In March of 2021, the Presidents and Chancellor made the decision to merge the three eLearning teams. Though merging Canvas has been in discussion for several years, this move to a single team provided the resources necessary to bring the project to fruition.

By combining our three Canvas sites into a single site, we provide

• A single-entry point for all courses at Seattle Colleges.

• A reduction of multiple accounts for students and faculty across the colleges.

• The ability for eLearning to provide faster support to students, faculty, and staff.

• Greater consistency across student and faculty experiences in Canvas.

For more information, including a video explanation of the whole project and you can prepare please see our new Canvas Merge Project homepage. There you can also request an appointment with our LMS (Learning Management System) Admins to discuss individual situations, submit scenarios for usability testing, and visit our FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).

See the project homepage and this newsletter for future updates.

Canvas Updates:

In April Canvas released a few minor updates including:

• Instructors can now apply the same score to all ungraded assignments in the Gradebook

• Using the Rich Content Editor, users can now create simple clickable icons to enhance the look of your Canvas page. Read more on how to make the icons and some important do’s and don’ts when creating icons.

• Instructors can now include emojis in submission comments, please note that Canvas did remove what they deemed inappropriate emojis.

To read more about these and other minor updates please read the April update release notes.

Attention Chromebook users

Just a quick update for Chromebook users. When using Zoom, you might have noticed “This app will no longer be officially supported after August 2022. Please use the new Zoom for Chrome PWA to join meetings on ChromeOS” at the top of the app. For more info about the Zoom PWA go here to learn more about the new update (Also includes how to download and install the new app).

Preventing Zoom Bombing

If you advertise your Zoom meeting links publicly and you do not password protect your meetings, you increase your chances of getting Zoom bombed greatly. Zoom Bombing is the unwanted, disruptive intrusion into a video-conference call with material that is lewd, obscene, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, Islamophobic, or antisemitic in nature. So, if you need to post your Zoom meeting links publicly, here are a few preventative tips and a process how to deal with being Zoom bombed.

If your desired audience is the college’s student body, faculty, or both, you can make use of the Announcements on Canvas to broadcast your Zoom event to the whole college or to only one of the colleges. When students/faculty visit their homepages in Canvas they will see your announcement at the top of their homepage. If you are interested in this option, just submit your request here. Requests must be turned in by Friday's at 4pm for posting the following Tuesday morning at 8am -- all details are in the link/form request.

Generally, there are some other ways to prevent Zoom bombing:

Under the Security button (the shield icon), you have a few ways to prevent Zoom bombing.

1) Enable Lock Meeting - You can lock the meeting once your desired audience has arrived.

2) Enable Waiting Room - Participants cannot join a meeting till a host admits them individually.

3) Disable participants' ability to share the screen.

4) Disable participants ability to use the chat. Remember, in the chat participants can post photos and animated gifs. File sharing can be disabled in your Zoom Settings. If you choose to use the Chat, at least, be sure Private Chat is disable in your Zoom Settings.

5) Disable participants ability to rename themselves. This will prevent a Zoom bomber with an attention-getting username from changing it to better hide among your participants.

6) Disable Unmute Themselves. This prevents a participant from enabling their microphone till you choose to give them the option.

7) Disable Video Start. This prevents a participant from enabling their video camera till you choose to give them the option.

8) If you are in the process of being Zoom bombed, you can click on Suspend Participant Activities. By clicking this, ALL video, audio, in-meeting chat, annotation, and screen sharing during that time will STOP, and Breakout Rooms will end.

You will be given the option to remove the participant and report their behavior to Zoom. Once the participant is removed, be sure to enable your microphone and video camera and under the Security button, enable the features you want for your participants for the remainder of your meeting. Just so you know, when recording a session and you must enable suspend participants activities, the recording will continue to record, although the screen will go black till you enable your video/audio for yourself and others.

If you suspect someone in the meeting is a Zoom bomber and you simply wish to remove them without stopping the meeting, go to the Participants panel, roll over their name and click on More, a menu will appear and choose Remove. But a quicker way to remove a participant is to click on their video window, a popup menu will appear and choose Remove. Using both above methods, you can also have the option to place a participant in a waiting room, just choose Put in Waiting Room instead of Remove.

I hope you find the above information helpful in preventing you and your classes and events from being Zoom bombed!