CCA Libraries exist to enrich and empower our diverse communities through inspiring and courageous knowledge-making spaces, free and open access to materials and resources, intuitive digital tools for expanded scholarship, and information competency instruction.

The Libraries’ Instructional Services and Technology team provides critical and just-in-time pedagogical and instructional support to students and faculty. Services include leading technology workshops, facilitating events on pedagogical models and best-practices in teaching, one-on-one consultations, appropriate teaching tool selection, high-level technical support for hosted platforms, and the creation of just-in-time help documentation. The Libraries and Academic Affairs collaborate to provide many teaching resources that support the pedagogical uses of online teaching and learning technologies.

The InST team may be reached via the Help Desk or the teal chat tab that reads "Questions? Ask us!" when accessing Moodle.

California College of the Arts regularly schedules workshops, trainings and conversations to increase faculty knowledge and skills related to teaching and learning.

Workshops facilitated by the Instructional Services and Technology Team are regularly offered during Faculty Week at the beginning of each semester. Additionally, workshops run by CCA and our platform partners are also added to the calendar throughout the year.

Check for currently scheduled events on the Teaching Lab Calendar:

Teaching Lab Google Calendar

Don't see a workshop you want? We will schedule workshops on demand in any of the topics listed below for your faculty or divisional meeting, or for a group of 2 or more instructors.

Please find below a selection of our previously offered workshops and a link to workshop recordings:

Managing Cognitive Load: An Overview of Learning Message Design with Moodle Examples

Topics covered: Careful and purposeful learning message design facilitates the acquisition of learning objectives by making it less cognitively demanding for students to decode and interact with learning materials. This workshop will focus on the “whys” and “hows” of learning message design that are most relevant to teaching and learning in a digital environment. Examples of learning content organization and presentation in the context of Moodle will be highlighted.

Quality Learning Experience: Use Quality Matters Rubrics for Course Evaluation and Improvement

Topics covered: Built on extensive research and best practices in teaching and learning, Quality Matters (QM) Rubrics are adopted by more than 1500 colleges and universities worldwide to evaluate and improve course design. In this workshop, we will highlight the key elements of the QM Rubrics and discuss how instructors can use them to examine, evaluate, and improve their own online or hybrid course designs.

Conducting Online Peer Critiques

Topics covered: In this workshop we’ll explore ways to set up critiques of student work both synchronously and asynchronously, using Zoom, Moodle, and VoiceThread, with an emphasis on VoiceThread. Hands-on. Be prepared to upload some media for critique and engage in some practice critiquing.

Information Literacy: Community of Practice

Come hear from other faculty about how they designed and implemented successful student research projects in their classrooms!

Designing Research Assignments

Topics covered: Research papers are a traditional way to encourage critical thinking, engage students in research, and teach them how to synthesize sources in order to develop an argument. However, many students struggle with research papers for a variety of reasons. In this presentation, we will discuss ways in which we can design engaging research assignments that foster student success.

Planning Your Course in Moodle: Layout, Organization, Activities, Logistics, Communication

Topics covered: This pedagogically minded workshop is ideal to attend prior to getting too far along in Moodle. We will go over layout options, naming conventions, organizing your content for student success, using communication tools consistently, choosing the right activities and resources tools to support your teaching goals and content posting, and other better practices when it comes to logistics.

Moodle: Getting Started

Topics covered: Overview of the Moodle dashboard, starter course, and navigation in Moodle. How to add files to a Moodle course like a syllabus, readings, or images. How to create an assignment, start a discussion forum, and use the Label and Page resources. Other Moodle Activities as time allows.

Planning Your Course in Moodle: Layout, Organization, Activities, Logistics, Communication

Topics covered: This new pedagogically minded workshop is ideal to attend prior to getting too far along in Moodle. We will go over layout options, naming conventions, organizing your content for student success, using communication tools consistently, choosing the right activities and resources tools to support your teaching goals and content posting, and other better practices when it comes to logistics.

Intermediate / Advanced Moodle: Gradebook, Rubrics, Groups, and more

Topics covered: This workshop is for folks who have a basic understanding of Moodle basics and are looking to the next level: Gradebook overview, building rubrics, using groups, and more as time allows.

Gradebook: Setting up your Gradebook in Moodle

Topics covered: Setting up your gradebook properly can be tricky. Is your weighting set up to reflect your gradebook? Are you using points or scales? How does this affect the gradebook total? Can you set up a Pass/No-credit gradebook? Can you hide individual assignment grades from students until you are ready to share them? Can you show letter grades instead of percentages? How can you unhide your gradebook so that your students can see their grades? These questions and more will be walked through during this workshop. This will be a hands-on workshop, so bring your Moodle course, your syllabus, and an overall grading plan and make it a hands-on experience.

Advanced Moodle: Using the Workshop Activity for Peer Critique

Topics covered: We will demonstrate how to use the Workshop Activity in Moodle for peer critique. This session will assume that the participants have a working knowledge of Moodle basics.

VoiceThread: Getting Started

Topics covered: VoiceThread is a web-based application that enables instructors and students to upload images, video, or documents and then record and add audio, video, or text comments. This workshop will go over how VoiceThread can be used for virtual discussions, critiques, and student presentations.

Intermediate / Advanced VoiceThread: Assignments, Collaboration, Groups, and Commenting

Topics covered: This workshop is for folks that have a basic understanding of VoiceThread basics and are looking to the next level: Using the VoiceThread plugin in Moodle to create Assignments, using groups and subgroups for critique, collaborating on VoiceThreads, and getting more out of commenting. This will be a hands-on workshop so bring images/media for practice.

Introduction to MURAL Digital Workspace

Topics covered: We will look at MURAL, a digital workspace/whiteboard application that can be used for collaborative work with students. This platform is primarily intended for low-residency programs, studio-based courses, and ideation-based seminars.

Introduction to Panopto Video Management Platform

Topics covered: Come learn about Panopto, CCA's video platform for recording and distributing video. Panopto integrates closely with Moodle and automatically generates captions. It does not have some of the limitations our other video options suffer from (limited file sizes, accessibility in China).

Panopto: Advanced Usage

If you know the basics of creating and sharing videos with Panopto, this workshop will delve into greater detail. Topics may include sharing videos in multiple classes, advanced editing techniques, and a deep look at all the many settings that videos and folders have. We will try to leave ample time for questions.

Creating Lecture Recordings in Panopto

Topics covered: Learn how to record lectures directly in Panopto, utilize the basic editing tools, edit auto-created captions, and build a session from multiple sources.

Portal Course Section Pages for Faculty

Topics covered: A workshop on using the Portal's Course Section Pages feature to showcase information about your course and useful resources.

Collecting Student Work in VAULT

Topics covered: Learn how to collect student works via VAULT, CCA's digital archive. Learn about VAULT's permissions system, privacy, upload forms, and see previews of both the faculty and student views.

Zoom Basics

Topics covered: Get a general overview of how you can use Zoom to record lectures, meet with students, and share content.