Instructional Technology and Instructional Design

Welcome to the Technology Help Guide for faculty. If you find that you require 1 on 1 or small group training with a technology specialist, please fill out the Technology Training Request Form.

Please click on the tabs to find training information for each technology & instructional design topic available.

New services are being offered to support you as a teacher. Together, we can do a wide range of things to help you and your students find success or improve on the success you already see. You are all fantastic teachers, but it never hurts to review what you’re doing with another pair of eyes or to pick someone’s brain for ideas.

You’ll share with me. I’ll share with you. Then we’ll be able to share the stories of successes and failures with others. As a result, we all learn from each other.

Please contact Jenny Michaels, Instructional Technologist, if you’d like to learn more about this or if you’re ready to get started. Email or visit her in the Library. 

We will work together to identify your goals for your students and figure out the best ways to reach them. The best might be what you’re already doing and we validate that. Either way, you’ll feel good about our discussions.

• Full Course Design
• Assignments
• Projects
• Individual Units or Lessons
• Assistance with Curation of Resources to Support Teaching & Learning

Anything from basic use to transforming your course. We’ll work hand in hand to make sure you and your students are successful.

• Consultations
• Trainings (group or 1-on-1)
• Classroom Trainings for your students
• Review of your course to look for further opportunities to use technology
• Find new technology to use to reach your goals

Even Tom Brady has a QB coach to help him study the game and stay on top. We’ll work together as a team and we’ll both grow.

• Classroom Observations—Sometimes it’s hard to see successes and hardships from the front of the room. I’ll sit in the back and provide another perspective.
  • Another pair of eyes can see what you do not.
  • The focus here is on students and how they engage with the lesson.
• Talk to students to get their feedback on the class
  • This works best following an Observation, especially if you’ve been trying something new. We want to pick their brains to see what works best for them.
• Identification and Discussion of Instructional Strategies
  • Maybe you want to try something new or find that what you’ve been doing isn’t working the way you wanted it to.
  • You could just be looking for ideas.
• Co-Teaching
  • If we work together to design a knock-out project, I can come along to help introduce it or even see it through to the end.

These links or files will be  helpful when using Canvas. If you require additional assistance, please fill out the Technology Training Request Form.

• Canvas Quick-Guide for Instructors
  • This document provides brief step-by-step instructions for how to do a lot of what you need to do in Canvas.
• Canvas Student Engagement Tips
  • This document provides tips and strategies to increase student engagement in online courses using Canvas.
• Canvas Faculty Training Course
  • This is a Canvas training course that walks you through step by step of how to develop your course in Canvas. Please read the message on the Welcome Page so you know which Modules apply to you.
• Embed Content in Canvas
  • This video shows you how to embed Youtube videos, Prezi's, or other web content on to a Canvas page or any other page with an HTML editor.
• Canvas Guides
  • These are guides created by Canvas. Think of it as an owner's manual.
• Student Accessibility in Canvas
  • This document lists some tips for making your Canvas course space accessible.

Panopto is a video system that can be used to record, store, and stream videos. These videos can be from the Panopto Recorder, a cell phone, camcorder, etc. Please visit the Panopto Sales website if you are curious to learn more about what Panopto is before getting started. You can also view the videos embedded on this page.

For Faculty to learn how Panopto can be used in their Canvas courses, please read this document and watch the videos it links to.

This video provides an overview of Panopto. If you have a Wilson Canvas account and would like to see more instructional videos, please go to this video folder.

This video series is a supplement to the training document. 

We recognize that faculty have ultimate control over their courses and we do not presume that our resources are better than what you already do. These resources (and help from Melanie) are provided to those who wish to use them voluntarily. Please contact Melanie via email  if you'd like to work on any of your courses or if you have questions about the resources below.

• Course Development Guide
  • This Google Doc is adapted from the Understanding by Design unit planning template. "Backward Design" is gaining more and more poularity within Instructional Design circles.
• Suggested Online/Blended Course Development Timeline
  • This Google Doc shares what we recommend as a timeline for course development. We believe that planning and preperation is the foundation of a quality course, but particularly for online/blended courses. It may look like the timeline starts really early, but we assume you have other things going on which is why we recommend so much time to plan. If you have nothing else going on at work or at home then you could probably plan a course a lot quicker; but we assume that's not the case.
• More resources to come. 

Prezi is an interesting online presentation tool because it is truly a wide open canvas allowing you to place content wherever you want. It is somewhat overwhelming if you don't take the time to practice before truly needing to use Prezi. Here are some resources that will help you use Prezi if you'd like to give it a try. One thing to keep in mind is that when you make a Prezi account you get a free upgrade to an educational license if you use your Wilson.edu email. It is also worth noting that Prezi just underwent a large upgrade. Some of the resources on this page are for Prezi Classic. The upgraded version is called Prezi Next.

• Prezi Next Workshops
  • Prezi has training materials and workshops you can join to learn Prezi Next.
• Prezi Next Youtube Tutorials
  • This is a Youtube Playlist made by Prezi to show you how to use Prezi Next.
• How to Make a Prezi (Classic)
  • This is a Prezi that shows how to use Prezi Classic. I will no longer be updating this because most new users will be using Prezi Next.

Canva (like Canvas without the s) is a tool that was originally designed for making infographics and other documents but also makes for a pretty slick presentation system.

• Canva.com Youtube Tutorials
  • This is a playlist of videos showing you how to use Canva. 
• Sample Canva Presentation
  • This is a sample presentation I presented to students to teach them how to give effective presenations.
• Sample Canva Presenation Webpage
  • This is the same presentation but presented as a webpage rather than a slideshow.
• Sample Canva Resume
  • Sample Resume in Webpage view. This link could be placed on your business card.

If you are here for information about using web-conferencing OUTSIDE of Canvas, please email Melanie Tutin. Using this outside of Canvas requires a password that we don't want to make publicly available on this website.

Using Conferences in Canvas:

The Conferences tool is kind of like a Google Hangout. I have helped some professors set up Google Hangouts with students and it is sometimes difficult to get everyone into the same room. Conferences fixes that because everyone in your course can be invited and it is built to house an entire class. You can also have a guest speaker by enrolling that person as a student or guest in the course.

Canvas Conferences can be used by you as the instructor to present to your entire class or a select group of students. Students themselves can even create a Conference to hold online group meetings or to present to the class.

We have upgraded to the premium version of this tool so recordings will be saved and available forever. After finishing a recorded conference it does take some time to produce the recording. It is usually good to give it a night to work. Once ready, you can either watch recordings from the Conferences page. If you would like to save the recording as an mp4 file then you need to click to watch the video. As it is playing you can right click inside the video and select "save video as." This will prompt you to choose a file location on  your pc.