Share your Faculty Professional Teaching Development Programs (please!?)

[johnmartin]

Would folks, pretty please, share/link the most successful parts of their faculty development programs relating to Canvas?

Ideally, as our faculty transition from D2L into Canvas, I'd like to figure out how to successfully encourage them to super-charge the heutagogical and experiential learning elements of their courses. For many, that sounds like "too much work!" and they want to just focus on doing the same ol' same ol' in Canvas (a waste of a promising student-centered LMS!). How do I convince them to change — even just 1-3 things — right away?

Perhaps more realistically, next year — if we can get their attention again — we can put together a Next Steps series on turning the course they just recreated in Canvas into a better one. How do we get them to come back for more?

Any examples you can share and link to that do either of these well? We've tried (with pretty good success) the Active Teaching Labs (seeA Successful Canvas Faculty Development Program), and are currently designing a four-session series on Teaching Effectively in Canvas (Please share ideas & advice!).

I'd love to learn more from the Community, so am tagging Higher Ed folks I've already been learning from:awilliams  @stephensda   @lindalee   @kroeninm  snufer  @abunag   @caryn   @Chris_Hofer  chriscas  @ccalderon   @dejonghed07  925024864  @G_Petruzella   @ProfessorBeyrer   @James  Jeff Ferner  @jthoms   @kari   @kmeeusen   @kblack   @kenneth_rogers   @kona   @lindalee   @anthonem   @mjennings  rgibson1  @Robbie_Grant  ishar-uw  @stevenwilliams  cms_hickss  @tom_gibbons   @tdelillo  

Thanks!

[laurakgibbs]

And I'm adding  @keeganlong-whee ‌ and  @michellemeazell  to the ping list because they had a ton of contact with faculty at OU during our transition year and could share some insights! Our move is also from D2L to Canvas, so that could be really useful to compare. 🙂

[tdelillo]

I don't consider myself an expert in faculty development by any means, but better minds than mine decided that we would re-certify our faculty for online teaching as part of the migration from Blackboard to Canvas. This meant that they needed to present a course to peers/chairs/DL staff, and it had to meet criteria in a rubric that was loosely based on Quality Matters standards. This encouraged them to at least look at their course content with fresh eyes as they learned Canvas. It was a lot of work for everyone, and we still had some faculty who just copied over their Blackboard courses and made minor changes, but I think it was a worthwhile process. 

[ProfessorBeyrer]

Great question  @johnmartin  and Thank You for tagging me. My college is in the middle of a yearlong transition to Canvas. About eight years ago we made another transition and I saw too many of my faculty peers go through extraordinary efforts to make LMS#2 look and work exactly like LMS#1 did. So this time around I now suggest they take 3 steps:

1. Decide why they want to use an LMS -- what kinds of benefits do they get from using an LMS, how does using an LMS help their students succeed, etc.
2. Learn how to do those things in Canvas -- take this opportunity to learn some new ways to achieve the same goals
3. Then worry about transferring material over from LMS#2 -- by this stage my hope is this is limited to quiz questions, files uploaded before, and links to outside resources

Time will tell if this plan works for those making the transition. For faculty new to using an LMS they can focus on steps 1 and 2 and spend their "step 3" time testing the innovative edges of Canvas.

[johnmartin]

Yes  @ProfessorBeyrer  this:

"go through extraordinary efforts to make LMS#2 look and work exactly like LMS#1 did"

Human nature? The power of comfort with the known? This is why we can't have nice things...

[925024864]

I agree with bothGregory andJohn, and it is very difficult to overcome this when Higher Ed, if not financially driven, is definitely financially constrained! Adjunct faculty are heavily relied upon by Administrations, and are usually already over burdened, often running between two or more institutions for their teaching assignments, and usually not paid for professional development. In a perfect (or at least better funded) world, all faculty would be fully trained and mentored in all the functionalities of Canvas and other educational technologies, as well as best practices for online teaching and learning, with ongoing workshops and paid learning opportunities. Ahhh, what a wonderful academic world that would be, but alas... we live in this reality, where we do the best that we can with the limited resources and personnel that we are allowed.  This is why I am so glad to be a part of this community, where we can all learn from and assist each other.  This goes a long way towards filling the gap!    ;>)

[kona]

This is why we can't have nice things...

Yep, THIS! ^

[kona]

While I think we do a lot of great things with our faculty, overall I feel one of the most important/successful parts of our faculty training is that faculty have to build a full course in Canvas and get it approved (using our best practices rubric) before they can start building the rest of their courses. I think this is helpful because faculty get a chance to focus on one course, get feedback and engage in a conversation about their course, tweak/revise the course, and then get final feedback (and hopefully approval).

This is my chance (since I'm the one who does all of the reviewing and approvals) to have a conversation with faculty about why they are doing what they are doing and whether there might be a better way to do something. In addition, this helps with the overall quality of our courses because faculty don't build the rest of their courses until they've gotten the first course approved. This means when they go to build the rest of their courses they know what they are doing (using Canvas and it's tools) and have hopefully thought about (and implemented) better ways to accomplish their course objectives. Another bonus is that this cuts down on the number issues we have at the beginning of the semester - courses work correctly and efficiently so our faculty and our students are happy with Canvas and can focus on the course content and not the technology!

[johnmartin]

Thanks  @kona  I love the course design rubric! Can I borrow and adjust for UW-Madison?

[kona]

 @johnmartin , yes, of course!

[cholling]

I also would love to use the rubric with my faculty  @kona ‌. May I?

[kona]

cholling‌, yes! Definitely! Feel free!

[jan_k_petersen]

Awesome! Is it OK for us to borrow and translate the OnlineCourseReviewRubric into Norwegian? We could make good use of this in our faculty training,  @kona ‌

[kona]

 @jan_k_petersen , absolutely! Feel free to use/tweak/do whatever you need to make it work for your school!

[JoshuaKer]

Hi Kona,

I'd like to take a look at this best practice rubric that everyone is raving about 😛

Unfortunately the link you've provided doesn't work for me (something about needing permission? though I'm guessing more likely the link has been broken in the intervening years)

Thanks for any help you or anyone else can provide!

Best,

Josh

[chriscas]

Hi @JoshuaKer,

I believe the rubric page you were trying to access should be available again now :).

-Chris

[JoshuaKer]

Thanks Chris!

You're right, the page is available again

[cms_hickss]

UCF has several paths for support of faculty and professional development for teaching online.

The Center for Distributed Learning offers... okay, I'm going to cheat and copy and paste from our website:

At every level of Professional Development, from beginners to advanced, the Center for Distributed Learning offers a variety of services for faculty. Learn the Essentials of Webcourses@UCF [Webcourses@UCF is our campus brand for Canvas] at your own pace, or join the award winning IDL6543 for credentialing to teach a fully online or mixed mode course. Want more out of Teaching Online? Keep current with Faculty Seminars and Multimedia Workshops geared to making your Webcourses@UCF course a Chuck Dzuiban Award winner.

More information on these and the other options can be found at: Professional Development | Center for Distributed Learning 

Also, our Faculty Center for Teaching & Learning (FCTL) offers teaching and learning resources from design and strategies to accessibility. They also offer events like Summer and Winter Workshop, Adjunct and GTA Programs, and New Faculty Orientation. 

[johnmartin]

Thanks cms_hickss Cheating is fine! Looking forward to digging through your Essentials course!

[rseilham]

I'm heavily involved in our main pro-dev course, IDL6543. This course offers a stipend, is 10 weeks (blended), and has been around since 1996! So if you have questions about that specifically, please let me know. 

[johnmartin]

Thanks  @rseilham 

First question: If you had to create a one-hour "Best of..." from that ten-week course what would you include? 

Second question: how would you market said workshop to faculty to get them to come without a stipend?

[rseilham]

John Martin‌: Wow, that's tough. The course requires 80 hours, so I'm not sure it would be very useful over 1 hour. The course is not just technology, but also includes pedagogy and best practices for just creating online and mixed mode courses. For one hour though? Um...I would focus on the main components of Canvas - Pages, Modules, and Assignments. I find that if faculty can understand these three elements, they have a "chance" at creating a good Canvas course. With that, I feel 1 hour isn't enough to build quality courses for most. 

Second question: Pizza? Ha, I don't know. I would probably hold back their online teaching credentials until they do the training. 

[johnmartin]

Lol. I know,  @rseilham , it's a crazy request. Thanks! for your insight! But it's the challenge we're facing with no real budget or leverage (we can use coffee and bagels), and faculty whose primary purpose is research. Teaching is often an "extra" — and after running their labs, university service, and publication agenda, there's just no time for trying new things (or new LMSes).

So, I'm trying to figure out what seeds I can plant that will interrupt their lives and grab enough of their attention in that one hour I might be able to get in order to get them to ask more questions, come back for more, and dig deeper. The quest continues....

[Stef_retired]

 @johnmartin ‌, I was recently involved in a training program that delivered one-hour sessions to K12 teachers who had never laid eyes on Canvas before. Typically, a one-hour training session walks through the global navigation, so you might use that as your guideline. We covered personal account settings (where to update your profile and notification preferences), the dashboard (customizing course cards), courses (customizing the courses list and where to find your courses if you don't see them on the dashboard), the calendar (how to create an event and an assignment in a course through the calendar), the inbox, and last we reviewed various help options available to that school and showed them where to find the guides (which was the only entree into the Canvas Community). One hour does not leave time for any hands-on activities; the time was entirely devoted to showing teachers where they could find what they needed. If we happened to have a few minutes extra, we showed them the SpeedGrader.

This particular training initiative offered additional opportunities for teachers who wanted to take their training to the next level. If you don't have a next level to offer, the one-hour outline I just described is just not going to be enough for teachers who are required to use Canvas. You might consider finding a good training course in Canvas Commons that you can offer your teachers as a follow-up resource or creating one of your own.

Last, with regard to the absence or presence of a stipend, at the school where I taught most of the instructors were adjuncts, no stipend was offered or even considered, and the choice was stark: If you wanted to teach online or blended/hybrid courses in Canvas, you had to pass a Canvas training course (designed and facilitated by the school). If you didn't complete the course, you couldn't teach online.

[kblack]

Late to the discussion here,  @johnmartin ‌--all the more embarrassing since you tagged me in your original posting--but I've been dealing with end-of-term stuff here.  I cannot agree with stefaniesanders more on her statement that an hour is not going to be enough time.  My "basic" workshop is 2-1/2 hours, and even then I feel it's not often enough. Much as I would love to emulate what  @kona ‌ does at her institution by requiring all faculty and students go through a course site of training, that is not really our "culture" at my institution. Heck, even though we require (in theory) going through an online pedagogy course (such as what Stefanie just described) for online/blended instructors, I have many Deans who essentially ask me to give an experienced online instructor a "pass" through that course.

On the plus side, you are coming off of an LMS with D2L which--from all that I have heard and from what little experience I had when we were "vetting" it years ago--has a very steep learning curve. Canvas should be like a walk in the park for anyone by comparison. 

To accommodate our off-campus users who teach face-to-face and who simply cannot (or choose not to) attend my face-to-face workshops, I have also created the online equivalent of the workshop site. I give them a sample "practice" course (as I do for my F2F workshops) and painstakingly recorded my own videos covering each of the exercises as they move along through them.  Unfortunately, most of the people who choose the online version of my F2F workshop do not bother doing all of the exercises that attendees at the F2F workshops do.  In the future, I may do more of what Kona does by linking directly to the Canvas-created videos rather than go nuts recording my own. (But I also find that faculty like the "personal touch" that my own videos have; plus I have learned to anticipate what questions they will have and try to answer them within the videos.)

If nothing else, "sell" them on the idea of using online grades (students love the "what-if" scenarios) as well as being able to read online assignments in the crocodoc program in Speedgrader. (Though I think D2L offers that, as well.)  And the Canvas help guides are quite good, as well!

[johnmartin]

Thanks so much for your thoughtful replies stefaniesandersand  @kblack ! I also completely agree that an hour is not enough time to do it all. And we're actually providing four different 2-hour sessions (TEiC Handout - May 2017 - Google Docs ) to start — on designing pedagogically-powerful courses in Canvas. The technical training is another thing.

Still, the challenge is real. We can't mandate that faculty come. We can't offer lucrative stipends. It's difficult to get them for even an hour, so I want to figure out how to hook them in that hour, so they find enough amazing value to want to come back for more face-to-face, or at least dig into some reinforcing online courses as  @kblack  has done. And you and  @kona are right about the Canvas videos — they're much easier/better than I have time to do. Huzzah! (now to get faculty to watch...)

I'm leaning towards making the first one a "Here are ways Canvas can make your teaching easier — and better for students."

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts!

[925024864]

John, here at Pierce College we (eLearning) struggled for years with trying everything we could think of, including stipends, to draw, entice, encourage, cajole or trap faculty into engagement and learning quality functional use of our various LMS's (Blackboard, Angel, Canvas), without any real wholesale success.

Finally, after many high level discussions and meetings, we got the Deans and Administration's attention and support for requiring LMS, Online practices and pedagogy training as an 'equity' issue, backed up by statistical evidence of lower completion and success rates for Online and Hybrid courses as compared to equivalent Grounded courses. Once we became a data driven institution, we consistently presented the statistical evidence of equity, parity, and access/support issues, quarter after quarter, with the end result of getting the 'required' training (or their equivalents) written into the faculty contracts.

Since that time, ALL existing and on-boarding faculty that wish to teach fully Online or Hybrid courses, must successfully complete all three phases of training, for which certificates are issued (these trainings are delineated below). In addition, I personally encourage ALL faculty to become as proficient and credentialed as possible, and suggest that this is a bonus to them, their careers, and their desirability as teachers to other institutions, as well as an excellent way to up their 'tech savvy' quotient!

Since the implementation of this policy, our online completion and success rates have greatly improved, and our parity gap has narrowed substantially. Every quarter we get Deans that want/need to assign an under trained faculty to an Online section due to one reason or another, which in the beginning, caused some sections to be cancelled. So, we came up with a 'mentor' program (and specialized Canvas 'teacher' role), wherein we officially assigned a fully trained and qualified faculty person in the Online classroom with the 'instructor of record', with the stipulation that the 'instructor of record' must complete the required training(s) before they could be assigned to another Hybrid or Online course.

This was a very long and hard fought battle, but one that has proven to be more than worth while!

Concerning Required Canvas Training for Hybrid/Online teaching:

•  1^st is ‘Canvas Essentials’ (or its equivalent), which you can enroll in immediately.
• *Renee Phoenix is our Instructional Designer and instructor for TTOL (Transitioning To Teaching Online), which is *required for Hybrid and fully Online classes (or its equivalent), as well as your contact for design, pedagogy and andragogy questions.
  • Renee Phoenix - PY: / FS:
• *James ‘JJ’ Johnson is your contact for APPQMR (Applying the QM Rubric), which is *required for Hybrid and fully Online classes (or its equivalent).
  • JJ Johnson – FS: 

[johnmartin]

Wow 925024864 I *love* the idea of partnering faculty! It provides an opportunity for faculty to learn from each other, to witness and share common (real) issues and solutions (and current frustrations), and to come up with new ideas based on having a 'sounding board'! It also aligns well with sociocultural learning theories and practices (Vygotsky, Dewey, Wertsch, Lave & Wenger, etc.) that work well for student learning! (learning is learning!)

We foster faculty learning from each other in our Active Teaching Labs (seeA Successful Canvas Faculty Development Program), but not a partner/mentor level, which would be a stronger learning relationship. I think that if we can get some solid data on student learning, that too would be a great help in convincing faculty to come. I doubt we'll ever have enough top-down leverage (nor am I convinced we should here) to compel them to come. And it's beyond my pay range to engage in that battle. 

Thanks for your thoughts!

[925024864]

Hi John, here are links to our eLearning webpage and our CEAL webpage (Center for Engagement And Learning).

• eLearning is responsible for engaging faculty with ‘Canvas Essentials and/or WAOL’s Intro to Canvas for Faculty’, and APPQMR (Applying the QM Rubric).
• CEAL, which is comprised of a Director, 1-Instructional Designer, 1-Educational Technology Specialist, and 1-support person, leads the charge for our advanced Canvas training, Educational Technology support, and faculty development. Below is a copy of the 'Welcome email' that I send to each faculty/staff member upon the creation of their Canvas account. (*NOTE: the 'Required' Canvas and Quality Matters training for Hybrid and Fully Online courses is written into our faculty contracts.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hello, and Welcome to Pierce College ‘eCAMPUS/Canvas’,

(*NOTE: As your Pierce College Outlook account is the official means of communication with and from the District, it is crucial that you monitor your Pierce College Outlook account!) 

Your Canvas account has been created on our Pierce College ‘District’ Canvas site, so now you will be enrolled into your assigned Canvas classroom(s), if any, within the next hour.

After initial login following the protocol below, please change your password… see *note below.

*IMPORTANT:  You must keep each Canvas password unique and different from passwords used in any other institution’s Canvas site!

This is your access and login information:

URL:  http://pierce.instructure.com – see attached graphic guide.

Username:  925###### (your EIN/SID)

Password:  the first 8 characters of your last name, all lower case – if less than 8, repeat from the first letter until 8 are reached. (i.e. Smith = smithsmi)

• The best place to start is ‘Instructor Orientation to Canvas’, which is a series of graphic guides demonstrating the layout, navigation scheme, and functionalities of Canvas. 
  
• Here is a link to the ‘Canvas Essentials and WAOL’s Intro to Canvas for Faculty’ request form. This is a self-paced and facilitated online training, which is recommended for Web-Enhanced users, but *required for Hybrid and fully Online classes. This is the next step and consists of a series of modules and lessons that you work through, performing the tasks and assignments in your ‘practice classroom. 

• Here is a link to the ‘Requests’ page at our eLearning>>>Connects blog site with request forms for Canvas ‘trainings’, merging sections and ‘workspaces’. 

• eLearning>>>Connects, our Canvas information, resource and request site… please bookmark this page for future reference.

Concerning Required Canvas Training for Hybrid/Online teaching:

•  1^st is ‘Canvas Essentials’ (or its equivalent), which you can enroll in immediately.
• *Renee Phoenix is our Instructional Designer and instructor for TTOL (Transitioning To Teaching Online), which is *required for Hybrid and fully Online classes (or its equivalent), as well as your contact for design, pedagogy and andragogy questions.
  • Renee Phoenix - PY: 253-840-8485 / FS:253-964-6779 or rphoenix@pierce.ctc.edu
• *James ‘JJ’ Johnson is your contact for APPQMR (Applying the QM Rubric), which is *required for Hybrid and fully Online classes (or its equivalent).
  • JJ Johnson – FS: 253.912-2245 or jjohnson@pierce.ctc.edu.   

Be sure to refer to the ‘Supported Browsers’ link frequently, and the ‘eCAMPUS Guides’ link for ‘how to’ tutorials on Canvas features (both are on the Canvas login page, and the bottom of most Canvas pages).

In addition, excellent resources and self-help can be found under the Canvas ‘Help’ menu (upper right hand corner of your logged in Canvas account) via the ‘Search the Canvas Guides’ and/or ‘Ask the Community’ options.

Welcome to eCampus/Canvas… let me know if there is anything else I can help you with!

;>)

Earl Sallade

eLearning Support Specialist

Canvas Administrator
Pierce College District

esallade@pierce.ctc.edu

253.912-3768 or (ext. 3768)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you want to review 'Canvas Essentials' or 'TTOL' (Transitioning to Teaching OnLine), please contact me via email, and I will see about sharing those with you!

[DrNufer]

This past year we created a sort of Canvas orientation course for faculty.  It's geared mostly for new faculty, but also has stuff for people who want to level up.  I borrowed many ideas that I found that were shared here on the community or on commons.  

Canvas Orientation 

Another thing to try would be some sort of faculty development gamification.  Establish a leaderboard with elements like updating profile and settings, or adding interactions to courses.  A badge for a QM certified course or integrating social media into Canvas.  Ideally you want want the criteria to be completely automated, unless you have a dedicated person for PD who would be willing to take on the responsibility. 

[johnmartin]

Thanks snufer

I think basic faculty gamification could work for some faculty, and really well-done gamification might work for a few more. Have you (or anyone you might know?) seen or tried any examples (successes or failures) of this that we can look at and learn from? (Disclaimer: Currently combing through the https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/gamification group... any you could point to?)

[DrNufer]

Probably the best example of professional development gameification is what the SUNY COTE folks are doing.

http://commons.suny.edu/cotehub/online-competency-development/badges-and-certificates/

[Jeff_F]

Hello John - the active teaching lab mentioned in the intro is how I would approach this.   

Each Active Teaching Lab is comprised of four parts:

• Listen: Hear colleagues share how they used a tool or technique in their teaching
• Experiment: Gain hands-on experience with the tool
• Discuss: Unpack the pedagogy and develop ideas on applying it to your course
• Expand: Discover additional options to accomplish similar results

And while experimentation is ongoing, have such guided practice where the expert(s) are on hand and supportive of exploration.

[johnmartin]

That's a nice affirmation,  @Jeff_F ! I guess we'll keep on doing that! Thanks!

[kenneth_rogers]

Hi,  @johnmartin  Thank You for including me in this list of some pretty awesome people. "I am extremely humbled" is often overused, but I really mean it. I'm not quite sure I belong on this list!!

I don't have a lot of faculty development experience, especially within Canvas. But I want to encourage you in a few areas:

• You are doing a fabulous job. I love that you are leveraging The Community to make a greater impact for your faculty. There's some great minds and ideas here - and you've tapped into a great place.
• Speaking of how great The Community is - I suggest you mention this wonderful place during all of your face to face training sessions you give your faculty. Talk about the importance of driving the product and giving them a voice - without having to be funneled through your technology staff.  @tdelillo ‌ has a presentation () if you wanted to make it available to your faculty. Tracey is pretty awesome, loves The Community, and talks about some of the changes in the last update (and she's my boss).
• Back when I was helping with trainings/faculty development in Blackboard, I always "preached" reaching your students. I don't know why other people stay in education, whether teaching or behind the scenes, but I am here for the students (and I HOPE the faculty are as well!). I always told my faculty to make their courses mobile friendly and reach our students on their devices - and now your faculty have the perfect opportunity. While you are working on development plans and what to focus on, mobile friendly courses and design need to be priorities. Fortunately Canvas makes it easy already, but there are still some design guidelines to take into consideration. You may want to check out the CanvasLive Session  @rseilham ‌ did on 
  This video is currently being processed. Please try again in a few minutes.
  , or hang around the Canvas Mobile Users‌, or hit up  @KristinL ‌. (Kristin is K12, but don't hold that against her, she's awesome).

People in The Community are always here to help in the transition. I've been on Canvas since August and can truly say it's pretty dang awesome - so... Welcome and Congratulations.

[johnmartin]

Thanks  @kenneth_rogers , I am doing my best at promoting the Community, but get pushback from faculty who have tried it. They want more action and less talk. It's tough to convince them that sometimes the processes are slow.

Regarding mobile, we're up to our eyeballs getting folks' basic content over. Convincing them to make it UDL-friendly (including mobile) is the second priority — but we're trying.

[cholling]

Great discussion. Here at the IU School of Nursing (Indianapolis) we made the switch from Sakai (Oncourse) to Canvas a few years back. We took a decidedly different approach than most of you because we could. I, as the instructional designer transitioned each course we offer from Oncourse to Canvas -- that was a few over 100 courses. With guidance from the undergrad and graduate deans, we planned a transition schedule over 2 years which I mapped on my white board (it was quite impressive and I took screen shots periodically just to prove to myself I was making headway and to keep from losing what sanity I had left). With consultation from the dean of learning technologies and the online course coordinator in the school, we developed a model for the standards we wished to employ (loosely based on the QM rubric) and after reviewing student end-of-course evaluations from several semesters.

Honestly, I expected outright mutiny at the university decision from many of my faculty. Despite numerous complaints from some about Oncourse's functionality over the years, when it came time to jump into something new and unexplored like Canvas, there was great apprehension. However, the transition plan that we set up and carried out succeeded beyond my wildest hopes. While there have been pockets of confusion and apprehension or specific trouble spots, the transition has gone very well, and I still occasionally have  faculty pop in and tell me how proud I would be of them because of such-and-such that they are now doing in Canvas successfully on their own. (It's so nice when the children grow up and learn to do things on their own.)

For each course I met individually with the lead faculty and completed a worksheet about what worked for them in Oncourse and what pie-in-the-sky-dreams they had for how they wished their course could work (and totally thrilled them when some of them learned that some elements could be done in Canvas). I then transitioned the course from Oncourse to Canvas putting the course into the standard format including a home page, tools (we strongly encourage the use of Modules and hiding most other "building block tools") and tool sequence. When I completed the course, I met again with each faculty to review the course and get "faculty sign-off" that the course was transitioned satisfactorily. For each of these courses they were named with the course number and the word "Transition". Those have remained as the courses move into the regular academic sequence; faculty can return to the transition course to use as a development or test environment as desired.

I also built a "Model IUSON Course" that is available as a self-join so that faculty can see -- and copy from -- the standards we employ.

I have continued a practice begun long ago in an LMS far, far away of sending out Quick Tips. These are email messages that always go out on a Friday, but not necessarily every Friday to all faculty and staff at the School of Nursing (including our affiliate core campus school). Each message contains 4-5 one- or two-line bulleted quick tips highlighting Canvas features or functions that I have received multiple faculty inquires about. The Quick Tips have continued to be one of the most valuable faculty development tools I use and faculty state that they save them to refer back to.

I also archive the Quick Tips in a Canvas site I created and maintain called "Pearls of Wisdom." In this self-joining site, I house handouts, Quick Tips, some links, PowerPoint presentation and poster templates branded according to university rules, and videos using Kaltura of video archives (workshops that I present) or how-to videos I have built using Kaltura CaptureSpace. I also use the site to highlight "special" things that can be done within Canvas (thanks to this group!) such as tabs on a page, accordions, images and things. I initially loaded all faculty into the course as a bolus and now add (or they add themselves) as desired. Rather than distribute handouts or send email attachments of needed resources, I refer them to Pearls to get them into the habit of going there as a resource.

I don't get as much traffic on the site as I would like, but it's steady and has almost 200 participants now with total interactions ranging from a few minutes each to several hours spent in the site.

[johnmartin]

Thanks cholling 

Lol on your they grow up so fast! comment. It's lovely seeing faculty who were scared turn into our leaders!

Is the "Model IUSON Course" and "Pearls of Wisdom" site open to folks from outside the university, by chance? 

[cholling]

Yes -- or no -- 🙂 You can self-join the Pearls site at https://iu.instructure.com/enroll/49WKA9 and the Model course at https://iu.instructure.com/enroll/R4YLEF .

I have actually never had anyone from outside our university ask to join. I don't mind, and you're welcome to try. If it doesn't work and you want access, you could get a Guest Account by going to our Canvas home page http://canvas.iu.edu and following the prompts for creating an IU Guest Account then let me know and I could add you manually.

[ProfessorBeyrer]

Thank you chollingfor sharing your Quick Tips idea. My college is in the middle of a yearlong transition to Canvas and I am still working on how to curate for my fellow faculty all the awesome stuff that I am finding in the Canvas Community. I think a regular email with a tip, a link to a community resource, and encouraging them to explore will be a great addition to my ongoing communication efforts.