Training – Page 24

New In-Depth Canvas Sessions Announced

Need some more assistance with the finer points of SMU’s new Canvas LMS? OIT has scheduled additional training sessions over the summer that cover advanced topics ranging from grade books to modules. Just like the basics sessions OIT has given through the spring semester, these summer sessions are walk-in only, so stop by on any of the dates!

Below is a list of the upcoming sessions, their locations, and their dates and times. For any questions regarding these sessions, please contact your academic technology liaison in your department.

Schedule of Courses

June 3, 1PM	Intro to Canvas (Condensed)	Crow 186
June 3, 2PM	Assignments & Grade Book	Crow 186
June 6, 10AM	Quizzes	Hughes-Trigg
June 6, 11AM	Mastering Modules	Hughes-Trigg
June 13, 2PM	Intro to Canvas (Condensed)	Webinar
June 23, 10AM	Intro to Canvas (Condensed)	Webinar
July 11, 3PM	Canvas Course Set-Up Workshop	Crow 186
July 11, 2PM	Assignments & Grade Book	Crow 186
July 20, 10AM	Quizzes	Crow 186
July 20, 11AM	Mastering Modules	Crow 186
July 28, 10AM	Assignments & Grade Book	Crow 186
July 28, 11AM	Canvas Course Set-Up Workshop	Crow 186
August 5, 1PM	Intro to Canvas (Condensed)	Crow 186
August 5, 2PM	Assignments & Grade Book	Crow 186
August 8, 2PM	Quizzes	Crow 186
August 8, 3PM	Matering Modules	Crow 186
August 8, 4PM	Assignments & Grade Book	Crow 186

IT Training: Canvas, Sitecore 8.1, and a contest for staff

New Canvas trainings
Now that Blackboard is no longer an option, get up and running with the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS). These walk-in sessions will introduce you to the Canvas interface, creating course content, customizing your course’s look and feel, plus assignment grading. Find the full schedule on the IT Training page.

What is new in Sitecore 8.1
We will be offering several courses in using the newly upgraded Sitecore 8.1, SMU’s Web Content Management System, later this summer. Until then, join us for “What’s New in Sitecore 8.1.” We will go through the new interface and highlight the changed from the current version of Sitecore. To register for one of the webinars, please visit the IT Training page.

President’s Picnic Contest
scooter As part of the SMU Staff Association’s annual President’s Picnic, OIT will be there to join in the celebrations with giveaways and fun prizes! Staff, stop by our booth at the picnic on May 18th to learn more about OIT’s services including our lyndaCampus service which provides staff, faculty and students with thousands of courses on hundreds of topics.To make it even easier for you to watch Lynda.com courses, we’re giving away three Roku Streaming Sticks to three lucky staff members so you can watch courses (and also Netflix and other streaming services in your free time) on your television! We’ll be giving two away during the picnic, but follow the instructions below for a chance to win one right now.

Just simply log onto smu.edu/lynda at anytime between now and May 17th and watch at least one video and you will be entered into a drawing for a Roku Stick! The winning staff member will be announced during the picnic.

Also, we’ll be giving away a scooter from our friends at Qualtrics, so you can cruise around campus in style!

lyndaCampus Adoption on Campus Increases

lynda.com When we at OIT introduced lyndaCampus in late 2015, we were excited to begin offering a new way to learn about all kinds of business and creative skills and software. Turns out, you were just as excited!

As of April 1, almost 800 people ranging from students, faculty, and staff have logged into Lynda.com. On top of that, over 15,000 videos have been viewed, totaling around 11,00 hours of online training reviewed since Lynda.com was first offered.

Out of all those hours of viewing, here are the top courses overall that have been viewed in Lynda. Maybe some may be of interest to you the next time you log in.

OIT and A-LEC Help Students Excel with Excel.

Almost two dozen students attended last night’s Excel@Excel hands-on-workshop at SMU’s Altshuler Learning Enhancement Center. The OIT-lead workshop was part of the A-LEC’s practical learning strategy sessions offered throughout the term. A-LEC has partnered with OIT to facilitate four of the 25 sessions available to both undergraduate and graduate students.

Excel@Excel Training in the A-LEC Yesterday’s workshop covered the basics of Excel and an introduction to formulas. OIT will offer a second Excel workshop for students on February 25th that will explore more in-depth formulas and functions. While last night’s and the February 25th session are both a student-only training, IT Training regularly offers workshops for all members of the campus community. For more information about upcoming training opportunities, visit our IT Training workshop schedule.

“I’m excited that we have such great training opportunities for all of our campus,” stated Laurene Klassen, the Manager of IT Training, “but, let’s not forget the challenges that some people have to attend our workshops. I always try to encourage others to check out Lynda.com. So many people aren’t yet aware of the great online resources we have and I’m working hard to get the word out. Our Lynda.com license strengthens our training department by offering the courses we can’t regularly offer. Now, we have the tools to assist others to increase their learning by leaps and bounds.”

Photo Credit: Rebecca Umobong

Preparing & Building Courses in Canvas

Canvas Tips & Tricks
When teaching any online course for the first time, course materials and files must be readied and assembled for course uploading. Creating new organizational folders for each course is one easy starting point for ensuring that your course materials for the transition to Canvas.

On your computer, create a new course folder for each unique course you are teaching. (Include any/all courses you have taught previously using Blackboard that you will teach again—especially consider courses you teach infrequently but will teach again in the future)
Copy or move all relevant course files into the relevant course folder.
Utilize SMU’s Box cloud storage service to maintain your course folders so as not take up space on your hard drive (Tip: SMU Box is also a great way to share your course folders/files with colleagues!)
Use your reorganized course folders to build your courses in Canvas.

Exporting, Reclaiming & Reorganizing course Materials from Blackboard

Many educators who have utilized Blackboard have accumulated substantial course materials and course artifacts which are still only stored within Blackboard. While Blackboard is still openly available to faculty until the end of June, all instructors are advised to export/download any and all course materials for reuse well before the June deadline. Since courses, course materials and files will not be moved automatically into Canvas, all educators must ensure, before June 30th, that course materials required for reuse are exported or downloaded from Blackboard for use in building new Canvas courses. Academic technology team members and instructional designers are available immediately to help guide you through this process. While SMU will offer numerous day-long “Canvas Conversion Labs” during May and June to assist with exporting course materials from Blackboard, please start preparing your materials now. Recovering Blackboard course materials after June 30th will be handled on case-by-case requests, since Blackboard will no longer be openly accessible.

Build courses in Canvas

After you’ve become familiar with Canvas and have consolidated digital course materials in folders for each course, you are ready to build out your course. course shells for your upcoming courses will be available for building and publishing well before the start of each term. If the official course shell is not yet available, please request a “sandbox course” from the OIT help desk for each course you’d like to get a head-start on building.

We’re excited about the opportunities that the Canvas course management system offers the SMU community. SMU, OIT and CTE are committed to providing as much training, guidance and instructional design assistance as possible during this transitional year.

Even with that support, however, most of the work that needs to be completed between now and the time SMU turns off Blackboard now falls to the instructor.

If you have yet to begin preparations for using Canvas, please begin the process of learning Canvas, preparing your course materials (especially those which you might need to retain from old Blackboard courses) and start building your courses in Canvas itself. An initial investment into planning for this imminent change in course management systems will pay dividends as SMU moves exclusively into Canvas.

Category: Training