Faculty Facilitators & Online Teaching Technology Support

Need One-on-One Help? Try the Faculty Facilitators!

The Faculty Facilitators are here to serve you again this semester and now the process is simpler! Contact the Faculty Facilitators at facfac@mtsac.edu with your questions. Seven Mt. SAC professor peers who are experienced in online teaching, course design, and Canvas will reach out to to help you solve your course design problems or set up time to offer you one-on-one mentoring by phone or Zoom! You can increase your knowledge and confidence in your online teaching by consulting with a fellow faculty member.

Some questions that faculty facilitators have answered this semester are:

Can you help? My discussion prompt is published but not showing in Student View.
How do I set up office hours in TechConnect Zoom?
How do I use the Syllabus tool in Canvas? Can I edit it?
Can you help me create a Table in my Canvas page?
How do I know if my Word documents are accessible?

There are a lot of resources out there and the faculty facilitators can help you find the resources you need! The faculty facilitators for Spring 2021 are:

Julie Bray-Ali, Natural Sciences
Luis Echeverria-Newberry, Counseling
Paul Mercier, Business
Francesca Rinaldi, Humanities
Steve Schlichtenmyer, Fine Arts
Sheila Wright, Humanities

Reach the faculty facilitators: facfac@mtsac.edu

Other Forms of Help for Online Teaching Technology

If you want to talk to a person who is local, knows about Canvas and technologies, and knows about teaching at Mt. SAC, the faculty facilitators are a great resource but sometimes your question or request can be fulfilled without the need of involving a faculty facilitator.

Mt. SAC offers several resources to support faculty as they use Canvas and other technologies offered through Mt. SAC. Reaching the right resource can help you get your questions answered faster! Knowing about and using self-paced resources helps you get what you need without any wait time. It also helps those helping you by saving them the time it takes to redirect your question to a self-paced resource. Redirecting dozens of people can take a lot of time and delays answers when that simply doesn’t have to be the case.

Answering Your Own Questions

The first approach to questions should always be to see if you can answer them yourself by using the many, many resources that have already been created to address the most common questions. Here are a few of the best ones to use. For questions about:

Canvas Guides

Reach through “Help” button within Canvas global navigation
Includes video “tours” of each tool
Now includes local guides in searches about our Mt. SAC account.
Didn’t find the answer? Use “Contact support” to reach Canvas 24/7 live chat, phone, or email options. Ask your question to Canvas and lighten the load on our local help services.

Mt. SAC Canvas Faculty Center: Local Mt. SAC Canvas & integrated tools at Mt. SAC

Can also be reached through “Help” button within Canvas global navigation
Lists all integrated tools in Canvas from Ally to Zoom & describes how to access
Provides links to learn more on each tool
Provides local info like how term dates are set and what roles are in our Canvas account
Subscribe to get announcements and stay in the know

Did you Google it?

There are tons of resources and they are sometimes easier to find by Google
Other schools or statewide support sometimes have resources not found in the other resources above
Remember: if it is a generic or other school’s guide, some settings may differ locally

IT Helpdesk: When Canvas can’t help, you need crosslisting, you need a sandbox or you have a question that requires local help from someone with admin rights in Canvas, Zoom, Screencast-o-matic, or another type of account, file a helpdesk ticket. You can do these by emailing helpdesk@mtsac.edu, calling 909-274-4357, or logging into the helpdesk and looking at info/filing a ticket directly in the helpdesk.

Check these Specialty Resources

In addition to these resources, a few extra helpful resources for specific info include:

Adjunct faculty info page in POD

this has more general Mt. SAC info relevant for adjunct professors

DLC recommendations page

this offers recommendations and suggestions based on local policies, such as proctoring, using Zoom, requiring cameras (or not), and suggestions for synchronous and asynchronous instruction.

Faculty Accessibility Center in Canvas

quick reference for accessibility questions relevant to teaching in Canvas.

Check the Vendor: Most vendors adopted by the institution offer help through email ticketing, support resources, live chat or phone help to end users. You can find links to those in the Mt. SAC Canvas Faculty Center.

Start Your Question in One Place

If you didn’t find your answer in self-paced resources or it isn’t that kind of questions, please start your question in one place. You can use the chart below to help you find the right place to start. Sometimes professors decide that the best way to get an answer is to contact every help outlet at once, but really what this does is double or triple the work it takes to make sure your issue is resolved. Here’s why: all of the people-based resources are internally connected. For instance, the IT Helpdesk can forward question to the college’s Canvas admin or FCLT if they are needed. Likewise, the Canvas admin can send questions to FCLT or send them on to the support technicians who work for Canvas. If you send a request through all channels, you just tied up time from three units who each must process your request and who may duplicate effort, receive duplicate requests, and not know you asked in multiple ways. If lots of people do it, that bogs down the system with duplicates and makes everyone’s requests take longer.

What about FCLT?

FCLT stands for the Faculty Center for Learning Technology. This unit that has two instructional designers (Michelle Newhart and Eva Figueroa) and a supporting computer technician (Hugo Aguilera). Dedicated to supporting faculty best practices in teaching with digital tools, FCLT makes lots of content for faculty including live workshops, self-paced workshops, websites, open Canvas courses, Canvas Commons templates, and training materials to support all professors.

The FCLT also receives tickets/referrals from:

Canvas email tickets
IT helpdesk tickets
Faculty Facilitator questions/referrals

Note that these were all listed above as the place to start. That’s because the FCLT receives questions from all three of the major pathways by which you can ask questions! You streamline the work of providing help to faculty by asking your questions through those channels. The FCLT will receive your requests and questions and respond when our expertise is needed.

Questions submitted via helpdesk tickets are much easier to track and less likely to get lost. Everyone on the help side can see, track, and forward questions and responses to the expert who is needed. You help us help you by using the helpdesk or Canvas help instead of emailing individuals or the FCLT unit directly when you have help questions. That means we can do more work creating content and training opportunities for you!

The FCLT still has Instructional Design Office Hours every Thursday from 2-3pm in Zoom or by appointment. We may advise you to come to Office Hours if that is the best way to answer a question asked through a help ticket, or feel free to drop in if you have non-urgent questions you’d like to discuss!

this chart summarizes the info provided in the post. See links below to get to a downloadable or accessible version.

For a downloadable chart or an accessible version of this chart, go to the faculty support page on the FCLT website.

Do you have additions or questions about this the content in this post? Leave us a comment below!

Faculty Center for Learning Technology | Mt. San Antonio College