Welcome to the College of IST Learning Design eNewsletter
December 2016
Your Spring ’17 Online Course: Important Dates
The Learning Design staff has been very busy preparing for the spring ’17 semester. We wanted to pass along some important dates for faculty who are teaching a World Campus course for us in spring ’17.
Sections Ready: Week of December 19th. Faculty will be notified when their individual sections are ready. Once faculty have their content, they can make individual adjustments and updates to their section.
Break: Penn State will be closed December 23 – January 2. Penn State, and the Learning Design staff, will return to work on January 3rd.
Preview Week: Week of January 2nd. IST students will be able to access the course during the week of January 2nd. Our staff will open sections at this time. This is part of our preview week which allows students to view course expectations and then have the ability to drop the course without incurring a financial penalty. Faculty will be provided sample email text regarding preview week for their students.
First Day of Classes: January 9th. Courses officially start this day.
Grading Scheme using Penn State Letter Grades Available in Canvas
Now that we are past the fall ’16 grading period, you may recall seeing a notice about a recent change which resulted in the ability for faculty to use Penn State letter grades. (Faculty can learn more about this functionality through Penn State.) World Campus faculty, however, should note that your courses automatically come with an IST grading scheme that is consistent among all IST World Campus courses. We advise World Campus faculty to keep the grading scheme used in the course.
Canvas Updates
Canvas released its last update on December 10th. Of note to faculty:
Instructor Role Group Announcement Notifications
Instructors and TAs can receive notifications for course groups. This new change from Canvas allows instructors/TAs to receive notifications without being added directly to a group. To receive a notification, the instructor/TA must be enrolled in the course and must enable announcements in their notification preferences.
Faculty may view all the updates from Canvas.
Staff News: Who is Laura Adams?
With the start of the spring ’17 semester fast approaching, many faculty members will receive an email about their course section from Laura Adams, Instructional Production Specialist in the College of IST.
Laura oversees online course production for the College including such area as QA procedures, consistency across courses, course template updates, and much, much more. You will usually hear from Laura at the beginning of the semester and often will hear from her individually during the semester.
Laura lives in State College with her husband, two sons, and two dogs.
