UPbeat

News for and about University of Portland faculty and staff.

Academic Technology Services & Innovations

Zoom: Now Available Via MyApps and Security Changes

Information Services has enabled Single Sign On (SSO) for Zoom.

  • If you have not already activated your UP Zoom account you can do so by following these step-by-step instructions. You can also use this process to convert a previous free or personally paid Pro account to the University plan, giving you access to the full features at no cost to you! Just follow any prompts to consolidate your account the next time you sign-in to Zoom.
  • If you have already been using Zoom Pro, you may now choose “Sign in with SSO” and use your standard UP email address and password to sign in to Zoom.

Additionally, Zoom has announced important updates to security settings mandating the use of either the waiting room or a meeting passcode. We will be enabling waiting rooms as a default setting on Friday, August 14. We highly encourage you to get familiar with and start using these features on your own ahead of the change to maximize the security for your meetings and class sessions. Visit Zoom’s support site to learn more.

For questions or troubleshooting, ATSI can be reached via email at atsi@up.edu.

 Zoom Pro Campus License for Fall 2020

As part of our initiative to support hybrid and online learning, information services is providing Zoom Pro accounts for all campus users. Instructors or others with a need to hold remote meetings or classes will have the option to use Zoom Pro or Microsoft Teams.

A few reminders:

Academic technology services & innovation will be administering Zoom at UP. Please contact atsi@up.edu with any questions or concerns.

 

 

 

Benjamin Kahn, M.S.Ed.

Acting Director | Technology Solutions Architect

Academic Technology Services & Innovation | Information Services

University of Portland

atsi@up.edu 

ATSI Presents Webinar Wednesdays, Moodle Mondays This Summer

Academic technology services & innovation will be offering a weekly series of “Wednesday Webinars” and “Moodle Mondays” to support faculty who are preparing for hybrid and online instruction this fall. UP faculty can find all session times, details, and RSVP forms on the Hybrid & Online Basecamp Moodle page.

  • Wed. 7/29 – Are you wary of “Zoom fatigue?” ATSI instructional designer Maria Erb will facilitate this discussion focused on strategies to beat the Zoom blues. We’ll discuss how well-planned asynchronous activities and a class structure that is designed for the online medium can help you create a great learning environment at distance.
  • Wed. 8/5 – With final exams slated to be online and de-densified classrooms on campus, please join ATSI for this session on administering assessments via the Moodle Quiz module. We’ll discuss how to create or import questions, review available quiz options, show how to meet accommodation needs, and review the Proctorio digital proctoring tool.
  • Moodle Mondays: Mondays starting 7/13 through 8/10 – ATSI technical support specialist Dawn Lloyd will host drop-in “office hours” style sessions for any Moodle questions, queries or how-tos. Faculty can drop in for one-on-one help on Moodle issues large or small.

For more information contact ATSI at atsi@up.edu.

Techsmith Relay Is Becoming Techsmith Knowmia!

Starting on Tuesday, June 16, you will notice some changes when logging in to TechSmith Relay, most notably a new name: Knowmia.

The good news, however, is that none of your video links or University of Portland’s TechSmith address (up.techsmithrelay.com) will be changing, so you will not need to update course pages or bookmark new links in order to access the items that you need. TechSmith Knowmia will also continue to be accessed by the same icon (simply called TechSmith) in your My Apps portal.

Where you will notice changes are the names and colors in places like email notifications, your landing page after logging in, and TechSmith’s own help pages. However, these will not affect the function of the product and you can continue using it as before. During their transition, TechSmith will also include the language “formerly TechSmith Relay” in communications and on sites to help alleviate any confusion.

Why are they changing the name you ask? In short, TechSmith hopes this name change will more fully reflect the purpose that their product has developed. Full information on the changes and the story behind the new name can be found in TechSmith’s announcement using this link.

Questions about using TechSmith? Contact academic technology services and innovation at atsi@up.edu.

Auto-Generated Captions Enabled on UP MediaSpace

Machine (auto-generated) captions have been enabled on any new videos uploaded to UP MediaSpace, according to Ben Kahn, academic technology services & innovation. Captions can be toggled on or off by viewers with the CC button on the video player. A video owner can edit or remove the auto-captions by navigating to Actions->Edit->Captions on their media page.

The accuracy of these auto-generated captions is fairly high and ATSI staff hope they will make videos usable for all, however, auto-captions are not at the accuracy level required for accessibility under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). As a reminder, if you are using video in a course or publishing a public video that needs to be accessible please contact atsi@up.edu to learn how to have a video asset captioned professionally.

Online Instruction Q&A Sessions

The Academic Technology Services and Innovation team will be hosting a variety of Q&A sessions during the week of May 4. These sessions will address basics as well as lessons learned from the Spring 2020 term. To see the schedule of sessions, please visit the ATSI Training Calendar.

Additional questions about materials or resources? Contact ATSI at atsi@up.edu.

Moodle Downtime, Fall Course Availability

The academic technology services and innovation office has scheduled a brief downtime for Moodle upgrades on Friday, May 8, from 9 to 10 a.m. We’ll be getting the latest Moodle fixes in place and getting Moodle ready for an online summer semester!

Also, the course creation process for fall semester is underway and should be completed by the time you are reading this. If you’d like to have course sections combined please see our Request a Course Merge Moodle Guide.

Would you like to consult with an instructional designer or get additional training on Moodle to plan for fall 2020? Please contact atsi@up.edu.

Online Experiences: ATSI Wants to Hear from You!

The spring 2020 semester has been full of new experiences, innovation, and incredible teamwork by our campus community to make the quick transition to help our students complete their coursework remotely. As the term comes to a close, the Academic Technology Services and Innovation team would like to take a moment to look back on the lessons learned. How did things go? What resources would be useful to future online learning? Did you have an “a-ha” moment that might be helpful for others? Share your thoughts with us via the Online Learning Feedback Survey.

Thoughts or questions not covered in the survey? ATSI is here for you! Send us a message anytime at atsi@up.edu.

Moodle Updates from ATSI

The following tips and updates are offered by academic technology services and innovation, according to Ben Kahn:

Assignment feedback annotation: Moodle has an ability for teachers to grade and annotate student papers from right in your web browser. With the large increase in assignment submissions in Moodle, the Annotate PDF feedback feature in Moodle assignments will now be opt-in instead of turned on by default. This will help ATSI manage our compute resources and make the grading process smoother for everyone, whether you are grading essays in your browser or using assignments to collect other types of files (like images, computer coding files, etc…). If you want to use the in-browser annotation feature, just enable it when setting up your assignment by checking “Annotate PDF” under the Feedback Types heading. See step 4 of the Moodle guide for adding assignments for detailed instructions.

Timezone settings: With many students now logging in to our courses from across the country or even the world, did you know anyone can change their timezone settings so that Moodle shows due dates, etc. in the correct time for them? It’s easy. Please share this Moodle Guide with any students who are learning at distance in other time zones. 

 As always, please reach out to atsi@up.edu with any questions.