IT Department Blog

The time has come to say goodbye to the Blue Wave Syllabus Builder and step into the future of syllabus creation with Simple Syllabus. This new system will provide a consistent experience for our students, an easy to use creation tool for our instructors, and a robust search and reporting feature for supervisors and administration - all while enabling us to meet the requirements of the state.

The EdTech team is excited to announce something new, informational, and even a little fun! We will be activating a New User Tutorial in Canvas, specifically tailored for our new users and those who may need tips for using various pages in Canvas. This new feature is part of our commitment to ensuring that you have the best possible experience and support as you navigate and utilize Canvas for your teaching needs.

As we approach the five-year mark of transitioning to Canvas, the Education Technology team would like to introduce the Canvas Course Archival Plan. This initiative will begin the process of streamlining course archives, ensuring that our digital learning environment remains both efficient and secure. The plan outlined below provides a clear timeline for the archiving and eventual deletion of courses, as well as what you should do to prepare for this project.

To provide our students with the best possible learning environment, IT strives to refresh audio-visual equipment on a 5-year lifecycle. The following rooms have been identified as needing their audio-visual equipment refreshed this year.

Though not as big as the 2.6 update, BigBlueButton’s 2.7 update is here. This update offers users improved usability, increased engagement, and more performance. Here's a breakdown of what's new in 2.7.

Microsoft has released a new version of Teams available and the College will be enabling the update for all staff and faculty on February 1st, 2024. This new version delivers improved performance, speed, and security – but overall has a familiar look and feel to it so it will be an easy switch for users.

While it appears that new functions and applications of generative AI are announced daily, a crucial skill that users are attempting to master is the ability to craft an effective prompt. Understanding how to articulate your request to elicit the desired outcome from the tool is like knowing how to formulate precise queries when using search engines like Google. In this blog post, we've compiled (with some help from our own favorite AI chat tool) a set of tips that you can experiment with the next time you use your favorite AI tool.

As you read in the recent email, IT has given everyone the gift of no longer requiring a password change every 60 days. In this blog post, we’ll recap the steps to ensure you have a secure passphrase and how to avoid it being compromised.

You may be familiar Spotify’s Yearly Wrapped, a fun overview of a person’s listening habits over the year. Today, we want to share our version of a Canvas Wrapped - a look at FSCJ’s Canvas usage from the past year and beyond. Below are a few graphs that visualize all the ways that we use Canvas at FSCJ. Let’s take a closer look at the data. Like Spotify’s Yearly Wrapped, you may be surprised what the data reveals!

We're excited to share an update that brings a small, but potentially impactful change to your Canvas courses. Instructors can now allow student replies to course announcements, per course and per announcement.

There is a lot of excitement around generative AI. While some companies are limiting the use of AI, we want to encourage use it as a tool to be more creative and productive while also protecting our privacy and data.

If you use discussions in your Canvas courses (and according to our recent data usage report, most of you are), then this post is one that you’ll want to read. Discussion improvements have consistently been an area where users provide feedback and want to see improvement in Canvas. Well, we agreed with you on and have been awaiting Canvas to improve for quite a few years.

….and that time has finally come!

As we approach significant feature releases and tools enhancements in Canvas, the IT department is forming a group to provide feedback and governance of the LMS at FSCJ.

As an instructor today, managing your time in Canvas can be tough. With this new feature in the Canvas Calendar, users can now create and edit recurring events. This feature, available after the October 21 feature release, hopes to make scheduling easier and boost user productivity.

Empowering yourself to regain access to your FSCJ account is a simple and secure process. By following the outlined steps, you can unlock your account, reinforce its security, and reduce the need for password reset calls. Remember, Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) is your ally in safeguarding your account, and is now mandatory for all users. If you're ever unsure about your User ID, finding it is a click away. Share this valuable information with your peers to ensure everyone benefits from a safer and more secure FSCJ experience.