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This section is intended to be considered in advance of any official decision to shift instruction online, to help faculty who may be interested in being more prepared for the possibility, both to connect with key resources and to work with their students to be ready before a shift is forced upon them. If you get a bit overwhelmed by all the possible tools to learn listed below, and/or really aren't sure where you ought to be focusing, you might skip ahead to the next page and review the different online approaches matched with what you might have done in the classroom.

Preparing Your Students Before the Crisis Moment

Before it actually happens, help your students to be prepared for the possibility of a campus closure or other instructional disruption:

If you're not already using Canvas much, alert your students to what you would be sharing in Canvas. Ensure students know how to access your course in Canvas on the web and via the Canvas Student mobile app.
Make sure your students know the communication channels you’ll be using to keep the class going. If you are going to rely primarily on emailing students via SURF rather than using Canvas, make sure students have set their emails in SURF correctly and know to check those emails.
Discuss with them how they should expect the class to continue in the event of disruption. If you are likely to make adjustments to the expectations outlined in your syllabus, be as clear as you can about this.
Ensure students know how to access support. This includes support available in Canvas through the Student Support and Tech Help buttons at left. It may also include support from the college specific to the situation - make sure you are aware of whatever the college may develop.
Communicate your flexibility and desire to help students succeed. Ask students if they have sufficient technological access to continue with class activities that might shift online, and consider options for students who express concern.
Consider giving an opportunity for students to practice with a technology that you or they may not have used before, such as turning in an assignment through Canvas or holding a live online session in Zoom, before they are actually forced to do so.

Preparing Yourself Before the Crisis Moment

...to use Canvas for content, communication, and assessment

If you don’t already use Canvas much, consider:

Learning content tools such as Pages and the Rich Content Editor
Adding your syllabus to Canvas (Upload it as a file and/or use the Canvas Syllabus tool)
Setting a Canvas home page that includes your contact information and other key course information (recommended: create a custom Front Page or use Canvas Syllabus)
Learning assessment tools such as Assignments (details), Quizzes, Grades, and SpeedGrader
Learning communication tools such as Announcements, Discussions, and the Inbox
Understanding how to publish individual items (pages, assignments, quizzes, discussions) in Canvas, and how to publish a Canvas class if you have not already done so
Learning to use Student View to experience your class as a student would
If you’d like more extensive and contextualized resources for learning and using Canvas:

Join MiraCosta’s self-paced Introduction to Teaching with Canvas course
See MiraCosta’s Start of the Semester Canvas Checklist
Find videos of MiraCosta Canvas workshops along with lots of other local Canvas resources on MiraCosta’s main Canvas faculty support site

...to use Zoom for live online interaction

If you think you may want to offer live online teaching, class meetings, and/or office hours, the best tool for this is Zoom. Zoom allows you to share your screen; use an interactive whiteboard; communicate via audio, video, and text; and more. You can share session recordings to ensure that students who can't participate live still can benefit from it, and recordings are auto-captioned.

Every faculty and staff member has access to Zoom Pro through MiraCosta - this will ensure that your usage is not limited and you have access to all of Zoom’s features.

Make sure you know how to access Zoom using MiraCosta's pro account
Start learning how to use Zoom, including how to record sessions
Learn to integrate Zoom within Canvas

...to record and share lectures

If you think you may want to record and post lectures, screencasts, or other multimedia content:

Consider MiraCosta's primary options for capturing screencasts: Canvas Studio, Snagit, Zoom
- Canvas Studio is built into Canvas
- Snagit is a separate software program that may already be on your computer, or you may need to request installation by AIS
- Zoom's recording feature can be used to make screencasts too!
Do some practicing with your tool of choice
Canvas Studio and Zoom both record “to the cloud”, allowing you to simply link to the video in your Canvas class. Snagit and other screen-recording tools may generate a file on your computer, which you will need to upload to a video system such as Canvas Studio, 3C Media Solutions, or YouTube to get a link to add into your class.
Captioning is ideal and perhaps a legal requirement - Canvas Studio, YouTube, and Zoom all auto-caption your recordings and allow you to easily edit captions to perfect them. 3C Media Solutions in the past allowed faculty to request professional captioning for your uploaded videos, but the rules for what they will caption have become more complex.

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