This guide provides instructors and teaching assistants with a description of the technology that can be used to facilitate continuity in the event of a Canvas outage. This page will be updated as additional tools become available in response to faculty and student needs.
Communicating with Students
Email Students
Use the Course roster email to send a message to the entire class, or to obtain a contact list for use in other tools such as Microsoft Teams
Chat or Meet in Microsoft Teams
- Connect with anyone on campus via chat, audio, or video call. All CU Boulder users are licensed for Teams, making it easier to add people to a team or search, call, and chat
- Invite external (guest) users to be part of your Team
- Access other Office 365 apps including OneDrive, SharePoint, OneNote, and Planner
- Connect your Team to third-party apps and connectors including Google Drive, SurveyMonkey, Twitter, RSS, Salesforce, Trello, GitHub and JIRA
Delivering Course Content without Canvas
If Canvas is not available, there are many other ways you can deliver course content. Choose the method that most aligns with your learning objectives.
Share Documents, Assignments and Files with Students
- Use Microsoft OneDrive to share files and folders of course content. Google Drive can also be used, but to avoid issues with storage limitations, try to only use Google-based files in your Drive.
- Microsoft Teams can be used to set up a private Team or group chat with your students and/or TAs, and you can also share folders and files. Fill out this form to request a private team.
- For large files or files that need secure transmission, use CU’s Large File Transfer service.
Collect Assignments
- University-provided Email via Microsoft Outlook allows for messages up to 150MB.
- For large files or files that need secure transmission, use CU’s Large File Transfer service.
- Collect document submissions with Microsoft Forms using a file upload question type. Students can submit their documents using the Form, and documents are stored in a secure folder others can’t access or view. Note that file upload questions have a size limit of 1GB.
Conduct Quizzes & exams
- Facilitate your course quizzes and exams using either the Qualtrics platform, or Microsoft Forms.
Grading and Feedback
- Individual grades may be transmitted via email from one colorado.edu email address to another, but not in bulk. View the Registrar’s instructions on secure electronic transmission of student data to learn more.
- For student feedback, share and annotate documents using Microsoft 365 or Google Docs
- For collaborative grade tracking using Excel 365, using a data sensitivity label of “Confidential,” with a sublabel of “Internal”, is recommended to ensure student data is properly protected.
- CU Boulder sensitivity labels can be applied to these Microsoft file types:
- Word files (.docx, .docm, .dotx, .dotm)
- Excel files (.xlsx, .xlsb; .xlsm, .xltx)
- PowerPoint files (.pptx, .pptm, .potx, .potm, .ppsx, .ppsm)
To apply a sensitivity label:
- Open the file in the corresponding Microsoft web or desktop app.
- Open the sensitivity labels menu by either:
- Clicking on the Sensitivity button on the Home tab
- Clicking on the shield icon in the title bar
- Select the most appropriate label or sublabel from the menu.
- Any protections associated with that label will be applied immediately.
For additional details, including screenshots, refer to the Microsoft's Apply sensitivity labels to your files support page.
Share Video with Students
Microsoft 365 offers video sharing via ClipChamp. Review ClipChamp tutorials to get started.
Conduct or Record a Lecture with Zoom
Zoom is a web conferencing tool that can be used for real-time lectures with students as well as for lecture recordings. It is an intuitive and simple tool that can be used on desktop, tablet and mobile devices. Zoom has a number of features that can enhance your online class experience, including screen sharing, chat, recording, annotation and more.
- Create Zoom meetings for each course at regularly scheduled class times or use your personal meeting URL.
- Record lectures then share cloud recordings asynchronously.
Tips for Using Zoom
- Use headphones or earbuds with a microphone to minimize surrounding noise and improve the quality of your voice. The Logitech H800 is a good option, although any headset and microphone combo will provide a better experience than a microphone and speaker built into a laptop.
- Test your audio and video before joining a call.
- Use the mute on entry function when scheduling meetings to prevent disruption from attendees joining with microphones on.
- See more of OIT's Zoom tips
Zoom Security and Privacy
Zoom offers several options to increase the security and privacy of Zoom sessions, including requiring authentication, muting and removing non-invited guests, as well as Tips to Keep Uninvited Guests Out of Your Zoom Event. Use OIT's Secure Meetings Guide for recommended options you can utilize to increase security including:
- Add Domain Based Authentication to Scheduled Meetings to limit attendees to CU Boulder users only.
- Other Authentication Profile options are available if requiring IdentiKeys is not possible.
- Use waiting rooms to control when each attendee can join a meeting.
- Enable account-level setting Attendees on Hold.
- Lock a meeting to prevent anyone from joining mid-session.
- Remove, Stop Video, or Put Attendee on Hold during a meeting.
- Limit screen sharing during a meeting.
Training Resources from Zoom
- Zoom is offering Zoom Meetings for Education Webinars focusing on topics including how to download the Zoom and join a meeting, how to schedule a meeting, and an overview of in-meeting controls.
- Zoom 101: In-Meeting Controls (Basic)
- Comprehensive Guide to Educating Through Zoom
- Tips and Tricks for Teachers Educating on Zoom
Conduct Group Work
There are a number of tool options you can use to facilitate group work during online classes and outside of class time.
- During live lectures, use the Breakout Rooms feature in Zoom to allow students to work in small groups via Zoom.
- Use Microsoft Teams as a platform for students to collaborate while working in groups. Students can communicate with one another using chat and audio or video calls. They can also leverage OneDrive, SharePoint, OneNote, and Planner to take notes, co-author documents, or plan student projects.
