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Showing posts from December, 2023

Canvas and undeleting assignments

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Suppose you deleted an assignment and then realize that you want to restore that assignment. Deleted assignments can be restored in Canvas. Go to the base address for the course as seen above. This is the link address seen for the course Home page.  After the last slash add the word "undelete" and press enter. This is the address for what some might term the recycling bin. Click on "restore" to restore the assignment. Grades that were assigned appear, from what I have seen, to also be restored. External Tools Caveat There is, however, a caveat. The above works for Canvas assignments. The above process does not necessarily work for external tools. For an external tool such as Cengage restoration has to be done from the Cengage external tool. There is the ability to force a sync which restores a Cengage assignment that was deleted in Canvas. This may also be true for other external tools.  This means that, for example, deleted Cengage assignments do not appear on the

WolframAlpha, ChatGPT, and Desmos 3D

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For the above expression WolframAlpha offers the result seen above, choosing to simplify only by removing the cube root of 64.  Further down WolframAlpha offers the more simplified result seen above, but with the caveat that x and y must be positive. Yet the this is an odd root expression. Negatives "under the radical" are not imaginary.  I asked ChatGPT to weigh in on this. As seen above ChatGPT, known to sometimes commit mathematical errors, concurs that x and y do not have to be positive.  I then asked ChatGPT to simplify the same expression and ChatGPT went straight to the correct answer with no caveats. I say that round went to ChatGPT.  Desmos 3D visually demonstrates that both x and y can be negative.  All of the above screenshots are from a budget cell phone. There is deeper question underneath this single example. In algebra classes students are still being taught to simplify expressions such as the above

Ethnobotany final

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The ethnobotany field final left A101 at 16:20 on Thursday December 7. On the previous Tuesday the ground rules and guidelines were set down.  Notes for the field walk Wear appropriate clothes, sections of walk will be in the bush Wear appropriate footwear. A hat may be helpful. Bring something to write with - perhaps two things Prepare for wet conditions, be ready to cope with rain. Do not bring things that cannot get wet The field walk passes through a Pohnpeian and Japanese cemetery, avoid stepping or sitting on rocks in that area If pregnant, submit medical evidence (a prenatal care note or something) to be excused from the final The class leaves A101 at 4:20. If you join the class late, missed plants cannot be made up. The field final operates on an honor system. Work quietly. I want to know what you know, not what your classmate knows. The directions shared with the students on Tuesday and repeated on Thursday were as follows: This will be a field walk where I will ask you to ide

Canvas end of term notes

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End of term Canvas  adjustment options: dropping lowest assignments, moving assessment data from Canvas to Nuventive TracDat, converting hyphens to excused or missing, and copying a course from one term to the next.  Dropping low assignments This week I will be setting up Canvas to calculate final grades. One thing I have already done is to move the Total column to the left side of the grade book. The Total column can always be moved back if desired from the same vertical ellipsis menu at the top of the column in the grade book. Over in Assignments I have already set up Groups (Assignments, Tests, Presentations, Laboratory reports, etc.). Each group has an Edit option under the three dot vertical ellipsis menu. The Edit dialog lets me drop the lowest score(s), in this case the lowest test, but to never drop the final exam (which is included in the Test group in my course). The Assignment area is also where weights can be set or adjusted. The menu for this is the vertical ellipsis menu

Online textbooks informal faculty survey

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An online voluntary participation survey of faculty on the use of online textbooks and ebooks was conducted at term end fall 2023. Questions varied according to prior responses, thus not all participants were presented with all questions.  About half of the responding faculty are using online textbooks.  Of those using online textbooks about a third are using free textbooks, open educational resources. Another third are using a mix of free and paid online textbooks. A third are only using paid online textbooks. For those who answered that some or all of their textbooks are not free, a follow-up question was posed. How do students pay for the non-free textbooks in your courses that have paid online textbooks or ebooks? There were seven responses. Books money Financial Aid thru Bookstore Three are free, one is not free. The one textbook that has to be purchased online is for a course spring 2024. The online textbook is available for Amazon Kindle, I do not know how the students will pay