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Narrator: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Karin De Varennes: Welcome, everyone. We're so happy that you're here with us. We are talking about Canvas and collaborating and where agencies have been in the journey to get where they've been. So we're glad you're here. This is a very open session.

We have a Tanya Cobb who is online. She's part of our panel. She's from-- if you want to give us a wave, she's from Santa Monica, Malibu. And would you two like to introduce yourselves? We have also two other panelists here that have joined us, Marci England from Corona-Norco and Monica Cueva from San Diego Continuing College.

We're happy that you all could be here. Would you like to unmute yourself? Also with us is our colleague here, Ely Friedman who is running our chat and admitting folks as they come in. We'll start. We can start over here. We'll have a little introduction and talk about Canvas where you are with your journey and our real purpose today is really just to have time to collaborate.

So we just want to know, and people other people want to know, what are other-- what are we doing with Canvas? So without further ado, I'm just going to go ahead and-- Made a quick error in the bottom left.

[interposing voices]

Just a little bit. Here we go. Here is sort of our agenda. And we may be-- we may have a little less-- a little more time really to just talk in section two, to sort of see what our panelists' experience with Canvas. Maybe we'll start with them first. And then go back and talk about where you are and any questions that you have.

And if that's OK with everyone, and that way we can get as much as we need to out. Today's, here our panelists. Again. Would you like to say a few words. We'll start with Monica, move to Tonya, and then Marci.

Monica Cueva: Hi, everyone. I'm Monica Cueva. I teach for the San Diego College of Continuing Education. And I am our ESL Technology Coordinator. And I'm also teaching an online vocational English as a second language class for intermediate high level ESL students.

Karin De Varennes: Tag, you're it, Marci. No, I think I said Tonya. I should have said Tanya, but go ahead Marci.

Marci England: OK. Hi. I'm Marci England. I'm the Assistant Principal at Corona-Norco Adult School. And I'm also the technology team lead among lots of the other roles that go along with being assistant.

Karin De Varennes: All your hats you wear. And sorry about that, Tonya. Tonya.

Tonya Cobb: No worries. Can everyone hear me OK?

Karin De Varennes: Yes. I'm trying to find you though so we can see you. There we go.

Tonya Cobb: OK. I'm Tanya Cobb. I am the EL Civics Distance Education in Canvas Lead at Santa Monica Malibu Adult School. I also teach credit ESL at Cypress College and at Coastline Community College. Happy to be here.

Karin De Varennes: Great. And would you mind introducing yourselves? We have a really nice tidy group here, maybe we could have a little introduction here. Sure.

Michael Delaney: Michael Delaney. I teach Advanced ESL at Eastside Adult Ed in San Jose. And a few months ago I became our Canvas admin. I've been using Canvas for a couple of years, and I'm interested to hear how other people are using it and what struggles you've been through.

Karin De Varennes: He's the one that attends most of our sessions online. He's a regular. He's a regular.

[interposing voices]

As is Tonya. Darwin, would you like to go next?

Darwin Dallas: Hi, my name is Dallas. I'm from Yucaipa Adult School. I teach ABE Math and Advanced ESL. Very happy to be here. Thank you.

Karin De Varennes: And where is your agency with Canvas? Have you have you started--

Darwin Dallas: We are on a really exploratory adventure to see what we have and what we can do because we don't have it yet.

Karin De Varennes: Nice. Fabulous. And then, yes, Ely.

Ely Friedman: I'm Ely Friedman, I teach US citizenship here at Chula Vista Adult School and I also teach advanced ESL Composition at Grossmont College, which is where I use Canvas and love Canvas.

Karin De Varennes: Nice.

Ely Friedman: Try to get them to use it here, but they didn't want to spend the money.

Karin De Varennes: OK. Well you know, with CDLC, the first 50 licenses are free. I know, it's a bargain. So and then online, if I could have-- Michele, if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself.

Michele Raymond: Yes. Hi my name's Michele Raymond. I'm here from Placer School for Adults in Northern California. And we're just getting started on implementing Canvas. A few of us have been using it so-- yeah, excited for more.

Karin De Varennes: Nice. And if I could have Patricia, if you wouldn't mind unmuting. Hi, Patricia.

Patricia Hernandez: Patricia Hernandez, I work with Tonya at Santa Monica Malibu. I work in-- I'm a citizenship instructor. But I'm really-- we're going to make this transition to Canvas so.

Karin De Varennes: I love that you're backing up your friend there. Moral support.

Patricia Hernandez: Exactly, exactly. Thank you. Thank you.

Karin De Varennes: Thank you. And then we have our last person, AUDG7D3. I hate to call you by the number, but if you wouldn't mind muting and introducing yourself. Or not. That's OK. It could be just something else.

And so what we'll do is we're going to pass this one. And we have six questions for our panelists. But that doesn't mean that you can't ask your own questions because this is the beautiful thing about having a small group is that you can just ask as you will.

So our first question, how did the Canvas journey begin for you? And within your agency, how far is your agency progressed? And who would like to go first from our panelists? OK, Tonya.

Tonya Cobb: So we started by participating in the Sacramento County Office of Education Cohort. And I think that was along with the Kate Project, as well, last June, sort of all jumbled as to how it was happening. Then we entered into an MOU with Adult Education Canvas.

So if we take a step back from that, I had used Canvas for several years, even pre-pandemic. And so I was using Canvas with my students, the free version with my students at the Adult School. And then we started hearing about these special projects and whatnot.

So we got involved, and then we started developing training first for the admins, and so that's me. That's one of our administrators, and an office staff member. And they had no experience with Canvas whatsoever. And frankly, were quite reticent about it at all. And so we started from there.

And then through the distance learning cooperative as well, then we developed-- like I developed like an implementation timeline, try to create buy in from everyone. So I think maybe that should stop there. So I'm not sure how far down where our journey began I should go. But eventually, once the administrators were trained then teachers participated in paid training, which I think was key.

They went through the Canvas for Teachers Training Modules. The first four modules we did some face to face interaction. But mostly, it was all online. They would have homework and things like that going through the modules. And they had the opportunity to play.

And by opportunity, I mean they had-- we financially supported that, for them to be able to explore and play around with Canvas. So that's how we began. I'll stop there.

Karin De Varennes: Awesome. And would you two like to tell your story next?

Marci England: Yeah. I'll go. So we started Canvas about-- I think it was 2018. We were part of the '18/'19 DLAC Cohort, that did the Digital Literacy academy through OTAN. And our goal was to implement Canvas in the high school equivalency program.

There were a lot of pen and paper packets. And we just thought that it would be really great to implement it there and have more usability where students digitize that program. What happened was that we were successful there. And then we had half of our teachers using Google Classroom and half using Canvas in a pandemic sort of situation.

And we were really struggling to get students on both routes. So we had to pick-- we had to pick a lane. And because of the transitional digital support that Canvas offers, like if our students are transitioning to community college or beyond, they need to be on Canvas.

And because Canvas, we were looking at Canvas and Google Classroom for-- we were looking at them both side by side at the same time. And we just found that Canvas was much more user friendly for adult learners, the way it interacts on your cell phone or from the front side and the back side.

And so as far as our journey, after we made that commitment, we also made the large financial commitment to purchase enough Canvas licenses so that we can really roll out to our entire school. And so all programs, ESL, high school diploma, actually high school diploma is on using Edgenuity. We decided that works as its own LMS.

Our CTE programs, ESL and high school equivalency are all now on Canvas. It was not easy to get where we are. Like we started really small, but we're institutionally-wide using Canvas now.

Monica Cueva: And that was really hard.

Marci England: That's where we're at. I have been really proud about it.

Karin De Varennes: Maraca shakes.

Michael Delaney: Can we ask questions?

Karin De Varennes: Absolutely. Let's ask questions.

Michael Delaney: How do your teachers feel about that?

Marci England: Yes, so with change. Always with change comes-- everybody takes change differently. It's hard.

Karin De Varennes: It is hard. It's hard.

Marci England: It's really hard. And so one thing that was interesting and maybe we will get into this a little bit more in a couple other questions. But one thing that was really interesting is those of us on the tech team were so excited about Canvas, and we were like Canvas cheerleaders for a large portion of our work.

And we actually started kind of annoying the people that were like, I actually really like this packet or this format that I'm doing. And when we talk about things, Karin said this is like a tell all. We share the good and the bad here today. And so when we talk.

Karin De Varennes: It's a safe place.

Marci England: So we really were a little. I would recommend giving a lot of time for the late adopters, just give a lot of time because we have teachers now, as of 2023, it's been five years. We have teachers now that say, OK, I'm ready.

And in the beginning, we forced it. We were like, everybody needs to be on Canvas and we'll support you and it's going to be great because you'll have support. But that it just takes time. And so I wish we would have said, this is going to be great. And when you're ready, we're ready. So knowing that it's never going to be everyone on this. Does that answer your question?

Michael Delaney: Yeah. That's been our experience. Sounds like you're doing very well. We struggle. We haven't mandated it, so people have not taken it up. They've gone to some trainings, but then they don't follow through.

Marci England: And we have it mandated, every class should be on Canvas. And at our last tech team meeting, we went through the list of every single teacher and talked about how are they all using cameras in their classroom. And we have a group that are not using it. It's mandated. But they're not using it. But we want them to still feel good about coming to work and the interactions they have with their students, so we're just continuing to tread lightly.

Patricia Hernandez: Karin. Tonya has a question.

Karin De Varennes: Oh. Tonya, you have your hand up.

Tonya Cobb: I just wanted to respond to the question about how the teachers felt. I think part of our-- we're not even a year in yet. So we're still like ramping up. We might get into this later, but the being willing to pivot when necessary and when teachers or staff, because we were trying to-- we are trying to implement it school-wide, but starting really slowly, but being willing when teachers or staff are like, this is too much, because we are also at the same time-- we're going through loss. We've also had some turnover and all of that.

And so we had to be willing to chill and slowly ramp up. But also when there are instances where, for example, one of our office staff, one who was quite reticent at the beginning, she's now implemented like our deliverables and such are now all through Canvas.

So whether some people are ready or not, we're gently nudging them in that direction by showing them how useful it can be, how efficient using Canvas can be. So they're coming along a little, kicking and screaming, but they're coming along.

Karin De Varennes: Fantastic, Maraca. I did shake the Maraca plate earlier.

Darwin Dallas: Can I go back? Marci.

Marci England: Yeah.

Darwin Dallas: Is it possible for a teacher to partially use Canvas?

Marci England: Yes. 100%.

Darwin Dallas: So if somebody feels like it's beneficial for this school, if they have to do it all day long, then that's great also.

Marci England: Yeah, and actually it's really interesting. At our last meeting, when we went through teacher by teacher and we said, how are they using Canvas? Some teachers-- we never anticipated this, but some teachers only use Canvas as a classroom management tool. So everything they teach is housed in Canvas. They have Canvas up. For ESL, we have Ventures, which integrates wonderfully with Canvas.

And they use the Canvas book, but they're not doing any class assignments. They're not necessarily putting students in a classroom, but they're using it to manage their class. And that is a huge step. And the class actually functions better when it's managed. In my opinion, it functions better when it's managed. So yeah, there's different levels of implementation, absolutely.

Darwin Dallas: No, we're here for your opinion.

[interposing voices]

Karin De Varennes: Yes, I want to bring Monica into the conversation too, a different point of view. And welcome, Ryan. We're just talking about Canvas. And this is our question. We have Tanya Cobb, also Santa Monica, Malibu, who's also a panelist and then our friends online there. So Monica, would you like to take over your experience and piggyback on another--

Monica Cueva: Yes. Of course. Thank you. So we are San Diego College of Continuing Education. And we are under the community college district. So we follow suit with a lot of what the community colleges are doing. And so we were using the Blackboard learning management system. And we migrated to Canvas in about-- it was I think 2017. 2018.

Karin De Varennes: It's a different thing altogether, because I used Blackboard.

Monica Cueva: And so at that time, it was just-- we had maybe just a handful or a little bit more of our ESL faculty that were using a learning management system. So that had to learn how to use Canvas. We just had a handful of online or hybrid classes in our program.

And then the pandemic came. And the only learning management system and training and the professional development that we had was Canvas. So all of our faculty had to learn how to teach online and how to teach with Canvas within one week's time. So that was a very stressful-- I mean, it was stressful for many reasons, but that was one of the reasons.

And so we did offer some bootcamps for that one week of training. And it wasn't-- we weren't mandating that faculty use Canvas. They could have used any other management system, but it was that we had the expertise and professional development to help them use Canvas to teach online, but they did have other options.

And our district does provide a 20-hour online certification, online teaching certification course where they learn about Canvas, but they also learn just how to teach online. They learn about accessibility. And they just-- they learn how to teach asynchronously and synchronously, and so that helps.

But teachers during the pandemic, they weren't even able to take that course until after they'd already been teaching online, because they just didn't have the time. But one thing that was very helpful is that we did in our program, we developed what we call the Teacher Tech Corner. And it's where we house all our teaching materials, trading materials in a Canvas shell. So it's more of a repository for teachers.

And that really helped at the beginning because teachers had to go into Canvas to access those materials. They were able to see a model of what a good Canvas course might look like. They were also able to experience it as a student and see how do the students navigate Canvas. And so that just-- we still use it now today. But I think it served a very different purpose at the beginning of the campus closures.

And then as Marci had mentioned, the Ventures-- many of our teachers use Ventures textbook series. And they have for every level, every unit, there is a module in Canvas. Many of our teachers have really appreciated that. And it just has taken a lot of pressure off of our teachers to be able to develop the content in Canvas. They now have this content ready to go from Ventures.

So does anyone have any questions so far for any of our panelists.

Darwin Dallas: So there was Ventures units and Ventures modules in Canvas?

Monica Cueva: Yes. So if they use the Venture textbook series, Ventures has created one module for every unit of every level of the textbook.

Karin De Varennes: So if you're just joining us, welcome. Our panelists here today are Tonya Cobb. She's a lead Canvas person at her site, Santa Monica, Malibu. Marci England, Corona-Narco, and Monica Cueva from San Diego Community-- San Diego Continuing

Monica Cueva: College. San Diego College of Continuing Education. It's a mouthful.

Karin De Varennes: It's an alliteration for sure. And hosting us today in her beautiful great class is Ely Friedman. So thank you for having us. So any questions yet so far, about what we've heard so far? OK. Michael?

Michael Delaney: I have a question, because we use Ventures, as well. And so I've been using the new shells. Last year there was something else in Common.

Karin De Varennes: Canvas Common.

Michael Delaney: Canvas Common, but it was different. We tried using that. I thought that was cool, but the new stuff is really great. But I'm curious, do you make-- you import the shells for the teachers? Or do you have them do it themselves? Or a little bit of both?

Monica Cueva: So for us, we give them the step by step instructions that we've created, not from Cambridge, for faculty to do it themselves. We do have mentors that help them. But that process has seemed to be easy enough for our faculty to be able to do with our guidance and instructions.

We do also use Pearson Feature Textbook series, which also has modules. And those are a lot more complicated. So for those ones, I have imported them all into my Canvas account and then faculty will just request it from me, and I just share it with them, and that seems to be a lot easier.

Karin De Varennes: Tonya, you have your hand up?

Tonya Cobb: Yes. I just wanted to respond to that as well. So sort of this on the same lines, I will import things from Commons or Publisher, whatever materials from Commons into the master course. So because I'm the EL Civics lead as well, so I'll create materials from that. And then I put the teachers into my course.

And so they can then use those materials accordingly because there were not at-- our teachers are not yet at the place where they're ready to create their own courses and have students involved as well. So that's a way for them to do that if they so choose.

But we are hoping that some teachers will start to create their own courses and do some of that importing themselves. They have been trained on it, but giving them that support, that's how we do it at my school.

Michael Delaney: Can I ask a follow-up question? When you said master course, you mean, you make a blueprint for us?

Tonya Cobb: Not exactly a blueprint, like because I am creating the materials for EL Civics, I will put everything in Canvas right. So everything about the objective, all of the instructional materials, the assessments, all of that. And then I put the teachers in that course.

So when the teachers get ready to use those materials, they can use it directly from the course that I've created or they can import it into their own course. So I think there is a technicality difference between a blueprint course and what I'm calling a master course. I think that we will get there, where it's a blueprint course, but not yet. For now, it's just a master course.

So I will typically import everything from the publisher, but sometimes it's too much. Or I try to be very selective as to what I actually might use for a particular objective or a particular course. And so I've already done that work. And so then the teachers can use what they will. I hope I answered your question.

Marci England: So for those that are just starting, we tried at first. We thought, oh so cool. Teachers are going to love this. They're going to love building their own classrooms and the freedom. And so we kept things like really open and it created overwhelm.

And then we had a few teachers that created some really great courses. And once we recognize, let's take those courses and then copy them for the other teachers. And so we do everything because we want this concierge VIP service to get everyone on board and liking it. So we do it all. But we have a technology team.

Audience: What percentage of your instructors are using Canvas?

Marci England: Yeah, so probably we're at about 75% right now.

Audience: Excellent.

Marci England: That includes our-- but that includes CTE. CTE is using it completely.

Audience: And in my mind, it's all of them. And how long? When did you start implementation?

Marci England: 2018.

Audience: So this has been--

Marci England: It is a journey. It is a journey. So that's why like, one of my things is start small. Start small. But CTE uses it great. ESL, we have 50% of our teachers. But overall, probably 75%.

Karin De Varennes: Do you want to say how many percentage wise you have on end? I know Tonya, yours is very new, within the year.

Tonya Cobb: I think it depends on what you call on. Right. If you mean on, like they are creating their own courses and students are enrolled and all of that, 0%. But if you mean, what percentage of our school, and that includes office staff as well, because we were really intentional about making this a school-wide effort for everyone, for teachers and for staff.

And so they are-- 100% of teachers and staff are involved in Canvas in some way. Again, they may not like it, but we are gradually ramping up to making even our student orientation, the office staff work type things also on Canvas. So teachers have to interact with Canvas one way or another.

And if they want to be a part of what we're trying to do down the road, things like developing a distance ed program and all of that, they will be enrolled in a course that we're creating as well. So one way or another, they are involved in that way. But they're not-- we don't have anyone who is really all in completely.

Karin De Varennes: Monica.

Monica Cueva: And for us-- oh, for us, in our ESL program, we have-- I would say almost 150 faculty. So it is a very large program. And right now all of our online and high flex classes, which is probably 60% of our program currently, they are all using Canvas. And then we even have a large majority of our on-site faculty that are using Canvas.

Karin De Varennes: And how long was that?

Monica Cueva: Well, with the pandemic, it didn't take long at all because they were forced. Yeah, it was that one week. There were forced onto Canvas. But I think if we hadn't had that pressure from the pandemic, it probably would have taken from 2017, 2018 until now to have not even as many faculty as we have on right now.

Karin De Varennes: Any other questions?

Darwin Dallas: Two questions. I'm starting to teach at your school today, am I able to access the other advanced ESL teachers' lessons. And that's no problem. Nobody's offended, like I did all this work and shame on you.

Monica Cueva: It would just be a matter of either putting you into the coarse-- putting you into the course or copying that course and moving it over to you. We copy the course and we keep our courses really basic. And we have a course for each level. So it's like, hey, come on in. You're teaching advanced, great. Here's your course.

And we've even had teachers-- we've had rollover, teacher rollover. We just moved one teacher out and put the new teacher in. So it's almost like the course belongs to the class level and the class--

Darwin Dallas: Not to disturb any particular instructor--

Monica Cueva: --instead of the actual instructor. But if the instructor wants to go in and personalize it, wonderful. But really, it's a classroom.

Darwin Dallas: Yes, I see your hand.

Ely Friedman: Yeah, I wanted to mention at college, we have in addition to our own class containers, there's the division and the departmental containers, where anyone can post lessons that they like and feel that other people can benefit from. So I found that very helpful because I had no training and I'm 75, so technology is not intuitive to me.

But I found Canvas to be very intuitive. I was able to jump in with both feet and do things with it that I had no idea you could do. And my classes went online with the pandemic. And then the people that enjoyed doing online were allowed to continue.

I write all my own materials. Everything's there. And I think the best thing about Canvas to me was the availability of the 24/7 hotline. So they kind of knew me by my first name. But there was no question that they couldn't answer, Saturday night, 3:00 AM, they were there and could help.

So I agree with what Tonya said. Probably 100% of the teachers at Grossmont College are on Canvas, on Canvas. But some use it minimally. And others, I mean, for me it was the whole class. Everything was there, videos. It was just wonderful.

Karin De Varennes: We're rocked out for Ely.

Darwin Dallas: So, Monica, you mentioned that your school has a 20-hour certification for teaching online. Is that-- Would that be available to someone like myself?

Monica Cueva: I don't believe so. It's only available to faculty within the district.

Darwin Dallas: Within the district.

Monica Cueva: But @ONE does have some really good Canvas courses available. Some are free. Some are for a fee. But I would definitely look into @ONE.

Darwin Dallas: Yeah. Thank you.

Audience: Monica, is that-- do you have-- is it an acronym for that? Is that spot certification?

Monica Cueva: At One?

Audience: No, I mean the trainings that you guys do at the college.

Monica Cueva: It's through our online learning pathways team. They are the ones that have developed the Canvas course, the 20-hour certification course. And they're the ones that actually provide the feedback to faculty. And it's offered every semester.

Karin De Varennes: Canvas offers training too. I'm sure you can go to Instructor or OTAN offers training too. You guys get all that.

Audience: Tons of Canvas.

Karin De Varennes: There's just tons of Canvas.

Audience: Maybe you should make it a badge or a certification.

Tonya Cobb: I was going to say, I think the official-- if you go through the official training, and I can't remember which if it was through CDLC or CAPE or what, but there is badging that goes along with it.

Monica Cueva: There is. Right.

Michael Delaney: As I see it, at Eastside, our experience, we use this Growing with Canvas Program. I think it's instructor makes it. And a fair number of teachers went through it. But then like a month ago, I was talking to some of them, helping them with different things, and you forget. So the training is not necessarily going to make everything fly. We really need to get in there.

Monica Cueva: It's the doing.

Tonya Cobb: It's the doing. And really I think what's great about that, though, is that they can always go back to it, right. They can always sort of retrain themselves or revisit those training modules. We just did this the other day because we have monthly-- our learning community is based on technology. So monthly, we're focusing on this.

And so the administrator wanted me to review Canvas quizzes. And so I went back to the training. And we played the video that they had seen way back last summer, but just forgotten all about and showed them the various ways that we have actually been using Canvas quizzes.

And they didn't even realize in the ways that they're interacting with it, because you have to kind of think outside the box sometimes with Canvas, right. Like you think it's this monstrosity and it can be very stressful, but really, no there are so many things that you can do with it. I don't know what someone said earlier that made me think of that, but think outside the box.

And so the Canvas quizzes is what we would use to-- the office staff for example, to turn in deliverables, things that you have to do at the end of the term and to acknowledge that you did it, we just created, or she just created a Canvas quiz, a survey.

And so anyway, with revisiting that, reminded the staff of that possibility by having them revisit what they had done last summer.

Karin De Varennes: OK. So moving onto question two. What will your agency look like when Canvas is implemented? What is your agency's hope or goal? Marci, you want to go first? All right. If you all want to pass, if this just a bad question, we can say skip.

Marci England: I have a list. So because I could say it's implemented, but is it implemented successfully? We can always do better. So a cool thing that we see happening, where I see an end road is when students have been enrolled in a different class, they enter a new class. They open up Canvas to their dashboard, and they say, where is this class? They're expecting the class in their Canvas dashboard.

That happens rarely right now. I would like to see that happen every fall. Like oh, how do I open my dash? They know how to open a dashboard, but where's my class? So where Canvas is fully an expected classroom format for all of our students.

And then when teachers can support teachers. Right now the technology team, which are teachers, are supporting teachers. But the way they get breakroom conversation is like, oh, I have this really good lesson. Come to my Canvas and we'll get it for you. So I see that as what it looks like when we operate it fully.

Karin De Varennes: Nice.

Monica Cueva: And for us, I think even though we do have a majority of our faculty currently using Canvas, we would just like to-- similar to what Marci said, we just want everyone to be on it, whether you're teaching online or on site because it's a very valuable resource for on-site instructors as well.

And it doesn't matter how much they use Canvas. They could just be-- just have a home page and on that home page, you have essential course information. As long as students are getting familiar with logging into Canvas, clicking on their course, and accessing information, that's what we want.

Audience: Are you-- well, depending on what your LMS is-- I mean, your student information system is-- so I guess more to Marci, are you integrated with ASAP with your campus or not?

Marci England: That gives me some-- like, those were some hard days.

Karin De Varennes: Michele's working on this too with ASAP.

Marci England: So we are somewhat. But we found a really great workaround. And if you need the workaround, but we basically upload a CSV file after every registration. And that we spent hours and hours and hours and time with ASAP with their technology developer. I mean, and we never got across the bridge to a good.

So we figured it out on our end with our district. But we upload a CSV file and we can give you-- we have the instructions on how to do that. And it has just saved us.

Audience: So that means you'll upload all your student data from ASAP into Canvas. But I'm assuming you don't download grades or anything out of Canvas into ASAP Is that right?

Marci England: No. Because we don't have any grades. The only courses that have grades is high school diploma, and they're using Edgenuity.

Darwin Dallas: What about completers?

Marci England: Completers. We're not following that. And we don't track that in Canvas.

Audience: EFLs.

Marci England: No, we're not giving any data between the two. Goals. But yeah, no.

Audience: So in the global sense, is it advantageous for us all to move to Canvas, just to integrate Canvas as an instructional element? And why? If we know, maybe we won't get there. It's like the majority of us across the state use ASAP. It could be something else one day. LA Unified, I think they have their own thing. But we have Canvas. Is it is it better for instruction purposes?

Tonya Cobb: Yes. Wholeheartedly, yes. I think you're talking about apples and oranges when you're comparing Canvas and ASAP. Like they have-- yes, you can integrate. And of course Canvas doesn't talk to TE either, which does present some issues.

They have two different jobs. And so to answer your question about instructionally does a program go to Canvas, that that's a resounding yes. From my viewpoint.

Audience: Awesome. OK. I think I'm going to add an administrator hat. Yeah, kind of like-- so we're talking, we have three-- basically three student data information systems, instructional platform that we're dealing with. So we have for us ASAP. We have TE. And now Canvas. But it would have been like we have Blackboard or something like that something like that.

Tonya Cobb: Or Google Classroom, like yeah.

Marci England: So I think the biggest connection between ASAP and Canvas is recording hours. So a teacher can go into it manually, but a teacher goes in and this is what we're working on is recording. All of our classes are listed as hybrid. And so a teacher would go in to Canvas, look, and we use a mastery model or the hours like a quizzes worth are all like we decided by program, all quizzes are worth--

Audience: So you've assigned time value to every activity.

Marci England: Right, because if you leave Canvas open in a browser, you'll have 20 hours that day. So you can't-- not like Burlington English counts working,

Audience: Interaction.

Marci England: Interaction, I don't know if that. So the ASAP component is that could be better, and maybe someday it will be. But we go in Canvas, and you pull out what students did what and then assign time. And then that goes into ASAP when you do your attendance.

Audience: So you basically created like a basic log of time to activity.

Marci England: Yes, across. It has to go across all the classes. But that's how that works.

Karin De Varennes: Michele, you have your hand up? Michele.

Michele Raymond: Yeah, so my question is are our biggest struggle that we're trying to work through is email addresses with our students. So we have our own email address, but it's not an ASAP. And so our teachers are struggling through that. So I was just wondering if there is a solution for that.

Karin De Varennes: You have an excited, Marci.

Marci England: I know that Tonya's hand is up too, so I don't know, but I was hoping someone would ask this question. So what happens is students get assigned. It probably is totally different at the community college. But so students get assigned-- when they register, they get assigned a school email.

And so what we did first is we establish single sign on. So they log into our their MYCNUS, the district website. They click on Canvas and then they're in. But what we recognized is that like student@cnusd.edu, whatever. Those students were never ever accessing that email at home.

It was like lived in somewhere, they couldn't. It's not in their face. And so against-- we kind of like drove upstream to do this, but we change it so that we give all of the students their username and their access point is their personal email address, whatever they give us, whatever is in ASAP, that comes from that CSV file.

So now they're student@-- student123 at Gmail or Hotmail or whatever they are. So when we establish that, everything changed, because then the student goes to their email and says, hey, welcome to ESL Advance. Click here. There's an email from instructor that says. And it's right there at their normal real thing.

The other thing we did that's upstream that no person would recommend is we give everyone the same password. I know. It's a tech conference and that's like not best practice. But for us-- yeah, for us, it was-- it's best practice. And so we give everyone the same password. And they're savvy enough, they can go in and change it, it's fine.

But everyone, and so when the teacher-- they're in the classroom, they say, I can't log in. I can't log in. The teacher opens ASAP, looks up their username, their email, and then can identify, this is yours. So it's all the trick is that CSV.

Michael Delaney: So another question is that we used to push them to use their school ID which is also a Google account. So when you go to the personal, and we've been doing a bit of that too, but then what do you do when there's an authorization, if there's a sign in that's made in Google, how do you do that?

Marci England: So we don't use Google at all. We don't use Google at all.

Michael Delaney: OK. I've been moving away from that recently. But this is really cool. It's Google integration. But then they had to use their school email, as you say, they never go to it, so we just don't use it. I mean, I've been-- I realized that some teachers don't even know how to take advantage of Google Docs.

So I've been having them just do-- writing rather than using the Google tools, just to do an online text entry or maybe discussion to simplify. So you just don't use Google.

Marci England: I mean, some teachers might use it for assignments in their Canvas. I guess, I don't have-- I'm more at like the back end side of things. So I maybe need to get back to you on that. But in general, we don't and we don't access it.

Karin De Varennes: And Tonya, how about your site?

Tonya Cobb: I actually had my hand raised, because I was going to respond to what does it mean when our agency has been implemented successfully. So I wanted to add a little something to that. But what I will say about the emails and all is that it's been very tricky for us.

So I use Canvas from a teacherly perspective in my community colleges, and it's like much, much easier. They get an automatic email and all of that. But on the adult ed side, it's very different. Our adult school is connected to the Google Drive or Google email with the district, but it's not adult ed friendly at all. We've had so much trouble with it, so we really don't use it. And there are a lot of restrictions around it.

So we're still trying to make sense of that when we do enroll students what that's going to look like. But the trainings that have been provided, they do provide a lot of steps in terms of how to do that, how to have it talk to ASAP and give student ID numbers and all of that. So I'm not looking forward to that. And that's why we are trying to train the office staff, so that they can hopefully deal with that part of it.

But in terms of-- I just wanted to add one thing to what the other said about what success will look like. For our school and for me, what success would look like is that we are contributing to Canvas Commons, because I go to Canvas Commons daily for whatever reason for either my adult school stuff or my community college stuff. And there just isn't or doesn't seem to be enough available, enough sharing out there among adult schools and among adding materials or EL civics or whatever it is.

It's either really hard to find or it's outdated. It was done like at the top of the pandemic, or there's just nothing there. So success for me looks like our Adult School is sharing into Commons where other adult schools can benefit from that.

Karin De Varennes: Nice. Any questions from that? Thank you for bringing up Commons too, Tonya. What about-- Yeah, go ahead for me.

Darwin Dallas: So your commentary right now would kind of mesh my question to Marci about, if could go on to Canvas Commons and I could be pulling out lessons and utilizing those and seeing how it all comes together, see how it works, and those would be positive models for me.

Tonya Cobb: Absolutely. Your search words are important. And again, people, it's really wonderful, but the way that people house it or what they call it is important. So if you're looking for a co-app for example, it could be called the topic, or it could be called the number of the co-app, or something else completely different.

So there's a lot of there's a lot available out there, but you have to know, I guess, where to look and from my perspective, I don't think there's enough, specifically for adult ed, and I mean K-12 adult ed, not community college adult ed.

Karin De Varennes: So just as a question for all of you, would you wish that our CDLC Canvas Commons had just a adult ed filter?

Tonya Cobb: Yes.

Karin De Varennes: Yes. So it would just be adult ed. It wouldn't be a closed. It would just be anyone that's part of our CDL Commons.

Tonya Cobb: And I think that-- I mean, all students whether they're 8 or 80, they're trying to learn about email. They're trying to learn about technology. And so sometimes you can go to Commons and you're just looking for how to teach some digital literacy skills.

But often what you're finding are materials that are more geared toward children or K12 program, maybe even a community college program. And so yes, to have something that's specifically for adult learners. And I know that things like NorthStar, they're working on trying to get integrated with Canvas. But that's been what I have found for years frankly, that the materials and instructional materials available for adult students can be difficult to find.

Karin De Varennes: Absolutely. Anyone have any questions so far that haven't been answered? We have about we have about 10 minutes. So I want to-- anyone like this question or do? You want us to pass? What advice would you give agencies first beginning the process? Tonya, did you want to start?

Tonya Cobb: Oh, yes. Let me get my list. I would say, what number is this? Number three. Don't leave anyone out. Have a can-do attitude. A principle of mine years ago said his best advice was to try to say yes and that's been sort of the lens that I have moved from there is to try to say yes. So to try to-- when a teacher is reticent or whatever, try to meet them where they are and just have a can-do attitude. We can do this.

And I think I said this at the beginning, to be willing to pivot. We have pivoted and turned around twice, multiple times. Lastly, would be to have buy in from someone. If you have just one person who is willing to go along for the ride with you, that would be-- that is some advice that I would offer.

Karin De Varennes: Monica and then Marci, what would your advice be?

Monica Cueva: Everything Tonya just said, I will echo that. And then also, one thing that really helped our faculty, I would say just continue to offer professional development. Don't just say, oh, we're going to offer it for one month and then everyone knows Canvas and we're good to go.

It's definitely something that needs to continue. But also, we have-- I think Tanya also mentioned this where they have learning communities. And so we have level-- we have committee meetings, but we also have level meetups which are very informal, online meetings of their faculty lead, faculty members only.

And it's just a safe place for us to talk about what's working, what's not. We do a lot of Canvas showcases and Canvas tours. And people are proud of what they've created with their Canvas shells and they want to show everyone and share their ideas. And so that really provides a safe space for them to do that and it gives everyone else ideas of what's possible with Canvas and gets everyone excited.

They're using the new tool. And they've decided to organize their modules a different way. And everyone's like, oh, that's so cool, I want to do that. So definitely would recommend not only admin professional development, but just faculty-led professional development.