We’re in the quiet before the storm…a positive and academically-primed storm, that is. By tomorrow morning, the Spring 2025 semester will have officially started and classes—at least those that take place on Saturdays—will begin taking place. For some instructors, this is a time of checking course materials, making last minute touches and ensuring everything is ready to go. Others might find themselves still ironing out their Canvas courses, creating efficient pathways to traverse learning outcomes throughout the term. In any case, the Instructional Technologies team is here to help with any Canvas/Zoom/Mediasite/etc. needs and questions as you get your courses started this term. We offer a variety of services, including workshops, individual appointments, general assistance, and other resources to get you ready for the new semester. Check out the guides and tips below to get started.
- Publish your syllabi and courses:
- Have you edited and published your syllabus yet? Simple Syllabus integrates with Canvas and allows instructors to edit and publish syllabi with ease. We’ve got written instructions and other guides to help you through the process.
- Make sure your courses and syllabi are published by the first day of classes, as this allows students to create their schedules for the semester and understand your expectations for the course. If you haven’t published your course yet, learn how to do so today!
- Remember that you don’t need to finalize all of your course materials before publishing the course. Selectively publish materials throughout the term by leaving specific modules, discussions, pages, assignments, and quizzes in a draft state until you are ready for your students to see them.
- Keeping up with Artificial Intelligence:
- A collaboration between COCE and OIT, the AI PLAIGROUND launched in August and has become a resource for all things “AI” at FAU. The PLAIGROUND offers events and information to help you explore new tools and build your understanding of AI. Visit the AI PLAIGROUND website for more info including a schedule of AI events, training opportunities, and other faculty resources.
- Enroll in AI Chronicles: Building Fluency in Generative AI, a self-paced Canvas course that provides a basic understanding of how generative AI works. The course (created in-house) features contributions from FAU faculty and staff involved in the field and is a vital resource towards integrating generative AI into your curriculum.
- For further AI info, visit FAU’s AI website dedicated to keeping you and your students up to date about anything AI. This page includes info on various workshops, proper AI citation, as well as a running list of potential AI platforms that can help make tasks such as research a little easier.
- Check out these (semi) new Canvas features:
- Zoom Appointment Scheduler: Zoom’s Canvas integration now has an appointment scheduler function useful for creating schedules that allow students to book Zoom meetings with you. We’ve created a guide for instructors as well as one for students to assist with any part of the process.
- Zoom Meeting Imports: Zoom’s integration is also able to import meetings across various courses with ease as well as disassociate meetings without having to delete the entire meeting. The feature is helpful for setting up office hours amongst multiple courses.
- Discussions/Announcements Redesign: On July 20th, Canvas released an update that gave the Discussions and Announcements tools a new look. The update also came with a few new features as well, such as the ability for teachers and students to mention each other using an @ symbol followed by the person’s name; instructor-side discussion history to track edits/deletions; as well as quoting other users within your response.
- Assign-To Update: Canvas also released an update to their Assign To feature. This now allows instructors to assign non-graded items such as modules, pages, and announcements to specific students/sections in a course. This comes in handy when you need to assign course content to a specific set of users. It also added Assign To buttons on the landing pages of different Canvas elements so that you can edit due dates without jumping into settings pages for each one.
- Need a refresher of how Canvas works? Check out this video from Instructure on the functions of the Canvas interface.
- Stay up-to-date with our team:
- You’re already reading our blog- why not subscribe while you’re at it? Scroll to the bottom of this page, enter your FAU email address in the box to the bottom-left, and click that red Subscribe button.
- Visit our TechEvents Calendar frequently to see our schedule of workshops and events covering topics from beginner Canvas tutorials, to new update to our systems, grading, video lecture recording and video conferences in/out of the classroom.
- Do you feel like you need some help with your course(s)?
- Get one-on-one help from our staff by scheduling an appointment.
- If you’re facing a specific issue or have any technical difficulties, put in a help request with our team and get that problem solved!