Technology – Teaching & Learning https://blogs.jccc.edu Johnson County Community College Thu, 14 Aug 2025 20:39:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.4 91413655 Tip! – Create an Email Template in Outlook https://blogs.jccc.edu/2024/06/28/tip-create-an-email-template-in-outlook/ Fri, 28 Jun 2024 15:07:16 +0000 http://blogs.jccc.edu/?p=6533 Creating a template in Outlook is quite an easy task, but the navigation to get there is somewhat hidden. You’ll find “My Templates” in the App icon in the Insert or Message ribbon. If you use the desktop application, you can manually put it in your ribbon, but if you use the online version, you’ll have an extra click. Still, a couple of clicks is easy if you don’t have to type a whole email! Here’s a short tutorial on how to do it.

If you prefer to follow along on paper, here’s the PDF: CreateanEmailTemplateinOutlook_PDF

]]> 6533 Tip! – Classroom Equipment Training https://blogs.jccc.edu/2024/04/02/tip-classroom-equipment-training/ Tue, 02 Apr 2024 15:10:40 +0000 http://blogs.jccc.edu/?p=6505 Need some assistance using classroom equipment and technology? You don’t have to wait until PLD to get the help you need. Find tutorial videos and overviews quickly on the Ed Tech Blog site. Of course, we’re still happy to help you in person, so if you need a one-on-one session with one of our Ed Tech Analysts, don’t hesitate to contact us in LIB 375 or x3842.

Here are some helpful links to classroom resources:

And if you find equipment that doesn’t work in a room – contact the Technical Support Center at x4357, option 2. Don’t leave it for the next instructor!

]]> 6505 Tip! – Zoom Room Closed? Now What?! https://blogs.jccc.edu/2023/12/06/tip-zoom-room-closed-now-what/ Wed, 06 Dec 2023 19:51:40 +0000 http://blogs.jccc.edu/?p=6319 It’s true. Sometimes the Ed Tech Zoom Room is closed. Sometimes we have meetings. Or we’re on vacation. Or we forget (sorry!). But not to worry, there are lots of other ways to get help with Canvas or other things you need.

First, at least one of us is probably still working. Try contacting the Ed Tech Center by phone (x3842) or emailing us at edtech@jccc.edu. There’s a very good chance we’ll answer you quickly if you try that. Find all the ways to contact us here.

Next up, we have provided a lot of resources on our Blogs page from how to use the classroom equipment, to which buttons to click to copy your course over. We have video tutorials, links to software support sites, and tips and tricks we get asked a lot of.

Here are some shortcuts for you:

Other college resources include:

Finally, try Google. Yes. It may seem too simple, but I promise someone somewhere has had this issue before and there are a lot of smart people in the world who have helped them out and recorded it for your benefit.

]]> 6319 Tip! Turnitin Takes on AI https://blogs.jccc.edu/2023/04/26/tip-turnitin-takes-on-ai/ Wed, 26 Apr 2023 10:43:27 +0000 http://blogs.jccc.edu/?p=6070 ChatGPT! ChatGPT! You can’t say it 5 times fast, but lately it’s all anyone can talk about. It’s either the greatest thing since spring clipped breadboards or the end of civilization, life and the universe itself.

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot: that is, an app you can have a conversation with. It runs on, and provides access to, a “large language model”: basically a library of text patterns intended to mimic the linguistic working of a human brain in a specific language (in this case, English).

You can have a free-wheeling conversation with ChatGPT, but what really has people talking is that you can give it a “prompt” asking for a text composition with any number of specific characteristics — length, topic, structure, style — and it will return you that very composition.

You don’t have to know anything about the topic or structure or style to get useful results. And ChatGPT doesn’t know anything in its own right about any topics — that’s not the kind of AI it is. It only repeats what it’s read on the internet. But it will repeat it as a new composition rather than as a quote (unless you ask it for quotes, and it might be making those up).

The opportunity for someone to have ChatGPT (or similar tools) compose text which they then pass off as their own is obvious. It isn’t straightforward plagiarism, or exactly a matter of hiring someone to write your paper. It’s potentially like hiring someone to plagiarize for you with such sophistication that it might never be detected as plagiarism.

Fortunately, Turnitin has already come to our rescue. The company, which is founded on plagiarism detection, recognized that tools like ChatGPT are creating text which presents some of the same problems as plagiarism but which can’t be detected as such. So Turnitin has built its own AI to detect AI writing.

The company rolled out the new features on 4 April 2023 in basically all of its services, including the one which we have built into our Canvas LMS. And every sample submitted to it since that date is automatically being checked for possibly having been written by an AI.

Professors don’t need to do anything to activate it (and can’t opt out, except by not using Turnitin). But AI Writing Detection works a little differently from the prior Similarity Report. The major difference is that it is only available to professors and administrators. In other words, when a student looks at the similarity report for their own work, they will not and cannot see the AI writing detection report. A professor will for the same work, but not in Canvas. To see the AI writing detection report requires clicking through the similarity report icon for the student’s submission to enter the Turnitin environment.

Click on the percentage Similarity Icon in the Canvas Speedgrader using Turnitin.  Then you will see a AI icon in the lower right corner representing the percentage of AI content flagged by Turnitin.

 

The reason for the difference is because of the difference in what Turnitin is doing with AI writing detection. With the similarity report, Turnitin finds actual verbatim instances of pieces of text from a new submission in a prior submission or out on the internet. The only question is whether these similarities rise to the level of plagiarism.

Turnitin’s AI writing detection involves another AI evaluating a submission for the likelihood that it was written by an AI. The AI returns a percentage likelihood, something between 0 and 100%, and Turnitin’s confidence in that percentage is 98%. In other words, Turnitin is 98% confident that whatever likelihood its AI assigns to the writing having been done by another AI is accurate. But that leaves room for false positives (and negatives!) so it’s important that the likelihood only be reported to the professor and for the professor to then decide whether and how to handle the situation.

Turnitin has great further information and discussion available through its blog post announcing the release of its AI Writing Detection.

]]> 6070 Tip! If Something Doesn’t Work, Report it https://blogs.jccc.edu/2023/04/03/tip-report-it/ Mon, 03 Apr 2023 19:20:21 +0000 http://blogs.jccc.edu/?p=6053 JCCC is a big place, full of classrooms and conference rooms, and there’s more electronics installed in more of those rooms all the time. On any given day, some pieces of it are going to fail. The failure may be temporary or permanent, it may be an emergency or a nuisance — but if no one reports it (and it’s not a hiccup) it may never get fixed. If it’s something that hiccups all the time and no one reports it, it may never be replaced with something reliable.

So when something isn’t working, do yourself and your colleagues a favor and open a ticket with the Technical Support Center. The form for doing that is at

https://planning.jccc.edu/TDClient/37/Portal/Requests/ServiceDet?ID=184&SIDs=1

As the form itself clarifies, if you are dealing with an emergency, please call the emergency help line at (913)469-8500, extension 4357, option 2. From a campus phone the extension can be dialed directly.

]]> 6053 Tip! – Troubleshooting LTI issues with students https://blogs.jccc.edu/2023/01/26/tip-troubleshooting-lti-issues-with-students/ Thu, 26 Jan 2023 17:30:51 +0000 http://blogs.jccc.edu/?p=5907 Canvas has about a thousand LTIs and other applications that work with it, but they don’t always go smoothly. Where do you send your students when that happens? Sometimes they can get the help they need from IS, but we’ve also got a troubleshooting page you can share with your students to get started figuring out why their stuff doesn’t work.

The basics are these – use a real computer rather than a mobile device. Don’t use Safari. And enable those cookies! Head over to the complete page for more info. You can even link it in your course.

]]> 5907 Tip! – Clear Space in Google https://blogs.jccc.edu/2022/08/30/tip-clear-space-in-google/ Tue, 30 Aug 2022 18:52:15 +0000 http://blogs.jccc.edu/?p=5736

Is there a storage limit on Google Drive for Education?

In 2021, Google announced a storage policy that provides schools and universities with a baseline of 100 TB of pooled storage shared across all users. 400,000 hours of video.  To provide enough capacity for our students and employees each JCCC stumail account will have a 5 Gig limit.

This policy went into effect across all Google Workspace for Education editions and Johnson County Community College in July 2022.

Learn more about storage with Drive

Your storage is shared across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. When your account reaches its storage limit, you can’t send or receive emails.

To see how much space you have left, on a computer, go to google.com/settings/storage.

How to clear space

Clear space in Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos to make room for new items.

To delete your Google Drive files, move them to the trash. Files in trash will be automatically deleted after 30 days. You can restore files from your trash before the 30-day time window. You can also permanently delete them to empty your trash. If you delete, restore, or permanently delete multiple files or folders at once, it might take time for you to notice the changes.

Free up storage space

Delete files by size in Google Drive

  1. Use a computer to see your files listed from largest to smallest.
  2. Put files you don’t want in your Trash, then permanently delete them.

Manage files in you Google Drive storage

]]> 5736 Tip! – Educational Podcasts https://blogs.jccc.edu/2021/11/09/tip-educational-podcasts/ Tue, 09 Nov 2021 16:51:14 +0000 http://blogs.jccc.edu/?p=5276 Remember iTunes?

The use of Podcasting to share ideas and have conversations is not new and has been available for years.  Here is a list of Podcasts that can be used to enhance your professional development.

Podcasts in Higher Education

The Ed Tech Center can also help you develop your own Podcast for your courses.  Let us help you. edtech@jccc.edu 

]]> 5276 Tip! – JCCC System Status https://blogs.jccc.edu/2021/10/19/tip-jccc-system-status/ Tue, 19 Oct 2021 16:59:43 +0000 http://blogs.jccc.edu/?p=5246 A large number of the systems at JCCC are now hosted in the cloud.  If you are having problems accessing a service either on campus or off campus you might check to see if this is a known issue. To report a issue continue to contact the Technical Support Center.  techsupport@jccc.edu

Please click on a link to check the current status of a service:

]]> 5246 Tip! – Move Your Videos to YuJa https://blogs.jccc.edu/2021/10/05/tip-move-your-videos-to-yuja/ Tue, 05 Oct 2021 14:47:00 +0000 http://blogs.jccc.edu/?p=5242 Are you using Videos outside of YuJa?

The Ed Tech Center is working with faculty to move all video content into our YuJa Video Management System.  This may include videos uploaded directly into Canvas Files, Personal YouTube Videos or Videos on the old Techsmith Relay Server which is being decommissioned by November 2021.

YuJa provides a variety of advantages including reducing Canvas course sizes, adding Closed Captioning and providing video analytics. So if you have videos that need to be moved or relocated let the Ed Tech Center help you.

Edtech@jccc.edu

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