Brent Warner 0:01
This is the higher ed tech podcast season five, episode one, fall 23 updates and starting the semester

Tim Van Norman 0:21
Welcome to today’s Higher EdTech Podcast. I’m Tim Van Norman Instructional Technologist at Irvine Valley College.

Brent Warner 0:27
And I’m Brent Warner professor of ESL here at IVC. We both enjoy integrating technology into the classroom, which is what this show is all about.

Tim Van Norman 0:36
Welcome. We’re glad you’re here with us. So usually we start off with a little banter about what’s going on. But that actually is the first part of our show is talking about what’s going on…

Brent Warner 0:46
What is going on, Tim? We both have very different things that have happened to us over the summer and things that have gone on. So let’s, let’s start with you.

Tim Van Norman 0:57
All right, yes. So I just got back a couple of weeks ago, was Instructure. Con. So we’ll be bringing up some stuff with regard to that in the next couple of episodes, I’m sure. With regard to some updates, instructors doing canvases annual conference, and it was a really good conference in Denver, Colorado, one of presenting on the canvas Trust, which we had in one of our last episodes of the last season. And presenting on design plus, which was a lot of fun with people with the makers of design plus, so they’ve come out with, again, something to prep for another episode. There they make, they’re making some really cool changes to their toolbar, their sidebar,

Brent Warner 1:49
If we were worried there’s not going to be enough to talk about this semester this year. There’s no concerns there at all. There’s plenty of updates going on.

Tim Van Norman 1:57
Absolutely. So on a personal note, I started my MBA on August 1. So any of you that know me and you see me, feel free to ask me about it. That’ll keep me motivated to keep on going.

Brent Warner 2:10
Did you do your homework yet, Tim?

Tim Van Norman 2:13
I haven’t done my homework yet. I’m learning that I have to write and write. And oh, by the way, I write a lot of stuff. And in a format that I’ve never heard up before or barely heard of APA. So yeah, I’m learning a whole lot of stuff about citing, and it’s just stuff that I thought I knew about. I realized I know nothing about, at least the way they’re doing it. So it’s been good. But it’s only been a week as well.

Brent Warner 2:44
So yeah, well that’s cool. Congratulations. So that’ll be exciting. And a lot too. That’s, that’s gonna keep you very busy. So there’s quite a few things to go through there. Now, in order to accommodate your MBA other things are changing for you as well, right?

Tim Van Norman 3:00
Yes. So if you’re trying to get a hold of me in the mornings at IVC, good luck. I’m going to be starting at like 10 o’clock in the morning instead of my usual 730. That should give me two and a half to three hours a day that I can study in the morning, when hopefully I’m still sharp. So it just doing different things like that to try to make my life doable with this new environment.

Brent Warner 3:30
Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot to cover there. So so people can catch you a little bit later in the day, but also then into the evening as well. Right?

Tim Van Norman 3:39
Exactly. My hope is that as I get through, at least is first semester, where we’re offering that online teaching course again, and Friday sessions and stuff like that. As we get through that next semester, so the spring semester, I’m hoping to often offer workshops that are a little bit later in the day so that we can provide things for adjunct and professors that work during the day. And they need other help later. So we’re, we’re working on a couple of different things. Hopefully, it turns out all great for everybody. But yeah, so at the same time, worked on two classes this summer. So updated the online teaching certificate class for us. That was a big chore, a lot of stuff from before, adding some stuff, taking away from stuff, stuff like that, and then wrote an AI in the classroom course. So we’re trying to figure out if I’m done, or if we have one more section to do, but it’s a that’s been a labor of frustration and love at the same time, because it’s an ever changing, literally ever changing world. So it’s been really good and there’s been a lot of people on interested in that? So we’re officially announcing it? Well, you hear it here first, but it’s gonna hear it. Yes. heard it here first, but during flex week, so prepping for flex week been doing a lot of that I’ve got two sessions, I’m doing their Canvas and tool updates that I do every semester. And then this time I’m doing using Canvas for regular and substantive contact. And then three open houses as well as you know, all the other ones that I get asked to help with. So yeah, I’ve got nothing going on.

Brent Warner 5:37
Yeah, Tim, you’re a very lazy, very lazy man. So I, I’m on my sabbatical, we’re still doing this. So in case anybody didn’t know this, this is a project purely out of our passion for the for this right, the the higher ed tech podcast is, is not a paid position, or part of our work at school. It’s just something that we do, because we we like to share about what we do. So the show will keep going on. But I will have different personal Well, I don’t know, I’m a little worried that I’m gonna have limited perspective on a lot of our conversations. Because I’m not actively teaching this, this actually this full year, I’m taking a one year sabbatical. And so as you hear my voice right now, I am in Japan, I am overseas and living quite a different lifestyle than the normal that my sabbatical is a manuscript project. And so I’m basically I’m writing a book about technology integration into language learning classes, ESL in particular. And so I’m doing a lot of research on that I’ll be doing work with the students. There’s, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s its own whole project, and I’m looking forward to developing it as we go forward. But but it’s, it’s a very different pace. So I’m not totally used to it right now. I’m still kind of like, wait, what do I do like, and you know, I’ll build my own schedule. This apartment that we got, Tim, you can see I’m in my little office zone, here. And so it’s, it’s nice, but it’s, it’s just going to take a little bit of getting used to and then making sure that I’m keeping up with it with enough things so that I can respond to all these updates that we’re going to be talking about. And all these changes somewhat coherently, and hopefully in a somewhat an informed way. So basically, the majority of my summer has been spent kind of prepping to move and moving. And so I don’t have a lot to say at the moment, you know, that was it. You know, it’s just moving overseas is a fairly large endeavor. And so, so yeah, here I am.

Tim Van Norman 7:55
Well, good. Glad to see your face for the first time in a couple of months. Yeah. Totally unusual. You know, usually I see you at least once or twice a week. So yeah, yeah, it’s good. Yeah, hopefully, this is going to be a change of pace for you that you get to see something a little different. And yeah, that followed that?

Brent Warner 8:17
Well, you know, they talked about that, too. I mean, it’s a real benefit of being a professor is like this opportunity to take a sabbatical. And, you know, like, every, every one of my friends that’s not in our field, or that doesn’t, you know, doesn’t have our jobs like, what, what are you talking about, but I also think that there’s a real benefit to it in that, it allows you to gain some perspective by stepping away from what you do every single day, right as as a teacher, and so being able to get that break. And, and I know it’s a huge, you know, it’s a, it’s a real privilege to be able to get a sabbatical and to be able to do this, because we have so many even wonderful adjunct professors who are like, hey, you know, I just gotta keep on working, or I can’t afford to take even the summer off, and all of those types of things. And so, so I am very aware of that, and grateful for it, and for the for the system that we have at our school for for making it work. But also, I do think it’s important at those levels to be able to say, Hey, let me let me think about, let me slow down, not be overwhelmed with so many, you know, decisions that have to be made on the daily basis when you’re chair department chair when you’re, you know, co chair of the online Ed, you know, committee all the different things in the roles that I have when I’m at IVC. You know, I’m going to stay connected to them in certain ways, but I’m not going to have to make all those decisions that can kind of get overwhelming by the end. So. So yeah, I’m excited about it.

Tim Van Norman 9:48
Yeah, and I think it’ll be good for you, you should come back. You know, a little bit changed a little different, a year away a year in a culture that’s different than the United states is always a good thing to try out. And I know I believe you’ve lived there in the past, or at least been there a number of times in the past. So, yeah, this, this should be good. Yeah.

Brent Warner 10:13
So. So there may be minor updates about Japan. But mostly we’ll still be focusing on our normal topics here. So

Unknown Speaker 10:21
absolutely, absolutely.

Brent Warner 10:25
All right. So Tim, normally, we do usually like to get off this the start of the semester with a couple of hints, tips, things to just to remember, as we’re stepping into a new semester, and this episode is coming out before flex week, before classes start. And so hopefully, if anyone’s listening early enough, they can take advantage of some of these tips and reminders, a few things that you want to pay attention to as we’re opening up our classes. So you came up with quite a few ideas, I got a handful as well. So what do you think people should pay attention to when they’re going to start their new semester?

Tim Van Norman 11:01
So let’s break it down. I’m kind of one of those people who likes to break it down into what I think is logical segments. But let’s first talk about the classroom. So you’re going to be teaching in a classroom, by the way that classroom might be in your bedroom and might be wherever, wherever you’re going to be teaching from. Go there. Get there early, like a day early a week early, walk in, turn on the computer, check the internet connection, check the projector, if you’ve got one, check the speakers, the microphones? Is all the technology you’re going to use working for you? Does it need to get an update? If you’re going to use Zoom for recording? You’re going to be teaching your class over zoom, whatever it is, is it updated? Do you need an update? Do you need something, get a hold of tech support this week, next week? Whatever it takes to get that in place before first day of class, and all of a sudden something doesn’t work?

Brent Warner 11:58
Yeah, and I’m gonna add two parts to that. So one, is once you update it, go test it again after it’s updated. Because I think one thing a lot of people do is they’re like, Okay, I’m just gonna update it, and then I’ll be good. It’s like, no, no, no, you need to check that the update works. Right. So that’s gonna be one part. And then the second one is, I think we give this warning every semester. But if you’re in a new classroom, don’t only like open the computer login, because at least at IVC, it takes five minutes or so when you’re when you’re first log into that new computer to kind of process your you know, to copy your your profile over into the computer and to make sure that it’s working so. So login with your account, login to all the things that you’re going to use as well and make sure they’re all good.

Tim Van Norman 12:42
And understand we’ve been doing a lot of updates this summer, as an IT department. So you might have you might have been in that same classroom for the last 10 years other than COVID. And it may be a different computer than it was two months ago. So just make sure everything’s working for you. Everything’s running your first day of class, do the same thing come in 15 minutes early. Yeah, just make sure that you’re taking care of that you’re not worried about the technology functioning or not functioning the day you show up for class.

Brent Warner 13:21
Absolutely. Okay. Next up, I think is some canvas. A couple couple little brief Canvas things. We’ll talk more about Canvas, I think in the next episode, but Canvas course so a lot of us copy our Canvas courses. And then we kind of just say, Hey, I brought that over from last semester and I use the, the, I can’t remember it’s called to the DT shift option inside of there that we have

Tim Van Norman 13:46
adjust all one now that there’s several of them. Yeah.

Brent Warner 13:50
So a lot of them. Right, adjust the dates but then update your links to right now I know that it’s easy to kind of go hey, I have this link to a thing and that’s gone and those ones are the ones that like sometimes, you know, we should be we should be responsible for going through and checking all of them and to make sure that those links still exist. But most importantly, update your resume. If you’re if you’re going to a zoom classroom make sure that when you’ve got your zoom classroom updated that it is is updated as well because I think I noticed him even my own zoom my own personal Zoom Room link changed over the summer. I think so like I think it’s not not connected at least the number my main one is to locate but I think the numbers somehow updated and so I sent a link to somebody said go back to my old link and they’re like they were in a different room. So double check. So

Tim Van Norman 14:40
yes, if you have a if you have a recurring meeting, it will end after about a year. So you do need a new recurring meeting for that surfing. Now it might be if you’re using your personal ID that may or may not change. I don’t know for sure on that one. But yes, and speaking have links, there is a way of checking for broken links in settings, there’s a button you can hit that will do a report and tell you all of the places, it’s got broken links. Now, it doesn’t know that that link to this article that it’s still the same article, but at least it will let you know where you got all of these broken links. And it’s very helpful. Perfect. So So along those lines, you know, I gotta have I gotta share a story. I, they’re using a new LMS at the university, I’m going to for my MBA, and this is the first class they’ve had on the new LMS. And I don’t know if they’re going to regret putting an instructional technologist on that class. But yeah, I went to two different pages in the first class that I’m in. In the next section, I’m not there yet, but I was just flipping through to see what it was, I clicked on two different pages. And on one page, all of the links were broken. On the other page, two of the links were broken. I’m like, That’s not encouraging me to keep on going. So I got an email today saying they fix them. But you’d rather hear that from a report than you want to from your student. So,

Brent Warner 16:18
you know, I’m wondering if, if teachers might make some sort of game out of like, hey, if they’re broken link, send it in, you get get an extra credit point, I don’t know something, something going on to to make it kind of a wait, because a lot of times, also, when I’ve taken those courses, I just get kind of like over it, and then I don’t report it. And then you know, nobody knows. And so maybe it’s trying to find some way to encourage your students to share that as well when they when they find it. So yeah, well,

Tim Van Norman 16:47
broken legs. And one more I had this actually happened today, somebody called Hey, how come this link in my class isn’t working. And remember, I like to encourage people to check the box in Canvas that says open a new page. I know it doesn’t look as nice, it doesn’t have the canvas look. But if you open it in a new page, it does a better job than trying to load into Canvas sometimes. And sure enough, that’s all it was. Click the button, and all of a sudden, everything worked perfectly. So even check those articles that you know, worked perfectly last time. Yeah, just make sure. So

Brent Warner 17:25
good. Okay, what else do we have going?

Tim Van Norman 17:27
Tools, we’re not going to get into specific tools, because there’s just too many. But make sure the tools are working in your new Canvas environment. If you’ve got a Padlet, did you do a new Padlet? For this? Did you wipe out the information in the old one, whatever you’re, you’re doing with the tools, make sure it’s all cleaned up and ready for the semester.

Brent Warner 17:51
And not only that, did your institution pay for the extension of those tools? Right? Sometimes that happens, and you’re like, Hey, I’m all ready to go, I love this tool that we have. And then it’s like, oh, we don’t pay for that anymore. Now we’ve got sick. So so for sure, there’s, there’s definitely you’re gonna want to check on those. And then Tim, I think we’ll wrap this up with a little syllabus conversation, and particularly around artificial intelligence, obviously, you know, we started talking about that all you know, over last season, and it is just the the conversation. But I think what a lot of people are not paying attention to is like, they’re saying, Hey, I’m worried about this, I’m thinking about this, but they’re not necessarily building an AI policy into their syllabus and their expectations for their classes. Right. So, so what do you expect of your students? And, you know, we all know that our syllabus is our contract with our students, right? And so if we don’t have anything in there, then you know, that’s, that’s on us, right? And so, so we do need to make sure, even if you’re unsure about what you want that policy to be, and by the way, there there are people starting to build shared policies and ideas out there, and like, Hey, these are these are ways to approach these conversations. So it’s worth doing some searches to find some of those things. But, but for sure, you you’re gonna want to have something because whether or not you’re totally digging into it, and going like we’re going to use AI for every single assignment or whether you’re fully opposed to it and say, How dare you do anything with this? Right? Whatever your stance is, you need to have some sort of way to communicate that because your students certainly know about it. And if you don’t say anything about it, then then that is on you.

Tim Van Norman 19:33
Not only that, but it also will guide your students in to the fact that you actually are updating. So going back to my MBA, looking at that, I read their policy, and they have a very specific AI policy, which told me that they hadn’t just wrapped it from two from a year ago. They had actually put something in because nobody a year ago nobody had anything about AI? Right? So it was good to see that and it told me Oh, okay, they’re actually paying attention. But that, that also consider your current assignments? Are you? What effect is AI going to have on them? Are you using AI? Are you not using AI? We’re not telling you to do or not to do, just consider what it’s going to be because you know that some students are going to whether you tell them to or not. So, so think about that, as you’re creating the assignments as you’re changing assignments. You know, if you’ve had the same assignment for the last four years, might be time to update some of the wording to

Brent Warner 20:44
Yeah, yeah. And I’ll just read encourage people to go back and listen to our AI episodes from the end of season four from I think, from Episode 1010, or 11. On basically from the spring semester, we had quite a few conversations around there. And we tried to keep them general enough that they’re still relevant. Even with all the updates to the specific technology, it’s more about the concepts of approaching it. And so, you know, we had interviews with students, we had interviews with professors, you know, all of these things. And so go back and listen to those if you’re kind of still dipping your toes in or trying to figure out what all this means. And certainly, Tim, you and I will continue this conversation regularly on the show moving forward as well.

Tim Van Norman 21:30
Absolutely. And I know that many institutions, including our own are developing courses are developing workshops, just a lot of different things going on in that area. So just pay attention. There’s a lot of stuff happening. And like I said earlier, I’m just finishing up one of those classes, writing one of those classes myself. Perfect. Thank you for listening today. In this episode, we talked about our fall 23 updates and starting the semester. For more information about this show, please visit our website at thehigheredtechpodcast.com. There you’ll find our podcasts and links to the information we’ve covered.

Brent Warner 22:13
As always, we do want your feedback. So please go to the higher ed tech podcast.com and let us know your thoughts. If you have ideas for future shows. There’s a link over there where you can give us your topic ideas.

Tim Van Norman 22:22
For everyone at IVC. That’s listening. If you need help with technology questions, please contact IVC technical support. If you’re got questions about technology in your classroom, please stop by the IVC Training Center in a 322 or contact me Tim Van Norman at Tvannorman@ivc.edu.

Brent Warner 22:43
And if you want to reach out to me about the show, you can find me on LinkedIn at Brent G Warner.

Tim Van Norman 22:49
I’m Tim VanNorman,

Brent Warner 22:51
and I’m Brent Warner. And we hope this episode has helped you on the road from possibility to actuality. Take care everybody and have a good semester.