CIS Service Reminders for Spring 2021

January 22, 2021

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Read below for more information about:

  • Spring 2021 course sites in Sakai
  • Course Mudd Shots
  • Course mailing lists in Google Groups
  • Gradescope and Gradescope-Sakai integration
  • Zoom and Zoom-Sakai integration
  • Screencastify, a screen recording platform that integrates with Google Drive
  • Winter workshop recordings
  • Help Desk contact information

Spring 2021 Sakai course sites were created and have been populated with faculty and students. Sakai will synchronize with the portal three times per day at 12:30 pm, 5:30 pm and 2:30 am. If you have not yet requested your ubercourses, this would be a good time to do so. If you’re having trouble finding and organizing your sites in the Home site, please read our Tips and Tricks for Organizing Your Sakai Sites. 

If you’re still working on your course site and don’t want students to be able to see it yet, you can temporarily unpublish your site by going to Site Info/Manage Tools.

As part of the College’s website accessibility initiative, we have added a link to the HMC Accessibility web page on all HMC Spring 2021 Sakai course sites. This is one of the requirements for compliance with accessibility requirements. If you’re using a web site other than Sakai to host course materials, we’d appreciate it if you would add a link to https://www.hmc.edu/website-accessibility/ to your site as well. If you’d like to learn more about how to make your course materials more accessible, please contact us at the CIS Help Desk helpdesk@hmc.edu or 909 607 7777. We also now have an accessible syllabus Word template that faculty can use. You can find it linked from our Web and Document Accessibility Consulting service catalog page.

Course Mudd Shots have been updated and are available in the HMC Portal. Course Mudd Shots are now available only on the HMC Portal. The HMC Portal version includes photos of non-HMC students. The HMC web site version has been retired and is no longer available.  More information and links are available on the Mudd Shots Service Catalog page.

Course mailing lists have been created in Google Groups. You can see your course mailing lists in your My Groups list or get a full list of all course mailing lists at: Spring 2021 Course Mailing Lists on Google Groups. With additional feedback from the HMC Computing Committee we have created a “master” Google Group for all courses that have multiple sections. For example, bio-23@g.hmc.edu contains all faculty and students associated with all 5 sections of Bio 23. Master lists will be automatically maintained just like the other Google Groups for courses.

We have an institutional license for Gradescope which includes Pomona, Scripps, and now CMC. Gradescope is integrated with Sakai, which allows you to easily synchronize your Gradescope roster with Sakai, as well as the Gradescope gradebook with the gradebook in Sakai. If you are new to Gradescope and would like to try it out this semester please send an email to the CIS Help Desk and one of the ARCS team can help you set it up. If you want to use the integration with Sakai please be sure to read the instructions for Integrating Gradescope with Sakai for Faculty since there are already a couple of gotchas that we’ve discovered. You can also point your students to Gradescope Instructions for Students for some useful instructions on scanning to PDF using a smartphone app. Both of these documents are available on the CIS Gradescope service catalog page.

We also have an institutional license for Zoom that covers all faculty, students, and staff. It has also been integrated with Sakai and you can find instructions on how to set up the Sakai integration in our Zoom Integration with Sakai for Faculty documentation. The Sakai integration allows you to schedule all of your class session Zoom meetings from within Sakai. Students can then join the Zoom meetings from Sakai and if you decide to record those sessions, the recordings are also automatically available from Sakai. The only wrinkle is that your Zoom account must be under your username@hmc.edu email address. If your Zoom account is under your username@g.hmc.edu you will need to contact the Help Desk for help with switching it if you want to use the Zoom Sakai integration tool.

Another useful software package that we have purchased a site license for is Screencastify. It’s an easy to use Chrome extension that allows you to record audio, video and/or your webcam in a Chrome tab or from your desktop. To get an account just go to the Screencastify website and sign up for an account with your G Suite account  and your username@g.hmc.edu address. Then install the Chrome extension. We have additional documentation in our Quick Start Guide to Screencastify documentation.

You can learn more about using these tools by viewing one of the recordings of the winter workshops we did in December. You can email the Help Desk to get a link to the recordings. Or feel free to schedule a time to meet with us one-on-one by emailing the Help Desk.

This semester, our Help Desk will continue to support faculty, staff, and students remotely. Arrangements will be made for the pick-up and drop-off of equipment as needed. We can still be reached via the following methods:

Have a great Spring semester!