Ready! Set! Interact! 🎆 Or, otherwise known as RSI - Regular Substantive Interaction.

In online courses, regular and substantive instructor to student interaction guarantees that the student receives the benefit of the instructor’s presence in the learning environment both as a provider of instructional information and knowledge and as a supporter of student learning. In a face-to-face course the instructor is present at each class meeting and interacts via all class announcements, lectures, activities and discussions that take a variety of forms. The classroom instructor also serves as a content adviser when they answer questions both as they come up in class and as they arise in individual situations. The same experience must be extended to an online environment. But what does this appear like in an online class?

Regular means weekly at Ohlone College, and includes activity that is predictable and scheduled. The instructor is also promptly and proactively engaging in substantive interaction with the student.
Substantive means engaging students in teaching, learning, and assessment, consistent with the content under discussion, and also includes at least two of the following:

Direct (Zoom) instruction
Providing individualized feedback on student's coursework
Providing information or responding to questions the content
Facilitating a group discussion regarding the content of a course

Interaction - what's interactive about the evidence?

Use our RSI Scavenger Hunt worksheet to explore your own classes for instructor to student substantive interaction!

And in case you were unable to attend the Teaching Talk on March 4, we recorded 20 minutes of the session where we dig deep into RSI. Enjoy!

Congratulations to the 29 faculty members who submitted 55 Individual Faculty Addendum (IFA) during Spring 2025. The Distance Education Committee is busy reviewing your submissions. To date this spring, eighteen IFAs have been approved.

If you teach a class with online instructional hours and you haven't submitted an IFA for your Anthropology, Astronomy, Biology, Business Supervision and Management, Computer Network Emerging Technology, Environmental Science, Geology, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, or Respiratory Therapy class, join us to get your IFA submitted. The deadline for submission was MARCH 1. Make sure to complete an IFA for any classes in these departments that you plan to teach online in the future.

Also classes with online instructional hours in Art, Chicano Studies, Early Childhood Studies, Nursing, Personal Development/Counseling, Physical Education, American Sign Language, Business Administration, Broadcasting, English as a Second Language, French, Interpreting/DCIPP, Japanese, Physical Therapy Assistant, Real Estate, Sociology, Women and Gender Studies, or Work Experience, should have an approved IFA on file.

Join us in Zoom for IFA Support Hours

Monday, March 10: 3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Tuesday, March 11: 10:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m., 4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Wednesday, March 12: 8:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.
Friday, March 14: 8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

Accessible Language

Accessible language is an important and evolving issue. The words we choose can either positively or negatively affect student engagement. Creating accessible digital content involves using clear and inclusive language to ensure that all users, including those with disabilities, can engage with your material.

Here are key strategies to enhance language accessibility:

Use Plain Language: opt for simple words and straightforward sentence structures to make your content easily understandable.
Be Direct and Clear: Present information in a clear and direct manner, avoiding unnecessary words or passive language. This approach helps users process information more efficiently.
Use Inclusive links. "Click” or “click here" are not inclusive phrases. Use descriptive phrases like "visit the website," "learn more," "download the document," "access the form," or "view details" - essentially, clearly stating the action the link leads to without relying on the word "click.
Tip: Instead of descriptive phrases, simply adjusting this language from “click” to “select” makes it more inclusive for everyone because it doesn’t assume the method of interaction.
Use inclusive terminology. When we create courses, we often use terminology like “let’s see how this applies ....”. However, using the word “see” is not inclusive for those who have a visual disability. While this is not an issue of clarity, it excludes a portion of our community. It is meant to be conversational but ends up being exclusive.
Tip: Rather than “let’s see”, we can use “let’s focus on”, “in this example”, or “review”. These provide the same idea but remove the exclusive language.

By considering these strategies, you can create content language that is more accessible and inclusive, ensuring a better experience for all users.

See you next time on the Accessibility Corner!

Canvas continues to update and add features. This month they have released changes to the enhanced rubrics. The goal was for rubrics to be easier to view on mobile devices and for them to be easier to find across classes. Unfortunately, the programming isn’t there yet. We have shared these issues with Canvas. Check eCampus News and Updates for Canvas deployment updates.

Need eCampus to help? Join us for office hours!

During the Spring 2025 semester, you can find us in eCampus Office Hours Zoom on

Tuesdays, 2:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Fridays, 2:15 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

If these days and times don't work for you, submit an eCampus ticket to schedule a 1-1 appointment.

CVC@ONE Webinars

The Content Authenticity Initiative - Transparency in the Age of AI

- Mon, March 10, 2025; 10:00 AM
- 60 minutes
- Santiago Lyon

Leveraging AI to Create UDL-Driven and Accessible Course Content

Easy AI for Educators: Simple Ways to Test How AI Can Help

- Mon, March 24, 2025; 1:00 PM
- 90 minuttes
- Anna Mills

Authentic Presence & Digital Doubles: Navigating Synthetic Media in Equitable Online Teaching

Connections That Count: How CoPs Are Advancing AI Conversations

- Mon, April 14, 2025; 11:00 AM

Should Educators Be Using AI? Addressing Ethics as We Explore AI Assistance

- Tue, April 22, 2025; 11:00 AM
- 90 minutes
- Presenter: Anna Mills

Advanced AI Assistance with Course Materials

- Thu, May 01, 2025; 10:00 AM
- 90 minutes
- Anna Mills

VoiceThread Workshops

VoiceThread Basics 2: Groups and Secure Sharing

This is a hands-on workshop. We will begin to explore the features available to VoiceThreaders with a full license. Participants will learn how to create groups and subgroups, set sharing permissions within those groups, and privately share VoiceThreads with individuals.

March 11 at 1:00 p.m. ET

VoiceThread Basics 3: Moderating Comments, Private and Threaded Replies, and Copying

In our third hands-on workshop in the series, participants will learn how to give private feedback, use threaded commenting, copy VoiceThreads for use with multiple groups, and use comment moderation to formatively assess student work.

March 18 at 1:00 p.m. ET

Perusall Webinar Series

Join Persuall's free Academy Webinar Series taking place from January 13th to March 13th to learn about their new features:

Reusable Scoring Templates: You can now define scoring templates and apply each score template to multiple assignments at once.
Reusable Rubrics: Assignments now offer the option of having a single rubric applied to multiple assignments at once.
Fishbowl Assignments: A spin on peer review assignments and allows specific students to submit work without reviewing others.
Adding a Late Submission Deadline for Partial Credit: Now applies to peer reviews.
Omit Specific Feedback Periods: Omit the instructor review period (a time when instructors can review feedback before it is shown to the original authors) and omit the request for students to provide an overall feedback comment about the work they are reviewing.
Instructor Review Assignments: Students will be able to submit work, the instructor will apply a rubric to score it and provide overall feedback, and the student can then be required to reply to the instructor's reviews.
Reading, Watching, or Listening to the End: The “Reading to the end” scoring component in Perusall’s automatic scoring now becomes “Reading, watching, or listening to the end” – allowing you to track how much of a video or podcast has been watched or listened to, in addition to tracking reading progress in text-based material.
Default Assignment Instructions:You can set default instructions for all of the assignments in your courses.
Reuse Quizzes: A single quiz can be assigned multiple times and scored separately each time it is assigned.
Flexible TA Permissions:You can customize what TAs can and cannot do in your course.
Streamlined Course Setup: Automatically populating certain aspects of the course set-up process will save time and having the option to upload the syllabus will make it easier to assign this core document as a first assignment.

Advanced users looking to master the platform:

Dates: March 7th, 4:00 PM EST

What do Students Say About Canvas

We asked Ohlone College students to share with us what is one thing an instructor does in a Canvas class that they wish others would do.

Students said

"I feel like most of my professors this semester were very good in how they structured their canvas. I do wish some were more considerate in how they set up modules and the information taught in that module. I frequently faced complications in one of my classes in finding specific course material from earlier in the semester. This made it difficult when it came time to study and prepare for the final exam/project."

"My professor created a "floating" module for big class projects which position the module towards the top of the modules page because certain steps of the assignment in the module were due sooner than other so it allowed me to prepare in advance and keep up with due dates better."

"I had a professor who included a checklist as the first slide in the weekly modules. I really liked this because it helped me keep track of everything I needed to finish for the week, especially since there were a lot of different assignments with different due dates."