At CIDI, we are ever grateful for the excellent faculty, staff, and students we get to work with every day. We have a few items to share that we hope will prove helpful.

Faculty Finals Hideaway, Dec. 14-16 at DE 106

Wednesday through Friday of finals week (Dec. 14-16), you are invited to the Classroom Innovation Lab at the Distance Education building to "hide away" for a time while you wrap up your grades. You will find refreshments, help with Canvas, and a chance to play with the lab's virtual reality headsets, e-glass, and more. We hope to see you there!

• Location: DE 106 (Classroom Innovation Lab)
• Open room hours: 8am-5pm, Dec. 14-16
• Canvas support hours: 10am-4pm.
• Did we mention free food?

Canvas tip: Message All Students Within a Grade Range

On the homepage of your Canvas course, click the New Analytics button to open a dashboard of course data. Next, click the envelope icon that appears beside the search bar. This opens a feature with which you can "Message students who" are receiving scores within a certain range. Once you define the grade range, Canvas allows you to send a blind-carbon-copied message to the students whose scores fall within that range. You also have the option remove certain students from the list of message recipients. For more information, see the Canvas Guides tutorial on messaging students from the New Analytics tool.

5 Ways to Encourage Students to Prepare for Class

Getting students to read or watch material before class can be a challenge. Adam M. Persky, from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, suggests the following five tips, which produce the acronym RAISE:

Reason: In class, provide more than just a rehash of the pre-class material. Use class time to help students better process and apply the material.
Accountability: Hold students accountable for preparation using quizzes, Q&A, discussion, and other activities. 
Interaction: Plan interactive activities such as case studies and group work that engage students with the content.
Student-Friendly: Make sure pre-class material is appropriate for the students' level—not over their heads with jargon.
Efficient: Try to make accessing the content as efficient as possible for students. Keep in mind that most students read at about 140-200 words per minute. About 70% watch their lecture videos at 1.5x speed or higher, according to Fall 2022 course video playback data for USU.

SOURCE: Persky, A. (2012). Pocket-Based Guide for Evidence-Based Instruction. Educational Blueprints, LLC.

---

Technology Updates

• Course Copy Tutorial: For a reminder of how to copy course content into your Spring course, see the Canvas Guide for copying content.
• Extended availability of Classic Canvas Quizzes: The Canvas product team has announced that the "classic" Canvas quiz tool will, for now, remain available without a set deadline for users to transition to the new quiz tool. Previously, the transition to the new tool was to be required by July 2024. The product team will continue to develop the new quiz tool with the goal of making it the most compelling option for Canvas users.

---

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.

---