THE SRJC INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNER'S ROLE IN TRANSITIONING INSTRUCTORS TO CANVAS
LIZ DU PLESSIS
Instructional Designer at SRJC
Whether you are an experienced online instructor or a face-to-face instructor testing the digital waters, collaborating with an instructional designer can help smooth your transition to Canvas. This session will familiarize you with support services offered by an instructional designer to faculty designing or redesigning online coursework in Canvas. Liz will provide before-and-after examples of coursework developed by faculty in collaboration with an instructional designer.
By the end of the session, you will know:
The role of an instructional designer in transitioning faculty to Canvas
The support services offered by an instructional designer
Examples of coursework developed by faculty in collaboration with an instructional designer
Distance Education at SRJC offers Canvas trainings both face-to-face and online. As the screenshot of a module below illustrates, trainings include pedagogical guidance.
A online, self-paced Online Special Expertise certificate training delivered in Canvas is also available to SRJC faculty. Many departments at SRJC require the certificate of faculty who teaching online or hybrid at SRJC. This training prepares faculty to design and develop effective, enjoyable, and accessible online courses based on Best Practices (Links to an external site.) provided by the State of California Online Education Initiative.
Objectives
By the end of the course, participants will be able to
Edit your Canvas profile and add an announcement
Create and organize instructional material in Canvas
Manage course communication and interaction with Canvas Tools
Create an assessment and use the SpeedGrader in Canvas
Identify accessibility issues and upload an accessible document in Canvas
Apply best pedagogical practices by designing and developing a module in Canvas
Screenshot of the pedagogy module in the Online Special Expertise certification training course in Canvas:
The Online College Project
The Online College Course Development Project provides incentives to encourage both full-time and part-time faculty to develop new online courses. Courses can be based on new or existing curriculum. For more information about developing and teaching online courses at SRJC, visit the Distance Education site. The primary contact person for the OCP in Distance Education is our Instructional Designer, Liz du Plessis. Email:eduplessis@santarosa.edu
About the OCP course
The OCP course has a module structure to leads participants through the required steps. The steps for completing OCP include appointments, Canvas training, and course development. Participants can track his/her progress in Grades.
Screenshot of the modules index:
Supporting Research
The following research informed the conference session:
This paper shares data from one Digital Media Simulation episode piloted by two cohorts of undergraduate business students at the State University of New York (SUNY), Empire State College. Results from this pilot demonstrate that Digital Media Simulations effectively increased student engagement and promoted deeper learning.
This article presents the results of a national study of 39 higher education institutions that collected information about their practices for faculty development for online teaching and particularly during 2011-2012. This study found that the most frequently offered training content was:
assessment of student learning (97% of the institutions)
creating online community (91%)
training on the institution’s CMS (84%)
student learning styles (84%)
instructional design models (84%)
Interesting differences by Carnegie institution type were found. (Types include Research/Doctoral, Master’s, Baccalaureate, Associate.) Both research/doctoral institutions and associate-level institutions place a higher value on pedagogical training (such as critical thinking and learning theories) over training dealing with a delivery tool (such as a wiki or podcast).
The one exception to this is the CMS; this tool seems less frequently the focus of training for associate-level institutions. Why associate-level institutions may offer such training less frequently than all other training content in the survey is unknown; perhaps all community college faculty have already learned how to use the CMS although this must be explored further.
3A: Plug-Ins and Apps to Extend the Power of Canvas 3C: Bring on the Bling! How to Make Your Courses More Visually Appealing