The 2024 Winter Faculty Development Week (WFDW) page is now live! WFDW will be from January 8th to the 11th online via Zoom.

Links for the Zoom Meetings are also available on the WFDW page.

Take a look at the full session lineup and RSVP today!

Submitted by: Tyler Kron-Piatek, Instructional Designer, COLI

It’s coming up to the end of the semester again. Here are some actions you should take by the week after grades are due:

• Enter your Final Grades through MyCanisius. Click here for a brief video tutorial.
• If you want students to see their Final Calculated Grade, click here to see a tutorial on how to do that.
• Export your gradebook to archive the grades for your personal record. See this tutorial here to do that.
• Archive your entire D2L course in the Brightspace format at the end of each term for your personal record. Click this link to see how to do that.
• If you are teaching courses in the next semester, copy course content so you do not have to rush through it and have time to work on it in between semesters. Click here to see how. Text instructions are available here.
• If you have not already, inform the Canisius Bookstore of any books or Cengage Unlimited products you intend to use. If you are not planning on using books or Cengage Unlimited products, let the bookstore know that as well. See their page here for more contact information.
• Copy your Panopto videos from the previous semester to the upcoming semester.
• If you plan on using student assignments from your class for later review or appraisal, download them now!

You can click here to view the COLI Checklist page, which has further resources. View this video for a quick overview of the End of Semester Checklist:

Submitted by: Tyler Kron-Piatek, Instructional Designer, COLI

With final exams around the corner, it may be useful to review these features of D2L Quizzes and Dropboxes.

D2L Quizzes provides 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. You can also import questions from another quiz into your final exam. Connect your exam directly to the grade book for faster grading. You can also have your students sign an Academic Integrity Pledge before continuing to the exam. Customize the Quiz Result display, in combination with a faux exam, to show students what questions they got and see where they need to brush up on their studying.

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 most notably PDFs, Microsoft Office files (ex, Word and PowerPoint), JPGs, or PNGs. You can also restrict the types of files the Dropbox will accept. Attach the Dropbox to the grade book or use a D2L Rubric and attach it to the Dropbox for faster grading.

For more information on D2L Dropboxes, click here. For tutorials on D2L Rubrics, click here. For other resources concerning D2L and it’s various tools, take a look at the D2l Self-Paced Training for Faculty and Staff Wiki page.

COLI also offers a number of workshops on D2L’s tools. Sign up for them on the Faculty Development Opportunities page.

Submitted by: Tyler Kron-Piatek, Instructional Designer, COLI

Do you need/require hardware for the January Intercession?

The Canisius Media Center offers a wide range of microphones and cameras that you can borrow and use with your laptop to record video with.

If you are interested, let the Media Center know your needs or visit the Media Center checkout office on the 4th floor of Old Main.

Additionally, you may be interested in the Lightboard Studio and the Digital Media Laboratories Podcast Studio.

Submitted by: Tyler Kron-Piatek, Instructional Designer, COLI

Clipchamp is a freemium (i.e., free to download and use with some “premium” features behind a paywall) alternative to ScreenPal. Clipchamp allows you to record and edit video, similar to ScreenPal. The Clipchamp editor is also a bit more powerful than Panopto’s in-built editor, though it does come at the cost of being more complicated to use.

COLI has several videos on using Clipchamp, with more on the way. Check them out below:

Introduction & Overview – This video takes you through how to download Clipchamp to your computer for faster access. Then it shows your around the Clipchamp dashboard.

Recording & Exporting a Video – In this demo, we take you through how to quickly record a screencast and export the video to upload it to Panopto.

You can check out these tutorials, and future tutorials, on the Clipchamp Wiki page.

Submitted by: Tyler Kron-Piatek, Instructional Designer, COLI