FACULTY ORIENTATION GUIDE

CANVAS

CANVAS is a web-based Learning Management System (LMS). It is used by learning institutions, educators, and students to access and manage online course learning materials and communicate about skill development and learning achievement.  Please visit our IT department to receive assistance and training on learning how to utilize Canvas.

The expectation of the University is that all courses are WEB-Enhanced.  A web-enhanced course is a traditional face-to-face course that utilizes the LMS for posting announcements, the syllabus and course calendar, rubrics and other student resources. It is the Faculty’s responsibility to post syllabi, lesson plans, handouts, lecture materials, Zoom link, and student grades on Canvas.  This is a mandatory requirement for both part-time and full-time faculty.  More information regarding CANVAS In – Service training schedule will be given during your orientation period.

The following forms are available on CANVAS under student services for faculty only:

  1. ASSIGNMENT OF INCOMPLETE GRADE FORM

This form is utilized if a final grade of Incomplete “INC” has to be assigned to a student.

  1. CHANGE OF GRADE FORM

This form is used after the Final Grades for the Quarter were submitted to the Registrar’s Office and if the Faculty needs to request for a change of grade. Change of Grade form must be submitted no later than 2 weeks from the Original Submission.

  1. INCIDENT-ACCIDENT-INJURY FORM

Form is used to report an incident/accident or injury in the classroom or clinical rotations if applicable.

  1. MID TERM FAILURE FORM

This form is submitted to the Student Services Office to notify administration of any students who are falling below B in midterm. The Department Heads must be given a copy to notify the students of the failure and to provide appropriate academic planning.

All teaching materials including course syllabi, power-points, MUST posted in canvas 2 weeks PRIOR to the start of the quarter.

Guidelines to Copyright Laws

(https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html)

A copyright is a property right attached to an original work of art or literature.  It grants the author or creator exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, adapt, perform, or display the protected work.  Other than someone to whom the author/creator has extended all or part of these rights, no one else may use, copy, or alter the work.  Wrongful use of the materials gives the copyright owner the right to seek and recover compensation in a court of law.  A copyright gives the author or owner the right of control over all forms of reproduction, including photocopies, slides, recordings on cassettes and videotapes, compact disks, and other digital formats.

Basic guidelines:

You can:

  1. Use material that is under public domain – you are free to use work that is considered ‘public domain.’ This includes federal government documents, materials produced before 1923 and materials produced before 1977 without a copyright notice.
  2. Use materials that comply with the “Fair Use” doctrine for teachers. Fair use explicitly allows use of copyrighted materials for educational purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.  Rather than listing exact limits of fair use, copyright law provides four standards for determination of the fair use exemption: https://www.copyright.gov/title17/title17.pdf, p.19 and 20.

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2)the nature of the copyrighted work;

3)the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copy-righted work as a whole; and

4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copy-righted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

3. Quote something you find interesting: the Copyright Act defines that short quotations for the purpose of criticism, commentary or news reporting are considered “fair use”. Please give credit to the author of the quote.

4. Use facts and ideas: Copyright Law allows using ideas, however it protects the expression of those ideas, that is, how they are written in documents and websites.

5. Use other materials that are not subject to copyright: apart from facts and ideas there are many other types of materials that are not and cannot be protected under the Copyright Law. Those materials include names, some symbols, ingredient lists or contents, short phrases, titles, slogans and procedures.  Please note that a trademark might protect some of those materials.

5. Use a company’s name or logo if you are talking about it: trademarks should protect a company from people trying to use its name or logo to deceive customers. If you are complimenting, criticizing or analyzing a company, you can use its name or logo under “nominative fair use”.

You may not:

  1. Assume that if you credit the author there is no copyright infringement: people wrongly interpret that if they credit an author of an article or image that they are not violating a copyright law. You are free however to make fair use of material as previously explained, but you cannot blanket use copyrighted materials without explicit permission from the author to do so.
  2. Copy material freely just because you do not see a copyright mention. Since 1978 Copyright Law abolished the requirement for copyright notice.  This means that every published work (be it on paper or digital media) automatically gets copyright protection.
  3. Use ‘Creative Commons’ since it these are limited access and NOT “free for taking”: In order to understand what you can or cannot do with ‘Creative Commons’ material you should check what kind of license is being used with the material.
  4. Copy journal articles or other protected material for students without permissions from the author or publisher.  No exceptions.  If you need to make sure that a student reads a particular journal article, one can be placed on reserve in the library or the student can utilize the library resources and data bases to find the necessary information.

Don’t copy material just because you can’t find the copyright holder: just because a copyright holder cannot be identified does not imply that the material can freely be copied.

How Can I Use a Copyrighted Work?

When deciding to use a work protected by copyright, the general rule is to seek permission from the copyright owner. Under the copyright law, a copyright owner may authorize activities that fall under the exclusive rights of copyright. For more information on seeking permission to use a copyrighted work, see How to Obtain Permission (Circular 16A). Sections 107 to 122 of the copyright law contain provisions that establish limitations on the exclusive rights of the copyright owner. The provisions make certain uses of copyrighted works permissible without first obtaining permission of the copyright owner. One of the most discussed of these statutory provisions is known as fair use, a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. For more information on fair use, see the Office’s Fair Use Index on its website. https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf