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 10, 2023 @ 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!
     
  • Jan 17, 2023: 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.
     
  • Onboarding Course: CCAPS ATD offers a short course that includes an overview of Canvas and information on grading, communicating, and guiding your students throughout the semester as well as access to just-in-time instructional resources. While intended for new instructors, any instructor wishing to refresh their knowledge is welcome to self-enroll to join the Teaching Online for CCAPS Spring ‘23 Cohort. The course runs from Jan 10 - Jan 27.
     
  • 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.

    We also recommend using the Announcements section to communicate with your students throughout the semester. This is a great way to give feedback on the previous Module’s work, make quick announcements, or supplement evergreen course resources.
     
  • Academic Calendar: The official OneStop Dates and Deadlines site lists all important dates for the Twin Cities campuses.

Teaching Tips

Images and Accessibility

In our last Highlights email we introduced our Digital Accessibility series. In this Highlight we are showcasing image accessibility. When should you use (or not use) images? How do you write effective alternate text? Check our Images and Accessibility article!

Faculty Development Day

CCAPS will host our bi-annual Faculty Development Day on Jan 10. Couldn’t make it? Checkout the Canvas link above to explore the presentation archive! Topics for this FDD include CCAPS’ continued focus on DEI in the classroom.

ATD Highlight

Check out Articulate Rise 360 in a course made using the software by Carol Klempka! Comes with video interviewing our instructors Carol Kelpmka and Carol Rinkoff. You can find a link to the Rise 360 module in the article Articulate Rise 360 Module Example.