Education Technology Partners COVID-19 Response and Emergency Preparedness - Canvas Skip to main content

Education Technology Partners COVID-19 Response and Emergency Preparedness

The links and information on this page relate to the COVID-19 Pandemic and are not up-to-date.  This page is retained for reference only.

 

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many education technology partners have published or relayed to Rutgers Canvas information concerning emergency preparedness and contingency plans, as well as, additional resources and trainings that are available.  Some of the tools listed below are supported by the Rutgers Canvas Help Desk.  For those that are not supported, please reach out to the technology partner.

Please click on a tool name to view recent information provided by the education technology partner.  This page will be updated as more information is shared.

Canvas

In the wake of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak and (potential) pandemic, Instructure released an article (linked below) that outlines how we are preparing to scale as needed. I’ve also linked a space in the community where other institutions can share & collaborate on contingency plans. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Canvas Conferences (Blindside Networks)

Statement of support for Blindside Networks customers planning to use BigBlueButton as part of contingency planning in the event of school closure

BigBlueButton is the built-in virtual classroom solution for many of the world’s leading learning management systems (LMS) .

Blindside Networks provides hosting for BigBlueButton to K12, colleges, and universities (“schools”) around the world.

We are aware that many schools are doing contingency planning in the event of closure. The following document gives a summary of our statement of scalability, what information we need from you for capacity planning (if you intend to use BigBlueButton in the event of a closure), and best practices for using BigBlueButton under these circumstances…Read more on the Blindside Networks website.

Elsevier Education

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update Nursing and Health Education (emailed on March 16, 2020)

As the world rallies together to combat the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), we are keeping a close eye on all the latest developments so we can effectively partner with you during this challenging time. To support worldwide efforts to better understand and combat this pandemic, Elsevier has created an online Novel Coronavirus Information Center offering free access to all of our evidence-based health and medical research on the virus. We invite you to visit the website and share it with your colleagues.

We know you are having to make difficult decisions to protect faculty and students, and we want to help you with your efforts to minimize disruption to your courses. We can support a wide range of your virtual classroom needs, including:

  • Distance learning for students to build knowledge, take formative quizzes, and develop clinical judgment remotely.
  • Lab and clinical replacement for students to experience real-world, hands­-on clinical exposure to charting, lab scenarios, skills, and virtual patient experiences using our remote, case-based simulation products.
  • Remote proctoring of secure HESI exams through our remote proctor partners.

Our new, regularly updated Coronavirus (COVID-19) Information Center for Nursing and Health Education provides further information to assist you with delivering courses virtually. Please reach out to your Elsevier Education Solutions Consultant to discuss tools and resources to help you adapt and achieve your curriculum goals.

Your wellbeing in the days and weeks to come is our top priority. By working together, we can support the needs of faculty and students as this pandemic evolves.

Harmonize

Harmonize is available until June 30, 2020 for a limited trial during the global pandemic.

Hypothesis

Posted on March 9, 2020

Hypothesis for Instructional Continuity During COVID-19

Over the past weeks, our contacts at schools, colleges, and universities have been writing to us asking about how they can use Hypothesis in response to campus closures and the move to online courses as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. We’d like to help.

Collaborative annotation can help connect students and teachers while they keep their distance to safeguard their health during the current crisis. Reading alongside and interacting with each other using Hypothesis is about as close to a seminar-style experience as they can have online.

To support the role that collaborative annotation can play in facilitating expanded online classes, Hypothesis is waiving all fees to educational institutions for the remainder of 2020, and will evaluate whether to extend this as the current situation develops. Existing partners can request a refund or apply any fees that they have already paid towards future costs.

We understand this is a demanding time for all. We will be focusing our efforts to work with schools that want to rapidly pilot or implement annotation.

Instructional Continuity Resources

To learn more about how schools all over the world are responding to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 health crisis, visit:

Kaltura

Posted on March 5, 2020

Like everyone in the world, we’re concerned by the emerging COVID-19/Coronavirus epidemic. Our hearts are with everyone who’s currently affected.

We want to reassure our customers that we are closely monitoring the situation. While this is obviously having global ramifications, we do not currently anticipate these affecting your ability to use Kaltura products….Read more on Kaltura’s website.

Emailed on March 16, 2020

We would like to share an update on Kaltura’s readiness with regards to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. We have activated our business continuity plan globally to ensure seamless operations throughout this situation, including provisions for ensuring that all data centers remain fully operational and are equipped with the necessary gear and supplies.

Kaltura has already approached all its vendors to verify their readiness as well.

While all Kaltura’s data centers are in full operation, we have also initiated a dedicated task force responsible for gradually increasing data center capacity by leveraging additional secure hosting infrastructure as needed. We will of course continue to monitor our services very closely and increase capacity accordingly.

LabArchives

Emailed on March 13, 2020

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we at LabArchives want to communicate to our global users how we are prepared to handle your research and/or course data as well as support your remote working needs.

Whether you have a team of researchers or a classroom of students, LabArchives allows users to collaborate and share data without being together. Important work and learning can safely continue without skipping a beat, no matter where you are or who you need to communicate with.

LabArchives has contingency plans in place to ensure operations run smoothly despite the impacts of COVID-19.

    • All of our employees, all over the world, have the ability to perform their jobs securely from remote locations if necessary.
    • Our physical offices are following local and national government directives.
    • LabArchives corporate offices are “serverless” which enables our entire staff the flexibility to securely perform their jobs remotely in the event of forced quarantine or location change.
    • Business-related travel has been limited to essential travel only.
    • All LabArchives applications are hosted by our cloud hosting partner, Amazon Web Services (AWS), in secure facilities in the United States, Australia and Europe that meet many regional and international standards of compliance.
    • All resources used to provide our applications are maintained exclusively by LabArchives systems staff and include 24/7/365 monitoring from multiple locations.
    • LabArchives services are able to scale to provide both processing power and storage on-demand.
    • All LabArchives application services and corporate functions have documented disaster recovery and business continuity procedures which are tested at least annually.
    • LabArchives has standards of performance guarantees in effect with all service providers.

In short, any regional or office restrictions will not impact LabArchives’ ability to securely serve its users around the globe.

LabArchives is ready to assist as you prepare a COVID-19 response plan for your institution, course or lab. If you need help taking your research or course online, we are here to help.

We will continue to monitor this rapidly evolving situation and provide updates as more information becomes available. If you have questions, please contact info@labarchives.com.

Emailed on March 1 7, 2020

Many institutions are moving classes online with little notice as a result of COVID-19. Even with lots of time to prepare, planning quality online instruction can be tricky.

In response, we’ve made LabArchives, an online teaching solution, completely FREE for you, your TAs and students through July 31st.

We’ve got the tools you need to effectively teach remotely and are here to support your transition to distance learning.

Our Resident Professor, Natalie Stringer, will host four webinars in the coming days to help you get started. In these webinars we’ll:

    • Present tips and tricks for making a speedy switch to online instruction
    • Introduce best practices for online course design
    • Troubleshoot common issues in the remote classroom
    • Help you leverage our integrations with OpenStax digital textbooks, learning management systems and other educational tools you may already use

Once we’ve helped you create your course online, all you’ll have to do is send an email to students / TAs. They’ll then be able to access your course anytime, anywhere and from any device.

Join a webinar or simply reply to this email to get started:

PlayPosit

PlayPosit has published a resource page to facilitate instructors who are interested in getting started with PlayPosit.  In addition, PlayPosit is offering a series of webinars, Student Engagement in a Pinch and instructors may schedule appointments with a Playposit trainer.

Respondus Lockdown Browser

Please note: Rutgers Canvas only has Respondus LockDown Browser integrated.  Respondus Monitor is not available.

March 2, 2020

Readiness Statement for Respondus Monitor and LockDown Browser

Hello,

Over the weekend, Respondus received numerous requests from universities for a COVID-19 readiness statement relating to LockDown Browser and Respondus Monitor (the online proctoring service that builds on LockDown Browser).

Here is a summary:

  • LockDown Browser (when used without Respondus Monitor) isn’t a technology that has scaling requirements. It’s a client application (a browser) that performs a simple check at startup to obtain current settings for the institution. If, for some reason, the browser is unable to reach the Respondus server to retrieve the settings, it will use the default exam settings and allow the student to continue with the exam.
  • Needless to say, services involving Respondus staff members have the least flexibility in terms of scalability. This includes teams responsible for 24/7 live chat, technical support, customer success (trainings, rollout), and account managers. Each team has plans in place for adding capacity/redundancy, or simply streamlining processes so more customers can be assisted.
  • Effective immediately, Respondus will offer DAILY training webinars for Respondus Monitor and LockDown Browser. Webinars are being scheduled at least 7 days in advance and will be available at different times of the day. Instructors and staff can register for the webinars. 

Finally, here are important contact details or links that might be useful to you:

Hopefully, this preparedness is for naught and the COVID-19 impact will be minimal. One of our concerns with this communication is that it might be interpreted as being alarmist and opportunist. Please know our intention is to provide institutions the information they are requesting, including assurance that Respondus staff members are actively planning and preparing for a variety of scenarios.

Sincerely,

Jodi Feeney
COO, Respondus

TechSmith

TechSmith is helping organizations and academic institutions who are preparing for prolonged absences and/or campus closures due to COVID-19. We are offering free access and expanded usage of tools that help enable business and educational continuity.

Our screen recording tool, TechSmith Snagit, and our asynchronous collaboration platform, TechSmith Video Review, will be free to use through the end of June 2020 to any organization that needs it….Read more on the TechSmith website.

TopHat

TopHat has published a support article, “COVID-19: Teaching Remotely with Top Hat” that onlines strategies to use with TopHat. In addition, to facilitate online instruction during school closures, TopHat will support faculty new to TopHat. TopHat has a support team that can help instructors with uploading and digitizing their slides and content as well. TopHat is waiving all fees for new faculty during this time, and are willing to offer full support for those looking for an alternative.

Turnitin

Supporting the Turnitin Community During the COVID-19 Pandemic – Posted on March 20, 2020

This is a difficult time and we want to acknowledge all of you who are working hard to manage the disruptions COVID-19 has imposed on your classrooms and institutional functions. During this unprecedented and uncertain time, we want you to know that we are here to help.

We are prepared for an increase in usage

The question we have received most in the last week is whether our systems can scale to meet demand should there be a surge in the use of Turnitin tools. We want to assure you that our infrastructure is designed with elasticity and scalability in mind.

Our recent modernization efforts to shift computing workloads to the cloud and run our services on clusters mean that we are able to handle significantly higher workloads as institutions move more activities online. We have also enhanced our monitoring systems and workflows so that we detect and respond to issues quickly. In short, we are committed to delivering reliable and consistent service to our customers across the globe who are now faced with new and unprecedented challenges.

Enabling remote learning and assessment at no additional cost

We are providing free access to Gradescope Complete to all educators through June 30, 2020. Gradescope can help instructors adapt their paper-based, digital, and code assignments for remote learning and is available for individual instructors to adopt for free. To get started right away, visit Gradescope.

At the same time, we recognize that you may need to expand your Turnitin license for increased use during this period. If you need short-term access or additional licenses for any Turnitin products, your account manager can enable the requested service at no additional cost through June 30, 2020. If you are unsure how to reach your account manager, contact our support team at tiisupport@turnitin.com.

Resources to help educators uphold integrity and deliver feedback remotely

Over the coming weeks, we will share resources and information to help instructors uphold integrity in their remote classrooms and deliver feedback and assessments that ensure student learning even when instructors cannot be there in-person. Below are two resources that you may find immediately helpful:

Gradescope Blog: Updates to help with urgent remote assessment needs

You will learn about common remote assessment workflows as well as resources and FAQs for quickly adapting assessments due to closed campuses, canceled courses, and remote students. Also, Gradescope’s collection of short, video tutorials helps new users onboard quickly.

Turnitin Instructor Resource Hub: Supporting remote learners

As you move more activities online, you may experience a need for efficient instructor onboarding and tools to support teaching and learning remotely with Turnitin. Our instructor quick start guide is available to help instructors onramp and our instructor resource hub includes short videos and guides for delivering feedback remotely.

Subscribe to our blog or follow us on Twitter to be notified of additional resources as they become available.

As always, please reach out to your account manager or our support team with any needs that arise during this time. It is a challenge to be fully prepared for an unprecedented situation like this one, but we are here to help.

Please bookmark this page and check back in — we will keep this blog post updated (last update March 20, 2020) with additional resources and news as they develop.

VoiceThread

VoiceThread has made available a Preparedness Workshop recording and instructors may attend a webinar by registering on the VoiceThread website.

If you are new to VoiceThread or you’d like a refresher in the basic VoiceThreading skills, we have recordings of our hands-on, step-by-step workshops that take you right through everything you need to know.

  • Basics 1: Uploading, commenting, and sharing
  • Basics 2: Groups and secure sharing
  • Basics 3: Moderating comments, private and threaded replies, and copying
  • Basics 4: Integrating VoiceThread into your LMS