Five Things I do for a Healthy Start to the School Year

[sbastian]

1. Take care of ME!

This means scheduling a vacation in late July/early August that involves my camera, my tent, and myself. This year it was Acadia National Park. Getting away and out into nature helps me re-center and come back refreshed and re-focused. Absolutely essential if I'm to get through the hectic season!

2. Course Design (or Redesign)

I'm not just a Canvas Admin - I am also an adjunct instructor. I know that this dual role means I won't have time to do any quality course design once Mid-August rolls around. Having all my ducks in a row and having my course built out in Canvas for the entire semester means less stress and last-minute scrambling all semester long.

3. New Faculty Orientation

Faculty new to our campus need a little extra help. This year we provided a separate new faculty orientation that focused on pedagogy as well as campus resources. We made sure they knew about Canvas and where to find help as they designed their courses in Canvas.

4. Update our Support

This means double checking our support sites for both faculty and students and making sure we have the most up-to-date information according to the latest Canvas updates.

5. Two-a-Days

No, not football practice, but SIS uploads! We (OK, I) run queries of the data in our Student Information System and create CSV files for course, faculty users, student users, faculty enrollments, and student enrollments that we use to populate Canvas. Beginning a week before the semester and continuing until the Add/Drop deadline, I run the enrollments twice a day. I also make sure the courses are in Canvas and faculty are enrolled as soon as the Registrar has that information in the system. This process has cut down the amount of calls and emails we get about "where is my course?".