Salisbury University | Instructional Design & Delivery Newsletter | August 8, 2023

August 23 - Establishing a Community of Belonging

Mark your calendars and plan to attend in-person the annual Faculty Development Day 8:30 a.m.-noon Wednesday, August 23, in the Guerrieri Academic Commons Assembly Hall, Room 462, with the theme Establishing a Community of Belonging.

Encouraging a sense of belonging is one of the best high-impact practices to foster student success. Join us for a transformative half-day professional development experience designed to equip faculty with practical tools to cultivate a sense of mattering and belonging in our student learning communities. Together we will explore how a rich understanding of identity and intersectionality can foster a sense of mattering and belonging – both of which contribute to student engagement, academic success and well-being. We will also discover ways to cultivate inclusive and supportive communities in our classrooms, departments and within the broader SU community. Faculty will leave feeling empowered to employ innovative strategies and effective tools to strengthen the fabric of our SU learning community. 

Registration is required for the 2023 Faculty Development Day and we look forward to seeing you there. 

In-person workshops are held in the Faculty Studio in the Guerrieri Academic Commons, Room 221 (15-seat capacity).

For those registering to attend in person, faculty/staff with active SU accounts should select SU Login to enroll in a workshop; incoming faculty/staff without an SU account should use the Non-SU option to enroll in a workshop.

Instructional Designer Liaison Changes

With the the retirement of the amazing Safaa Said, ID&D has modified our instructional designer liaisons to academic units. A liaison is an instructional designer designated as the formal contact person in support of pedagogical consulting, instructional technology, and quality course design and development. A complete list of instructional designer liaisons is available online. Academic units that have been reassigned to a new instructional designer are listed below:

Publisher Integrations and Inclusive Access

Several major textbook publishers provide the ability to integrate their content and services with MyClasses courses. For example, assignments provided by the publisher can be linked from within a course module, and grades from the assignment will be automatically pushed back to the MyClasses gradebook.

Inclusive Access is a program coordinated by the SU Bookstore to provide access to course materials as soon as the MyClasses course opens to students (typically one week prior to the semester). With Inclusive Access, there are two types of course materials:

1. eBook - Access to a digital copy of the assigned textbook through the VitalSource eBook reader.
2. eBook and Courseware: In addition to the digital copy of the assigned textbook, students will also have access to various instructional materials and activities (Courseware) related to the assigned textbook selected by the instructor.

After faculty elect to participate in the Inclusive Access Program, setup is required to connect their MyClasses course with selected publisher instructional materials and activities (Courseware) for students to access the selected materials.

ID&D is ready to help with publisher integrations and/or inclusive access and invites faculty to the following sessions:

• Any Publisher or IA Setup:
  • Monday, August 14 - 2:30-4 p.m. 
   
• McGraw Hill Integrations (using the new LTIA integration)
  
  • Wednesday, August 16 - 9-10 a.m.
   
• Cengage Integrations:
  • Wednesday, August 16 - 10-11 a.m.
   
• Pearson Integrations:
  • Wednesday, August 16 - 11 a.m.-Noon
   

No registration is required; faculty can drop in any time during the scheduled time and will be helped in a first-come, first-served system. Locations are available on the Faculty Development calendar for both in-person and virtual options.

For more information please visit the ID&D Inclusive Access and Publisher Integration Knowledge Base articles.

Change in Student Response System Support Level for PointSolutions

ID&D is transitioning support for student response systems from a single university primary supported platform to a supplemental support for third-party tools. PointSolutions, previously known as TurningPoint, has been our primary student response system since 2012. However, the utilization of this system has drastically reduced to only a few sections consistently using the system each year.

Instead, we have seen more faculty explore and utilize various student response systems based on the goals of the learning process for their courses. Please see ID&D's Student Response System Comparison Chart in the ID&D Knowledgebase (SU login required).

How does this change affect faculty using PointSolutions?

Nothing changes for you to design and develop your polling sessions. You can continue to use PointSolutions by obtaining the software from the Software Center and by using it in your classrooms. ID&D has collaborated with IT to ensure that this software remains part of the configuration for classroom computers.

What does change is that students will purchase their subscription licenses directly from the "Clicker Registration" link within your MyClasses course. The SU Bookstore will no longer sell clickers or PointSolutions subscriptions. Please reach out to your ID&D liaison for student instructions on how to create their polling account and obtain a subscription.

Questions regarding this change can be directed to ID&D Manager Melissa Thomas.

Pro Tips for Importing and Reusing Course Content

As you copy and update content from previous courses for the fall 2023 semester, you can copy or import all content from a previous course and update course information, assignments and activities as needed. However, you have additional copy/import options you can utilize as needed, and after you copy/import content, you will want to ensure all course elements works as intended! Please note the useful tips below, some of which may be helpful before you copy content and some for verifying your content after!

• Import Select Items As Needed (instead of your entire course). If you are only using part of the content created in a previous course, you can choose to import only the specific content you select. Also, if you are using the Zoom tool in your course, you do not want to import all content because you will import your old Zoom meetings with this option. Instead, choose the Select Content option and select all content EXCEPT for your calendar items (4:23 in this video tip). 
  
  
• Shift Due Dates. Remember that you can Shift Due Dates to approximate your course schedule. However, the system will not account for gaps in assignment due dates from breaks, such as spring break or holiday breaks. If you choose to shift due dates, remember to verify and update them! 
  
  
• Modify Assignment Due Dates. You can update and modify all assignment due dates and times, as well as Available From and Until dates and times from one location. Review the Canvas guide on how to update assignment dates in bulk.
  
  
• Verify Your Links! After you have imported content into your new course, remember to validate your links! This will check for links to files, other resources in the course (pages, assignments, etc.) and external links to websites outside of MyClasses. (Note: If you have questions about any of the results, consult with your ID liaison.)
  
• Reuse Panopto Videos. When you import content from one semester to another, students are automatically granted access to view any Panopto videos you have embedded in your course. However, they will not show in the course Panopto folder. Review the ID&D video tips about reusing Panopto recordings and about Panopto share settings and how to move videos between courses.
  
  
• Reuse Respondus LockDown Browser. If you use Respondus LockDown Browser for any of your online tests/quizzes/exams, activate it in the new course by selecting Respondus LockDown Browser from the course menu. You will receive the following message as verification: "Your Settings Have Been Updated! Copied courses require instructors to access the LockDown Browser dashboard before exams can be taken by students. You just did that, so you’re all set!"
  
  
• Audit Announcements. Did you import old announcements into your new course? Delete any unnecessary announcements. Want to keep some of the announcements but schedule them to be released at later times in the course? Review how to delay announcement posting dates!
  
• Share Content with Peers. If you are sharing one or two pieces of content with a peer, you can also share certain resources with your peers (or yourself if you prefer to use this instead of the Course Import option). Watch the Sharing Content video tip for more information about sharing content options and limitations.

SU is an Equal Opportunity/AA/Title IX university and provides reasonable accommodation given sufficient notice to the University office or staff sponsoring the event or program. For more information regarding SU's policies and procedures, please visit www.salisbury.edu/equity.