May 6, 2020

This message is distributed to All-Instructors and SBADM-L.  (Click here to view description of distribution groups.)  

The following is being sent on behalf of the Instructional Support Team
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Congratulations! We’re in week six of spring quarter! Keep up the great work!

Join us for a Coffee Break on Friday, May 8, 10-11 am
Stop in to say hello, talk with others, and share your experiences! No RSVP required – stay as long (or short) as you’d like. Mindy Colin will host. https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/780255627 

What is our students' experience of Spring 2020?
Remote Learning Survey results webinar: Thursday, May 14, 1-2pm.
Zoom link: https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/96656054826

Join Undergraduate Education, Institutional Research, and Student Affairs for a webinar presentation of a first-pass analysis of the UCSB undergraduate student experience survey administered in week four of Spring 2020 and completed by ~1600 students. The webinar will include an overview of the findings, major themes and implications for instruction and student support.

Panopto Captioning: There appears to be a free, AI-based captioning option in Panopto now that we are on the cloud service. While it is free, it is strictly machine-based transcription with a very high degree of variability in the accuracy of the transcript. If faculty want/students need, high accuracy transcripts in one pass with no intervention from the faculty, they should still request transcripts via ID to be sent to Verbit.ai. If a less accurate transcript is useful, or if the faculty/TA have the time to correct the transcript, then this might be a reasonable solution. To access the AI captioning:

  • Log in to GauchoCast
  • Click “Edit” for the video that you want to get the AI caption
  • On the left side of the screen click he “Captions” link
  • Click the “Import captions” popup menu
  • If the only choice is “Upload or request captions”, the AI caption has not yet been processed, so exit editing and plan to come back an hour or so later.
  • If there is a choice “Import automatic captions” available, choose that.  You can then either click the green “Apply” button to save the transcript with the video, or you can edit the transcript and then hit Apply to save.
     

Zoom Meeting Time-Outs: If you have an open Zoom meeting for online office hours, you may have run into a problem where the meeting automatically terminates after 40 minutes of inactivity. This is normal behavior, there is no way to override the behavior, but there is a work-around. If you have a Zoom meeting open, but no one has joined the meeting, the meeting will stay open for 24 hours. If someone has joined the meeting and then left, the meeting will terminate after 40 minutes of no activity. To avoid the automatic termination, after someone has left the meeting, and if no one else is in the waiting room, end the meeting and then restart it.  That will restart the 24-hour clock for the meeting until someone joins or you manually end the meeting.

Google Assignment Works With Google Sheets and Slides:  Google Assignment is now integrated with GauchoSpace. Students can complete writing assignments in Google docs; instructors and/or TAs can insert comments and grades in the same document. Google Assignment is not limited to Google Docs, however.  If you have student assignments that rely on spreadsheet work or developing slide presentations, you can also use Google Assignment for submitting Google Sheets and Slides based assignments that take advantage of the same rubric, comment, and grading tools that work for Google Docs.


That’s it for now — have a great remainder of the week!


The Instructional Support Team