Faculty Resources

The "Summer Accessibility Series" is a series of weekly webinars that will explore key topics in digital accessibility including Title II compliance, assistive technology, the role of AI, and more.

For more information, please check out the full 2025 Summer Accessibility Series Schedule.

Now available in Brightspace, the new "Blueprints for Digital Accessibility" course will guide you through designing accessible digital content and environments that support all users.

To register, please complete the Blueprints for Digital Accessibility Registration Form.

Brightspace Course Design Institute

Join us in the Brightspace Course Design Institute! This five-step program covers Brightspace and its many tools, as well as information and insights on pedagogy, course design, and online instruction. The steps are cumulative and must be completed sequentially. To register for Step 1, please complete the Brightspace Course Design Institute Step 1 Registration Form.

For Step 1 of the Institute, you can either work through the module self-check quizzes at your own pace and complete the Comprehensive Quiz to move into Step 2. Or, if you feel confident in your understanding of Brightspace, you can take the Comprehensive Quiz without completing the self-check quizzes. Scoring 90% or higher on the Comprehensive Quiz will automatically enroll you in Step 2.

If you have successfully completed both Steps 1 and 2 of the Institute, please use our Brightspace Course Design Institute Step 3 Registration Form to continue to Step 3.

To reach the final frontier of the Brightspace Course Design Institute, you must complete Step 4! Join us to take a deep dive into the various OSCQR standards and learn how they can be used to enhance your course design and instruction. To register for Step 4, please use our Brightspace Course Design Institute Step 4 Registration Form.

For past webinar recordings and other resources, please check out our Instructor Resources shell. For more information on how to access this shell, please view our Instructor Resources Shell Access

Faculty Mentors

Course Design and Instruction Faculty Mentors - If you would like assistance with the development or instruction of your online course, please don’t hesitate to reach out to one of our wonderful Mentors.

Brightspace MentoROOS - If you would like to work with a mentor in Brightspace, please check out our list of Brightspace MentoROOS.

CLDIOI Shining Stars

COURSE DESIGNER HALL OF FAME

Many instructors have been working hard to complete the Center for Learning Design, Innovation and Online instruction's Course Design Institute. Level 3 – Influencer of the Course Design Institute asks that participants serve as a mentor for a colleague completing the course development process. The following instructors have served as a mentor and made a positive influence on SUNY Canton’s online course quality. Be sure to read the testimonials from their mentees!

Christina Lesyk
Testimonial

Barat Wolfe
Testimonial

David Button
Testimonial

Gradebook Gladiators: Unleash Your Grading Power

Our Gradebook Gladiators have successfully completed the Gradebook Gladiators: Unleash Your Grading Power certification program with SUNY Canton’s Center for Learning Design, Innovation, and Online Instruction. Gladiators have successfully created and submitted two efficient and well-designed Brightspace gradebooks AND attended a gradebook editing session!

Syllabus Spartans

Our Syllabus Spartans have successfully completed the Syllabus Spartans Training Challenge with SUNY Canton’s Center for Learning Design, Innovation, and Online Instruction. Spartans have created two fully accessible, accurate, and well-designed Syllabus documents for the Fall 2024 semester. Congratulations, Spartans, and thank you for your hard work!

Digital Accessibility Advocates

Campus members who successfully completed the Digital Accessibility Challenge become SUNY Canton Digital Accessibility Advocates. The Challenge task is to create a document containing accessible headings, a list, an image, and a url link, and email it to cldioi_training@canton.edu. The Challenge explores these digital accessibility topics (please note the handouts are being edited to reflect our current LMS):

Accessibility for digital materials – Who is responsible?
Accessibility or accommodation?
Ally
Text formatting: Headings
Text formatting: Lists
Junk code
Images
Contextualizing links
Closed captions
PDFs

OSCQR Certified Faculty

CLDIOI and the Online Learning Committee (OLC) hosted a SUNY Canton OSCQR Certification program. Several faculty members completed the program and became SUNY Canton OSCQR Certified Faculty.

Course Development

Online Course Development Shell Form

Creating Accessible Content

Create Accessible Products (by Section 508.gov)
Create accessible content in Brightspace
Accessibility in Brightspace
Tips for Accessible Course Design
Ally FAQ
Video: Ally is Your Ally
Accessible Powerpoint
How to Enable Automatic Captions (ASR) in Panopto
Media Captioning Request Form (for ASR-enabled Panopto videos)
Sharing Panopto videos in courses

Syllabus

College governance-approved Required Online Syllabus
CLDIOI OSCQR-friendly Syllabus (optional)
CLDIOI Course Schedule template (optional)

Time on Task

Online courses focus on total time on task to mirror ‘seat time’ in traditional instruction and the conventional academic credit model (in which one college credit requires 15 hours of classroom time plus two additional hours of homework time per hour of classroom time). For example, time on task for viewing three, 15-minute lectures (text or video), with web links would equal 1 hr. Posting to discussions (original post, responses to three classmates’ posts, responses to responses) would equal 2 hours. Small group project meetings (web conference or asynchronous discussion) would equal 1 hour. The College’s Center for Learning Design, Innovation, and Online Instruction provides faculty with guidance on converting online learning activities to time on task to calculate equivalent hours to meet the requirements of the academic credit model. Students complete no less than three hours of equivalent work per credit per week in online courses.

Assessment

Online Course Data

Textbooks

Federal Textbook Adoption Dates:

The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA) requires all institutions receiving federal financial aid to "publish," in time for registration, a list of all required and recommended books and other course materials for all classes offered at the institution.

SUNY Canton OERs

Approved Online Courses

Approved Online Course List (All schools are included in list)

Online Learning Committee (OLC)

Course Reviewer Notes
Pre-Assessment OSCQR Rubric
(After opening, go to File > Save As > Download a Copy. This will allow you to save and edit the document)
Printable Pre-Assessment OSCQR Rubric
(After opening, Go to file > and choose "Print". This will allow for printing of this version of the rubric.)

FLEX Course Review

FLEX courses must be fully developed for online delivery in accordance with the College approved OSCQR Rubric, with the exception of lecture recordings. Recorded lectures should be posted following class sessions and must be accessible (i.e., have to be captioned) once posted to the course. Course Developers may include a "Lecture Recording" content folder in each module when designing FLEX courses. In addition, it is recommended written lecture notes are present in the course at the time of review.

Operational

Guidebook and Standard Operating Procedures Relevant to Online Learning at SUNY Canton
Brightspace Campus Announcement Request Form
Photo & Video Model Release Form

Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property Rights

US Copyright Law:

Copyright protection is automatic and begins when your work is permanently recorded. This means that you can't copyright your ideas, only the recorded product of your ideas. You are not required to include a copyright statement or register your copyright but there are advantages to doing so (needed if taking legal action, less appealing to plagiarism sites that upload faculty materials). The Library can provide assistance and resources on copyright rules and responsibilities.

Copyright Your Videos
UUP Policy on Intellectual Property Rights
Copyright and Faculty Ownership of Intellectual Property
What is Public Domain?
What is Fair Use?

Emerging Technologies

Software

Ally (Accessibility Tool in Brightspace)
Grammarly (Online proofreading and editing tool)
ReadSpeaker (Accessibility and translation tool in Brightspace)
Draft Coach by Turnitin

Panopto Video Platform

How to Use
Copyright your videos
Panopto Information Center
Becoming Familiar with Panopto
Sharing Panopto Videos in Courses
Audio Descriptions in Panopto