Title: Instructor Guide Template
Course: BTEC-1300-301-302-303-F21

This Instructor Guide provides basic information about this course for all faculty teaching it. It includes directions for what needs to be completed before the semester starts, as well as information about the structure and philosophy of the course.

Table of Contents

1. What is a Standard Course?
2. Setting Up Your Course
3. Understanding This Course
4. Course Management
5. Help

What is a Standard Course?

[course name] is a Standard Course. Standard courses are designed and developed by the [name of department: ENGL, BIOL, etc.] department and designated as the template that should be taught for the course. These courses meet Quality Matters standards by including, among other things:

- Student orientation to online learning
- Consistent and easy navigation
- Aligned outcomes, objectives, assessments, and materials that support accreditation and articulation
- Copyright permissions
- Accessible materials

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Setting Up Your Course

To have your course ready for students on the first day you’ll need to:

1. Make a Copy of the Standard Course

Instructure has provided a How do I Copy Content from Another Canvas Course guide to assist in copying the course. You will copy this [dev course name] course content into your course shell.

If you are teaching multiple sections of the course, you might also want to cross-list your sections before the semester starts and before you copy over this course. Cross-listing allows you to use just one canvas course shell for all of your individual sections of that particular course. Please see the Cross-Listing guide for more information and to access the form to request a cross-listed course.

2. Set up Your Course

Home Page: Put your name and contact information on the home page.

Welcome Page: Create an introduction video to include on the “Welcome” page in the Orientation module. This video shows you how to record screencasts using Kaltura through the My Media tab located in the course navigation menu. You can also use Kaltura to do a webcam recording if you prefer. When you are finished with your video, embed it on the "Welcome" page in the orientation. If you have difficulties with Kaltura, the Center for eLearning has a media team available to help by contacting Chris Luker. You are welcome to upload a picture and write an introduction instead of a video, but students like the personal touch of hearing a voice and/or seeing a face.

Also create a Teacher/Student Participation Expectations policy that outlines things such as an email/call response time frame, grading time frame, participation on discussion boards, student participation expectations.

Syllabus Page: Review and customize the syllabus page and syllabus file. You can use the department-generated syllabus as the template for your course syllabus to make sure all students get the objectives and the required syllabus language. You will have to enter your contact info and you may make some adjustments to the syllabus to match your individual teaching practices and individualized assignments.

To customize the syllabus, go to the “Files” section of the course, download the syllabus (found in documents), and modify the syllabus to contain your contact information. Make modifications as needed to the “late work” policy, etc. Save the document and re-upload to Canvas to the documents folder. Don’t change the name of the file or the pre-established links will no longer work.

Orientation Quiz: If you have changed any policies in the syllabus, make sure to review the orientation quiz and update the questions and answers to align with your policies.

Any Questions: This is a discussion board in the Orientation Module that students can use to ask questions about content and policies. It is recommended that you subscribe to this board so that you can receive alerts any time students post on the board and can then answer their questions.

Course Availability Dates: Under the Settings tab in the course navigation menu, you can set the course to open a day or two before the semester begins or you can leave the default setting.

Due Dates: Review the course due dates. Students in online classes prefer to have weekly due dates to keep them engaged and on track. They also prefer to have those due dates remain consistent, on the same one or two days each week. The due dates in this course have been set up this way.

Calendar: Review the calendar to make sure all dates are consistent with the current term. This is located under the Calendar tab in the Canvas navigation menu. Instructure has a guide for changing the dates when the course is imported. Please note: If you use the calendar to adjust the due dates for the assignments, you must still change the available dates on the individual assignments, if necessary, so you can also change the due dates via individual assignments instead if you wish.

Canvas Notifications: Set your Canvas notifications. You may want to have all messages and comments forwarded to your desired email account to assure that you will see them in a timely manner. Please note: Comments that students make on their assignments do not show up in the Canvas inbox and thus can be easily missed. You can set up a notification rule that automatically puts the email into a folder to organize your assignments and notifications.

3. Publish Your Course

To learn how to publish a Canvas course, see Instructure's How Do I Publish a Course guide. Once it is published, ensure the links are working in your course site. See Instructure's How do I Validate Links in a Course? guide on how to check for broken links. Do not publish the Instructor's Resources module; it would then be visible to students and this information is only for faculty.

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Understanding This Course

Philosophy

This course is for students who []. The goal of [course name] is to provide students with []. The fundamental objective is to provide students with []. This course uses the following instructional strategies:

- Lecture videos
- Readings from the textbook
- Immediate feedback through study guides and quizzes
- Real life application through written assignments and discussion boards.
- Reflection on the material

Module Structure

The course is set up in modules that present the information in a linear, sequential style. Each module follows a pattern:

- Module Overview
  - Introduces the module
  - Describes major project that will be due at the end of the module
- Week Overview
  - Attention-getter/introduction to the topic
  - Objectives for the chapter

Note:The students cannot access the content modules until the orientation module, including the introduce yourself discussion board, practice submitting assignment, and syllabus quiz have been completed.

Textbook/Learning Materials

You can get a copy of the textbook from the department office on the [] floor of the []  Building on [] campus. Check with [name] at [email], or [phone], to make sure there is a copy there for you before you make a trip in! [Book title and other information, such as if it is custom publishing, course pack, etc.]

Grading Policy

[include the weight distribution and major assignments; include what can and cannot be changed about the grading scheme]

Major Assignments/Exams

[include information about the major assignments and exams]

ePortfolio

Salt Lake Community College students are building fantastic General Education ePortfolios. Not all students catch the vision of creating an ePortfolio, but those who do understand how an ePortfolio helps them step ahead by providing a place to archive, reflect upon, and share their best work with faculty, scholarship committee, family, and friends. ePortfolios showcase the entirety of an academic career. Creating an ePortfolio is absolutely free, and there are excellent Student ePortfolio resources to help them through the process.

If you haven’t caught the vision of ePortfolio, there are faculty resources available to help you understand what they are, how they work, and even how to grade them. Reflection fosters critical thinking about learning and allows students to make connections with what they are learning in other courses and with their own experiences.

- In order to view your students’ Digication sites (where ePortfolios reside), you MUST be logged in to Digication BEFORE entering your student’s site.
- If you’re logged in to Digication and still cannot see your students’ sites, please send your students to the ePortfolio lab for help changing their settings or tell your students to change their privacy settings to “Private within SLCC” as shown in this video
- If you don’t know how to login to Digication, please refer to the instructions below:
  - Go to slcc.digication.com
  - Click on “login”
  - Put in your MyPage username and password and then select SLCCI in the drop down box
- Agree to the terms and conditions for both SLCC and Digication.
- You will now be logged in to your Digication account and can view students’ Digication sites.

Using SpeedGrader

Canvas's SpeedGrader can be helpful in grading your assignments and essays for the quizzes and exams. You can access SpeedGrader through the Grades menu in Canvas. When you access the gradebook, click on the down arrow by the assignment being graded. You can use SpeedGrader for discussions, assignment dropboxes, and quizzes.

When you are grading a quiz, you can turn on the ability to grade by question. This will allow you to move through the different questions needing grading. To do this, you will need to open the SpeedGrader Settings then click on the "Grade by question (beta)" option.

When using the SpeedGrader feature, there is a button that updates the scores as you grade.

Using Unicheck to Check for Plagiarism

This course uses Unicheck for some of the essay assignments. Please see the Unicheck Instructor Guide and the Unicheck Student Guide to learn more.

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Course Management

Instructor Presence

The general principle behind teacher presence is to ensure that your students know you are there to answer their questions and guide their learning experience. There is nothing worse for a student than a teacher that is MIA in a course. The following is a list of ways you can have teacher presence in the course.

Welcome email: You are encouraged to send a welcome email out to all of your students a few days before the term begins. This email could contain the syllabus, textbook information, how to get into Canvas/your course, Canvas help resources (calling 801-957-5125) and any other information you know that students frequently ask about. Make sure to include this information in a Welcome announcement as well for students that add late.

Introductions: Introduce yourself to the students via a screencast or webcam video and reply to each student introduction on the orientation module discussion board.

Announcements: Weekly announcements will enhance the course most by giving students feedback and encouragement as well as giving general information about where students should be in the course. In the weekly announcements, please include links the week’s overview page. Making the announcement's content specific will help.

Feedback: Instructors are encouraged to give as much personal feedback in grading as possible through text, audio, and video. Instructors are also encouraged to participate in the discussions.

Online Office Hours

Online office hours can be held weekly or by appointment. You can use one of three methods to do this after adding them to the left-hand menu (See the How Do I Reorder and Hide Course Navigation Links guide to learn how to add the following tabs).

- Use the Conferences tab to connect with students over webcam, screenshare, and audio tools via Big Blue Button.
- Use the Webex tab to connect with students over webcam, screenshare, and audio tools. You can learn how to use Webex via SLCC's Quick Start Guide.
- Use the Chat tab and monitor the chat space when you are sitting for office hours to let students know you are there, then take it away when finished. Be mindful, however, that the chat space is a public course board so if you choose to use this feature, be sure to warn students that it is a public chat board. Do not have confidential conversations in the space.

Monitoring the Discussions

The discussion boards need to be watched to make sure everyone is following netiquette guidelines (located in the Orientation Module). As mentioned earlier, teachers are encouraged to participate on these boards to show students you are reading them. Remember that there is also an ungraded open question discussion board for students to ask questions, and this will need to be checked frequently.

Instructor Response Time

Please respond to emails and phone calls within 24-48 hours, except weekends. Please respond to questions on the Any Questions (optional) discussion board within 24-48 hours, except weekends. Please return grades within one week of the assignment due date. Late work will not be subject to this policy.

Course Pace

The course is set up with the following parameters:

- Content locked: All course content is locked for the students until they complete the orientation module.
- Due Dates: The course content is divided into modules. Quizzes for each module are due on [day] at [time]. Discussion boards and writing assignments are due [day] at [time]. Please keep the consistent weekly due date schedule as student surveys have shown that this is a preferred schedule. If you teach an accelerated section of the course, this pace will be different.

- Working Ahead: After the orientation module is completed, the course allows students the flexibility to work ahead. They are required to meet deadlines for quizzes and assignments, but since all of the modules are unlocked, they can complete any of the modules ahead of time.

- Late Work: Students should plan ahead and get work done in advance as much as possible before leaving on vacation or when facing anticipated life events; however, the Late Work Policy is up to each instructor.

Accessibility

The materials in this course are accessible, or alternate accessible versions of the materials have been provided. The videos provided in the standard version course are captioned. If students need accommodations, please refer to the DRC Accommodation Procedures site. If you receive a letter of accommodations from the DRC to extend time on quizzes or exams, you can moderate the time.

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Help

Technical Support: Teachers/students get support for non-Canvas issues by calling 801-957-5555.

24/7 Canvas Support Hotline

- Students: 1-844-334-0397 (toll free) or 1-801-957-5125 Option 1
- Faculty/Administrators/Staff: 1-833-250-2077 (toll free) or 1-801-957-5125 Option 2

Course Support: Instructors teaching the standard version course can obtain support on general items in the course, such as philosophy, strategies, and methodology. For support, please contact:

Online Course Coordinator:

Email:

Office Phone:

Associate Dean:

Email:

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