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Google Calendar for Appointments

Faculty have a toolset to manage appointments with students, such as office hours or advising, pithing Google Calendar. This requires no third-party apps or additional logins. This will not violate Canisius ITS policies or security recommendations by supplying your Canisius account credentials to anyone else.

Use the appointment scheduler in Google Calendar and connect the Google Calendar with your Outlook faculty Email. Click here for the tutorial.

Submitted by: Tyler Kron-Piatek, academic technologist, COLI

D2L Tools for Mid-Term Examination

Mid-terms are right around the corner. There are many tools and features in D2L you can use to help with these exams.

D2L Quizzes provide a robust tool to grade quizzes easier and quicker. Some features can help prevent cheating to a degree, like basic question randomization and advanced question randomization. If you want to use questions from a previous exam or quiz, the Question Library lets you copy questions to the mid-term. Connect your mid-term exam directly to the grade book for faster grading. Click here for a tutorial.

Please note that if you allow automatic grading of your exam, D2L will not automatically grade written responses. Those need to be graded manually. Inform your students that the grade they have immediately after completing the exam is not reflective of their overall grade. If you want to see all of the tutorials on the D2L Quiz tool that COLI has compiled, click here.

D2L Dropboxes are a great way to receive student work in various formats, but more notably PDFs, Microsoft Office files, JPGs or PNGs. Attach the dropbox to the grade book or using a D2L Rubric for faster grading. Note that D2L will be changing the editor for dropboxes relatively soon, so it is a good idea to get a jump on these new changes. Watch this tutorial for an overview of these changes.

For more information on D2L Dropboxes, click here. For tutorials on D2L Rubrics, click here.

COLI has compiled other resources on the various toolsets in D2L. Click here to access those.

Submitted by: Tyler Kron-Piatek, academic technologist, COLI

Wiki Updates

A few updates concerning the Canisius College wiki:

  • After March 1, 2021, the gray left-hand sidebar will be minimized by default. Although still available, it will not automatically appear to users on desktop or laptop computers. While the sidebar appears to provide a navigation menu, it does not always do this in the most efficient way.  More importantly, the sidebar does not appear on mobile devices so it should not be relied upon to assist users in navigating wiki pages and spaces.  You can provide much better navigation within your own pages, using tools outlined here.
  • Revisit your wiki pages and update the materials there. This includes files attached to pages. If your pages are available to anyone, so is any out-of-date information posted there or in attached files, even if they are not linked on visible pages.
  • As part of an effort to assist offices and departments across the college, the Center for Online Learning and Innovation has updated and augmented our guide to using the Canisius College Wiki. The guide provides information on how to improve wiki pages, as well as some time-saving tools and tips. Access the guide here.

If you don’t have a wiki page yet, you can request that COLI create you a page. Follow the guide and add content, create subsequent pages and manage access.

With the overwhelming volume of Emails crowding into faculty, staff and student inboxes, information distributed solely through Email will likely get buried and users will later struggle to find it. Trying to distribute important information by email could be problematic. Consider including it in the wiki where users can continually refer back to it. Save time and Email links to wiki pages that users can bookmark in browsers.

Email helpdesk@canisius.edu for any questions concerning the wiki.

Submitted by: Tyler Kron-Piatek, academic technologist, COLI