Faculty and Staff Training and Workshops

USF's Instructional Design team presents Beyond the Basics, our Spring 2021 peer-interactive workshop series, targeting improved strategies for remote instruction.

Visit our page to learn more and register.

In this workshop, we will explore ways to enhance your recorded lectures considering structure and visual design as well as how to include accountability for students. We will also look at options to streamline lecture development and recording.

Facilitators: Mishiara Baker

Using breakout rooms engages students with each other and helps with their learning. In this workshop, we'll go beyond the basics and explore activities you might apply to increase student learning during breakout groups.

Facilitators: Angie Portacio

Integrating asynchronous activities enriches a remote course, but what mix is best? In this workshop, we'll go beyond the basics to discover how to strategically determine and connect asynchronous components to strengthen your course—and even reduce your synchronous delivery.

Facilitators: Jill Ballard

Spring 2021 Remote Instruction Workshop
These workshops developed by the Instructional Design team will focus on remote course design, pedagogy, and facilitation. Workshops comprise two 2-hour online synchronous sessions and 4-5 hours of online asynchronous instruction and activities.

Workshops will be offered weekly from November 12 to January 19, 2021. Participation is highly recommended for all full time and adjunct faculty teaching in spring 2021 by the Provost's office, School/College Deans, and ETS.

Facilitators: The Instructional Design team

(Prerequisites: No prior Canvas knowledge needed)
In this introductory,  hands-on class, we will create the outline of a basic Canvas course from scratch. Topics covered include:

• Configuring a few basic course Settings
• Uploading Files to our Course Files Repository
• Linking a Syllabus to your Canvas course site
• Configuring Your Course Homepage
• Creating an Assignment, grading it & giving feedback
• Organizing our Course with Modules
• Sending Announcements  and Emails to students
• Discussion Boards

Instructor: Greg Crum

(Prerequisites: Setting up Your Canvas Course/Canvas Essentials or basic knowledge of Canvas)
This class covers creating and configuring online assessments with the Canvas quiz tool. Topics include:

• Viewing the quiz from the student point of view
• Allow extra time and extra attempts for students with SDS accommodations
• Techniques and tools to avoid student cheating
• Moderating quiz sessions  and examining student result stats.

Instructor, Greg Crum

(Prerequisites: Setting up Your Canvas Course/Canvas Essentials or basic knowledge of Canvas)
In this class we will briefly review creating a Canvas assignment. We will cover managing the Canvas gradebook as well as cover these grading related topics:

• Speedgrader
• Rubrics
• Creating a Turnitin Assignment
• Peer Review assignments and Groups assignments

Instructor, Greg Crum.

(Prerequisites: No prior Canvas knowledge needed)
Are you tasked with creating or maintaining a Canvas page as a department collaboration site or student resource page? This class is for you! We will cover creating a custom front page and examine techniques to structure and organize your content. We will also explore how to add participants and manage participant communication and interaction.

Instructor, Greg Crum.

This class covers the settings and strategies to safeguard your meetings and classrooms before and during your session.

Instructor, Ken Yoshioka.

This class covers an introduction to Zoom web conferencing,  including setting up your account, installing the software, scheduling meetings, as well as meeting tools.

Instructor, Ken Yoshioka.

Learn about the tools and strategies to manage your classroom in Zoom including using chat, managing participants, working with breakout rooms and more.

Instructor, Ken Yoshioka.

LockDown Browser is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within Canvas. LockDown Browser is the “gold standard” for securing online exams in classrooms or proctored environments. Monitor allows for secure testing from a remote location using a webcam and LockDown Browser software.  Learn how to use Respondus Lockdown Browser/Monitor to conduct secure and proctored online quizzes and exams.

Instructor, John Bansavich.

Attend this workshop to learn about a tool that will support student engagement in the classroom. Poll Everywhere is a software based product that will allow you to create polls that students can respond to on their smartphones or on their computer web browsers.  Learn how to embed polls in Powerpoint, Google Slides and how to create a variety of questions to break up the lecture time and increase participation.

Instructor, Ken Yoshioka.

Looking for a place to store and share your video content without going to a public platform like YouTube and Vimeo? Echo360 is the university’s lecture capture system, but it is much more than just that. This class covers the Echo360 Universal Capture app for your Mac or PC to screen record your content with your voice and video. You can also upload your own video content to store and share. Learn about the auto transcription tool and the video editing capabilities built into the site. Also learn about the embed tool to embed video from Echo360 into any place in Canvas that has the rich text editor like Canvas pages. Finally learn about the new Echo360 assignment to allow students to record/upload, edit and submit video into Canvas assignments. As faculty, you can use Echo360 courses to manage video sharing and track engagement in the video content. For staff, create public courses to share out training videos or a video series. 

Instructor, Ken Yoshioka.

Would you like to enhance your students' knowledge using a  virtual lab? Check out the comprehensive, virtual learning module that can be implemented right in your Canvas course. 

Learn more about Labster, Virtual Simulation Lab that is ready-to-use for all faculty members at USF.

Instructor, Insun He

Learn the craft of voice recording for podcasts, whether as content for your class or as  student projects.  This class introduces methods for recording from digital recorders, your computer or a mobile device.  Learn to edit the recordings with the free open source audio editor Audacity and then finally to share the podcasts through Canvas sand other podcast hosting solutions.

Instructor, Ken Yoshioka.

Portfolium is an ePortfolio tool inside Canvas that will help students to easily create digital portfolios to showcase their best work. Students can share their projects, skills, and connections with prospective employers. Learn more.

Instructors, John Bansavich/Eileen Lai.

This class covers the strategies and tools to setup up digital storytelling assignments for your class.  Learn how to develop the steps for implementing both audio and video projects in your course and of course the software and hardware tools to capture, edit and publish the final products.

Instructor, Ken Yoshioka.

Learn how to use digital badges to recognize learning achievements. Use Canvas to organize your program then grant badges to share on a resume, ePortfolio, or LinkedIn social media.

Instructor, Insun He.

Adobe Spark is a bundle of 3 tools, which allows you to create webpage, video, and social media graphics.  It is web-based, and can be used on different platforms and devices such as iPads, iPhones, tablets, Android devices, and desktop computers. All you need is to create a free Adobe ID to start your projects.  Share projects with images, video and music to Facebook, and Twitter, share through email link, or even embed it on a website. This class focuses on creating Spark Page.

Instructor, Eileen Lai.

Spark video is web-based, and can be used on different platforms and mobile devices. All you need is to create a free Adobe ID to start your projects. All projects are stored online and can be retrieved for edit on any devices. You will learn how to create projects with still images, video clips and music, and then share on social media or via email.

Instructor, Eileen Lai.

Offered in two sessions, this class provide you an introductory, step-by-step instructions to create an augmented reality prototype using Reality Composer.
The participants must have the required device available to themselves. Please see the specifications and platforms below:
Option 1: Design using a Computer
A Mac computer with MacOS10 Catalina
Xcode 11 (Download free from App Store)
iPhone (iOS13.4 or later) - can be optional

Option 2: Design using an iPad
As an alternative, you can use qualified iPad device to use Reality Composer. Please make sure your iPad is compatible by reviewing here.

Instructor, Insun He

Piazza is a robust, Wiki-style discussion platform that can be installed right in your Canvas course The rich text editor allows LaTeX equations as well as code typing, making it easy to teach or discuss any subjects in online format. The participations in Piazza can be made public or anonymous and the discussion posts can be set to be public or private as needed.

Instructor, Insun He

This class covers an introduction to Zoom web conferencing,  including setting up your account, installing the software, scheduling meetings, as well as meeting tools.

Instructor, Ken Yoshioka.

This class covers the settings and strategies to safeguard your meetings and classrooms before and during your session. 

Instructor, Ken Yoshioka.

Learn about the tools and strategies to manage your classroom in Zoom including using chat, managing participants, working with breakout rooms and more.

Instructor, Ken Yoshioka.

Learn how to create a Zoom Webinar to host an event with up to 3000 attendees. Include a Q&A feature, panelists, and a registration form.

Instructor, John Bansavich.

Click here to submit a request to host a Zoom Webinar

Master the convenience of Google Shared Drive when working with your co-workers at USF. In addition to learning how to use Google drive efficiently, this class will offer you specific insights on how to share and manage everything that team has contributed together in Team Drive. 

Instructor, Insun He.

Learn how to use the administrative system, Banner 9. This online learning module provides general overview of the banner as part of the onboarding process for new employees/change of roles at USF.

This is not an overview of Self-Service Banner for faculty members.

Think of presentations, not as a way to report information, but as digital storytelling; in this class learn how to change the way you look at creating a presentation.  Rather than build the slides, design the slides that tell a story.  No matter whether you use Powerpoint, Keynote, Google Slides or Prezi, create presentations that help you engage your audience.

Instructor, Ken Yoshioka.

Learn the essentials of creating movie presentations using images, video and audio. Develop your storytelling skills whether it be for a class project, department presentation or personal story. Finally, we will show how to package the presentation for viewing whether it be on the web or on your computer. iMovie is available on Mac OS X only. 

Instructor, Ken Yoshioka.

The university Emma email system is a user-friendly email tool that will streamline email design for our campus communicators. Emma offers: an intuitive drag and drop email editor; advanced analytics and reporting functionality; subject line split testing; A/B content testing. This is the system to use for all university emails to 40 or more recipients (excluding emails to prospective students).  This class is required to gain access to the system.

Instructor, Eileen Lai.

Find out how to use the website's content management system to add description and categorization to events on the USF calendar. This course will give you the information you need for working with events in both myUSF and the marketing website as well as adding events to university email. Attendance in this class is required to receive a user account for working on events in the calendar. 

Instructor, Eileen Lai.

Web Content Editing is designed to give you all the training needed to create and edit content on the myUSF site. myUSF is the primary web resource for all students, faculty, and staff.  Attendance in this class is required to gain access to the system.

Instructor, Eileen Lai.

This class is to explore the interface and features of the new Google site. Compare it with the Classic look and choose your pick. It is still very easy to create a new site without any knowledge of HTML or use of advanced web authoring tools.

We will learn how to create multi-pages web site embedded with videos, images, maps, presentations, forms, and gadgets. Use your creativity and explore the different ways you can make use of a Google site! It's quick to build and to collaborate. 

Instructor, Eileen Lai.

Gather information gathering is made so easy through online Google Forms.  Want to find out which date is good for your club to meet,  or get feedback for your last event?  Learn how to create secure online forms for polls and surveys.  You can create simple questions and answers, multiple choices, checkboxes, and more.  Send your form through email to targeted audiences, and collect data displayed in various formats. 

Instructor, Eileen Lai.

PowerPoint makes it easy to create, collaborate, and present your ideas in dynamic, visually compelling ways. Learn the fundamentals of PowerPoint to create a presentation that will surely leave your audience wanting more.

Instructor, Ken Yoshioka.

PowerPoint makes it easy to create, collaborate, and present your ideas in dynamic, visually compelling ways. Take your PowerPoint skills to the next level with advanced features such as: sounds, videos, paths, Animations, layers, much more!

Instructor, Ken Yoshioka.

USF Blogs is a free platform for all USF faculty, staff, and students to create beautiful and responsive websites or blogs.  You do not need to know any HTML or programming language to begin. There are a variety of branded USF templates as well as WordPress templates to help users create their first sites quickly. Faculty can also use this environment as a class blog where students can park to the course and collaborate together. Join a class and see how easy it is.  

Instructor, Eileen Lai.

Learn how to set your availability for meetings on your Google Calendar and have your students sign up for the time.

Instructor, Insun He.

Looking to host a public event in either the regular meeting or webinar format in Zoom?  This class covers the strategies for planning your event including schedule, registration, and meeting management as well as technical criteria like internet connectivity and app version requirements.

Instructor, Ken Yoshioka.

Unlock insights and tell the story in your data. Review the fundamentals of Excel and create a worksheet that solidifies the information. We will get familiar with Excel User Interface, How to enter and format data, calculate totals, keyboard shortcuts, and other productivity tricks! 

Instructor, Anh Nguyen

Unlock insights and tell the story in your data. Ensure that the data in the target cell reflects any changes in the original cell by creating a link between the two cells. Learn this, create charts, and move it all to Microsoft Word without losing any information. 

Instructor, Anh Nguyen

Unlock insights and tell the story in your data. Learn to use Pivot Tables to summarize, analyze, explore, and present your data, and you can create them with just a few clicks. We will also cover Macros to help save you time and headaches by automating common, repetitive tasks.

Instructor, Anh Nguyen

Learn the tools and features necessary to create effective online surveys. Qualtrics software enables users to collect and analyze data online for different purposes including market research, customer satisfaction and loyalty, product and concept testing, employee evaluations and website feedback.

Instructor, John Bansavich

Introduction to Tableaus Desktop interface,  data sources Tableau Supports, the build-up of different data visualizations in order to put them together in a presentable Dashboard. Data visualizations introduced are Text Tables, Bar Charts, Pie Charts, and Geographical Heat Maps.

Instructor, Anh Nguyen

Build efficient Dashboards in order to present as much relevant data as possible, create calculation fields in order to find hidden data patterns. Put together Dashboards into a Story in order to present multiple dashboards in a slide deck with Story settings. Data visualizations introduced are different types of line charts and Gant Chart that provides information about data relating to time.

Instructor, Anh Nguyen

Data blending in order to communicate two different data sources in your data visualizations. Data visualizations introduced are stacked bars, scatters plots and different variations of these two visualizations. 

Instructor, Anh Nguyen

Learn how to create accessible documents in Word, and apply same features in PowerPoint and Google Docs. This will cover how to use correct headings, lists, hyperlinks, headers and footers, metadata, table properties, image alt text, color contrasts, conversion to PDF, accessibility checker and reading order.

Instructor, Eileen Lai.

(Requirement: You need to have installed Acrobat Pro DC on your computer for this training.)

This is an introductory class for those who want to learn the basics on how to make their PDF document accessible using Adobe’s Acrobat Pro DC. You must have the Acrobat Pro installed on your computer to do the hands-on in this class. You are also welcome to just watch and get a feel of what's involved in the process. We will cover the accessibility full checker, reading order, tags, scanned documents; and how to fix basic errors.

The goal of the training is to learn how to improve the accessibility of an PDF document as much as we can with some basic knowledge. We will not cover PDF forms in this class.

Instructor, Eileen Lai.

This class will provide the tools available in Zoom, Echo360 and YouTube to automatically create transcriptions and to edit them for use as captions in video. Will also show how to embed captions in video and to create transcriptions for audio recordings.

Instructors, Ken Yoshioka.

Learn how to use Ally in your Canvas course to identify documents that have a low accessibility score and the steps to make those documents more accessible to your students.  Ally also allows students to download various document formats, creating a more universal design for your course. 

Instructor,  John Bansavich.

What is digital accessibility and why should I learn about it? Digital accessibility provides digital content and services that can be accessed by anyone regardless of their ability. It is important to understand the key concepts of digital accessibility to ensure that the content you provide to your students is accessible for all. This workshop will provide a basic overview of digital accessibility and provide specific instructions on how to make some of your course content accessible.

Instructor: Tom Merrell and Nicole Cuadro

The purpose of this course is to educate and train all digital content contributors to ensure that all web content meets USF's accessibility requirements. There are 9 lessons. Each lesson includes a video presentation of the material, supplementary text material, and a short quiz. A score of 100% in all quizzes required for completion. (This course is also used as a requirement for those staff who needs to get access for myUSF website editing and USF calendar). Any staff and faculty, who do not need to get access to the systems, can register for this class for self-enrichment.

Self-paced Canvas Course