March 30, 2020

A message from Linda Adler-Kassner, Faculty Director, Center for Innovative Teaching, Research, and Learning (CITRAL)
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Colleagues

Welcome to Spring quarter! This isn’t the term we expected - but it will be an adventure. We’ve done everything we can to prepare, and now we will jump in to see what happens. Be patient with yourself, patient with your students, and as patient as you can be with technologies. Remember that K-12 and postsecondary schools are returning this week, so systems everywhere will be put through their paces. Whatever happens, we can do it!

Extended Help Hours - 7 am - 7 pm for Weeks 1 and 2
If you need technical assistance, email either help@collaborate.ucsb.edu or help@id.ucsb.edu, or create a new help ticket at: UCSB Support Desk Collaboration. All three methods go to the same place and allow us to direct your question to the most appropriate person to address it the most quickly.

GauchoCast Block in GauchoSpace sites: If you already added the GauchoCast Block to your course site, you may see an error in red that says “Error retrieving GauchoCast course folder”. This is because the address of the server has changed with the migration to the cloud. This is easy to fix. Illustrated step-by-step directions are available HERE. There is also a link to the instructions in the top banner of GauchoSpace for your convenience.

Direct Links To or Embedded GauchoCast Videos: If you linked, or embedded, GauchoCast videos prior to the migration, you may need to update the links. The hostname for GauchoCast was “gauchocast.ucsb.edu” before the migration. The new hostname is “gauchocast.hosted.panopto.com”.  There are two ways to fix the links or embeds.  The first is just to edit the url directly and change “gauchocast.ucsb.edu” to “gauchocast.hosted.panopto.com”.  The second is to replace the old link altogether with a new link from the “Sharing” setting in GauchoCast, as you did originally.  The same applies to embedded videos.

Securing Zoom Sessions: There are reports of “trolls” hijacking Zoom sessions. Remember: Only share Zoom URLs on GauchoSpace or via email. Click here for advice on securing your Zoom meetings.

Pedagogical Consulting is Available! 
Join a conversation with your colleagues to discuss your Spring plans. Zoom sessions will be joined by instructors with extensive online teaching and learning experience. 

Mon, 3/30, 11-12,  Creative, Formative Assessment in Social Science/Humanities 
Mon, 3/30, 12-1, Creative, Formative Assessment in in STEM
Mon., 3/30, 1-2, LARGE Classes Q&A 
Mon., 3/30, 2-3, SMALL Classes Q&A 
Tues, 3/31, 3-4, Open drop-in Chat
Wed, 4/1, 11:30-12:30, Designing and Commenting on Writing Assignments

To access the Zoom links, please “register” through the Preparing to Teach Online GauchoSpace site. This site is publicly accessible and full of fantastic resources. 

Equipment Loans for Instruction: Instructional Development has a pool of document cameras, webcams, headphone microphones, and hopefully soon, laptops available to loan to faculty either as needed or for the quarter. To submit a request, or check on availability: Submit a help ticket to UCSB Support Desk Collaboration or email help@id.ucsb.edu.

File Sharing During a Zoom Session:  If you want/need to share a file or files with your students during a live Zoom session, you should:

  • Upload the file(s) to your GauchoSpace site, either as individual files, or aggregated in a folder.
  • Make sure that your students know that they should be logged into GauchoSpace before joining the Zoom session.
  • You should be logged into GauchoSpace before you start the Zoom session, and navigate to the part of your course site that contains the files you want to share.
  • When the session has started, make sure to tell your students to open the chat panel in Zoom.
  • As you need to share specific files, or a folder of files, for some activity you want students to engage in during the live session, simply copy the link from GauchoSpace, and paste it into the chat panel in Zoom.

Upcoming Gradescope Training Webinars: The Gradescope support staff will be offering two online webinars on using Gradescope this week:

New Users: Gradescope Training for Remote Assessments

  • This webinar will introduce Gradescope, help you set up a course, build an assignment, grade work and provide feedback, and share tips on how to conduct assessments remotely.
  • Tuesday, March 31, 10am PDT / 1pm EDT
  • Register Here

Existing Users: Delivering Assessments Remotely

  • This webinar will go into detail on the above workflows to meet your immediate needs for remote assessments.
  • Monday, March 30, 10am PDT / 1pm EDT
  • Register Here

There is also information on using Gradescope at: https://instructional-continuity.id.ucsb.edu/?page_id=51

We’ll close where we started: We can do this! Thank you all for your outstanding efforts and for the quarter to come. We’ll be back with more updates soon!

The Instructional Support Team