If you are an instructor using eClass for the first time, or are interested in re-designing or improving upon your course content, the U of A has a number of different groups and resources that are available to assist you.

IST eClass Support Team

Website: https://support.eclass.ualberta.ca

For an overview of system features and technical assistance for eClass.

The eClass support team provides email, telephone, and face-to-face consultations to assist you with your technical needs for constructing courses within eClass. In addition to a large collection of searchable knowledge base articles (including this one!), instructors can also access our online, self-paced training materials available in eClass 101 (a resource course available in eClass). This team is also responsible for system administration and local development of features and integrations in eClass, so be sure to contact this group to suggest feature improvements to the system, report suspected bugs or accessibility concerns, or to troubleshoot any technical problems you encounter in eClass.

Centre for Teaching and Learning

Website: https://www.ualberta.ca/centre-for-teaching-and-learning/

For instructional design consultations, introductions to innovative technology, and pedagogical professional development.

The Centre for Teaching and Learning has a long tradition of providing well-researched, appropriate advice to U of A instructors for reflecting on and improving their teaching practice. The Centre delivers a variety of professional development workshops and also hosts a number of annual events that showcase great teaching and highlight exciting new strategies. The staff of educational developers offer instructors discrete feedback on teaching practice, consultations for course design and curriculum (re)design, and guidance in the appropriate use of innovative teaching technologies.

See more at: https://www.ualberta.ca/centre-for-teaching-and-learning/about/index.html

U of A Copyright Office

Website: http://copyright.ualberta.ca

Contact this group for advice and guidelines on proper practice for posting copyright materials to eClass

The Copyright office is the best source for guidelines how to use copyrighted materials in your eClass courses. The basic standard that instructors should follow is that copyright materials used in an eClass course should be credited in the same way as if you were citing them in an academic paper. The same guidelines would apply for the amount of a particular source that you can include - the standard is up to 10% of the original work. For specific recommendations about posting formats, practices for citing, and queries about specific pieces of content, we recommend that you contact the Copyright Office directly.

Open Educational Resources

An alternative option to copyrighted materials that instructors might want to consider when constructing courses are Open Educational Resources (OER). These can include instructional resources, assessment items, multimedia, and textbooks that are freely available through Creative Commons licensing. Entire courses have even been made open through this license and may be valuable in providing inspiration or examples of content delivery. Most of these items allow instructors to pull down their own copies of these materials and to re-work and customize for use in their own courses. For more information on OER, please contact Krysta McNutt, Open Education Program Lead, Centre for Teaching and Learning.

More info: https://www.ualberta.ca/centre-for-teaching-and-learning/grants/oer/index.html

U of A Libraries

Website: https://www.library.ualberta.ca

Contact this group for the preparation of electronic resources listing any holdings from your course reading list

The library is an excellent resource for selecting readings for your course and offer a useful service that converts your final reading list into a list of clickable links to any resources in their holdings or that exist online in the public domain. This file can be added directly to your eClass course. It is also possible to add a Library Resources block into your course and to have subject area librarians customize it for your area of specialization.

Academic Success Centre

Website: https://www.ualberta.ca/current-students/academic-success-centre/index.html

Contact this group for validation of course content accessibility and instructions on meeting duty to accommodate

Accessibility Resources can advise and collaborate with you to ensure that your course materials interact with tools they provide for students with disabilities. They are among the experts on campus in universal design practices and should also be contacted for making exam accommodations. They can be reached at arrec@ualberta.ca. AR has also provided a basic article on accessibility within eClass: Accessibility Considerations in Constructing eClass Courses.

Advanced and interactive content authoring tools

A number of tools that are not centrally supported can be used to create importable learning objects that present multimedia content, interactive lecture captures, or assessments

• H5P (HTML5 Package) enables educators to create content such as interactive videos, quizzes and presentations. Existing H5P activities (created for example on h5p.org or h5p.com) may be embedded into eClass either by linking the URL or by uploading the file. 
• New for June 2021: H5P templates can be used to construct interactive activities directly in course Content banks. These activities and those exported from H5P.org ot H5P.com can now push their grades directly into the gradebook.  
• iSpring offers both paid and free tools for converting PowerPoint presentations to SCORM format and for creating SCORM surveys/quizzes. SCORM is an interoperability format supported by eClass which can integrate automatically with your course’s gradebook.
• Articulate Storyline creates interactive lessons that can include in-place assessment
• The eClass lesson activity also offers some of these types of features in-system