorite restaurants, special parks and famous landmarks. They recorded their videos on the top of a mountain, in their cars, at home, and in the back of the classroom. One of Denise’s experienced students took us on a live tour of the San Diego

One of Denise's students provided a tour of the San Diego Zoo.

Zoo, and one of Daya’s students, on her first day attending class, stood in the hall and encouraged visitors to come to her favorite spot in San Francisco, City College! No matter where they recorded or what they shared, all students were engaged and enthusiastic, practicing their presentations many times, for increased language mastery and confidence.

Daya’s class watched Denise’s class on the big screen and students were inspired by their peers’ fluency. They felt connected and inspired. And they felt more curious about this other California community, motivated by global learners like themselves committing themselves to their education.

Overall, we found this to be such a wonderful collaboration, that we are planning to incorporate it in our fall semester classes as well.

6 Tips for Class-to-Class Collaborations with Flipgrid

We have identified a  few tips for for a successful collaborations:

1. If you use Canvas, forego using the Flipgrid Integration for your collaboration, as it will only allow students enrolled in your course to participate in your Flipgrid Topic. Instead, create an Assignment, enter "No Submission" for Assignment Type, and include the link and password to your Flipgrid Topic in the rich content editor below the Assignment title. 
2. Activate the closed captions feature in your Grid settings to ensure your student contributions are accessible to everyone. 
3. Before your class-to-class collaboration, use Flipgrid with your own class. Before our collaboration, both of our classes were already familiar with Flipgrid, which made students more comfortable with collaborating. This approach lessens the students’ cognitive load and calms nerves that can come along with using a new tool.
4. When you introduce Flipgrid to your students, use a prompt that invites all students from participating classes to join in. It’s fun to see the other class setting, and the smiling faces of the professor and students.
5. For your class-to-class collaboration, choose a topic that allows students to “show off” their expertise in their college or city. Then move into other more content-based topics.
6. Find ways to support students who are less comfortable with the platform. If you're teaching a blended or face-to-face course, allow students to work alone or in pairs. For those who aren't comfortable showing themselves on video, provide the option to show a video tour and simply narrate it with their voice.

Flipgrid is a wonderful way to build a learning community, within a class and between classes. In addition, our students love sharing their grids with their friends and families, here in California and back in their home countries. Once the semester finishes they leave the class with a record of their learning progress and memories of classmates near and far.

Your Home page is a special place in your course. It’s the virtual “first impression” you’re making with students (and remember what Mother said about the importance of first impressions!). In this Byte-sized episode, we’ll look at the many functions of a Home page and offer some examples for you to model.

Designing an online course can seem like a very daunting task.  But, if you break your task down into smaller bits that are more manageable, you will find it much easier. I find that using some basic Project Management strategies can really help you get through the process.  In online courses there is more front-end work and planning compared to a traditional face-to-face course. The plan you create should have three major components; define your project, break it down, and estimate your time. Applying this process will simplify your task, and help you produce a well-constructed “back bone” for your course.

The 8 1/2 minute video below provides you with a visual tour of the three steps summarized in this post.

Step 1: Define Your Project

On paper or a spreadsheet, start by defining your project.  Consider these questions:

• What are the dates for your course?
• What resources are you using (textbooks, test banks, etc.)?
• Are there any major holidays or breaks to account for?

I like to start this process by making a spreadsheet divided into weeks with the start and end dates clearly defining each “bucket” or module. Within those modules I first determine if there are any special events that I need to be aware of. For example, Thanksgiving week is always a week where many people travel, so I try to assign very little work that week and plan around it. I also label finals week to ensure I am not assigning work that week. This will depend on your campus standard practice: if there isn’t work in a traditional face-to-face class that week on campus then I don’t want to include any in my online class either.

Next, I want to really think about what the  course outcomes are and how I plan to design a learning experience to ensure my students meet them. For most of us, we know what we are assessing and what we want to accomplish. Sometimes, additional thought and structuring must be put into assignments to ensure they are appropriate for the online environment. This can be the case for certain types of traditional assignments like term papers, presentations, or projects that need special instruction. If you need support, contact your campus distance education folks or explore the @ONE blog for ideas.

Step 2: Break It Down

After defining the project, it is important to break it down into manageable parts. Using Canvas for your online class, typically means breaking down the coursework into Modules.  I usually create a weekly format that goes from Monday to Sunday.  I divide the book chapters to fit within the weeks allotted with one extra “Start Here” module. Remember to check in with your distance education folks as they may have a boiler plate template that you can edit.

Step 3: Estimate Your Time (x2)

Once I have all the above information I move on to my last step, which is budgeting my time to get the project completed. This will largely depend on your familiarity with Canvas, instructional resources available to you, and the technical requirements for your course. Try to double all estimates for your time until you have a better feel for the actual work. Some aspects of any project will take more time and some will take less. I encourage you to spend time searching for and getting to know the distance education resources available at your college, and others like @ONE and the OEI.

All in all, creating an online course will help you examine your role as an educator and reflect on how to take your students through a journey of learning. That process can be daunting and can seem like a large mountain to climb. But, if you pre-plan and think about it with some basic project management tools, it will make the end result better and will allow you to work through the project one piece at a time instead of trying to build a proverbial house without plans.

In April of 2018, Merced College was accepted into OEI’s Consortium, in the Online Equity Cohort.  We are very pleased and excited.  We have set out to explore innovative approaches to promote equity in our online course designs.

If you have taught for a while, you know that your classes are populated by an array of diverse leaners.  You may have a student or two who gets it all right—on the first try, every time.  But you very likely have students who don’t pass on their first attempt.  “Second chance” opportunities can support them to re-study, review and try again.  Every student needs to build skills and competencies; and finish your class feeling enriched, accomplished and ready for the next challenge.

What Is Canvas Mastery Paths?

Use the links below to jump to different topics in the video above.

• What is EdPuzzle?
• What is Canvas Mastery Paths?
• Why use EdPuzzle + Mastery Paths? 
• How does this look in Canvas (the impact on students)?
• Student Satisfaction Survey Results

Canvas Mastery Paths is a feature in Canvas that allows instructors to set criteria for redirecting lower-performing students to supplementary or remedial activities (view the helpful Canvas Guide for Canvas Mastery Paths).  Suppose, for example, after a summative assessment such as a unit exam, the instructor finds that some students passed; while others “barely passed” and some failed the exam.  Mastery Paths allows instructors to redirect the students to varied levels of remediation.  Those who achieve acceptable (“passing”) scores of, let’s say, 70% are not redirected for remediation.  those who “barely passed”—e.g., scored between 60% and less than 70%--could be redirected to complete supplementary remediation at a moderate level.  Finally, those who did not pass with scores of at least 60% could be redirected for more intensive remediation.

Practical Considerations for Online Remediation

Relevant Substance

The remedial task or activity should be one that re-teaches content and concepts similar and relevant to that in the primary assessment.  For example, I teach Child Development for Merced College.  If I give my students an exam about how preschoolers develop physically, cognitively and socially; then any remedial tasks should focus on those same developmental domains.  It would be off-point to redirect study toward other topics; unless those are somehow foundational to the content that was not mastered on the exam.

Encouraging

Think about it.  Your students just bombed on your exam.  How enthused would they feel about being redirected to some labor-intensive, time-consuming, tedious and difficult requirement?  We can guess they would feel much more encouraged and willing to do a task that refocuses their attention in ways that are relatively quick, engaging and fun.

Immediate Feedback

Canvas Mastery Paths is very versatile.  Students could be redirected toward just about any assignment or task.  An instructor could, for example, have students write an essay, or create a slide show, to demonstrate that they have reviewed the content and their comprehension is now significantly improved, since the exam. However, any such assignment requires instructor grading, which of course takes time. To facilitate quick feedback, I recommend remedial tasks that can be auto-graded in Canvas, such as quizzes.

Advantages of EdPuzzle

EdPuzzle allows users to upload educational or other videos from virtually any source, such as YouTube, Khan Academy or even teacher-created videos. The free version of EdPuzzle works just fine for this stategy, but there are premium account options too with additional features. Instructors select videos with content appropriate for their current teaching needs and augment these using EdPuzzle tools.  With EdPuzzle, instructors can program a video to pause at strategic points, where questions or explanatory audio notes can be inserted.  Therefore, when your student views an EdPuzzle video, the playback pauses at strategic points and the student is challenged to answer questions displayed to the screen (and/or listen to your prerecorded comments).  Video is a very familiar and popular medium for most students today, which makes it an appropriate learning tool.

These features make EdPuzzle an effective approach for remediation, as well as other teaching methods.  Let’s say, for example, that a student scores poorly on an exam.  Presumably that student could benefit from a guided, focused re-study and re-assessment experience.  An EdPuzzle—which in effect is a video quiz—could be ideal for this purpose.

Want to see how all this works? View my video overview of this teaching practice (also see the quick links embedded at the top of this post to help you navigate the video topics). 

Hand in Glove

Therefore, when EdPuzzle is embedded into a Canvas quiz and used as the remedial method in Canvas Mastery Paths, low-scoring students can be automatically redirected to a fun and relatively easy, focused re-study and re-test opportunity, with a chance to recover a portion of the points missed on the recent exam or assessment.

EdPuzzle via Mastery Paths is an equitable strategy that gives your lower-scoring students a “second chance” at success in your course.

If you have any questions about this teaching strategy, please leave a comment below.  I would be happy to answer them.

Empowering students is a critical part of education and there is room for improvement in the United States. Students need self-worth, motivation, determination, and persistence to thrive in a course, and often times those traits come out of student empowerment. Giving students the opportunity to shape their education, develop their lessons, and apply it to their own path is essential because it encourages critical thinking, and gives lessons that can be applied outside of the textbook and the classroom, and eventually applied to their career. Being a passionate student about this topic, I have much to share and a few suggestions too.

In 2017, I graduated from College of the Canyons (COC), a California Community College, with associates degrees in Mathematics, Computer Science, and Physics. After that, I transferred to Cal Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo where I am now majoring in Computer Science and minoring in Entrepreneurship. I have been taking online courses since I was in high school and I was also employed at COC as a member of their Open Educational Resources (OER) program. From these experiences, I have gained a great deal of insight about how to engage and empower students in the online environment.

When students feel valued in a class, they will see it as a meaningful experience. But where do you start with this lofty goal? Start by reflecting on a few questions about your class.

• “After the class is over, what can students share with future employers?”
• “How might this class affect students’ career paths?”
• “Am I making assignments that nurture the learning abilities of the students?”

If you struggle to answer these questions, ask your students. They love to give input and opinions, and just want to feel important to the class. Asking students for input is a great way to empower them!

9 Tips for Empowering Your Online Students

Here are some additional suggestions.

Have your online students:

1. Create their own prompt for an assignment
   • Provide a rubric you will use for grading, and give students the freedom to craft an assignment around the rubric after you have approved the plan.
2. Create their own test questions
   • This is a great way to see if  students understand the material and get an idea of what they think is important in the class.
3. Give input on the course at  the beginning and the end.
   • Asking for student feedback immediately is a great way to establish a trust and convey that you are here to support your learners. Some suggestions for week one include: What do you expect from this class? What do you hope to learn? .
4. Teach some of the lessons in the class (using Canvas Groups )
   • One of the best classes I took had groups of four students teach the class every day for the last half of the quarter. This was great because each group had to know their material well to teach it.
5. Find resources for the class
   • Students can find great resources, and having additional relevant resources is always a good idea, especially for students who struggle.
6. Run a socratic seminar  
   • When students facilitate discussions about topics  they are more engaged. Act as the guide of the conversation and requires each student to speak at least once.
7. Seek out scholarships, competitions, grants, and more.
   • For every topic in school, there is always a way to get students more involved. Encouraging them to apply for an opportunity and let them know you believe in them! . If they are successful, they will have something to  show off for a lifetime.
8. Help write materials for future courses
   • When students know their assignments are not ‘throw away’, they are usually more willing to invest time in the topic and deliver something that will last. Plus, they may be able to deliver it in a way future students will  understand a bit better
9. Connect with their community
   • Local companies are always looking for help. Connecting students with local businesses gives students a chance to understand a career and be considered for a potential employment opportunity.

How do you empowering your online students? Leave a comment below so we can keep this list going!

Join Natalie for her keynote presentation at Can•Innovate, Friday, October 276th - a free, online conference!

The California Community Colleges (CVC) - Online Education Initiative (OEI) provides support services to address equity and achievement gaps in the online learning environment experienced by students from marginalized communities.  Aligned with Chancellor Oakley’s Vision for Success to fully close equity gaps within the CCC system, these ongoing efforts include applying an equity lens to surface institutional and systemic barriers, implementing an Equity Framework to address disparate impact and increase our students’ sense of belonging, and providing colleges with innovative tools, technology, and professional development in the areas of instruction and student services.     

The CVC-OEI and the Online Counseling Network (OCN) have designed innovative tools to support high quality Online Counseling Services. Instruction and student services play a pivotal role in student success and providing students with the ability to access online services in real time, truly defines meeting our students where they are. In 2016, Cranium Café powered by ConexED was selected as the meeting and collaboration platform for the Online Counselor’s Network Project. The ConexED platform was designed with student services in mind and ConexED is 100% committed to accessibility, FERPA, HIPAA and Security. The platform allows for various forms of communication (email, chat, video conferencing) all in one tool. The CVC-OEI and the OCN not only introduced this innovative tool to the counseling field but they also made sure, training and resources were provided to those using the online counseling platform. Experienced counselors are invited to participate in professional development courses, where they will learn strategies and techniques for fostering successful online counseling sessions.

Student Equity in Online Counseling

Our students are tomorrow’s leaders and workforce.  As educators, equity must be at the center of our daily practice as we assist students with meeting their educational, personal, and professional goals. Many of our students enroll in online courses and/or use online support services in the matriculation process. Counselors are key to this process.  In classrooms and counseling sessions, they identify students’ strengths, skills, and knowledge, and provide guidance towards selecting appropriate educational and career paths. However, to address disparities, close achievement gaps, and meet the needs of each student, it is important for counselors to provide welcoming and supportive environments that are based upon equity principles and culturally responsive teaching and learning practices.  Participating in flex-day breakout sessions, conferences, and campus-wide cultural events are great starts, but equity requires ongoing professional development, and a supportive community that provides networking opportunities and resources. There must also be a personal willingness and commitment to know our students and the communities they come from, to be more deeply engaged in the work to transform our classrooms, the delivery of student services, and our online colleges.

How Do You Do Equity?  

In The Next Equity Challenge, Dr. Estala Bensimon refers to higher education faculty members as ‘first-generation equity practitioners’ who must recognize and concede that their practices are failing to create success for too many students.  They need to see that their implicit biases about race and ethnicity often prevent them from viewing students who are not like themselves as college material (Bensimon, 2016). Having an awareness around institutional and systemic barriers to online learning is key to eliminating achievement gaps. This includes challenges such as implicit bias, microaggressions, and stereotype threat. USC Center for Urban Education (CUE) offers equity-minded indicators and other valuable resources. Equity-minded counselors help students to build on their strengths.  They create welcoming environments that develop a sense of identity with and belonging to our institutions, and educational experiences to match their goals. Because equity is not about fairness, rather it it is about creating inclusive supportive learning environments that help our students find their voice and fulfill their potential.

Get Involved

The OEI will be offering professional development opportunities through on-campus workshops, online courses, webinars, and training modules, including a four-week course, Equity & CRTL for Online Counselors, this course will be offered through @ONE, late fall 2018. Along with opportunities for general counselors and mental health clinicians. A six-week Online College Counseling course, a two-week Online Mental Health for non-clinician course and a three-week Online Mental Health for licensed clinicians course.

Finding the right way to spin a discussion can be an impactful way to increase student engagement in your online class. Don Carlisle, Economics faculty at Cabrillo College and Modesto Junior Colleges, has some nifty discussion strategies for making his course content come to life. In the 8-minute video below, he shows two of his online discussions. One is designed to engage students in self-discovery about their career choice and the other has students discover connections between Economics and the world of love and dating.