Present: Stacy, Heather, Amy Collier (Associate Provost for Digital Learning), Joe A., Jamie, Mack P., BKoul, Zach, Adam, Amy Slay (MIIS Digital Learning Specialist)
Main Topic: Canvas Pilot Preparation
- Update on MIIS Course building in Canvas: so far so good, one prof left to add
- Kickoff meeting next week during this meeting slot. We’ll use this slot for pilot meetings throughout the semester where possible. (MIIS may need to schedule things slightly differently on occasion, given that their semester schedule is different.)
- Joe will send out further reminders for things for faculty to check before the kickoff meeting.
- Let’s finalize course lists at that date so we aren’t constantly requesting new stuff from Cindy Peet (manual importation of students).
- Add/drop will be manual; finalize at the end of the add/drop period.
- Review of timeline; looks good.
- Instructure meeting: signoff on branding, Midd KB document. KB signoff activated support: we tested submitting a support request through the interface and got a response within half an hour.
- Todo: enable support for importing Moodle courses. Need to find out if faculty will use it first.
Goals and Outcomes
- What questions should we ask?
- How do we assess the course-building process?
- Let’s ask ASAP after courses are built (quite soon for MIIS, by Sep 8th for Midd).
- “What did you enjoy? What excited you about the platform? What didn’t you like?” Assume that everyone had both positive and negative experiences, and try to hear about both. Trying to ask people to directly compare to Moodle may not be productive; they may not ever have built a Moodle course, or built one years ago that they’ve been using since. “Like asking someone to compare their first year of college to first year of high school.”
- Difficult to balance collecting useful data during the pilot about how well this works for Midd, vs. helping faculty use the new tool in the best possible way.
- Moodle and Canvas are two different tools; it’s quite difficult to compare them directly. Different features.
- Not just about using the tool; the focus should be pedagogy. Educational technology should be educational. If they were only going to be doing the same things they’d be doing in Moodle, there’s no point in switching.
- We don’t want to just throw people in the deep end as far as support goes; be available for question.
- “What are your goals for participating in this pilot?” (ask in e-mail before kickoff meeting, then go around the room). Help make connections between faculty of different disciplines.
- “How do you picture this enhancing your pedagogy?” (+ check in again later)
- It’s definitely worth asking the same question more than once to see how things change over time. We can directly ask the faculty about what’s changed over time, as well.
- Questions for students: No inspiring questions for the beginning of the semester; we’d like to get a general answer to “What do you want in a course website?”
- We should e-mail out a more-formal survey for mid-semester (students and faculty). We should come up with good questions by October.
- Joe has some letters and other communication that other students have used. Questions from MISO survey: Bill will get from Terry.
LTI (Learning Technology Integration framework)
- Adobe Connect is a good example. The way other schools do it is to pay an integrator a yearly fee (AC outsources their LTI.)
- Canvas’s release schedule means integration is a moving target.
- LTI use gets complicated very quickly. Ex: integrating TurnItIn broke assignment dropbox. We should have a process. (SR goal for this year is to clarify support models, we can start by being clearer with this.)
- Support, privacy (FERPA), data use, etc.: draft recommendations. “If you’re thinking about using a tool, here are some considerations to be aware of.”
- Stanford policy: Can’t force students to use a tool that uses personal data for a graded assignment. Has to be an option.
- Amy Collier has talked to Chris Norris about how to start a conversation around how we handle this at Midd. In the meantime, let’s stick to guidelines.