Distance Education Newsletter

It's the time of year when we start to think about sharing good food with the people we care about. Families and friends gather together around a table laden with delicious offerings, a culinary manifestation of love. It may be harder this year to gather, so maybe we can show our caring by sharing recipes, instead. Click on the button below to share your favorite holiday recipe, and to try out your colleagues' favorite recipes. And while we're at it, let's share some virtual treats with our online community of students and colleagues, too. Let's ensure a season of sharing with a warm smile, a word of encouragement, or an acknowledgement of a job well done.

Every CES survey for Kapi‘olani courses consists of seven campus-level questions plus department-level questions (check with your department). Please note that there are no open-ended questions unless added by the instructor or the department. If you are looking for qualitative feedback from your students, you can add your own questions to your surveys now until Dec. 2. Please contact ecafe-kcc@lists.hawaii.edu if you need assistance.

NOTE: A new version of CES was released in September 2021. According to ITS, “The software frameworks used by CES have been upgraded and required major changes to the backend of the application.” For most of us, the change will seem minor - a few menus may look different, however, the following important changes should be noted:

• Non-traditional surveys are now by default open to students for 7 days, just like the traditional surveys. The instructors can still extend and re-open the surveys. Email notifications to the students regarding the non-traditional surveys are automatically sent on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email notifications to instructors with upcoming non-traditional surveys are sent out on Monday of the week before the survey opens to the students, so the instructor can add questions to the upcoming survey if desired. IMPORTANT NOTE: Don’t extend the last day of survey by more than 7 days, as this new rule will reclose your survey until the start of the 7-day period.
• Starting in Fall 2021, CES will create one survey for each instructor for every course in Banner. Previously, CES created one survey per course and co-instructors had to ‘share’ the survey. While each instructor now has his/her own survey where he/she can select questions, the students will only see one survey per course. If a course has more than one instructor, the student view of the survey will have multiple sections, one section per instructor followed by the questions set by the campus/college/division/department and subject.
  

ITS has also created a new set of how-to documentations (requires logging into your hawaii.edu Google account). Please share this information widely, and submit your requests or questions on the CES Request Assistance page.

Source: UH ITS Course Evaluation System Administrator, September 29, 2021

If you use Laulima’s discussions or forums in your classes, adding an avatar for the profile picture is a nice way to break the online ice and both students and instructors can project their personalities. Encourage students to create their avatars in one of several ways including Bitmoji, iPhone’s Memoji or Avatar Maker. An avatar can be added to the Laulima profile by logging into Laulima. Then, go to Home (the default tab when logging in) and profile. In the my profile tab hover over the placeholder image then click on change picture, choose file, then hit upload.

Are Padlet Folks telling you that you’ve reached the limit of 3 Padlets? It’s very likely that you are forgetting to log into your ​Kapiʻolani Padlet account. Be sure to use the correct URL so you and your learners can take full advantage of our subscription:

• ​kapiolani.padlet.org - Backpack (Pro) subscription for Kapi‘olani faculty and staff and will allow you to make unlimited number of Padlets

• padlet.com - free for up to 3 Padlets

Want to import your padlets to your Backpack account? See the 3 simple steps to consolidate all your padlets into one account.

Don’t have an account with us? Contact us at celtt@hawaii.edu.

Time Insights

Does it seem like you are spending endless hours in Zoom meetings? If you use Google Calendar to schedule and track your time, try out "Time Insights" -- found in the left pane of your Google Calendar -- to find out how you spend your time in meetings.

Focus Time (Coming Soon)

This month, Google will be rolling out a new Google Calendar entry type, Focus time, so you can block out and protect your time for heads-down individual work. Similar to the Out of office event type, focus time will have a different appearance on your calendar and includes the option to automatically decline conflicting events.

Why it’s important

With the changes to our working environments in the past year, having more chats and meetings make it more difficult for people to carve out time for their core individual work. With the new focus time feature, it will be easier to create dedicated time for thinking and core work.

Additional details

You can choose to assign a new color to have your focus time have a different visibility from your events and other meetings. Additionally, your scheduled focus time will also be tracked in your Time Insights.

Join instructional designers from across the UH system for a synchronous professional development opportunity to learn more about how to work smarter (not harder) with Google Docs. This webinar is designed to offer something for everyone, no matter your role or experience level with Google Docs. You will get an opportunity to participate in a 30-min breakout session facilitated by an instructional designer focusing on one or two of the following subjects.

• Create & Edit Your Document

• Format Your Document

• Print, Publish or Change Page Settings

• Collaborate on Your Document

• Spell-check, Shortcuts & Tools

• Insert Items (image, video, table, equations, etc)

• Productivity & Efficiency Tips (voice typing, offline viewing, etc)

Date: November 9, 2021 | Tuesday

Time: 10:30 – 11:30 AM

Register TODAY!

Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to ask any questions related to Google Docs that bother you the most and/or share your success stories to help inspire and uplift your colleagues.

Interested but can’t make it? No worries. We will be recording the entire webinar including the breakout sessions. Please be sure to register in order to receive a follow-up email along with access to the recording when it’s ready.

Presenters:

• Hui-Ya (Laura) Chuang, UH Online Innovation Center

• Ross Egloria, Honolulu Community College

• Laureen Kodani, UH Maui College

• Matt Parcon, UH Online Innovation Center

• Youxin Zhang, Kapi‘olani Community College

Cook with Chancellor Lui as he speaks about cultural practice in terms of campus relationships. Hōkūlani Holt shares mo'olelo of ulu.

• Wednesday, November 24
• 3:00 - 4:30 pm
• Zoom link: http://go.hawaii.edu/yGV
• Password: ulu

Hosted by Maui College; for more information, contact Joyce Yamada yamadajo@hawaii.edu.

November 8 - 12, 6:00am - 9:45am HST

Register for USDLA's free conference and listen to sessions while you're getting ready for work in the morning. Sessions that look promising include:

• Keynote: Online Learning: What Was, What Is, and What Could Be Dr. Kelvin Thompson, Exec.Dir., Center for Distributed Learning, UCF (also cohost of TOPcast)--M 11/8, 6:00-6:45am HST
• Discussion Panel with Higher Education Leaders--W 11/10, 6:00-6:45am HST
• Flex-mode: Distance Hands-on Skills Training for Safe-care of Human Subjects (presented by Nursing faculty)--W 11/10, 8:00-8:45am HST
• Psychological Safety and Higher Ed--Th 11/11, 6:00-6:45am HST
• The Future of Academic Integrity: Privacy, Proctoring, and Protection in 2040--F 11/12, 8:00-8:45am HST

Check out the complete conference schedule to see if any other sessions pique your interest.

Currently, Kapi‘olani CC has a subscription with Go2Knowledge, which offers Kap‘olani CC faculty and staff free access to dozens of Innovative Educators webinars, both live and on demand (pre-recorded). Many of them are quite good! Here's a sampling to pique your interest:

Upcoming live webinars:

• Creating Meaningful Connections Online: Practical Strategies to Build a Community of Learners (Wednesday 11/3, 7:00 - 8:00 am HST)

• Pandemic Proctoring: Practical Approaches For Hybrid Proctoring (Wednesday 11/10, 10:00 - 11:00 am HST)

• Practical Strategies For Supervisors: Helping Staff Who Are Experiencing Burnout or Compassion Fatigue (Friday 11/12, 7:00 - 8:00 am HST)

Recently-added on demand webinars:

• How to Increase Engagement during Synchronous Online Sessions (60 min)

• Online Student Support: Why Returning to Pre-Pandemic Service Models Won’t Work (60 min)

• Creating Inclusive Classroom Environments: Addressing Implicit Bias, Microaggressions & Exclusion (60 min)

And many, many more. Sign up at Kapi‘olani CC's G2K account page and browse through the offerings.

• Tenure for Teachers Only (article, Inside Higher Ed)

Hawaii's tenure controversy has made the national news: "University of Hawai‘i is considering major changes to its tenure system, including limiting tenure to instructional faculty only, tying hires and tenure to enrollment and unit 'success,' and involving the administration in posttenure review."

• Report: Most Learners Have Found They Like Online Learning (article, Campus Technology)

According to a comprehensive nation-wide survey, 59% of online students were motivated to learn online by the pandemic, and 51% of them now feel more positively about online learning. Asynchronous is preferred over synchronous (68% vs. 32%). Several other interesting nuances are discussed.

• Future of College Will Involve Fewer Professors (article, The Conversation)

The author forecasts that the rise of artificial intelligence, the erosion of academic tenure, and pedagogical & technological innovations might lead to fewer faculty needed to teach face-to-face.

• College Enrollments Continue to Drop this Fall (article, Inside Higher Ed)

While some institutions have seen some enrollment recovery this Fall (elite colleges and 2-year institutions), others continue to struggle.

• Use Revise and Resubmit Instead of Extra Credit (article, Faculty Focus)

Extra credit sends a wrong message that the grade is the point of education, not the learning. Find out how this author’s revise-and-resubmit strategies kept his students motivated and focused on learning, while minimizing added workload for the teacher.

• DE Newsletter - October 2021
• DE Newsletter - September 2021
• DE Newsletter - August 2021
• DE Newsletter - July 2021
• DE Newsletter - June 2021
• DE Newsletter - May 2021
• DE Newsletter - April 2021
• DE Newsletter - March 2021
• DE Newsletter - February 2021
• DE Newsletter - January 2021
• DE Newsletter - December 2020