Online goes international in this issue of Distance Up Close. The Office of Distance Learning media production team partnered recently with the FSU Dedman College of Hospitality on a sojourn to Mexico to shoot video for an online course on tequila and agave spirits. The course will be available in Spring 2023 as part of the college's RNDC Certificate in Beverage Management. The photo above features the agave fields at the Jose Cuervo distillery in Tequila, Mexico.

Closer to home, we extend congratulations to the 2021-2022 winners of the FSU Excellence in Online Teaching award. In a four-part series, the honorees will share instructional strategies for teaching in the online environment. Read below for insights from Charla Perdue of the FSU College of Applied Studies.

On the tools and technology front, this issue takes a closer look at a new student engagement tool and equipment for online video production. You can also read about the latest New Quizzes features in the recent Canvas release notes. To ensure that you’re prepared for the ongoing transition to New Quizzes, we’re offering several opportunities this summer for webinar training on the tool.

We’re excited to introduce a new section to the newsletter: Quality Quick Tips, which provides guidance on incorporating standards from the Quality Matters rubric into your online course. Whether you’re creating a course intro video, developing a measurable objective, or engaging your students, the tips can help you enrich your course with quality.

Enjoy the summer! And remember that we’re always here to help, no matter the season.

Mexico Trip is a Spirited Affair

From agave fields to renowned distilleries, faculty and staff from the Office of Distance Learning and the FSU Dedman College of Hospitality explored the making of tequila in a recent trip to Mexico.

ODL Media Production Manager D.D. Garbarino and Media Specialist Jim Shaw partnered with Teaching Faculty Libby Lewis and Dean Don Farr from the College of Hospitality, along with Farr’s wife Diana, for the weeklong shoot. Garbarino and Shaw worked with Lewis to shoot video footage for a new course on tequila and agave spirits for the college’s RNDC Certificate in Beverage Management. The Republic National Distributing Company certificate meets the needs of individuals interested in pursuing careers that involve beverage management, with an emphasis on sales and service within the hospitality and tourism industries.

“The Dedman College of Hospitality is at the forefront of beverage education,” said Lewis, who is director of the certificate program. “Our partnership with the Republic National Distributing Company gives us a unique ability to bridge classroom theory with industry experts.”

The college continues its innovation in beverage education with the new course.

“The Tequila, Agave Spirits, and Mesoamerican Culture class is the first university-level course of its kind in the United States,” continued Lewis. “This course includes videos taken in Mexico at both Jose Cuervo and Corralejo tequila distilleries. Due to the dedication and hard work of ODL’s media production team, D.D. Garbarino and Jim Shaw, the course includes one-of-a-kind interviews with jimadors, master distillers, sustainability experts, and much more.”

The class will be available in Spring 2023 as part of the certificate program.

To learn how the ODL media team can partner with you to develop videos for your online courses, contact Garbarino at 850-644-7574 or dgarbarino@fsu.edu.

In the Spotlight: Charla Perdue

The Office of Distance Learning congratulates the winners of the 2021-2022 FSU Excellence in Online Teaching award: Lisa Johnson, Charla Perdue, Svetoslava Slaveva-Griffin, and Karen Works. The award recognizes outstanding and innovative teaching in distance learning courses. From now through December, we will be sharing insights and instructional strategies from each honoree.

In this issue, we spotlight Charla Perdue, teaching faculty with the College of Applied Studies at Florida State University Panama City. With the university since 2013, Perdue works with Crime Scene Investigation in the Public Safety & Security program and has master’s degrees in forensic science and criminology.

Why do you like teaching online?
I have the ability to reach a whole lot of students I would not be able to reach otherwise, especially being at a small campus like Panama City. I’m very passionate about forensic science, so I enjoy having the opportunity to share that with other students in different places. I’m very excited that distance learning is an option for us and that we’re able to reach students in Texas or in the Republic of Panama. The fact that I can share a learning experience with students so far away is very exciting.

What teaching tips would you have for instructors interested in teaching online?
Being creative and thinking through if students are going to meet the same learning objectives in distance learning as they do in the classroom. If they can get the same learning experience, that’s what we want.

For instance, we had to think about how students will do the forensic science investigation lab if they’re at home. I record the lecture and instructions for the lab, and I do the lab in a video so they can see it. We send students a boxed lab so they have all the materials to do the lab and can send me the results of their work.

Thinking through those things is what’s really going to be important for instructors and to ask, “Can I teach this course online and, if I can, how can I give students the best learning experience where they walk away acknowledging and understanding the same learning objectives but maybe in a different way?”

What is your favorite instructional strategy for teaching online?
Again, that’s just to be creative. I use some online laboratory simulations and have some 3D crime scenes that students can walk through. Instead of putting out a mock crime scene like I might do for a face-to-face class, I have 3D crime scenes where students can take their mouse and walk through the crime scene themselves. I think about how I want to give students the same experience but in a virtual world.

How do you engage with your students and how do students engage with each other?
Through discussion boards and group work. In the fall I teach with a blended experience, so I have my face-to-face class and my distance learners in the same class. I teach live in Zoom during the face-to-face class so my distance learners can jump on and enjoy the lecture and ask questions. One of the things I like to do is open Zoom office hours when students can pop in. I also take the grading rubric and have students peer review other students.

Assessment can sometimes be challenging in online courses. What strategies do you use for assessing student learning?
Alignment, alignment, alignment. That would be the most important thing – making sure that your assessments align with your course objectives. That’s something that, thanks to QM [Quality Matters] courses that I’ve taken, I’ve found extremely helpful – to be more thoughtful about what I am trying to assess and am I going to get the results I want from this particular activity. Make sure that if we do assess that it’s an assessment with a purpose.

Coming Soon: We will be featuring Dr. Lisa Johnson of the FSU College of Social Work in the July/August issue.

ODL Awarded Technology Funding

The Office of Distance Learning (ODL) has been awarded funding from the FSU Student Technology Fee Advisory Committee for technologies to enhance student engagement and online video development.

The annual Student Technology Fee proposals give departments an opportunity to obtain funding for instructional technology projects. For the 2021–2022 award cycle, the committee awarded $1.397 million to proposals for instructional technology-enhancing projects.

Annoto

The interactive video tool Annoto enhances content engagement for students and provides insight into student usage and performance. The application, which is integrated into the Kaltura environment, allows instructors and students to work in Canvas to:

• Enhance engagement and collaboration. Annoto provides an interactive video platform that allows for learner-to-learner and learner-to-instructor interaction. In-video collaboration, time-tagged discussions, and personal notes facilitate active student learning.
• Deliver diverse use cases. Examples include skills assessment, guided watching, class recording and instructional video content, video analysis, and peer review and feedback.
• Provide faculty with insights on learner performance. The dashboard is integrated in the learning environment and furnishes comprehensive analytics and actionable insights to the instructor.

Fall Pilot

ODL is planning a fall pilot for Annoto, so stay tuned to the July/August issue for more details. In the meantime, if you’re interested in learning more about the tool, you can review the following resources:

• User Guides
• Video Tutorials
• Annoto docs
• Annoto website

Video Technologies

The ODL media production team will secure innovative equipment to stay at the forefront of video production.

“To keep up with the trends, we will be purchasing newer technology so we can experiment with better ways of producing material for online courses,” said ODL Media Production Manager D.D. Garbarino. “We also want to give instructors the opportunity to borrow some of our equipment for DIY projects. Our ultimate goal is to enhance the quality of videos for the FSU community.”

To fulfill this goal, the media team will be exploring several options:

• 4K camera. With a 4K camera, the team can shoot video at a much higher resolution, which results in a sharper image.
• Lighting kits. Battery-powered lights give the team the portability to shoot on location and in dimly lit areas.
• Tripods. Because the team travels to media shoots on campus, in Tallahassee, and out of town, lightweight and durable tripods are critical for an easy and successful shoot.

Contact Garbarino at 850-644-7574 or dgarbarino@fsu.edu to schedule media shoots for your department or college.

Help Students Find Their Way

Quality online courses contribute to FSU’s standard of excellence in academics and student success. Quality courses are easy to navigate, remove barriers to learner achievement, and result in improved learning outcomes and a better student experience. Including quality standards in online courses allows the university to reach students with diverse needs and approaches to learning.

To assess the quality of its online courses, FSU uses the nationally recognized Quality Matters (QM) rubric. The rubric comprises eight general standards, including 23 “essential” specific review standards that range from learning objectives to assessment to accessibility. By meeting these essential elements, you’re on the way to developing a robust learning experience for your students.

The Office of Distance Learning is excited to launch the “Quality Quick Tips” feature. In each issue, we’ll describe an essential standard (along with its corresponding general standard) and provide helpful hints on how to meet it.

Essential Standard 1.1: Instructions make clear how to get started and where to find various course components. This standard falls within general standard 1 (see boxed text below), which states that the design of the course is made clear from the start. Information posted at the beginning of the course offers a general course overview, provides a schedule, and indicates what to do first. Some of this information may be included in the course syllabus.

These tips can help you meet the essential standard:

• Add a Start Here page to your course that includes introductory information, how to get started (such as first-day attendance activities), and a link to the syllabus. View our support article for options on taking first-day attendance in your Canvas course site.
• Use ODL’s Start Here page template. You can download the ODL Quality Course Shell, which includes the Start Here template.
• Create a course “tour” video that introduces the course and shows learners where to find course components like assignments and grades.
• Deploy a “syllabus quiz” component that takes learners through an orientation of the course, as well as serves as a first-day attendance assignment.

If you’re interested in learning more about online course quality, visit the FSU Online Quality Initiative webpage.

Canvas Notes Highlight New Quizzes

Item bank filtering and fill-in-the-blank questions for New Quizzes are among the features listed in the latest Canvas release notes. The monthly notes focus on features that will be included in an upcoming Canvas release.

April Features

• Item Banks for New Quizzes now has a "This Course" filter that displays existing item banks within the current course. The "This Course" filter will be the default selection when navigating to Item Banks from within a course.
• Instructors can set a default time for when assignments are due that is specific to their course instead of the FSU default of 11:59pm.
• Access the complete April release notes on the Canvas Community page.

May Features

• For New Quizzes, fill-in-the-blank question types can use the Rich Content Editor. This allows instructors to add content as part of the question stem and make portions of the content fillable in the student response.
• Observers who are linked to multiple students can select which dashboard they want to view.
• Access the complete May release notes on the Canvas Community page.

To be notified of updates, subscribe to the Canvas release notes.

New Quizzes Summer Training

Summer is a great time for instructors to get acquainted with New Quizzes, Canvas’s assessment engine that will replace Classic Quizzes by June 2024. To help you prepare for the transition, ODL technical support specialists offer training that explores what’s new and different with New Quizzes. Commonly requested assessment features include new question types, question shuffling, and robust auto-grading.

“Instructure’s Canvas engineers are currently working on implementing a robust bulk migration tool that will save instructors time when moving their test content to New Quizzes,” said ODL Canvas Support Project Manager Amanda Whitaker. “Engineers hope the tool will be ready to launch by the end of this summer, although that’s not a guarantee. We encourage instructors to learn about New Quizzes now so they’ll be prepared once the migration tool is ready to use.”

Registration & Resources

To sign up for New Quizzes training, visit our list of webinars. For resources, read our support articles:

• Introducing New Quizzes
• Get to Know New Quizzes
• New Quizzes Transition Timeline

Instructors can subscribe to updates or share their experiences by participating in Instructure’s Quizzes Transition user group. For assistance with New Quizzes, please reach out to ODL technical support at 850-644-8004 or canvas@fsu.edu or submit a ticket.