Keynote Addresses
Thursday: From Gatekeeper to Warm Demander
By Michelle Pacansky-Brock
Description: The research is clear, relationships are the foundation of meaningful learning experiences — face-to-face and online. While this is true for all students, it is especially true for students from minoritized communities. In this session, we’ll explore the transformative potential of “warm demander” pedagogy, which is a pathway to empowering more students to achieve their full potential. You’ll walk away with practical, humanized online teaching strategies that foster trust and belonging at a distance through the use of Canvas. Want to learn more – visit Michelle’s website.
Friday: Interrupting our Grading Culture
By Latoya Reid, Tacoma Community College and Ivan Ramirez, Professor, Astronomy and Physics, Tacoma Community College
Description: We will examine the problematic origin of our standard grading system and address the misconceptions about what it accomplishes, reflecting on how grading affects students and how it reinforces power codes. We will then present an overview of some nontraditional grading methods and how they could be implemented in different areas of study. Finally, we will discuss ways in which nontraditional grading methods are troubled by cold campus climates and a technology that is not designed for its implementation, focusing on providing tools to meet these challenges.
Accessibility Track
Accessibility Basics Workouts in 20 Minutes a Day X 5 Days
By Ana Thompson, Academic & Access Technician, University of Washington Bothell
Description: I always like to ask, does this document need to be a PDF? We have become creators and users of Portable Document Format files or PDFs since their inception in the 1990s as a consistent way to share documents, including text formatting and inline images, in different platforms. All a person needed was the Adobe Reader plugin. The time has come to adapt and be better, do better and create content that is universally accessible to everyone from the start. Besides, when we practice good practices, we also make better formatted content that is consistent and looks nice.
Accessibility in the Faculty Contract: From Idea to Implementation
By Michael Hanscom, Accessible Technology Program Manager, Highline College and Jenni Sadler, Highline College
Description: Policies and statements in support of accessibility are great – but how does your school make sure that action is being taken to back up the intent? Highline College recently ratified an updated faculty Collective Bargaining Agreement which includes a section mandating accessibility standards for all classes, including Canvas courses. Join us for an overview of the process, the final contract language, and the initiatives and Canvas integrations we use to support our faculty as they update their classes.
Elevate Your Course! HTML Coding for Improved Design & Accessibility
By Nick Taylor, Online Ed Instr Designer, Community Colleges of Spokane
Description: Designing in Canvas can be tricky with the limited tools we have available. Sometimes this leads us to make decisions for the sake of design that compromise the accessibility of our courses. The good news is that design and accessibility are not mutually exclusive and can be one and the same if we adjust our approach. This session will cover accessible coded designs that are built off of HTML that anyone can learn and adapt to their needs. Our goal is to provide tools to create improved visuals while improving course transparency, reducing cognitive load, and improving accessibility across platforms.
Teaching an Online or Hybrid Canvas Course that is Accessible to Neurodiverse Learners
By Sheryl Burgstahler, Director AccessibleTechnology, UW IT, and Affiliate Professor, College of Education
Description: Many online learning opportunities present content and activities that are not fully accessible to participants with disabilities. This presentation will share tips for delivering a Canvas course that is accessible and inclusive of everyone, with a particular focus on neurodiverse learners. Resources for further study will be shared. This topic is of special importance because of the conversion of thousands of on-site programs to an online format in response to the pandemic, of legal mandates to make campus offerings accessible to students with disabilities, and of the growing numbers of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at our institutions.
UDOIT Advantage for Accessibility for Remediation and Content Conversion
By Tom Gibbons, Instructional Designer, Renton Technical College
Description: UDOIT Advantage is a new offering from CidiLabs that expands on the functionality of UDOIT, an accessibility remediation tool originally developed for Canvas content. The Advantage toolset offers conversion and remediation functionality for instructors and designers to convert documents to alternate formats, like HTML Canvas pages, ePub, mp3, text, and auto-tagged PDF. After a file is converted, the new version can automatically replace the original document. The new file is stored in your Canvas course.
Equity Track
Asset-minded Course Design Strategies
By David Owens, Instructional Designer, Everett Community College
Description: We wonder why many of our students are disengaged and fail to see how our classes relate to their lives, but much of the education they receive relies on an outdated banking model of education that focuses on what they lack and treats them as empty vessels waiting to be filled with information. Using an asset mindset and a constructivist model, we can develop strategies to tap into their interests, incorporate their experience into our subjects, and perhaps even rekindle a love for lifelong learning.
Collaborating with Faculty to Assess an Institutional Social Justice Outcome
By Heather Mayer, Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning, Everett Community College and David Owens, Instructional Designer, Everett Community College
Description: A new Equity and Social Justice college-level learning outcome provided an opportunity (and demonstrated a need) to reimagine the way our college approached Assessment, moving from an endeavor that placed a heavy workload on department chairs and rarely involved adjunct faculty to one focused on collaboration and learning, facilitated by our center for teaching and learning. In this session, participants will work through the initial steps of this process (defining the outcome and piloting a rubric), see examples of ways to facilitate faculty discussions around the learning outcome, connect the Assessment process to professional learning, and brainstorm opportunities to engage students.
Interrupting our Grading Culture: Continuing the Conversation
By Latoya Reid, Tacoma Community College and Ivan Ramirez, Professor, Astronomy and Physics, Tacoma Community College
Description: Continue the conversation from this morning’s keynote presentation on “Interrupting our Grading Culture” with Latoya Reid and Ivan Ramirez.
The Social Construction of Classroom: Beyond Canvas
By Nomita Yadav, Associate Professor, Social Science, LWTech
Description: The Pandemic brought Canvas as the primary interface between students and faculty as an institutional platform/LMS for lesson (content) delivery, communication and grading. While Canvas was used increasingly, it brought its own challenges of one model fits all. In this interactive presentation, I seek to invite faculty to deliberate on our (un)learning of the scope of Canvas in the ‘real classroom.’ The Social Construction of Classroom’ presentation will seek to invite questions and deliberate on answers as ‘we’ as a community of educators navigate new challenges and seek answers to create equitable learning experiences for our student body. My presentation seeks to invite my audience to partake in a ‘shared space’ to ask and share ideas on ‘best practices’ to construct a community of learners in the classroom.
Tracking Student Learning Outcomes to Close Achievement Gap
By Claver Hategekimana, Director of Institutional Research & eLearning
Description: Academic program review at Skagit Valley College, involves annual review of the data and implementation of strategies to improve student outcomes. One of the key aspects of this process is to analyze course learning outcomes. In this presentation, you will learn: 1) how to map course learning outcomes in Canvas, 2) how to use authentic artifacts to assess student progress, and 3) how to report outcomes assessment data using Tableau. This systemic process helps faculty to identify specific areas for curriculum and pedagogy improvement to ensure that students equitably achieve learning outcomes.
Flex Mode Track
Lessons Learned: Flex Learning and Canvas, A Student-Centric Modality
By Nizar Ali, Dawn Allen, and Raquel Andre, Renton Technical College
Description: Learn about how a team of ESL instructors integrated Canvas features and other tools to pilot Flex instruction. Flex instruction addresses a variety of student barriers by allowing students to choose in person, virtual or asynchronous instruction for each class. This presentation will give an overview of the approach we took, the challenges we faced, how we addressed those challenges, and the discoveries we made. We will finish the session by sharing details on how you could incorporate part or all of the Flex modality in your own classroom regardless of your available budget and access to technology.
Open Educational Resources (OER) Track
OER Grants: Building OER Heroes from the Ground Up
By Nizar Ali, Alan Roth, and Di Zhang, Renton Technical College
Description: Di Zhang and Nizar Ali will introduce Renton Technical College’s OER Mini-Grant program, administered by our OER Steering Committee, as a sustainable model for building OER ambassadors throughout the college. Our faculty who have completed our grant process, our “OER Heroes,” have become resources and mentors for others on the Open Education journey. Select faculty will also join us to share their resources, outcomes and lessons from having completed the OER Mini-Grant program.
“Other” Track
Amazing Analytics in Canvas: Getting the Most from your Teaching and Learning Data (Octopus Bi)
By Jared Ward, VP of Sales and Partnerships, Octopus Bi
Description: Canvas LMS generates an incredible amount of rich learning data and is a tool that gets used daily. The difficulty (until today) has been seeing student data across all courses or giving students access to view their own learning data. In this session, you will see how Octopus BI unlocks all of your Canvas data to provide timely and actionable insights on demand to the people who need it the most!
A New Vision for Transparent and Engaged Professional Development
By Kristin Copeland, Director of Teaching and Learning, Clover Park Technical College and Geoff Cain, Clover Park Technical College
Description: In this presentation, participants will learn about Clover Park Technical College’s efforts to create a more engaging and connected system of professional development by applying curriculum and instructional design principles to professional development efforts. The Teaching & Learning Center at CPTC is charged with creating professional development learning communities around four basic themes (hubs): Cornerstones of College Instruction, Evidence-Based Teaching Practices, Student-Centered Curriculum, and Open Education Practices. Participants will learn how these hub courses connect faculty professional development with Universal Design for Learning, peer-to-peer learning communities, open education, and the college’s commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Telework to the Extreme: Doing the Entire Job from Uganda
By Mark Gaither,
Description: Beginning in 2020, Mark found himself teleworking from different locations in Uganda. The experiences included a full teaching load, college service obligations, student advising, community activities, and even negotiating a union contract. Mark makes the annual trip to Uganda to be with his family and spends a full quarter working remotely. This session will be hosted from Uganda.
Amber Lemiere, Instructor, Lower Columbia College
Description: If you are curious about what happened to the letter grade of “E,” tired of puzzling over work that is neither “Complete” nor “Incomplete,” and feel generally conflicted about boiling student work down to numbers, percents, etc. (especially considering the conversations surrounding diversity & equity in grading) come join me in Wrecking in the Canvas Gradebook. It will be a mix of complaining about Canvas’s limits while also revealing some of the places where it really does provide the blank canvas opportunities that we, as creative educators, crave.
Pedagogy/Andragogy Track
Achieving student engagement and inclusion through UDL-informed Mastery Path Design in Canvas
By Grace Soo, Associate Director Educational Technology & Media, Seattle Pacific University and Helen Gong, Graduate Student Assistant, Seattle Pacific University
Description: In an inclusive learning environment, every learner feels engaged and encouraged to participate in the learning process. Strategies grounded in universal design for learning (UDL), such as student choice-based scaffolding and learning autonomy, foster an inclusive learning enrolment that encourages all learner encouragement and mastery of new knowledge. This session provides takeaways on specific UDL strategies and Canvas tools (i.e., Mastery Path) that can be applied to course design and teaching for student inclusion and success.
Being Sketchy has Advantages: Elevating Science Learning Through Drawing
By Melanie Coyan, Online Ed Instructional Designer, Community Colleges of Spokane
Description: Visual representations are critical for science teaching and learning, but students often fail to recognize key concepts, processes, and relationships when observing visualizations. Many studies have shown, however, that when students construct sketches of the target content, they interact with it in a more meaningful way, which can lead to better comprehension. Whereas creating sketches in a classroom tends to be an intuitive instructional practice, sketching in an online course requires additional considerations regarding instructional strategies and sketching tools. This presentation will summarize research about sketching as a practice for science learning and start a discussion of ways that sketching can be implemented in online courses as a tool for learning and assessment.
Creating Culturally Responsive Classrooms
By Ekaterina Stoops, Columbia Basin College
Description: What is Culturally Responsive Teaching? How can we create engaging learning experiences that meet the needs of all students in our classrooms? Join Ekaterina Stoops, Director for Teaching and Learning at Columbia Basin College, as she shares how you can adopt Culturally Responsive Teaching strategies to create equitable learning environments for your students. In this session, we will also discuss how unconscious biases impact our teaching and how to address them through Culturally Responsive Teaching.
Faculty Voice and Student Agency in the Time of the LMS
By Todd Conaway, Instructional Designer, University of Washington
Description: This session begins at the first few moments any teacher enters their physical classroom or their LMS, and the lingering effects of that event on their teaching practice and that of their students. Through the lens of Dewey, McLuhan, and Lisa Lane, the session explores the impact of the “default” and the shaping of possibilities beyond the classroom and beyond the LMS. We will look toward a future of the best possible opportunities for student learning, as well as teacher learning.
Learning Improvement and Alternative Grading using the Canvas Learning Mastery Gradebook
By David Owens, Instructional Designer, Everett Community College
Description: Many of us are frustrated that Canvas is not well suited to alternative grading strategies, but the Canvas Learning Mastery Gradebook is designed as an alternative to point-based systems. Using practical examples, this session will review the basics of the outcomes-based system and discuss its implications for learning improvement and alternative grading strategies. The data collected by the learning mastery gradebook can illuminate equity gaps, and alternative grading systems can support inclusive strategies like asset-based andragogy.
Video Feedback: Building Connections in Online Teaching
By Heather Ryan, Director of Student Learning Assessment, South Puget Sound Community College
Description: Students often experience instructor feedback as confusing, and sometimes even alienating. This is especially true in an online class. Video feedback–or the instructor’s voice over a video of the assignment–is one technique to build equity and inclusion in the classroom, while providing students with useful feedback. It can also decrease grading time. In this session, you will learn how to record, safely store, and share video feedback; the basic pedagogical strategies; and how this can be used as an equity measure. While this session is focused on writing assignments, this method can be adapted for other types of assignments.
Technology Track
By Christie Fierro, Director of the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning
Description: In this discussion, we will explore the opportunities and challenges of integrating AI into teaching and learning and the broader impacts. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions and engage in a lively discussion about AI and Large Language Models. This session is suitable for educators, instructional designers, and anyone interested in the intersection of AI and education.
By Chris Johnson, Atomic Jolt
Description: Search functionality in Canvas helps students, faculty, and administrators by simplifying Canvas navigation. In this session you will learn how Atomic Search can improve Canvas in the following ways:
- Better user experience: By simplifying the Canvas navigation process, Atomic Search can improve the overall user experience. Faculty and students are more likely to be satisfied with Canvas if they can easily find what they’re looking for.
- Increased productivity: With search functionality, students can find and review their learning assessments more quickly and efficiently. This leads to more time for other important tasks.
- Reduces cognitive load: When faculty and students don’t have to worry about navigating Canvas to find their learning materials, they can focus on completing their coursework.
Take advantage of Atomic Search to improve your Canvas navigation and enhance your online learning experience.
Big Data, Big Impact: How to Build a Strong, Data-informed Culture
By Jace Gilbert, Instructure
Description: From big-picture enrollment trends to real-time statistics, data collection empowers institutions to make informed decisions. The big impact of data starts with building a data-guided decision-making culture. In this session, we’ll discuss five key principles for building a data-informed culture.
The importance of proof over postulations with their campuses..
The foundational purpose and vision for making data-informed decisions with their campuses.
The benefits of data transparency and availability.
The efficacy and impact of data-informed decisions.
Data privacy and security.
By Edina Tipter, Instructure
Description: Insights into Canvas Data 2 product and roadmap: what, why, when.
Cidilabs – DesignPlus (Captions Pending)
By Tom Gibbons, Instructional Designer, Renton Technical College
Description: DesignPlus is more than just a templating tool for Canvas. Come see how we’re using DesignPlus at Renton Technical College to improve the visual and organizational design of our content, build our course content faster and more consistently across browser and mobile, and deploy strategies to improve readability and information retention. We’ll also talk about rollout strategies and planning for adoption.
De-Clickifying Repetitive Tasks
By Tom Gibbons, Instructional Designer, Renton Technical College
Description: In this session, you will be introduced to what API calls are and how they can make your life easier as an instructor or admin. We will examine the building blocks of API calls and explore the types of tasks you can automate with API calls. We will also talk about testing strategies to keep your calls from creating chaos.
Elevating Learner Achievements & Creating Equity with Digital Badges
By Elizabeth Miller, Regional Director, Canvas Credentials, Instructure and Alissa Sells, Policy Associate, WA State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
Description: The road from learn to earn is paved with skills, and those skills are captured in digital badges, so badges are rapidly gaining popularity to recognize and credential learner achievements. Washington Community and Technical Colleges are exploring digital badging to support employment opportunities for students, track faculty professional development, and upskill/cross-skill staff. Join us to discuss badging through Canvas, badge uses in higher education, and how using badges can create equity for learners. We’ll also chat about Canvas Credentials features, share about the SBCTC Canvas Credentials pilot, and showcase badging programs in progress at Bellevue College and Everett CC.
Finding the Human: Responding to AI Disruptions in Higher Education
Description: AI tools for generating text, art, images and audio have reached a critical mass in just the last six months, and are already disrupting student learning and work. We can’t ignore it, and we can’t stop it. But can we design assignments that can’t simply be run through an algorithm? And in the long term, can we re-imagine ways to approach our content areas that acknowledge the potential power of AI tools while still centering human dignity, effort, and potential?
By John McLeod, Account Manager, Pressbooks
John McLeod, account manager for Pressbooks, will host this presentation on the Pressbooks LTI 1.3 integration and describe how Pressbooks Results users have used H5P to create formative assessments in their OER projects.
Strategies of a Relational Technologist
By Chris Powell, Canvas Administrator, Western Washington University
Description: Join Chris Powell, Canvas Admin for Western Washington University, as he shares the software applications, workflows, and mindsets used to process 13,000 emails (single-handedly) in one year of COVID remote learning. Learn how Chris was able to pivot from simply being a technical resource for teachers to emerging as a relational technologist who worked smarter, not harder, with his unique brand of customer support. These strategies not only helped clients climb the steep learning curve caused by COVID’s rapid transition to online learning, but also helped navigated their stress, pressure, and innovation of that unique academic year.
By Sarah Griffith, eLearning Director, Lower Columbia College and Danielle Casey, eLearning Program Specialist, Lower Columbia College
Description: Want to know more about what Canvas can do? Join us for a showcase of tips, tricks, and hidden features! You’ll learn about things like the Undelete tool, customizing your course navigation menu, using requirements and prerequisites, and more! Knowing what Canvas has to offer and how to use it is foundational to creating accessible, equitable experiences for the people we serve. This session is designed for folks new to Canvas, but intermediate users may find some new ideas, too.
By Jason Richter, Ed. D, Instructure
Description: In the 10+ years that Instructure has been offering and supporting Canvas, numerous unique needs have been requested and provisioned by our Services team. Some of our partner institutions needed custom functionality within Canvas, while others requested custom solutions that had nothing to do with an LMS. We’re happy to say we’ve got a stellar track record of responding to schools’ requests with creative, timely and innovative solutions to problems across all areas of learning.
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