A Bit About Kristine Dreaver-Charles

I am a member of the Mistawasis Nēhiyawak, so I live and work in my treaty territory. I grew up in Prince Albert and my connection to the University of Saskatchewan first began with earning my B.Ed. degree here. I spent the early part of my career teaching in northern Saskatchewan and later teaching online. I have a M.Sc. in education in instructional media from Wilkes University. For almost 8 years, I have been working at the University of Saskatchewan as an instructional designer. I am currently a PhD candidate in the College of Education at USask, focusing on decolonization in distance education.

My Instructional Design Practice

During my time as an instructional designer at USask, I have come to realize the enormity of knowledge within our campus community. I enjoy the opportunity to build relationships with faculty and learn more about their disciplines as we work together to design their courses. Working with an instructional designer is a very collaborative process and it is always good to reconnect with faculty after we have finished designing a course. As a first-generation graduate student, I am fortunate to work where I study. I have benefited from meeting and spending time with faculty who will often check on my progress, offering their experience and support.

What are the essentials of good design

Honestly, less is more, and consistency is key. Here are a few ideas to consider

• • A course needs to meet the needs of the professor and the students.
  • Having basic pieces in an online course like a home page can sound insignificant but it establishes an online space that is the home for your course.
  • The nomenclature you use in a course needs to be consistent throughout. Keeping a quick list of the standards you’ve established, and formatting details can be a good reminder to refer to throughout the term.
  • Keep students in mind when designing courses. For example, using the available university supported technologies alleviates the potential need for students to have to effectively use many different web conferencing systems in one semester for their online classes.

Open publishing unlocks potential of historical text

Course Copies in Canvas & Readying Your Course for Winter Term

If you’ve spent all term getting your Fall 2021 Canvas course in tip-top shape, or perhaps have been building content in a development/sandbox course in anticipation of teaching in Winter 2022, you should be ready soon to move your content into the empty Canvas course that has been set up for your Winter 2022 course. When you first open it, your empty Winter term course will look something like this; it will have no content, but it should have students enrolled (you will see students if you check under the People area).

In order to duplicate the content from your other course into this empty Winter course, you need to:

1. 1. Complete a Canvas-to-Canvas course copy
   2. Adjust event and due dates, and double-check all due dates on your Assignments, Discussions, or Quizzes before you are finished.
   3. Upload your new Syllabus for the Winter term (click on Syllabus on the course menu). You can link to a PDF of your course syllabus. If inserting a file link, consider setting the file to auto-open for inline preview. This allows the file to display right on the page vs. The student needing to download/open the file. To do this:
      • Insert the Course Link to your Syllabus file (PDF).
      • Still within the Rich Content Editor, click on the link and select “Link Options”.
      • Select “Preview inline” and “Expand preview by Default”.
      • Press the “Done” button and then the “Update Syllabus” button to save your changes
   4. If you do not have Panopto videos, skip to step 6.
   5. If you have videos in a previous term Panopto folder, the process depends on whether the videos are embedded in the course using the rich content editor or not:
      • If the videos ARE embedded, you can provision your future/present Canvas course for Panopto. You will not have to copy/move any videos.
      • If the videos are NOT embedded (e.g., exist only in the Panopto folder), provision your future/present Canvas course for Panopto, then either:
        • copy your videos from the past course folder to the current course folder,
        • or, move your videos from the past course folder to the current course folder (note: past students will lose access to the videos).
   6. If you do not have groups, skip to step 8.
   7. If you use the Groups, there is a quirk of the Course Import function, all Group-associated Assignments and Discussions are assigned by default to a single Group Set called “Project Groups”. Before your course begins, you will need to reset groups after a course copy.
   8. When everything is ready publish your Canvas course.

If students are having issues viewing Panopto videos, refer to the Knowledge Base article I cannot see a Panopto video in my Canvas course.

(Credit to Tyson Brown for all the “how to” videos)