2021 Newsletter - October
The CIDI monthly newsletter to USU instructors shares the latest news teaching tips, and technology updates to help you succeed as a teacher.
Now is a great time to get to know who your instructional designers are and how they can help you with your current and upcoming courses. You can see the list of designers, by college, here.
How Your CIDI Instructional Designer Can Help
- Training: Learn more about teaching tools like Canvas, plus teaching techniques for any format.
- Design/Development Help: CIDI will help you tackle your new course developments, tailored to your needs. We can help you identify the best activities, course format, and assist hands-on by building a great user experience in Canvas. Teachers who work with an instructional designer regularly see improved student evaluation results!
- Analysis: Instructional designers can help you collect and interpret teaching data for your own documentation and improvement or for research purposes.
- Direction: CIDI is committed to helping you find help wherever you may need it. If you need help but aren’t sure where to start, see if we can help point you in the right direction—or help you on the spot.
- Troubleshooting: Get help figuring out why a teaching tool or method isn’t working the way you want it to. For urgent or minor issues, contact cidi@usu.edu or 435.797.9506. Your department’s designers are also available to take deeper dives into problems that are less urgent.
Set up an appointment with me or another designer.
Upcoming Training Opportunities
- 10/15 at 1:30pm · Shortcuts and Tools to Take Your Canvas Course to the Next Level
- 10/19 at 10:30am · Writing Outcomes for Assessment
- 10/20 at 11:00am · Shortcuts and Tools to Take Your Canvas Course to the Next Level
- 10/21 at 1:30pm · Building Interactive Learning Activities with Atomic Assessments
- 10/22 at 2:30pm · How Online Can Make You Better Face-to-Face
- 10/26 at 2:00pm · ETE Seminar: A new normal in inclusive, usable online learning experiences
- 10/28 at 1:30pm · Importing and Updating Your Course for the New Semester
- 11/1 at 10:00am · Managing Multiple Sections with Blueprint Courses
- 11/2 at 2:00pm · Online Teaching Tips
- 11/5 at 3:00pm · Hybrid Face-to-Face Teaching Tips
- 11/10 at 1:00pm · Improve the Canvas Student Experience
- 11/12 at 11:00am · Blueprint Courses
- 11/12 at 11:30am · How to Quickly Create a Beautiful Canvas Course
On-Demand Training Resources
- Online Teaching Orientation and Digital Badge
- 2021 Canvas conference (InstructureCon) session archives
- Open Access Book Series · Resilient Pedagogy
Teaching Tools and Updates
- This weekend: A new Canvas release will allow you to search for assignment columns in the gradebook in addition to student names. You will also be able to set notification preferences per-course.
- In recent releases: Outcome management became easier.
- Check out the USU Instructors group on the new my.usu.edu portal.
Teaching Tip Highlights
Ready for final projects? Dr. Kristy Bloxham from USU’s ITLS department shares strategies on managing group work.
Do you have extra, unused files in your course? You can use the TidyUP tool in your Canvas course to cleanup your course files or reach out to CIDI for help.
Contact CIDI
For on-demand support with teaching technologies, contact CIDI at cidi@usu.edu, via chat, or at 435.797.9506. Schedule an appointment with an instructional designer to get help making your courses more engaging, usable, and accessible.