Carmen

Quick Tips for a Temporary Move Online

Need some action steps to move your course content to a remote instruction format? Check out the tips below.

What do I do first?

Create the “Key Three” components of your course on Carmen. The Key Three components are:

  • Course syllabus
  • Course materials
  • Gradebook

Visit keepteaching.osu.edu for the official OSU information on how to move your course content to the online environment under emergency circumstances.

Do I have to move my lectures to an asynchronous format?

Please know that if you were previously conducting your class in an in-person, classroom format, you can achieve continuity by doing something very similar to what you were accustomed to doing in person. In other words, if you were previously lecturing or holding seminar during class time, your students still have your class time on their schedules and can attend class activities synchronously in Zoom. Please be sensitive to students who may not have reliable internet connections that support synchronous Zoom meetings or even long, recorded lectures, and refer them to ODEE’s “Keeplearning” site for information on how they might address bandwidth issues.

I’ve got the Key Three on Carmen now. Is there a checklist for other things I should be doing?

Quality Matters (QM), a leader in online course quality assurance, has published an excellent Emergency Remote Instruction (ERI) checklist that was specifically designed for this event where instruction needs to be delivered remotely due to emergency circumstances.  Please use the ERI checklist to guide your academic continuity efforts.

Are there any live workshops or help sessions I can attend?

Yes! The Office of Distance Education and eLearning (ODEE) is holding a series of online “Keep Teaching” webinars to show you how to make sure your students have the resources to complete their work while face-to-face classes are suspended. You will learn how to share your syllabus in Carmen, post necessary resources for students, set up your Carmen gradebook, and use Carmen Zoom to communicate with your students.

Where can I find some quick-start guides?

Carmen has an instructor’s guide where you can find tool-specific information.

Thank you to Sarah Rusnak, clinical instructor in nutrition in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, who created and shared several great quick-start guides with us.

What are my options for moving lecture online?

ODEE has published a brief document that breaks down the alternatives in two simple options: recorded lectures for asynchronous viewing or live lectures. Both options use Zoom.

What are the best tools to ensure continuity in teaching and learning?

Your go-to tools will be:

  • Carmen for your syllabus, announcements, documents, online class discussions, course assignment submissions.
  • Zoom for synchronous meetings that you were previously conducting in person (and Zoom can record meetings and lectures, also).
  • Panopto for pre-recorded lectures and demonstrations that you want your students to view asynchronously.

How can I give my students high-quality feedback online?

The Chronicle of Higher Education offers some excellent guidance on how to provide good feedback to students. Their recommendations are specific to the online environment, and they also apply to all instructional environments. This article covers a complicated topic very concisely and includes practical suggestions you can apply quickly, with topics such as:

  • Essentials
  • 4 Key Quality of Good Feedback
  • 2 Time-Saving Approaches
  • When to Use Audio or Video Tools for Feedback
  • When to Stick to Text Feedback
  • Tips on Getting Started
  • Common Pitfalls and Smart Solutions

Please read the article and let the CON-IT team know if you want to get started with one of the two great tools in Carmen to provide feedback (Rubrics and Video for feedback).

I’m not sure how to use Carmen or Zoom or Panopto. Can you provide resources?

Keepteaching.osu.edu has a great compilation of teaching resources that focus on Carmen and Zoom for teaching. The resources are organized by topics such as

  • Communication with students
  • Engaging and interacting with students
  • Sharing materials, content, or lectures
  • Student assignments

If you want to record lectures for asynchronous viewing and you need help with Panopto, plesase contact the CON-IT team at con-it@osu.edu. Please be as specific as possible in your email when you describe what you want to accomplish with your Panopto recording. Your detailed email will help us help you identify the best tool and use it efficiently.

How do I access Health Sciences Library Services?

Many library services are available even though the physical libraries are closed. A list of resources that may help you in your virtual classroom is available at https://hsl.osu.edu/about/press-room/news/hsl-resources-support-virtual-learning.

Librarians have also curated a variety of guides tailored to specific topics and disciplines. A full list of these guides are available athttps://hslguides.osu.edu/?b=g&d=a.

How do I get help?

The CON-IT team is here to assist you! Email us at con-it@osu.edu to let us know what you need. Provide as much detail as you are able about your teaching role and course context. This will help us respond to you quickly and efficiently. Include in your email at least the title and number of your course as it appears in Faculty Center, and be as specific as possible about the kind of assistance you will need.

Three Tips for Carmen Course Setup

We have only a few days between spring and summer semesters to set up summer Carmen courses, so it’s important to be as efficient as possible during course setup.  These tips might help.

  1.  Page History:  Your Carmen course pages might have beautiful pictures and text formatting that can be ruined with just a single swipe of a misplaced cursor.  If you save changes on a Carmen page that you later regret, there is a solution!  Access Page History at the three-vertical-dots menu on the right side of the page (see 1 in the image below).  You can go back to a previous version of the page where you last saved changes you actually want.  For more detailed instructions, see the Canvas documentation.
  2.  Auto-open File Viewer:  Sometimes, you want a file that is attached to a page in Carmen to open automatically for students so they view it in the Carmen page rather than needing to download it and open it as an attachment.  Enable the “Auto-Open for Inline Preview” option to make this happen.  See the Canvas documentation on this feature.
  3.  I often hear requests for image sources where instructors can find “free” pictures to use in their courses.  Keeping in mind that many pictures on the internet can be copied at no cost, images should always be cited just like written resources are.  If you aren’t sure whether you should use an image or not, please contact your CON-IT team or your copyright librarian for more information.  You can find images that are designated for reuse by others at the following sites:

OSU Photography – scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Browse signature photo gallery”; mainly OSU-themed and higher-education-themed pictures
OSU Digital Storytelling – suggests sites that enable searches for content labeled for reuse
Unsplash – beautiful images on general topics (very few medical pictures)
Pixabay – another site with general image topics
HSL image resources – specific medical images for teaching related purposes; these have very specific terms of use listed here

Many thanks to Sarah Rusnak in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences for sharing these resources and collaborating on these important Carmen tips!

Submit your Final Grades for Spring ’18

You’ll be submitting final grades for SP18 soon. If you need a reminder of how to submit final grades, or a step-by-step tutorial, we’ve provided some resources you might find helpful below. Please contact the CON IT instructional design team if you need additional assistance.

Additional resources

Overview of Canvas Peer Review for Group Work Evaluation

We have discussed peer review in Carmen/Canvas before both on this blog and in previous Flash Friday presentations.  If you would like to catch up on the most recent Flash Friday on Peer Review, click here.  This post will go over some details and instructions for using the Canvas Peer Review tool to allow your students to evaluate one another’s performance in group work.

Peer Review in Canvas was designed to allow students to review work submitted by peers, such as research papers and websites.  If you are interested in using Canvas for this type of peer review, check out this post on creating peer reviews and this post on viewing peer review comments.  Also note that there are other ways of getting peer review feedback, including Qualtrics surveys and having students use email.  Whatever method you decide on, the College of Nursing IT team can help you design and implement a peer review assignment.

Peer Reviews for Group Work

For a step-by-step guide to creating your own group work peer evaluation assignment, download this presentation: Using Canvas Peer Review for Group Peer Evaluations-1qlkjnb.

Hints and Tips

  • Peer reviews do not receive a grade—if you want to give a grade for how well a student peer reviewed another student, you have to create a separate (no submission) assignment in Canvas to allot grades.
    • Alternatively, the instructor can give a grade on the assignment being reviewed and call that the peer review grade—this does get confusing and will not work if you have two rubrics involved.
    • Grading completion of peer review vs. grading students’ work vs. grading students’ feedback can be confusing.  Feel free to consult IT about this!
  • Who can see the comments in a peer review?  Instructors and the student being reviewed can see all comments on their submission or performance. Peer reviewers can only see their own comments–the comments they made and the comments addressed directly to them.  Students cannot see comments made by students to other students. The “test student” in Canvas cannot complete peer reviews.
  • Saved by the Bell – Clicking the “bell” symbol next to a student’s name who has not yet completed a peer review sends an email to the student to complete the review along with a link to the review they need to complete. This is handy when students state they cannot find their peer review assignment. Peer reviews go directly to the person getting the review—instructors cannot read over or approve them beforehand
  • When “Saved by the Bell” doesn’t work—instructors can delete the assigned peer review and re-assign it. This will erase all record of the first peer review attempt.
  • When assigning peer reviews for evaluation of group members, there is no shortcut to have the group members evaluate each other— the instructor must manually add each student (this can be tedious).
  • Dates get wonky in peer reviews for performance rather than a submission (“due date” is really “start date”)— you will need to explain this to students so they understand that this will look like an overdue assignment. Also, changing the due dates or available dates after publishing the assignment may result in student difficulty in viewing and completing peer reviews.
  • There is no “self-review” option.  If you want your students reviewing their own work, you’ll have to do this separately or on a different platform.
    • Workaround: you could have students leave a comment on their own peer review submission page.
  • Students may be able to go back in and change rubric scores after the review period, but they cannot edit or delete comments.

If you would like help setting up a peer-to-peer evaluation of group work, please contact us at CON-IT@osu.edu

Resources for Carmen Courses

Are you working on your Carmen course content for the upcoming semester? The Office of Distance Education and eLearning has some useful templates and information you might be interested in.  Check these out!

Review an online course

This is an online form you can use for a self-evaluation of your online course or ask a peer to use to provide feedback for you.  It is more concise than the Quality Matters rubric and covers teaching practices of individual instructors. It can also be used as a general guideline for knowing what makes an online course and an online instructor “good.”

Log in to Carmen first in order to access the Canvas Commons resources below.

Student Resources at Ohio State

Provide information to your students about services related to academic success, tech help, community resources, and health.  This resource imports as a Content Page in your Carmen course and can be placed in Modules.

Student Online Readiness Module

Help your students understand what the expectations are in online learning.  Keep the parts of the module you like and delete the rest.

Template for a fully online course

This template is a good place to begin in Carmen with any online course development, and it also serves as a good model for revision or reorganization of existing fully online courses.  You’ll be asked to log in with your university credentials to view this template. If you want to see it in action in your own view of Carmen, create a master course, and import the template into it.

Looking for more Carmen templates?

Try going to Canvas Commons, uncheck the “Show Public Resources” button, and enter the terms OSU Carmen in the search field.  You’ll find templates from a basic homepage to a resource-heavy course.  Browse the available course models and see if one seems right for you.  Create as many master courses as you need to import the templates you are interested in.

Creating a Self-Grading Quiz on H5P

In a previous entry, you learned how to create a set of flashcards on H5P. Flashcards are an excellent study tool, but some students may simply memorize the cards themselves rather than actually learning the underlying concepts. For that reason, an excellent tool to reinforce the material on the flashcards is the self-grading quiz. Below is an example quiz based on this flashcard set:

To create an interactive quiz of your own, go to the H5P content creation screen and select “single choice set” from the drop down menu.

The first dialogue box will set the title for the entire quiz.

In these dialogue boxes, you will fill out the question and up to four possible answers. The form will default to two possible answers. You must click the grey “add answer” button to create new blank answer dialogue boxes. It is important to note that the first dialogue box is for the answer that you want the quiz to grade as correct. It is also important to note that the quiz will randomize the order of all four possible answers. This will be important later.

Question 5 is an important example because I chose to include an “all of the above” style answer. However, it is important to note that even though this answer is the last one on the form, it will not necessarily appear as the last question within that answer set (eg: it could appear answer 1, 2, 3, all of the above OR 1, all of the above, 3, 4 etc.). For this reason, you should choose a wording similar to “all answers are acceptable” and avoid answers that make reference to other answers in terms of their location within the answer set.

This image shows the grade ranges you can choose. This section starts relatively blank. To create the grade ranges for this quiz, I clicked the blue “add range button” until there was one grade range per question, then clicked the white “distribute evenly button.” However, If you choose to, you can manually adjust the grade ranges. The text boxes next to each grade range are the messages that will appear if a student receives a given score.

In these final steps you can further customize the behavior of the quiz and the messages and prompts that appear on the quiz. For this tutorial, these settings have been left as default, however I encourage you to play with these settings and contact CON IT for any additional assistance you may need. As with other content on H5P, you can edit the download, embed, and copyright buttons that will appear. Once you are happy with your quiz, click the pink save button. If you followed these directions, you should end up with a quiz identical to the one at the beginning of this blog post. Once you have completed your quiz, it can be embedded into Carmen or into your u.osu blog for use as a study tool. For help configuring your quiz, or assistance in implementing an H5P quiz in your classes or study groups, please contact CON IT for additional assistance.

Hiding the Nearpod Navigation Link in Carmen

Many of you may have noticed a new navigation link on the left side of your Carmen courses called “Nearpod.” For those who use Nearpod in their classrooms, this may be a great addition to your course. However, if your students don’t need the Nearpod navigation link, there is an easy way to hide it.

The Nearpod navigation link is currently showing by default on the left-sided navigation on all College of Nursing Carmen courses, but it can be hidden if it is not necessary for your course.

 

If you want to hide this navigation link, the first step is to click “Settings.”

 

Next, click the “Navigation” tab.

 

Here, you can see that there are two sections where navigation links can be sorted. The top section is for navigation links that you want to be viewed by students. The bottom section is for navigation links that you want to hide from students. Since Nearpod is in the top  section, it is currently able to be viewed from the student perspective.

 

Left click on the Nearpod box and drag it down to the lower set of navigation links. Notice the note in the Nearpod box now, “Page disabled, wont appear in navigation.” This verifies that students will no longer be able to see this navigation link.

 

Scroll to the bottom of the page and click “SAVE.”

 

The Nearpod navigation link is now hidden and will no longer show up on the left navigation menu.

You can hide any of the unused or distracting navigation links in your Carmen course using the method described above. If you have questions or need assistance with your navigation links in Carmen, contact the CON IT team.

Creating Flashcards on H5P

The previous blog entry showed how to make a basic accordion style review tool on H5P. This entry will teach you how to use H5P to create online flashcards. The online flashcard tool is a great way to present a large amount of study material, as long as the material requires only a brief explanation or rationale. The process is a bit more complex than the accordion style list, but the outcome is much more customizable. Below is an example flashcard set to study commonly used medical abbreviations. Most of these cards are simply text on both sides. Cards 3 and 4 give examples of how to use audio and image clues on a flashcard set.

To create a flashcard set, start at the H5P content screen (you will need to create a free account) and select “dialog cards” from the drop down menu.

These first dialogue boxes will set the title for your project, the title that appears at the top of the card pile, and the general instructions for the card pile.

The first dialogue box for your card will determine what shows on the front of the card. The second dialogue box shows what will appear on the back of your card. Initially, you will only have one blank card. To add more cards, you must click the blue “add dialog” button on the left menu.

Card 3 is unique in that I added an audio clue to the card. To do this, scroll down until you see the section for “audio files” then click on the grey rectangle to upload your audio file. You can upload audio files with a URL or from uploading a saved MP3 from your computer. It’s also possible to record your own audio files to upload. It’s important to be aware of any copyrights your file may have, and to cite them properly. Citations will appear in the “Rights of Use” button on your flashcard set.

Card 4 is unique because it has a visual clue that appears on the card (images will appear on the front and back of the card). Images are uploaded just like audio files, except you will upload images under the “image” section. Just like audio files, be aware of the copyrights your image may have and cite them properly.

At the bottom of the page you will have the option to further edit actions and behaviors of the card deck. For this tutorial I left those options as default, but I encourage you to play with them and contact CON IT for any additional assistance you may need. You will also have the option of editing what buttons will appear on the final flash card deck. Once you are satisfied with your flashcard deck, click the pink “save” button. If you followed the directions posted here, you should end up with a deck identical to the one at the top of this blog post. For help configuring your deck, or assistance in implementing flashcards in your classes or study groups, please contact CON IT for additional assistance.

 

 

An Introduction to Using H5P

In this post, I will show you how to create an accordion list, one of the many tools on H5P. Below is an example I created of an accordion to review physiology. In this example, the student is presented with a question  to consider, and then the student can double check their answer by clicking on the accordion to reveal more information. One of the benefits of an accordion list is that it can organize and present broad answers with a lot of information. Accordion lists can be embedded into Carmen to condense large chunks of information and can be given to students as an assignment to complete or as a study guide. Accordion lists are especially useful in organizing long blocks of text into digestible pieces of information, as in complicated assignment instructions or longer discussion postings. Please try out the interactive accordion below:

The creation of an accordion list is quite simple. Follow this link  to get to H5P’s content creation page (you will also need to create a free account). Once there, click on the bar in the center of the page labeled “select content type,” and “accordion” will be the first choice. After selecting “accordion” and clicking the blue “use” button, you will be presented with a blank template. In the image below I have given the list the title “Physiology Review.” The current template has one blank form. To create a second blank form, you will need to hit the blue “add panel” button (circled in red).

The following images shows how I filled out the forms to create the interactive example at the top of the page (click on the image for a larger view):

Following these steps will create an accordion list identical to the one you see at the top of this blog post. All that’s left is to finalize the list at the bottom of the page:

 

If you want to add more content, you can continue to add more panels by clicking the blue “add panel” button. If you want to edit the display buttons on your accordion list, you can do so with the check boxes. If you are finished and want to see the completed list, click the pink “save” button.

Saving will take you to a finalized version of your accordion list. If you want to make edits to your list, you can do so by clicking the “edit” button. If you want to download a copy of your list or get the embed code, you can do so by clicking the respective buttons. If you don’t want the option to have download or embed buttons, you can remove them by deselecting the check boxes on the previous screen. For assistance using the H5P accordion list in your classroom, please contact the CON IT Department for support.

Multiple Choice vs. Multiple Answer

The “Quizzes” tool in Canvas is a easy way to allow students to take a quiz or survey online. Not only is this feature easy to use, it also comes with a large number of  features to customize a quiz to fit your exact needs. You can make it a quiz or a survey, a graded or a practice quiz, and even add a variety of question types such as matching and true/false.

With 12 different question types to choose from, there may be some confusion as to which question type does what. Two very similar sounding types are “Multiple Choice” and “Multiple Answer.” Although they sound the same, they produce very different types of questions. Below is a tutorial on how each of these question types work.

Multiple Choice vs. Multiple Answer tutorial

Go to the quizzes tab in Canvas and select “+ QUIZ.”

 

Select the “Questions” tab.

 

Select “+ NEW QUESTION.”

 

Here you can select which type of question you want. In this tutorial, we will select “Multiple Choice.”

 

Type your quiz question into the text box.

 

Type your possible answers into the texts boxes.

 

Select “UPDATE QUESTION.”

 

Select “+ NEW QUESTION” again. This time instead of selecting “Multiple Choice,” we are going to select “Multiple Answers.”

 

Note the warning above the text box. “This question will have a checkbox next to each answer and the student must select ALL the answers you mark as correct.”  Do not select this question type if you only have one correct answer in your question. For questions with only one correct answer, use “Multiple Choice.” For questions where you want the student to select more than one correct answer, use “Multiple Answer.”

 

Type your quiz question into the text box.

 

To turn a “Possible Answer” into a “Correct Answer,” click the arrow next to the answer. Notice if you were in a “Multiple Choice” question, the “Correct Answer” would simply move to that question row. You cannot have more than one correct answer in “Multiple Choice.”

 

Type in your possible answers into the text boxes. Notice since a net and volleyball are both needed for a volleyball game, both answers are marked as correct.

 

Select “UPDATE QUESTION.”

 

This is what the quiz questions will look like from the student perspective. Notice “Multiple Choice” questions have circles (also called radio buttons) next to the answers while “Multiple Answer” questions have squares (also called checkboxes).

If a student sees a question with squares (checkboxes) by the answers, they will assume more than one answer choice is possibly correct and can choose more than one answer. This circle and square convention holds true across quizzes and survey created in many different applications, including Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, and the NCLEX.  This is why it is important to only use “Multiple Answer” questions on your quizzes if you want the student to believe that more than one answer may be correct.

 

Notice “Multiple Choice” questions will only allow the student to select one answer while “Multiple Answer” questions will allow the student to select several answers.