Canvas Brown Bag: Using Commons

Alan Eno Author

02/15/2017 Added

212 Plays

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Using Commons to manage course sections

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[00:00:01.457]I teach in the broadcasting sequence
[00:00:03.968]of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications.
[00:00:07.120]Just to give a little background on how
[00:00:10.705]we ended up using these techniques that
[00:00:13.788]I'm gonna talk about,
[00:00:15.575]we just revamped our visual literacy core curriculum
[00:00:21.633]to be more module-based,
[00:00:24.404]using a child-based learning model
[00:00:27.711]mixed with a emporium-style model,
[00:00:30.684]so we redid some curriculum.
[00:00:33.922]We're using Canvas to present modules to the students
[00:00:38.534]that they can complete as part of the course.
[00:00:44.471]What we have is
[00:00:46.942]roughly 240
[00:00:50.257]freshmen in this course,
[00:00:53.734]which meets in sections of about 18 to 20 students.
[00:01:00.488]Which means we have 27, this semester 28,
[00:01:04.241]sections of this class.
[00:01:06.132]Wow.
[00:01:07.607]Yeah. (laughs)
[00:01:10.068]Which all need to be the same.
[00:01:13.115]So, what we have--and I'll go into my courses
[00:01:15.323]here and take a look.
[00:01:16.938]I'm responsible for four of these 28 sections.
[00:01:21.277]We have five faculty that are teaching across all these
[00:01:23.854]different sections, one of whom is the overall coordinator
[00:01:28.331]of the whole Visual Communications program,
[00:01:30.367]as we're calling it, or VisCom.
[00:01:35.427]She's responsible for the maintenance of the course,
[00:01:39.045]and for making sure that everybody, all the faculty,
[00:01:40.907]are on the same page.
[00:01:43.397]Part of what she's doing, is she's going in
[00:01:45.664]and she's creating, we have
[00:01:47.838]the master program this is for...
[00:01:51.761]So, four of these courses--don't pay much attention
[00:01:55.749]to the numbers, they correspond
[00:01:58.582]to different versions of the course.
[00:02:02.227]We have a Master Course
[00:02:04.477]that she and I have worked
[00:02:05.687]on and have set up
[00:02:08.550]to present all of the modules.
[00:02:12.227]And just kind of going through here,
[00:02:14.742]we've got everything is pretty much in the module section.
[00:02:21.247]We've got all these different modules dealing
[00:02:24.522]with different skills: typography, photography, layout,
[00:02:27.076]video, audio, web design, mobile social.
[00:02:30.914]We have advanced modules in 360 video, data viz,
[00:02:34.450]VR, UX and that kind of thing.
[00:02:37.513]This course needs to be presented across
[00:02:40.661]28 sub-courses, or rather,
[00:02:43.591]sections of the course.
[00:02:45.910]We do that using the Commons, Canvas Commons.
[00:02:48.504]I don't know how many of you guys have done anything
[00:02:50.614]with Canvas Commons yet.
[00:02:53.386]A little bit, okay.
[00:02:55.065]So, Campus Commons is really a neat tool,
[00:02:59.007]which allows you a lot of flexibility in what you use.
[00:03:03.113]Our main use for it--let me just go to the Commons here.
[00:03:12.893]The Canvas Commons allows you to
[00:03:16.682]store modules, or courses, or assignments.
[00:03:20.407]You can get as specific as just putting a specific quiz
[00:03:23.386]into the Commons and broadcasting or
[00:03:26.796]sending that out to multiple courses.
[00:03:29.315]But you can do an entire course,
[00:03:31.746]which is what we've decided to do.
[00:03:36.092]It just so happens there is an update to my course
[00:03:39.569]that was put through last night,
[00:03:41.646]so I can actually do this live and show you what
[00:03:43.563]the actual process is for updating a course
[00:03:45.765]from the module in Commons.
[00:03:48.408]I don't know if you would call them modules,
[00:03:49.723]we call them modules but that's
[00:03:51.716]there is a module it's not to be confused
[00:03:53.579]with the modules section.
[00:03:59.370]So, looking at,
[00:04:02.558]just kind of going back to my course listing here,
[00:04:09.324]I have, like I said, four sections of this class.
[00:04:12.085]So, I have this section, this section,
[00:04:13.753]this section, and this section which are all that course.
[00:04:18.027]So, they're all based on this master course.
[00:04:22.039]At the beginning of the semester we did this,
[00:04:25.037]and we started a couple of things,
[00:04:26.261]and I'll talk about it a little bit later
[00:04:27.844]what you should avoid.
[00:04:30.060]Through experience, we messed things up and had to fix them.
[00:04:34.362]So, I have access to this master course,
[00:04:37.831]but the main instructor, the manager,
[00:04:41.640]the coordinator for the Visual Communications,
[00:04:44.435]is the one that actually pushes the modules out to Commons
[00:04:47.759]and then the rest of us go in and can download.
[00:04:52.783]Basically her job means this course is set up,
[00:04:57.038]it's updated so this
[00:04:58.739]newest update brings in some
[00:05:00.758]more additional advanced modules.
[00:05:03.862]If I go in an look at one of my courses,
[00:05:07.482]and maybe I'll do that just for the reference
[00:05:08.900]so we have an idea of what actually changed.
[00:05:12.233]If I go into my modules for one of my courses,
[00:05:18.493]go down to the bottom, we can see,
[00:05:21.772]fold these up.
[00:05:23.400]We can see some of these modules are unpublished
[00:05:28.268]because
[00:05:30.858]and I don't know which one it is,
[00:05:32.995]I think it's the virtual reality,
[00:05:35.292]unpublished because they are incomplete.
[00:05:37.320]If I go into one of these pages,
[00:05:40.113]oh, it's there.
[00:05:41.335]There's some stuff that's incomplete,
[00:05:42.663]I don't know exactly which pieces.
[00:05:48.411]I know this one's probably one of them.
[00:05:50.554]Some of these are incomplete, they're missing...
[00:05:53.982]Nevermind.
[00:05:54.815]Bad example.
[00:05:56.931]Some of them I know are missing content.
[00:05:58.508]Maybe it's the project.
[00:06:03.984]Yeah, so some of them have just placeholder text in there
[00:06:07.112]at this point which is why they're unpublished,
[00:06:09.112]the students can't actually see them yet.
[00:06:12.837]So, what she's been doing is going through a little bit
[00:06:15.384]at a time and updating, adding the descriptions
[00:06:18.997]to the projects, or the instructions or whatever part
[00:06:22.123]of the module needs to be completed.
[00:06:24.259]Once she's done that, and that's what this update is about,
[00:06:27.628]she'll push that update to Commons,
[00:06:32.604]and I will
[00:06:35.083]really quickly kind of show that process.
[00:06:37.438]So, is this the master?
[00:06:39.222]This is not the master.
[00:06:40.511]This is my course that we're looking at.
[00:06:42.928]There is an update that I will run which will bring
[00:06:45.722]in some of those additional pieces of the modules
[00:06:48.412]and publish those.
[00:06:52.528]There is a Share to Commons button.
[00:06:54.712]If you go into the Settings for a course,
[00:06:58.112]I won't do it here,
[00:06:59.727]'cause this is one of my live courses,
[00:07:02.525]but I would Share to Commons,
[00:07:04.879]and if it's been done before, you have to fill this out
[00:07:08.232]the first time but once it's been done you can just
[00:07:10.101]update the module in the Commons,
[00:07:13.232]so it takes what's already been uploaded to Commons,
[00:07:16.274]just updates it with whatever's been changed.
[00:07:19.127]That's at least my understanding of how it works.
[00:07:23.116]The interesting thing to note at this stage
[00:07:25.092]is that when you do something like
[00:07:27.983]update a module in Commons,
[00:07:30.061]every piece of
[00:07:32.579]assignment, quiz, module,
[00:07:35.093]every piece of information pertaining to Canvas course
[00:07:38.041]has a background ID, there's a number associated with that,
[00:07:42.552]and what it'll do is it'll compare to the course that
[00:07:44.791]exists in Commons and compare those IDs to say
[00:07:46.999]does this match?
[00:07:48.969]It's in the background, you don't notice
[00:07:50.709]it happening but it is.
[00:07:52.010]This is where we ran into trouble, 'cause we had
[00:07:54.315]some modules that were replaced accidentally
[00:07:59.317]and then the module IDs didn't match
[00:08:01.198]and so it was duplicating modules,
[00:08:02.676]and we couldn't figure out why,
[00:08:03.884](background noise obscures speech)
[00:08:05.243]so we had to go back and revert everything to,
[00:08:09.007]in fact it got so bad by the third week of the semester
[00:08:11.803]we had to revert all of our courses to erase to zero,
[00:08:14.999]start from scratch, which wasn't a real
[00:08:17.032]fun experience.
[00:08:18.761]So, you have to be very careful in doing this
[00:08:22.324]that you make sure you maintain,
[00:08:24.389]from whatever your master course or your original course is,
[00:08:26.413]that you maintain that consistent.
[00:08:30.178]So, in your module that you sent to Canvas,
[00:08:33.515]you have this process,
[00:08:34.871]once you fill all this in you just share it
[00:08:36.890]and it goes into the Canvas Commons.
[00:08:39.704]Then I can go up in my course,
[00:08:41.931]I can go in the Commons and I can say,
[00:08:43.510]okay these are,
[00:08:44.889]it'll give me a notification,
[00:08:46.107]yeah there's a course that needs updating.
[00:08:49.075]If I don't have that done yet, I can just go into courses
[00:08:52.625]and I can search for a course.
[00:08:55.267]So, look for "jomc",
[00:08:58.027]it's gonna give me a listing of courses,
[00:09:00.690]and if this was a new course,
[00:09:02.335]I would say this master course is what I want.
[00:09:05.571]Here's the one we used for last fall.
[00:09:13.506]This is interesting, I have a 134 course that's
[00:09:17.029]in the same curriculum, a different course.
[00:09:20.890]So, I would find...
[00:09:26.081]If this were the first time I would have
[00:09:27.543]to go in here and search for it.
[00:09:29.011]And I would find that course and I would tell it,
[00:09:31.436]I want to update these particular courses,
[00:09:33.491]I'd check a course, maybe this course,
[00:09:36.213]and it would update,
[00:09:37.798]I could import into the course.
[00:09:40.370]I'm not going to do that here because this
[00:09:42.188]is an update not in the course.
[00:09:44.206]So, that's how I would start,
[00:09:45.633]I would create my Canvas Commons module based
[00:09:48.915]on a master course or base course that I'm using.
[00:09:53.658]Then I would go into the Commons, find that course,
[00:09:56.886]and import it into any courses that I'm using
[00:10:00.071]that need to have that (background noise obscures speech).
[00:10:04.488]But I would go back, it might be easier to just
[00:10:07.177]go back this way, and see.
[00:10:10.080]It's telling me now, I've done that, I have my course,
[00:10:13.235]it's been set up, and now there's been an update pushed
[00:10:16.537]to the course module in the Commons.
[00:10:19.007]So, I can go in and View Update Notes,
[00:10:20.633]it'll tell me
[00:10:23.428]what the updates are,
[00:10:24.952]so there's been some updates made to some videos
[00:10:27.513]and two of the advanced modules have been completed,
[00:10:30.131]and so they've been added and published.
[00:10:32.444]So, when I go courses I have to pay attention to,
[00:10:38.274]here they made a list of courses that have had this
[00:10:42.318]course put into them from Commons,
[00:10:45.512]so I have to go down my list and see which ones
[00:10:48.174]I actually want to use it for.
[00:10:56.670]And (background noise obscures speech) have extras,
[00:10:58.719]I'm just gonna do one.
[00:11:00.302]So, I'm gonna go ahead and uncheck all these,
[00:11:02.478]and just find one of these courses.
[00:11:09.996]Let me just do my Tuesday 1:30.
[00:11:13.174]And if something gets messed up
[00:11:14.179](background noise obscures speech) to fix it.
[00:11:17.941]So, I select the course that I wanna run an update on,
[00:11:20.011]if I wanna do all four it's probably,
[00:11:22.143]14, 24, 26 and 12 are the (background noise obscures speech)
[00:11:27.825]There's some residual
[00:11:32.204]effects from our mess up earlier this semester,
[00:11:37.387](background noise obscures speech).
[00:11:38.694]It will give you this error every time you do this,
[00:11:42.086]it will replace your current resource.
[00:11:44.806]That's a little scary. (chuckles)
[00:11:48.384]What you have to remember there is that you'll replace
[00:11:51.145]resource with new versions of that resource.
[00:11:55.012]If the resource hasn't changed between your course
[00:11:58.406]and the update from Commons, it will skip over it.
[00:12:03.698]The good thing that we've discovered about this
[00:12:05.727]is it doesn't replace things like grades in the grade book,
[00:12:10.176]or scores for assignments or anything like that,
[00:12:12.998]attendance records, so you can use the roll call module in
[00:12:19.641]one of your courses and it won't replace that information,
[00:12:22.690]that will stay with the course.
[00:12:26.427]In our case, all it really is updating is pieces
[00:12:28.483]of the modules that we put in.
[00:12:31.112]It's a little scary to put this but we do it anyway.
[00:12:36.552]Then,
[00:12:39.689]what I can do is I can go back to that course,
[00:12:43.566]this is the right one,
[00:12:45.188]it will tell me, oh there's something going on,
[00:12:47.873]'cause it takes a little time for this to happen,
[00:12:50.318]it doesn't happen immediately.
[00:12:52.338]I go to that course and it tells me there's something
[00:12:55.580]happening, usually what I do is I go to the Import Status,
[00:12:59.437]and it actually tells me,
[00:13:02.050]there's a Cartridge, sorry I called it a module,
[00:13:04.091]it's Cartridge,
[00:13:05.387]that's being, currently it's queued,
[00:13:08.767]I've never seen that.
[00:13:09.892]That mean there's a lot happening on campus right now?
[00:13:14.148]Normally, I go here and it just comes right into the,
[00:13:16.946]it's got the progression, progress bar,
[00:13:19.354]that's moving across here.
[00:13:22.171]Interesting.
[00:13:24.419]Let me try it with another one, we'll see.
[00:13:29.955]I'll just do 'em all.
[00:13:37.593]And it'll give me errors on four of them because
[00:13:39.983]four of them don't exist anymore because of our erasure
[00:13:43.363]and having to reboot the course.
[00:13:46.241]Which is fine,
[00:13:48.707]I can just Dismiss those.
[00:13:53.556]Then it shows me, yeah you're done updating.
[00:13:55.470]So, I can go back in any of my courses now
[00:13:58.287]and it should give me the little
[00:14:01.888]message at the top
[00:14:04.721]saying there is items being imported.
[00:14:06.924]I can go to the Import Status and see,
[00:14:09.868]it's queued.
[00:14:11.541]If I go to the 024 section,
[00:14:16.428]same status.
[00:14:19.638]You can see that this has been updated once already,
[00:14:23.780]and it's
[00:14:25.963]workin'.
[00:14:27.655]Same thing here.
[00:14:33.621]They're all queued up, I was hoping one of them would run
[00:14:37.245]and get finished, there it goes.
[00:14:41.185]So, this one is normally the course that I test with
[00:14:46.069]'cause it just happens to be the first one on my list
[00:14:48.532]and so whenever I try to bring in something new
[00:14:51.168]I bring it into this course and if it breaks I don't
[00:14:53.099]do the others I just have one to fix.
[00:14:56.117]So far,
[00:14:58.339]everything since our week three explosion has been
[00:15:02.395]pretty smooth.
[00:15:05.161]It will download, and then what it will do
[00:15:07.766]is it'll just continue as
[00:15:11.440]what it looked like before except for it'll have updated
[00:15:13.711]modules, in this case some of them have videos that have
[00:15:17.657]been added in for examples or tutorials.
[00:15:21.819]I'll have to go through, I don't know exactly
[00:15:23.867]what's updated so I'll have to go through and find out.
[00:15:26.573]Can I have a question?
[00:15:27.552]Yes.
[00:15:28.385]The questions on the content.
[00:15:30.208]In those modules, are the files actually saved in Canvas
[00:15:35.049]or are they out in Box, or is it a combination?
[00:15:37.104]In this case, they're saved in Canvas.
[00:15:39.963]Have you every done anything
[00:15:40.934]that's been saved in Box (background noise obscures speech)?
[00:15:45.746]Not that I can think of, no.
[00:15:48.854]You can pretty much everything,
[00:15:50.132]there are some things that are linked to YouTube...
[00:15:53.064]Okay, so it'd be kind of the same
[00:15:54.403]situation like that?
[00:15:55.236]Yeah, and that's--
[00:15:58.047]And you don't have any problems
[00:15:59.000]with links breaking or anything?
[00:16:00.428]No, they're absolute links and so as long
[00:16:03.152]as they still exist on YouTube, those come across just fine.
[00:16:08.231][Group-Based Woman] Do you have any assignments that
[00:16:09.499]are group based, and if they are, when they copy over,
[00:16:13.343]how does that mapping work?
[00:16:16.934]We don't, in this particular have anything
[00:16:19.153]that is group based.
[00:16:21.711]My understanding of how that works, though, is,
[00:16:25.997]I would preface this by saying I don't know exactly
[00:16:27.517]how it works, but,
[00:16:29.206]my understanding is the groups are preserved
[00:16:32.168]because I do have groups,
[00:16:35.247]in this course
[00:16:36.771]I have groups
[00:16:38.812]that are,
[00:16:40.605]I divided the class into two Critique Groups.
[00:16:43.621]Those get preserved across an update, like this.
[00:16:47.133][Group-Based Woman] But there are no assignments mapped?
[00:16:49.053]There are no assignments mapped
[00:16:50.096]for a particular group, no.
[00:16:52.679]My guess is that it would be preserved across assignments,
[00:16:55.728]as long as, that's a good question.
[00:16:58.710]'Cause within the master course,
[00:17:00.250][Group-Based Woman] Yeah, there wouldn't be a--
[00:17:01.083]There wouldn't be those groups to map to.
[00:17:04.283]That would be an interesting thing to look into, but no,
[00:17:06.645]for this particular course,
[00:17:07.801]I don't have any examples that would...
[00:17:11.341][Group-Based Woman] And then another follow-up question,
[00:17:12.694]if of your four sections
[00:17:17.874]after you've imported the Commons
[00:17:21.055]there's a edit that you have to do to customize
[00:17:23.513]to that section, when the next
[00:17:27.747]update goes in, does that
[00:17:30.050]revert that customized edit to the standard one?
[00:17:34.148]Or will it keep that customized edit?
[00:17:37.616]It will revert it.
[00:17:41.543]With some things, like if I put an Announcement
[00:17:43.324]in one section that will stay.
[00:17:47.218]Anything that is new to this particular section
[00:17:51.989]is not affected by the update.
[00:17:54.632]If I were, to use an example, going into one of the Modules,
[00:17:59.864]to customize
[00:18:02.662]some of the instructional material
[00:18:04.368]for this particular course,
[00:18:05.786][Group-Based Woman] It will revert.
[00:18:06.619]That would revert back.
[00:18:09.037]So the idea really here is that we want all of the courses
[00:18:12.353]to be exactly consistent based on the master,
[00:18:15.917]because our goal for this is to really have consistency
[00:18:19.151]of instruction and that's how to keep to that,
[00:18:22.037]to have all the same material across all of them.
[00:18:27.883]Since this has the background ID that I mentioned earlier,
[00:18:32.365]it will compare content to the master.
[00:18:36.304]That's why that warning says it will overwrite
[00:18:39.346]whatever's in the master to whatever
[00:18:41.815]corresponds with the same background ID
[00:18:45.697]with whatever content was there.
[00:18:47.043]So, if you customize it at the class level,
[00:18:49.239]you run that update, it'll go back to whatever the module,
[00:18:53.525]or the Cartridge I guess is the correct term for it.
[00:18:59.316]And that does happen
[00:19:00.210]with due dates, too?
[00:19:01.445]Yes.
[00:19:02.278]And your classes have due dates
[00:19:03.111]so you don't have to worry.
[00:19:04.071]Right.
[00:19:05.757]So, you'd really have to reset when you do
[00:19:07.121]this, is that what you're saying?
[00:19:09.002]Yeah, but in his example,
[00:19:12.285]they're making updates throughout the semester,
[00:19:14.430]and because everything's consistent and they want
[00:19:16.554]that consistency across the board, they don't have to worry.
[00:19:19.968]In a class where you'd have 28 sections where you may be
[00:19:22.604]making little minute changes for a Tuesday, Thursday
[00:19:25.918]versus a Monday, Wednesday,
[00:19:28.016]that's where you'd have problems if you were trying
[00:19:29.912]to change, and then maybe you'd only want to make
[00:19:32.468]one update every semester at the beginning
[00:19:35.561]and bring that course content into.
[00:19:38.254]Right, that was the big question
[00:19:39.447]I was asking because...
[00:19:40.700]Ideally, and the only reason we're doing it
[00:19:43.246]incrementally is because some of the material
[00:19:45.251]for the course is incomplete,
[00:19:48.117]'cause we started writing this curriculum and thought
[00:19:50.716]well, we gotta add some stuff to it halfway through.
[00:19:53.583]So, are you using this more
[00:19:55.338]instead of using a Course Copy?
[00:19:57.280]Yes.
[00:19:58.310]Okay.
[00:19:59.143]I guess my big question is the Commons.
[00:20:03.361]Who can get into your information in the Commons?
[00:20:07.036]How do you
[00:20:09.494]set it so you're the only one to...
[00:20:12.577]It's based on who the instructor is who
[00:20:15.141]puts the Cartridge, whoever the instructor is or the person
[00:20:19.276]that uploads the Cartridge to the Commons,
[00:20:22.965]that's the only user that can access and make those changes.
[00:20:28.042]So, in this case I can't access, because I'm not
[00:20:30.582]the instructor in charge of pushing it to Commons
[00:20:33.687]as a Cartridge, I can't go in and make,
[00:20:36.094]now, I have access to the master course.
[00:20:38.637]So, any changes I make in that master course,
[00:20:41.017]when she goes in and pushes that to a Cartridge in Commons,
[00:20:43.796]those will get included,
[00:20:45.696]but I can't directly edit the Cartridge.
[00:20:47.986]And I don't that that's even possible to directly edit
[00:20:50.270]a Cartridge outside of updating the course,
[00:20:52.882]and updating that pushing it
[00:20:54.636]to the Cartridge in Commons.
[00:20:56.879]Okay, you'd have to down--or just
[00:20:58.233]get another core shell?
[00:20:59.066]And download the Cartridge into it?
[00:21:00.506]I don't think you can edit
[00:21:01.339]the Cartridge itself directly.
[00:21:03.166]So, the Cartridge is a stand alone,
[00:21:05.499]it's like a--
[00:21:06.457]It's like a package.
[00:21:07.447]Right, so if there's subsequent
[00:21:10.344]changes to that master but was not converted to a Cartridge,
[00:21:14.393]that Cartridge doesn't automatically update based
[00:21:16.924]on what had changed?
[00:21:17.757]Yes, that's correct.
[00:21:21.676]So, there's probably situations where this may be not ideal.
[00:21:25.617]Especially if you're thinking about customizing a course
[00:21:29.622]after the fact, little changes here and there
[00:21:32.637]within a course.
[00:21:34.941]I think the ideal situation would be really,
[00:21:37.248]and in our case I would love to not have to update
[00:21:39.468]a course multiple times over a semester.
[00:21:43.559]I really believe that eventually when we have
[00:21:46.037]all our modules in place, we'll be able to use this
[00:21:49.332]one time at the beginning of the semester
[00:21:51.220]and then it will last the whole semester.
[00:21:55.892]The curriculum for this particular set of courses
[00:22:00.677]is still under development and that's why we're having
[00:22:03.080]to do this on an incremental basis.
[00:22:06.730]Ideally, once that building is complete, we'll start
[00:22:10.083]a semester, we won't make changes to it during
[00:22:12.488]the semester, we'll run all our Cartridges into the course,
[00:22:16.676]download it, import it, whatever the term is,
[00:22:19.477]and then they'll just run the full semester without
[00:22:21.503]having to have those updates, but that might take
[00:22:25.151]another semester or two.
[00:22:34.115]I think you mentioned over here, that's not a terrible
[00:22:37.105]lot different than a Course Copy.
[00:22:40.742]Well, my question would be remember
[00:22:42.800]how you said there's that one-on-one mapping with the
[00:22:46.078]unique ID of every item of every assignment, I'm wondering
[00:22:49.736]whether the mechanism, is it the same because a Course Copy,
[00:22:54.444]because I know in a Course Copy if the title of the item
[00:22:57.335]is identical, it will ask you, do you want to overwrite it?
[00:23:02.017]But I haven't pinpointed when does it overwrite it,
[00:23:04.759]when doesn't it.
[00:23:06.451]So, I'm just wondering whether the mechanism for this
[00:23:09.082]is slightly different the mechanism for Course Copy,
[00:23:11.947]and if there are to be customized date changes
[00:23:15.587]for different sections, maybe this tool may not
[00:23:18.343]be as functional as a Course Copy, simply because
[00:23:22.405]a Course Copy that does allow you to blank out the dates.
[00:23:27.453]There's that button that allows you to blank out the dates,
[00:23:30.567]whereas this one there is no option for that, I'm guessing?
[00:23:33.519]To blank out the dates?
[00:23:34.735]They're just not included--
[00:23:35.889]So, it is a different mechanism.
[00:23:37.806]For our purposes, since these classes meet
[00:23:39.834]Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we don't want
[00:23:42.624]those dates anyway because everyone would have
[00:23:46.167]to go in and change them, if they're on a Tuesday course,
[00:23:48.461]if the master was set up Monday's due dates,
[00:23:50.825]that doesn't work for anyone else, so that's,
[00:23:53.746]for us it's kind of useless to have the dates included
[00:23:56.913]anyway, but that might be kinda...
[00:23:58.499]Yeah.
[00:24:00.185]We went ahead and did this, we didn't really
[00:24:02.566]experiment much with Course Copy because this presented
[00:24:06.106]itself as a pretty viable option for our needs.
[00:24:11.193]I've really not experimented with Course Copy
[00:24:14.750]to see what the differences would be.
[00:24:18.164]So what you're telling us really,
[00:24:19.504]you're just changing in one master course
[00:24:22.837]and then it changes it across all the courses.
[00:24:24.983]Well, there's a few steps to go there
[00:24:25.983]and do that but...
[00:24:26.816]Right, yes. But that's the general
[00:24:28.511]idea and so in a sense it is superior to Course Copy
[00:24:32.780]from that perspective, from a content perspective.
[00:24:35.363]It's a little more automated than
[00:24:37.205]a Course Copy.
[00:24:38.038]It will tell me I have updates,
[00:24:39.937]I just go in and I just click the courses I wanna update
[00:24:42.558]and then click update, and it runs all that.
[00:24:44.980]Course Copy's a little more involved.
[00:24:46.493]They'd have to go to each one
[00:24:48.035]and change the link or...
[00:24:49.319]So, there's a few more steps involved
[00:24:51.842]in a Course Copy.
[00:24:53.185]For us, with 28 courses it made a lot of difference
[00:24:55.788]to do this, 'cause...
[00:24:57.552]To do a Course Copy you have to give
[00:24:58.782]every instructor access to the master course and that
[00:25:01.059]could lead to some serious problems.
[00:25:02.857]That's actually how we ran into our issue,
[00:25:06.635]somebody accidentally copied the module back into
[00:25:08.840]the original master course.
[00:25:10.214]So, even with the date changes,
[00:25:12.154]you're still able to,
[00:25:13.385]I mean it's still a better
[00:25:15.563]route for that number of sections because they're just
[00:25:18.534]going to change the dates on each section
[00:25:20.329]one time at the beginning of the semester--
[00:25:22.640]It would be even better if Canvas set
[00:25:23.879]it up so the updates could be automated instead
[00:25:26.251]of instructors having to go in and do it manually, but...
[00:25:28.901](all talking over each other)
[00:25:35.237]I actually like that it's not an option
[00:25:37.478]or it's not automatic because we had an issue where
[00:25:42.228]we created, way back at the beginning of the semester
[00:25:46.555]one of the professors wasn't really, had never used Canvas
[00:25:49.645]before, went in and accidentally downloaded the module,
[00:25:55.924]cassette, Cartridge, sorry.
[00:25:58.889](group laughing)
[00:26:01.692]Nintendo.
[00:26:04.115]Downloaded the Cartridge
[00:26:05.257]into the master course which then,
[00:26:08.338]in the process of fixing that,
[00:26:10.647]this was before we realized that there was
[00:26:12.180]an ID associated with every piece of
[00:26:16.548]information in there,
[00:26:18.406]in cleaning that up we didn't realize what that was about,
[00:26:21.094]and so when we redid the course Cartridge
[00:26:23.149]then everything had new IDs, when we imported that
[00:26:25.878]into another course it duplicated everything.
[00:26:28.869]So, everything was original and then it had all these
[00:26:30.806]new IDs on top of it, so everything was duplicated.
[00:26:34.039]And that was basically an unrecoverable situation.
[00:26:37.795]That's why we had to clean the course,
[00:26:39.528]erase, start over
[00:26:41.374]with a fresh...
[00:26:42.534]It must have been a headache.
[00:26:44.944]It was a little bit of a pain,
[00:26:46.190]and it was...
[00:26:47.583]So that's where your ability in this instance
[00:26:51.787]to keep every-single-body involved in the course
[00:26:54.377]out of that master to avoid that
[00:26:57.430]is a big deal.
[00:26:59.420]'Cause we really don't want someone who doesn't really
[00:27:01.148]know what they're doing going in and messing
[00:27:02.555]with that master course,
[00:27:05.973]even if it's not involving
[00:27:07.806]pulling a Cartridge back into it.
[00:27:11.250]But if it was an automatic update,
[00:27:13.094]we caught that issue after we'd only done a couple courses.
[00:27:16.763]Then we realized, oh it's doing this, so the rest
[00:27:18.950]of the 27 or six courses that hadn't
[00:27:21.908]had that update were still okay,
[00:27:25.304]until we redid the Cartridge,
[00:27:30.561]so we didn't have that,
[00:27:32.123]if that had been automatic it would have jumped down
[00:27:33.826]to a whole 28 courses instead of
[00:27:36.549]the three, I think, that actually got really messed up.
[00:27:42.782]Course the students were like, there's two of these
[00:27:43.615]which one do I?
[00:27:44.922]I don't know, so,
[00:27:45.878]it was a bit of an issue.
[00:27:49.614]Who has access to the Cartridge
[00:27:50.627]in the Commons?
[00:27:52.845]The...
[00:27:55.584]Anybody.
[00:27:57.103]Well, actually you can set access,
[00:27:59.374]if you go into the...
[00:28:03.132]When you create a Cartridge, is that what you're asking?
[00:28:04.953]I wanted you to talk about that.
[00:28:06.255]If you Share it to Commons, you can set
[00:28:12.127]who can use it, that's the very first thing,
[00:28:13.978]who can use it is public or just within the university.
[00:28:17.389]I don't think you can limit it any further than that.
[00:28:20.384]So, theoretically someone else from another college
[00:28:22.228]could go in and use our Cartridge for the JOMC courses,
[00:28:25.935]want to but it's possible.
[00:28:28.372]But if an instructor needed
[00:28:29.666]to prevent that from happening, they could select
[00:28:32.648]just University of Nebraska, for example,
[00:28:36.101]and at least limit it to this campus?
[00:28:40.369]You can also,
[00:28:42.384]I don't know how big of a deal it is to set your copyright,
[00:28:46.784]but you could put that information in there, too.
[00:28:50.889]I wonder if a Cartridge
[00:28:52.347]is already by accident put into public,
[00:28:54.514]whether you can retract it?
[00:28:57.845]You could always delete it.
[00:29:00.259]You could delete it and put up a new one.
[00:29:03.303]And I can't really check it on ours because I wasn't
[00:29:07.275]the one who created the Cartridge in the first place.
[00:29:10.759]It would have been helpful if I had actually done that.
[00:29:12.914]I did mess around with it like it's a sandbox course.
[00:29:17.435]If it's not checked,
[00:29:18.939]then who can see it?
[00:29:20.425]If it's not checked?
[00:29:22.129]Well, you have to, it's required so it won't let you proceed
[00:29:24.794]without checking one of the boxes.
[00:29:28.297]And, I'm assuming because it says maximum of 10 here
[00:29:30.702]that there could be more options that whoever sets
[00:29:34.038]up Canvas provides those,
[00:29:37.652]maybe they could set it to specific colleges
[00:29:41.541]within the university or something.
[00:29:44.171]I'm not sure that would be a,
[00:29:45.536]I don't know if that's a question you guys can answer,
[00:29:47.520]if it's more like a Jeremy Van Hof question.
[00:29:49.380]Yeah, it's a Jeremy question.
[00:29:53.074]Just like when the
[00:29:55.104]session start dates and that setting...
[00:30:00.325]But otherwise, yeah, anybody can go into
[00:30:02.215]the search and,
[00:30:04.331]if I just go into courses,
[00:30:07.103]you could go through,
[00:30:07.936]like there's a course that,
[00:30:09.205]it kind of pops up with a recent list of courses
[00:30:12.864]that have been put up there.
[00:30:16.103]Richmond County Schools.
[00:30:21.623]So, you can go through and find a number of courses.
[00:30:24.966]Will you click on one?
[00:30:26.162]Click on one?
[00:30:27.889]Medical terminol--let's try this,
[00:30:30.527]Richmond Public School,
[00:30:32.218]Algebra two!
[00:30:33.051]That sounds like an actual course.
[00:30:36.174]There's not a terrible lot you can see.
[00:30:38.505]So, this option on the right here,
[00:30:39.633]this Download option
[00:30:41.306]This?
[00:30:42.139]That would work for an instructor that
[00:30:44.722]wants to take that content and keep it separate
[00:30:47.819]from future updates?
[00:30:49.823]They want to import that content into that course--
[00:30:52.254]Oh, this?
[00:30:53.693]But then make their own changes
[00:30:55.655]and things into the one that, is that correct?
[00:30:58.786]What you can do, is you could import
[00:31:00.311]it into a course in your own course,
[00:31:05.146]and then if there were updates made to it,
[00:31:07.215]if you had made changes to it, you can ignore the updates,
[00:31:09.928]it's not like the updates are forced on you--
[00:31:11.735]Right but if somebody could
[00:31:13.528]accidentally, a TA could click on it.
[00:31:16.423]Well, that's when you want to import
[00:31:18.192]these things into a shell course, because the description
[00:31:20.645]of what you're getting isn't very clear here,
[00:31:22.760]the description's so minimal.
[00:31:25.150]So, import it into a shell.
[00:31:26.644]Take a look at it, empty out the shell
[00:31:28.457]before you import it to a real course.
[00:31:30.568]Trust me, it's not fun to clean that
[00:31:31.754]up because I did it to her.
[00:31:33.129](crosstalk obscures words)
[00:31:34.996]Right, he cleaned it up.
[00:31:35.964]It took a while.
[00:31:36.797]Yeah, but don't import that
[00:31:37.630](speech obscured by crosstalk)
[00:31:38.463]thing into a real course--
[00:31:39.296]Use the shell, first.
[00:31:40.237]Yeah, always check it out,
[00:31:41.433]the description's limited.
[00:31:42.868]Yeah.
[00:31:45.947]In our list of courses here there are,
[00:31:49.032]we call them master courses,
[00:31:49.865]but essentially what they are is shell.
[00:31:53.462]So, that master course is a shell course
[00:31:55.944]that currently, only two of us--
[00:32:02.919]If you download it and put it to another
[00:32:04.491]course, when any update's done on the master,
[00:32:07.824]does it shoot them both inside?
[00:32:09.904]You'd get a notification about it,
[00:32:11.394]but it doesn't automatically do it.
[00:32:13.273]Even with Download?
[00:32:14.902]I think that even with Download,
[00:32:16.457]I don't know if you Download--oh, if you Downloaded it?
[00:32:18.211](speech obscured by crosstalk)
[00:32:19.371]that connection would be...
[00:32:21.321](speech obscured by crosstalk)
[00:32:22.551]If there's a download, like you...
[00:32:25.180](speakers obscured by crosstalk)
[00:32:27.421]That's a good question.
[00:32:29.114]I would almost imagine that--
[00:32:30.473]Like if I go into,
[00:32:33.098]where was that course again?
[00:32:36.175]If I Download it here?
[00:32:37.865]And then use that to upload it again?
[00:32:39.908]I don't think--
[00:32:40.829]That would break the--
[00:32:41.818]Exactly, there's not,
[00:32:43.742]that connection gets broken, in fact,
[00:32:49.077]I've actually inadvertently broken connections
[00:32:51.425]in the courses and I don't even know how I did it.
[00:32:56.458]Like the direct import into a course and I did something
[00:32:59.419]with it and it broke the course.
[00:33:02.775]The cool thing about it if that happens,
[00:33:04.669]is you can reselect it and import again and it will do
[00:33:10.874]an update, and it will reconnect it.
[00:33:14.379]I had that happen last fall, last semester, where
[00:33:17.803]I had five of these courses and a couple of them
[00:33:20.418]I somehow broke the connection to the Commons,
[00:33:23.468]so I'd get update notifications on three of the five,
[00:33:28.918]but then I don't know why I didn't get updates
[00:33:30.920]on the other two, but all I had to do was go back into
[00:33:36.065]the Cartridge, and then select those other two
[00:33:39.295]and then reimport and it reconnected them
[00:33:42.819]in the process of updating.
[00:33:46.304]My guess would be, never tried it,
[00:33:49.058]but my guess would be yes.
[00:33:53.001]Have you had any experience with
[00:33:54.586]material that comes from Commons
[00:33:56.079]but is from another source that you downloaded,
[00:34:00.677]imported to a course shell
[00:34:03.244]and maybe the original developer for the course
[00:34:05.878]had proprietary links that are kind of important
[00:34:09.151]for the content but they no longer work because
[00:34:11.240]you don't have the authentication to be able
[00:34:14.323]to go to where the link is pointed?
[00:34:16.842]Yes.
[00:34:17.863]Actually, within this particular course we have had that.
[00:34:23.245]I'll show you an example.
[00:34:25.418]In our Announcements we have links, in one of the first
[00:34:29.458]Announcements we have links to assignments
[00:34:32.411]within the course.
[00:34:35.368]Like these two, so these two link to surveys within
[00:34:39.273]this particular course, so when this gets posted
[00:34:42.839]to Commons as a cassette
[00:34:46.836]and downloaded to another course,
[00:34:48.442]these links still point to the content on my course,
[00:34:52.624]'cause they're absolute links, they don't update
[00:34:55.141]to the surveys on that course.
[00:34:58.288]So, for those particular instances, we had to go in
[00:35:01.452]and edit the Announcements.
[00:35:05.877]I'm assuming it would work the same way on assignments
[00:35:08.050]or anything else that had something like this,
[00:35:10.615]is edit this Announcement to point to the,
[00:35:17.881]it will point to their quizzes in this particular course.
[00:35:22.541]So, yeah, that's also a concern about if you grab a course
[00:35:27.260]from someone else and there's things that link to specific
[00:35:32.603]quizzes within that course, that will change.
[00:35:36.265]But in that case, since it's a Canvas
[00:35:38.163]quiz, it brought that over with it?
[00:35:40.753]It brought the quiz with it.
[00:35:42.042]But if it was sitting on the textbook
[00:35:43.403]company's website or something?
[00:35:48.853]If it's an outside URL, like our links
[00:35:50.355]to YouTube, or links to a Box folder, those should,
[00:35:53.913]if they're visible by,
[00:35:55.677]if they're a shared link,
[00:35:58.073]that shouldn't really be an issue.
[00:36:00.330]It's this case...
[00:36:08.666]The links point to specific IDs,
[00:36:14.725]so this course ID and a quiz ID, that's a very specific
[00:36:20.925]quiz that's in this particular course.
[00:36:23.307]And so if this were to get translated to another course,
[00:36:26.393]that would break.
[00:36:29.682]In this case it was just a matter of going into these
[00:36:36.551]and deleting the links that were there and putting
[00:36:38.251]in this one instead, from this particular course.
[00:36:42.853]So, there is some of that customization that happens.
[00:36:45.460]The nice thing about it is, once you've done this once
[00:36:48.421]and you reupdate the course, as long as the master course,
[00:36:52.373]this hasn't really changed, or hasn't changed any,
[00:36:55.174]it will leave it alone.
[00:36:56.641]Once you've done that once you don't have
[00:36:57.570]to keep redoing it.
[00:36:59.721]So, that is one instance where the updates
[00:37:03.361]will ignore this particular.
[00:37:08.910][Knowledgeable Woman] I think something else to consider
[00:37:10.552]besides sharing an entire course,
[00:37:13.115]you can export to Commons just a Module.
[00:37:16.217]Consider maybe just a module on student expectations,
[00:37:19.386]grading policies, late assignments, stuff that's
[00:37:24.419]common among all your courses, just one Module
[00:37:27.036]with information, exporting that to Commons,
[00:37:29.623]and you can bring that student orientation into all
[00:37:32.077]your courses wherever you need it.
[00:37:34.260]On a smaller scale instead of an entire course.
[00:37:37.123]You can see here I'm talking about just
[00:37:38.527]a whole course but there are Modules, Assignments, Quizzes,
[00:37:41.660]Discussions, individual Pages, all those things you can
[00:37:45.399]on a much smaller level
[00:37:48.059]share to Commons and then put it into multiple courses.
[00:37:50.968]You don't have to do the entire course, you can do just
[00:37:52.572]pieces of a course.
[00:37:54.218](poor audio obscures name) have you
[00:37:55.051]checked it with assignments to do it through Commons?
[00:37:57.292][Knowledgeable Woman] I haven't done anything
[00:37:58.125]with assignments.
[00:37:59.640]Because I'd be curious how the
[00:38:00.473]assignments, the mapping--
[00:38:02.052][Knowledgeable Woman] I don't know, I haven't
[00:38:02.885]tried that but I've
[00:38:04.363](background noise obscures speech) individual pages
[00:38:05.763]with information, I think a whole module about
[00:38:07.948]student orientation, that it's common among all
[00:38:10.322]your classes, you share that out there
[00:38:11.864]that out there with the department,
[00:38:13.665]you can share it or put it in all your courses.
[00:38:15.870]Update it in one spot.
[00:38:18.465]You could test it on assignments,
[00:38:20.097]'cause when you copy an assignment the mapping
[00:38:22.292]to the roster--
[00:38:23.577][Knowledgeable Woman] Right, I don't know.
[00:38:24.410]I haven't tested the assignments,
[00:38:25.711]it would be good to test them.
[00:38:30.834]And, Alan, it looks like this will
[00:38:33.252]work practically seamlessly reusing for a new semester?
[00:38:37.063]Yep.
[00:38:37.896]As soon as you set up a new course in Canvas,
[00:38:41.503]instead of update it's just importing the course
[00:38:44.140]through Commons using the same module that links
[00:38:47.023]that module to the--cartridge,
[00:38:51.620]to that course, and then once those update
[00:38:54.596]if the cassette gets updated from the master,
[00:38:59.049]then the new course will have those updates
[00:38:59.882](audio quality obscures speech).
[00:39:03.920]That's really our long-term plan is to use this
[00:39:07.419]from semester to semester to just propagate out,
[00:39:11.455]'cause we're gonna run 28-30 sections of this every
[00:39:15.777]semester and we're trying to save ourselves
[00:39:18.735]as much time as possible.
[00:39:21.225]Probably best practice is you
[00:39:23.385]could just not use terminology like spring semester,
[00:39:26.542]fall semester, just avoid any indication of timeframe,
[00:39:30.911]so that you could reuse it as seamlessly as possible.
[00:39:33.742]Things like individual announcements
[00:39:35.798]that I put in the course, then fine, that's yeah, but
[00:39:38.825]in the core part of the course that is in the module,
[00:39:42.787]or cassette, that we would leave references to that off.
[00:39:48.356]Or you could just change the master
[00:39:49.561]every semester.
[00:39:50.579]You could do that, you could update
[00:39:51.412]the master every semester to reference specific fall,
[00:39:54.829]spring, summer, whatever, and then push a new cassette,
[00:39:59.485]or update the cassette, essentially as needed.
[00:40:04.739]Okay, so your intent is to copy
[00:40:07.844]your spring master to your fall master?
[00:40:11.019]And then take your fall master, upload that to Commons,
[00:40:15.916]and then push the cartridge out to the other courses?
[00:40:22.087]Maybe even not that many steps,
[00:40:24.478]we might even use the same master--
[00:40:27.224]That's why I asked the question.
[00:40:29.986]So, if we're archiving on a three year basis
[00:40:33.211]campus material, does that create a problem for you
[00:40:36.102]four years from now?
[00:40:39.528]I don't think so because what we really
[00:40:42.317]want to be archiving is the actual 28 courses that
[00:40:45.242]it was sent out to.
[00:40:47.380]But won't your master also be archived?
[00:40:51.082]It's a course shell.
[00:40:53.422]So, it's gonna get archived every
[00:40:54.948]three years like we've done with Blackboard, isn't that?
[00:40:57.743]Previous course shells,
[00:40:59.321]like the sandbox course shells in Blackboard,
[00:41:02.072]both course shells and organization shells were never
[00:41:04.682]wiped clean and then put yours once a semester,
[00:41:06.877]so in this case--
[00:41:07.710]That's not an organization shell,
[00:41:10.099]we don't have organizations in campus--
[00:41:11.756]No, that always for sandbox
[00:41:13.253]course shells as well.
[00:41:16.386]They aren't actual courses.
[00:41:17.967]Right.
[00:41:18.800]Course shell is actually a sandbox
[00:41:20.187]shell that has the same name as a course shell.
[00:41:27.902]That's what I'm told, does that make sense?
[00:41:29.704]My understanding is they won't be archived
[00:41:32.057]and go away after,
[00:41:34.060]'cause of the type of course.
[00:41:36.612]It's not connected
[00:41:37.925]to a real semester.
[00:41:40.806]It's not being populated by my red.
[00:41:47.511]Alan, do you have anything inside
[00:41:50.510]any of your master modules, do you use rubrics?
[00:41:54.585]Yes.
[00:41:55.616]And so the rubrics go over it fine
[00:41:57.557]no problem?
[00:41:58.390]Rubrics? Outcomes?
[00:42:00.080]Yeah. So, is yours an ACE course,
[00:42:01.735]do you have outcomes with those?
[00:42:03.564]You do, it's not currently certified
[00:42:05.998]as an ACE course, but we do have outcomes.
[00:42:08.765]They do transfer across a course.
[00:42:13.563]But your outcomes
[00:42:14.396]are not the ACE outcomes?
[00:42:15.847]So, you've built it in your master course
[00:42:17.878]and it carries through?
[00:42:19.586]Oh, okay.
[00:42:22.805]There's been talk about making this an ACE,
[00:42:25.318]but I think it's...
[00:42:29.596]We'll cross that bridge when we get there.
[00:42:33.126]Yeah, but the outcomes is in the modules, or the rubrics,
[00:42:37.438]populate all through as well.
[00:42:49.738]Thanks, Alan.
[00:42:50.571]Thank you.
[00:42:51.404](crowd applauding)

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Canvas Brown Bag: Using Commons

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