If you follow ITRS on Twitter, you know we were recently celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), which occurs on the third Thursday of May every year. The spark behind GAAD is that accessibility awareness, testing, and design should be mainstream and essential—not just the work of a few specialists.
On a personal level, my contribution to this day of recognition is to spread awareness of the journey that accessible design entails. Learning to design accessible courses; to create accessible websites and documents; and to remediate inaccessible courses, documents, and websites takes time, patience, and a growth mindset. If the idea of making your course completely accessible and inclusive is overwhelming, you’re not alone! Start today by incorporating one new accessible design practice into your course development work—add headers to your documents, captions to your videos, or alternative text to your images. Recognize that the work of digital accessibility is never done; it’s truly a journey rather than a destination.
Here at Loyola, there are several teams excited to support faculty, staff, and students in digital accessibility work, including Instructional Technology & Research Support, the Office of Online Learning, and the Student Accessibility Center. In ITRS, we focus on the accessible, inclusive design of digital course materials in and outside of the learning management system, Sakai. To that end, ITRS offers one-on-one consultations to address questions about accessible design and assistive technology. We can discuss digital accessibility best practices, check your course materials for compliance with ADA and W3C standards, and assist with formulating an action plan for remediating inaccessible learning materials. To schedule a consultation, visit our booking page, select Instructional Technologies, then Digital Accessibility. We look forward to working with you!
Do you need help setting up your Sakai site? Are you curious which instructional technologies will help your online learning vision come to life? Just need a friendly face to talk you through some tech troubles? ITRS is here for you and we’re happy to introduce a new tool to streamline the experience.
Visit the ITRS ScheduleOnce hub to book a one-on-one appointment with a member of our team, comprised of Instructional Designers, Learning Design Engineers, and more! Appointments are offered via Zoom and you will receive a link to the Zoom meeting when our team confirms your appointment.
Greetings from ITRS! We are pleased to announce the arrival of Panopto 10, Loyola’s official lecture capturing platform. The new version will be available on December 20th, 2020 and will include several new and improved features:
Tags — Panopto’s video library has a new way to support content organization and discovery: #tags. Users can now add tags to their recordings from the video settings, the editor, or in Panopto Capture.
Smart Chapters — The new Smart Chapters tool automatically creates a table of contents for any recording with a screen capture, including recordings from Zoom.
Delete Streams in the Editor — Users can now delete or replace video streams in the editor, allowing for greater flexibility in making changes to recordings.
Share interesting points in a video — This feature enables viewers to easily share a link to a specific point in the video with others.
Audio Normalization — Users can now make audio levels consistent throughout their recordings with the audio normalization feature in the editor.
Updated Mobile apps — New updates to the Panopto app (coming soon) will provide users with enhancements for recording and uploading content from their phones.
Sakai 20 is coming to Loyola on Monday, December 21st, 2020! On 12/21 from 7am to 12pm, Sakai will be unavailable.
Once the upgrade is complete, the following new and improved features will be available:
Sakai Grader with a document preview for the Assignments tool
A date manager that allows instructors to quickly modify all due dates in the Site Info tool
An auto-groups wizard that takes the guesswork out of creating groups
A brand-new Rubrics tool that integrates with Assignments, Forums, and Tests & Quizzes
Gradebook enhancements, including the ability to equally weight items within a Gradebook category
Rich text editor templates to easily create stylized Lessons pages
And more! For a full list of new features, see the Sakai LMS blog.
Faculty, staff, and students who would like to learn more about the changes coming to Sakai are invited to attend a “What’s New in Sakai 20?” info-session or a Q&A open forum with ITRS staff. For dates and registration information, see Sakai 20 Upgrade.
Top Hat Training: Discover Interactive Learning Software
ITRS is proud to announce a series of trainings on Top Hat, a web-based platform that allows students to use their smartphone, tablet, or other mobile devices to participate in and engage with in-class activities.
Top Hat’s student-centric experience engages and motivates learners with captivating virtual classroom features, interactive course content, and built-in assessment capabilities. Instructors can choose between seven different poll question types for instant feedback, create an online discussion board, explore a fun tournaments option, and access an enhanced gradebook.
The Zoom tool integration in Sakai and the Zoom Desktop Client have both been updated to improve your Zoom experience. Please take a moment to note and use the updated features that will make for smoother class scheduling and meetings.
Zoom Desktop Client: Zoom 5.0
Download the Latest Version of Zoom
The Zoom Desktop Client is the application that runs your Zoom meetings once you’ve started or joined a meeting. Because the Zoom Desktop Client is therefore critical for your Zoom meetings, it is important to have the latest version installed on your computer.
Download the latest Zoom Desktop Client at https://luc.zoom.us/download. The same download link will provide you with an update to your existing Zoom Desktop Client.
Users will no longer be able to privately chat with other members of the same channel if they are not on the same Zoom account or organization. To continue chatting with contacts outside of their Zoom account, they can add them as external contacts.
If the host has the web setting Embed password in meeting link for one-click join disabled in the Zoom web portal, the Zoom client will no longer include the password in the URL when inviting new participants.
Re-enable clickable links in meeting chat
Users will be able to send clickable links through the in-meeting chat. The link must include http or https to be clickable.
Meeting features
Report a user during a meeting
The meeting host can now report a user during a meeting by clicking on the Security icon, then Report. This feature will generate a report which will be sent to the Zoom Trust and Safety team to evaluate any misuse of the platform and block a user if necessary.
New security feature to report a participant.
Enhancements to meeting end/leave flow
The host will now be required to assign a new host when leaving the meeting. Additionally, the pop-up message asking if the host would like to leave or end the meeting will now be displayed by the Leave button.
Assign a New Host when Host leaves meeting.
Host option to End Meeting for All.
Zoom in Sakai: The New Zoom Pro Integration
To resolve many bugs and ambiguity with scheduling Zoom meetings through your Sakai site, the new Zoom Pro integration in Sakai now displays a detailed dashboard of your course meetings and recordings.
Schedule a Meeting.
Instead of one single Join Meeting button, course participants will now see a list of upcoming meetings. To start or join a meeting, the host or participants must select Start for the scheduled meeting.
View Previous Meetings and Upcoming Meetings.
The new Zoom integration allows you to view and access upcoming meetings and previous meetings through selecting the respective tabs at the top of the Zoom tool page.
View Upcoming Meetings and Previous Meetings with tabs.
Access Cloud Recordings.
Another convenient feature of the new integration allows for accessing cloud recordings without having to distribute a link. Course participants can go to the Cloud Recordings tab and play the recording in their browser.
Select the Cloud Recordings tab to access course recordings.
For added protection, a password will appear to copy in order to play the recording.
Select play to play recording in browser. Copy and paste the provided password to access playback.
Next Steps for You
Download Zoom 5.0 to update your Zoom Desktop client. The latest set of updates is included in Zoom 5.0, which we strongly recommend you do by going to luc.zoom.us/download. Select the blue Download button for Zoom Client for Meetings, and this version will be the latest provided by Zoom. Follow the installation cues to complete the update.
Select Download to update Zoom Desktop Client.
Zoom Resources from Loyola ITRS
Thanks for becoming refreshed with the latest from Zoom. For more Zoom resources and assistance, check out the new Zoom Guide from ITRS (Instructional Technology & Research Support) or report an issue with ITS Service Desk at ITSServiceDesk@luc.edu.
Panopto, Loyola’s official
lecture capturing platform, now includes new features and functions. Users are
now able to access deleted recordings through their Recycling Bin. When
embedding video, there is the option to customize the embed size. Additional,
the choice is now available for instructors to allow viewers to download their
slides, PowerPoint, or Keynote. Coming later in the semester, users will have
the option to create and edit videos through the web-based recorder,
eliminating the need to install the desktop plugin.
For more information on Panopto,
please visit this guide.
Are you looking for ways to enhance your course’s PowerPoints or create more interactive discussion boards?
VoiceThread
may be your solution! VoiceThread allows instructors to facilitate
online discussions, so students can post, comment, and collaborate with
their peers in a fun and engaging way.
These conversations are
not live, so the timing of discussions allows students to participate
whenever and wherever it is convenient for them. Discussions may include
a mixture of images, videos, documents, and media files. VoiceThread is
fully integrated with Sakai. VoiceThread can be placed on a Sakai
course lesson page or added to a Sakai course as a standalone tool.
