Brent Warner 0:00
This is the HigherEdTech podcast Season five, Episode 20: Season Five Wrap Up

Tim Van Norman 0:20
Welcome to today’s HigherEdTech Podcast. I’m Tim Van Norman, the Instructional Technologist at Irvine Valley College.

Brent Warner 0:26
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 0:34
Welcome. We’re glad you’re here with us.

Brent Warner 0:37
Hey! End of the semester, this is the last episode before my sabbatical is over. So we we wrap up at season – or episode 20. And I will have summer break. We take summer off for the show. And so we’ll be back in August, right?

Tim Van Norman 0:55
Absolutely.

Brent Warner 0:56
Yeah. So Tim, we’re going to we’re going to cover a couple things, just a little bit of a wrap up some advice on what to do to wrap up the semester, as we kind of typically do here, we often do here at the end of the, at the end of the year, just some reminders, some things that maybe a lot of us can forget with all the other things that are going on and trying to run finals, etc. So let’s jump right into the first segment. All right, so Tim, what did we talk about? We talked about a lot of things this this year, obviously, I think AI is going to be one of the big ones that we talked about. And probably in some people’s mind, we didn’t talk about it enough. And in other people’s minds, we probably talked about it too much. But there’s there’s no bacon everyone happy. So we did our best to balance and not only talk AI, but I think you know, it’s been the talk of education. Right?

Tim Van Norman 1:47
Absolutely. And it will continue to be, unfortunately, I’m hearing about more and more podcasts that are talking about AI exclusively. and stuff. So I think we’ve tried to do a balance. And if we’ve got some people who think we talked too much, and some that we talked too little, we probably struck at least a decent balance.

Brent Warner 2:07
And you can pick and choose which episodes you want to listen to. So that works out as well, right? Absolutely. Yeah. So there’s a lot of stuff going on with the AI conversation. Obviously, we’ll be coming back with more of that as we step in next year. But you know, I’m also just gonna give a little light advice is give yourself a break, it’s impossible to keep up with all this stuff. Like they’re, you know, even it’s more than a full time job. I think we’ve mentioned this before, just you know, be kind to yourself, when you see people talking about it and just say, Hey, I’m, I’m, I’m doing what I can, and I’m getting getting bits while I can and working on it as we’re moving forward.

Tim Van Norman 2:44
Absolutely, absolutely. I think that’s the key to AI. So we also went over Canvas updates, and other tools, updates, zoom and stuff like that. Lots of different updates this past year, some products going away like jam board. And we talked about fig jam. This was just a couple episodes ago. And so yeah, some new products coming out some interesting things that way. Yeah.

Brent Warner 3:10
And I would suggest, take a take a listen to or take a scan back through the show, because now you might have some more time over the summer, some of these things might be relevant to you, as you’re saying, hey, you know, I taught only in person this last semester. And now I’m back to you know, I’m going to be going back to teaching an online class, is there anything that I need to be aware of because I’m a little bit worried about that myself? Is like coming back to regular teaching after being on sabbatical is like, okay, what are the things that I haven’t seen, even though we you and I have talked about and kept up, it’s like, when I’m not interacting with those things, when I’m not, you know, actually using them, you you do tend to atrophy a bit. So just, you know, just give yourself a little bit of stretch time to get back into the tech or to make sure you know what you’re going to be using next semester.

Tim Van Norman 3:57
Absolutely. We also went into some other things that aren’t necessarily typically part of what we do. So we talked about the purchasing process. Yeah. That was an interesting one as as we just dug into why sometimes it takes forever to get something purchased. We as always, we talked about, you know, brain food for the winter break. Yeah, gift giving and a different things that we would be interested in. And by the way, yes, I did buy a laptop $300 Laptop for for myself. So yes, that was one of the things that I was wanting. And then also, we talked about tech, any events. We’re seeing more and more events around us and just wanted to talk about how does that tech fit in? Because we don’t always think about that from a streaming standpoint and other things. So brought that up, just actually just a little bit ago. So yeah,

Brent Warner 4:57
So go ahead and take a look back if those are useful for you, they’re all available at thehigheredtechpodcast.com. Or if you’re in your pod catcher, you can just go and refresh and pull out the older episodes as well. So Tim, let’s jump over, I know we’re gonna move a little bit fast as fast as we can through this. But I also want to do some kind of wrap up reminders on like things to consider as we close out the semester. So let’s jump over there.

Tim Van Norman 5:25
So closing out the semester. First of all, there’s no need to unpublish your course. In fact, you cannot unpublish your course in Canvas. And please at IVC do not conclude your course. This is what I have argued I will I will beg on bended knee to have people not conclude their course.

Brent Warner 5:47
What’s the reason for that, Tim?

Tim Van Norman 5:49
Because if there’s any reason that I need to go back into it to look at grades two, if a student has a great grievance, anything else goes on, it takes me two to three hours to restore your course to the point where I can even look at it. Yeah, okay. It’s just for my sake, and for yours, because that means you got to deal with this question. You gotta wait two hours. So, yeah.

Brent Warner 6:15
Okay, next up, is even if you’re after the end of the semester, you might even send a little quick video to your students telling them how to use the “what if” grade, right? So right now we’re kind of in finals. If you’re listening right on time, Hey, make sure you know what are their potentials is they’re kind of looking at things. But that what if feature inside of the gradebook is really useful. And still, a lot of students don’t know that it’s there.

Tim Van Norman 6:40
Yeah, and by the way, you can’t see it. So don’t Don’t be looking for it in your instance, look for, you know, talk to the students. If they look at the gradebook in the upper right hand side, it gives them that option. Now, one of the key things though, is once the end of the semester hits, as far as settings in your Canvas course, they will not have access to the course any longer, depending on different settings. So you may need to extend that to give them access to let them see grades after you’ve posted them. Nice just so that you know what’s going on there. So all right. incompletes, we have that every semester. My suggestion talk to your instructional technologists, there’s usually a process involved for us, you send an email to, to Amanda or myself and we go in and we set up a separate course for you so that no other students are involved in it, and it works out nice and clean. But different schools have different ways of handling it, but get a hold of your instructional text technologists instructional designer, they can let you know how to handle an incomplete.

Brent Warner 7:49
Alright, Tim, I know that there are going to be a lot of people that are going to try and get a little bit ahead of it and copy their course over to a new semester. Let’s cover a few things that might be worth covering there.

Tim Van Norman 8:00
Absolutely. So first of all, do it, do it early, make sure it’s all in place. But when you copy it, don’t select the button that says to change the dates. And the reason for that is because the first thing you want to do afterwards is go through and fix all the dates in your class. And the reason I I say don’t check that box is because if you see something that says May 2024, and you’re doing it for the fall, you know that that’s not right. If you see something that’s December 2024, and you’re doing it for the fall, did you make the change did you not make the change. Now you got to go back through and you got to verify everything. So I find it easier to just one time go through and pull out a calendar and just change all the dates one at a time. We have tools that IVC such as adjust all that literally let you do it in one screen. Adjust all the dates in your class Canvas has in assignments, they’ve got an ability to adjust the assignment dates all at one time. So there’s places to do this so that you literally pull out a calendar and just adjust all the dates by for make that happen all at one time. Check your LTI is okay. Is Proctorio if you’re using it is Proctorio enabled in your class, your publishers Did you delete all of the publisher content so that when you refresh it and you synchronize it comes back in properly. Turn it in, make sure it doesn’t have an error message so turn it in sometimes gets an error if the start date. The available date for an assignment is after the prior assignments due date. And so you might have to go in and adjust turn it in by the way Turn It In also sometimes will not keep all of the settings that you have put in place. So you might have to remark things like allow late submissions which I recommend always marking even if you don’t allow late some Everyone’s just mark it. And then if you want students to be able to post with any type of document or post multiple times before the due date, those types of things, those, just verify the settings and all your assignments just to make sure that it’s the way you want it. So it’s just really important.

Brent Warner 10:20
I would also say, Here, Tim, this is just for my own sanity is don’t try and do the whole thing all at once, I would say like, take three weeks or two weeks or four weeks, whatever it is, and just say, Hey, I’m just gonna do a chunk right now. And I’m going to work through them one at a time. But if you say, Hey, I’m going to work through our -you know, at IVC – our 18 week semester and go through all of these things, you’re just going to, you know, you’re going to, will quit before you start, right. And so if you just say, Hey, today, I’m going to do modules one and two, and I’m just going to look at them one at a time, and I’m gonna go in and see, did I say any specific date names inside of here, whatever, and I’m going to take an hour or two hours, whatever it is, right. And then give yourself a day off and then come back the next day, you know, and pace yourself. So you can do this a little bit, where it doesn’t feel too heavy. But you know, if you just keep kind of chipping away at it, you’ll be much, much happier, I because I’ve done that thing where it’s like, Okay, I’m gonna wait, or I’m gonna try and do this all at once. And then I’m like, 18 weeks with like, some of these days, or some of these weeks have like 10, assignment parts, chunks to them, and all these things, and it’s like, it just really feels overwhelming. So break it down into smaller chunks, give yourself that freedom. And don’t try to do too much all at once.

Tim Van Norman 11:37
Well, and think about as you’re going through it, think about, say you put dates at the, in the header of your assignments and stuff like that. Maybe remove those, if you’re gonna go to gonna go in and edit it anyway. Just remove that. And the reason I say that is because now next semester, you don’t have to go in and correct it. Yeah. And so think about that type of thing. Can you do this without creating that extra work for yourself?

Brent Warner 12:08
Yeah, so how can you make it a little bit more universal? Right? So it’s like, hey, it’s replicable, like, the details. So for example, the dates on things, they will show up on your assignment anyways, right? So if you make the assignment, the dates in there, and it shows up in the calendar for the students? So do you need to say it every single time in writing that you need to change out every single time? Or can you make the assumption that the students can look at it? I will say sometimes you do, you kind of do want to make sure that it’s very clear on there. So for example, like when I do multiple drafts of an essay, and I say, hey, I want to make sure they see it very clearly. But the better way for me to do that is to have it inside of the Google doc that’s meant for that individual assignment. And I make the changes to the Google Doc that goes out to everybody. And when it’s published inside of Canvas, then they can still see those changes there. As much as possible. I tried to make it so that Canvas itself doesn’t have a specific date identifying information.

Tim Van Norman 13:04
Absolutely. And that really will save you a ton of time. Next semester. Yeah. And you’re spending the time this semester. So yeah, so clean it up for yourself. And by the way, also file names, get rid of the dates and your file names. If at all possible, get rid of the yours. Does it really matter? You probably are using a very similar syllabus to what you use last year, at least the main text of it. Yeah, could you just reuse that, and then use Google Docs instead of storing it in Canvas. And now you can just swap that out?

Brent Warner 13:40
Oh, you know what I’m gonna give another little hack here. Because I think some people don’t think about this. So when you’re working through each of those, each of those pages, and each of those assignments, if you make an assignment or even just a header inside of Canvas, that’s just like a line of x’s that doesn’t have any meaning. And drop it down below the below the last page that you made an adjustment to, then when you come back next time, you’ll go like, Oh, this is as far as I’ve gone. Everything above this is clear everything below this still needs to be worked on. Right so so you have a little identifier inside of there. And then you can just delete that it’s just a placeholder, but a way to a way for you to identify where you are in the process of updating.

Tim Van Norman 14:22
Absolutely. And that’s really the key is know where you are, know what you’re going through. And by the way, try to clean up your your tools and stuff as well. So you still have access to last semesters, assignments, pages, all that stuff. If you’re not going to use an assignment this next semester, delete it. Okay, there’s no reason for you to have 200 assignments. Hopefully you’re not giving 200 assignments your students in 18 weeks. But if you get rid of a lot of those extra assignments, it will make Canvas work much faster for you. It’ll be less had make for you later. And it just it cleans it up and do it. Now, before you get into it. Remember, you can always go back, reach back and pull it in assignment again. It’s not a big deal. But if you clean it up now it’s just life is better. Agreed.

Brent Warner 15:18
Cool. Anything else?

Tim Van Norman 15:21
No, I think that’s that’s pretty good. Get a hold of whoever you need to get a hold of your instructional technologist, Instructional Designer, friend, coworker, enemy, whoever it is to, to help guide you through if you’ve got questions about stuff like this. We’re we’re available to help. That’s what we do. And we love doing it. And we would rather have you ask us now, then, the week before classes start?

Brent Warner 15:49
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it goes without saying, but planning, planning ahead will save you so much time, your you know, it will make you much happier if possible. But yeah, great. So a few things to take a look at as you’re planning or thinking ahead of next next semester around and wrapping up everything that you’re trying to do. So you don’t have to spend so much time thinking about it in the future. Now, Tim, last bit here, we just wanted to cover a few conferences that are coming up over the summer that people might potentially be interested in going to. And so I guess, I’m going to start with one that I’m presenting at tomorrow. So if you if you happen to be listening to this immediately, and then you’re ready to jump on a plane and come to Japan, there is the jolt call Conference, which is the big ad tech in English language learning in Japan. And so it’s a big AI themed conference this year. And I’m going to be presenting and I’m working with the coordinating team. So if you happen to be in Japan tomorrow, and you want to stop by Nagoya, please say hello.

Tim Van Norman 16:58
Nice. That sounds like a fun one. Yeah. So we’ve also in June, there’s a couple of conferences. There’s the online teaching conference that’s put on by the California Community Colleges, June 25 through 28th.

Brent Warner 17:13
I still keep laughing about that – they still don’t do it online, right?

Tim Van Norman 17:17
No (laughter)

Brent Warner 17:18
It’s it’s completely in person,

Tim Van Norman 17:20
Completely in person. (laughter)

Brent Warner 17:22
It’s great, but but it is a it is a well respected, excellent conference. Everybody that I know – I still haven’t been to it. The timing hasn’t worked out. But everybody says it’s a great conference.

Tim Van Norman 17:32
It’s definitely it’s a really good conference. You really get a lot of information to help with teaching in general, but especially when it deals with online. Absolutely. Okay. And then ISTE is actually June 23. Through 26th.

Brent Warner 17:52
Okay, so right before.

Yeah. In Denver.

That’s great. Yeah, it’s the ISTE does tend to be a little bit more K 12 focused, but I love it. You know, I always tell people like, the reason I get so many creative ideas is because I’m talking to K 12 teachers about what they’re doing. And then those are the kind of the ideas that sparked a lot for me, so. So ISTE is an excellent conference. It’s huge. It’s, you know, one of the biggest edtech conferences in the world, and Denver would be an awesome place to go if you’re able to make it.

Tim Van Norman 18:28
And then right in the middle of summer, InstructureCon, July 9 through 11th. In this that really cool. cold place, you know, gotta wear long johns and all that: Vegas. (laughter) Yeah, I imagine it’s gonna be really, really hot. It’s at the Venetian. And so it’s gonna be a really neat conference. I looking forward to that one, because that’s going to be Yeah, they always go over the top. And I can’t imagine what over the top is in Vegas.

Brent Warner 19:04
Yeah, that’s so that’s gonna be a wild a wild party. So but InstructureCon. So if you’re into the Canvas stuff, if you’re into like, seeing how things are going to be changed what’s going on? I know that that’s, that is the one and then they really do put a lot of effort into it. So so that should be pretty cool. Actually, there are other conferences out there. So everybody, please go look, there’s tons of online conferences that are people are offering free ones. If you have any recommendations, you know, well, let us know. And we all post about them on on LinkedIn if I see them, but other than that, you know, I want to just encourage people as we normally do is like give yourself some time chill out, relax. Go to the beach or go to the mountains or whatever it is, you know, have a have a beer or a coffee with a friend and give yourself that time to brew Eve before you come back in, in the in the fall semester.

Tim Van Norman 20:05
Absolutely this is we talk about lots of different tools and all kinds of stuff. Look at one of them. I my fear always is that somebody is going to look at it and go, oh, I need to implement everything that they say, No, please don’t. Yeah, you know, we don’t do that, you know? And so please just take your time look into into one, two, and get comfortable with it. Try things out. And let us know your thoughts. Let us know what you come up with. Yeah, for

Brent Warner 20:39
sure. And we do love that too. If you send us some of your thoughts and let us know, say, hey, this didn’t work for me, or hey, this worked better than I expected. Right? We would love to hear from you. So please, even though the show is taking a couple months, a summer break, we’re still checking our emails, so so please feel free to send us a message.

Tim Van Norman 20:59
Absolutely. Thank you for listening today. And this episode, we wrapped up season five. For more information about this show, please visit our website at the higher ed tech podcast.com. There you’ll find our podcasts and links to the information we’ve covered.

Brent Warner 21:16
As always, we do want your feedback. So please go to the higher ed tech podcast.com. And let us know your thoughts. And of course, if you have ideas for future shows in season six, can you believe it? There’s going to be a link over there where you can leave us your ideas.

Tim Van Norman 21:33
Absolutely. So for everyone at IVC that’s listening. If you need help with technology questions, please visit IVC technical support. If you have questions about technology in your classroom, please stop by the IVC Training Center in a 322 or contact me Tim Van Norman AT T van norman@ivc.edu.

Brent Warner 21:51
And if you want to reach out to me about the show, you can find me on LinkedIn at @BrentGWarner and if it’s after the summer’s over you can find me on campus back at IVC as well.

Tim Van Norman 22:02
Nice. Looking forward to that.

Brent Warner 22:04
Yeah.

Tim Van Norman 22:05
I’m Tim Van Norman,

Brent Warner 22:06
and I’m Brent Warner and we hope this episode has helped you on the road from possibility to actuality. Have a good summer, everybody!