Academic Technology Updates: Spring 2025

Academic Technology (AT) welcomes you to Spring 2025! As you prepare to start a new semester, please note the following announcements and updates from AT:

Announcing: AI Literacy Education Program, launching Spring 2025

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) continues to emerge as an extensive and rapidly evolving technology in education and society at large. To help prepare the SF State community for an ever-changing technology environment, Academic Technology (AT), the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CEETL), and Information Technology Services (ITS) collaborated to develop the AI Literacy Education Program. This comprehensive training program instills essential competencies for effective and responsible engagement with generative AI, both in personal and professional contexts. This includes the ability to understand, use, evaluate, and ethically navigate generative AI to enhance human thought and work. 

The curriculum consists of two core prerequisite courses addressing effective prompting strategies for practical applications with chatbots and the critical analysis of generative AI and its outputs. The program also includes several elective offerings that cover specialized AI tools and role-specific AI best practices for faculty, staff, and administrators. In addition to these synchronous courses, participants receive access to an online Canvas course site containing supplemental learning materials, AI resources, and assessments to measure learning. Through this program, SF State community members cultivate substantive, transferable AI knowledge and skills to employ in their current work and beyond.

Participants who successfully complete all of the following requirements will receive a digital badge to demonstrate AI literacy:

• Attend and actively participate in both prerequisite courses 
• Attend and actively participate in at least one elective course 
• Pass all pre-course assessments in the Canvas course site
• Pass a cumulative final assessment in the Canvas course site

To learn more, and register for workshops, visit the campus response to AI website "Start your AI journey" page (https://ai.sfsu.edu/start-your-ai-journey).

Canvas

Support and Training Opportunities for Spring

Faculty looking for Canvas support materials can visit the Academic Technology help center at https://athelp.sfsu.edu. AT has published several recordings of workshops from the past year, available via our YouTube channel.
More workshops and training opportunities for Canvas are coming soon. Keep an eye on the calendar on https://canvas.sfsu.edu for upcoming workshops. 
Want to suggest a workshop topic? Check out the community forum and suggest or vote on workshop topics.
 

Renovate and Elevate Your Canvas Course module

Renovate and Elevate in Canvas is an asynchronous professional development course constructed by the Teaching & Learning and Service Teams from Academic Technology. In this course, participants will: scaffold, reinforce, and reimagine their Canvas courses to streamline and organize their content in dynamic ways. More information on how to sign up for this course will be available on the Canvas website, https://canvas.sfsu.edu. 
 

Canvas Studio

Canvas Studio is a video tool built-in to Canvas that allows instructors and students to upload and record video directly into Canvas in a variety of ways. Instructors can record webcam and capture screencasts directly in Canvas, post the videos in Pages, Discussions, and Quiz questions, and organize and share video content with other instructors. Students can upload and record video content into Canvas Discussions and assignment submissions without the need for any fancy video hardware or software, including recording and uploading from mobile devices.
Instructors can create interactive quizzes in Canvas studio embedded directly in video content to help reenforce learning objectives.
Playback speed in Canvas studio hosted videos can be adjusted to play slower (up to 0.5x) or faster (up to 2.0x) to allow students to adjust to their needs. Video quality automatically adjusts based on internet connection speed, with video quality up to 1080p. 
Videos in Canvas studio can also be automatically captioned.
Academic Technology (AT) has prepared an introduction video and guide, with more guides on the way!

Migrate Collaborative site content to Canvas by March 2025

Collaborative sites in iLearn will no longer be supported as of March 2025 as part of the Canvas transition at SF State.
To get assistance migrating Collaborative site content to Canvas, send an email to at@sfsu.edu with the name of the site as it exists in iLearn.
Read the full announcement via ITAnnounce. 
 

Other Projects and Initiatives

Excellence in Online Pedagogies

Academic Technology and the Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning are excited to invite SF State faculty interested in teaching a quality online course to enroll in Excellence in Online Pedagogies. The course equips faculty with essential approaches to designing and enhancing online synchronous and asynchronous courses.

Learn more via the CEETL site informational page: https://ceetl.sfsu.edu/excellence-online-pedagogies. 

AR/VR LIB 222 Space

AT will be soft-launching the opening of a new Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) classroom space which will be available for instructors to bring their students in groups to experience AR/VR content.
Learn more via the AT website: https://at.sfsu.edu/ar-vr-space

Learning Glass

Learning Glass is a technology for recording lectures allowing instructors to write lecture notes on a lighted, transparent whiteboard while maintaining face-to-face contact with students. 
This Spring, AT is bringing back Learning Glass, a dynamic and visually appealing way to record video lectures with visuals.
To book a consultation or get more information, visit the AT website: https://at.sfsu.edu/learning-glass.

BuyIT - the new home for campus IT purchasing

The longtime campus Technology Acquisition Request (TAR) process has been relaunched, introducing a new streamlined interface and a new name: BuyIT. Beginning July 29th, 2024, campus users who purchase IT goods and services will begin using the new website to submit requests. 
Learn more about BuyIT on the AT website (https://at.sfsu.edu/it-purchasing) or visit https://buyit.sfsu.edu to get started today. 

FogCam

Did you know AT maintains the world’s longest operating webcam? Read more about FogCam from local press coverage, and visit the website for a "live" (images captured every 20 seconds) view of the campus quad.