Welcome to the Spring semester to all our instructors and staff! CCAPS Academic Technology and Design is very happy to start a new academic year and continue our efforts to provide technological, media enriched, and pedagogical assistance for CCAPS courses.

Important Reminders

As a reminder, ATD opens courses for online/blended instructors one week before the start of the semester to allow students to acclimate to the online environment.

  • Jan 11 @ Noon: ATD Team members will open Fully Online and Blended one week prior to semester start to provide time to acclimate to the online environment. Don’t forget to send your welcome messages this week!
  • Communicating with your students: It is a best practice to contact your students for the first time via MyU → Key Links → Faculty Center → Class Roster. Provide them with a link to the Canvas course site. Encourage students to update Canvas notification preferences to receive your Announcements throughout the semester.
  • Jan 18: 14 week UMN Courses officially begin. Face-to-face and Internship instructors should publish their courses by this date. How do I publish a course? provides directions if it’s your first time opening your course to students. 
  • UMN COVID-19 Updates: UMN Twin Cities continues to monitor the Covid-19 situation on campus and in the surrounding area. For the most up-to-date information on policies, visit UMN’s COVID-19 response site (Web page no longer exists, reference left for posterity) which includes information on the university face-covering policy, prevention and well-being, and on-campus cases.
  • Academic Calendar: The official OneStop Dates and Deadlines site lists all important dates for the Twin Cities campuses.
     

Teaching Tips

Faculty Development Day

The Spring Faculty Development day will take place on January 13, 2022 from 12:30 p.m. - 4:15 p.m. Join us to learn more about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and to meet with the CCAPS-ATD teaching community. Recordings of Faculty Development Day sessions will be available after the event.

Kaltura and Mediaspace in Canvas

ATD highly recommends using Kaltura videos to enhance your virtual presence in your Canvas course sites. Kaltura videos can be used to welcome students to the course or modules, to create presentations on course content, or to have students interact with one another via video. Explore our Introduction to Kaltura and Mediaspace to find out how you can leverage this versatile tool in your course!

ATD Highlight

Thank you to all the faculty and staff who participated in the Academic Technology and Design Survey! We received a 15% response rate across both program leadership and instructors that provided insight into how we can improve our services and communication to best serve the college. ATD is currently working on a process improvement project that incorporates your feedback; stay tuned for more news!