Orientation
About the Orientation
In addition to introducing some core concepts for this course, the orientation also serves as your guide to the structure of the course and to our online learning environment.
Objectives
At the successful completion of the Course Orientation, students should be able to:
- navigate between this course text and the Canvas course management system;
- articulate expectations about how and what will be learned in this online course;
- understand how and what instructors expect students to learn in this online course;
- locate key information about the course, including assignments, due dates, technical information, places to get help, and course policies;
- understand course policies, including academic integrity; and
- communicate with instructors and fellow students.
The next page in this lesson outlines the necessary steps to perform to successfully complete this orientation.
Questions?
If you have any questions now or at any point during this week, please feel free to post them to The Lounge forum. (To access the forums, return to Canvas via the Canvas link. Once in Canvas, you can navigate to the Modules tab and then navigate to the Course Orientation lesson.) While you are there, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help out a classmate.
Checklist
To get started with the course, please review the orientation module before moving on to the course lessons.
- Read the course orientation.
- Set up your course notifications.
- Introduce yourself in the Introduce Yourself Discussion in Canvas.
- Install PyScripter.
Learning Environments
Course Website and Canvas
Registered students in the online Penn State courses that use this text need to navigate between several environments in the World Wide Web. These include:
- Course Website [1]: The course website consists of lessons, each including pages of text, graphics, and activities. Activities prompt readers to explore selected websites, to download data and/or software, or other adventures. Registered students may also be prompted to navigate to Canvas to take practice quizzes and graded quizzes.
- Canvas [2]: Penn State's enterprise course management system [3]. In Canvas, registered students consult course calendars, communicate with instructors and fellow students, submit project reports, receive individual project critiques from instructors, take online quizzes and a final exam, and check assignment scores and course grades.
Course Management System
About Canvas, General Orientation
Following is information about Canvas, Penn State's Learning Management System (LMS). In Canvas, registered students may consult course calendars; communicate with instructors, teaching assistants, and fellow students; submit assignments; receive feedback from the instructor and teaching assistant; take online quizzes and surveys; and check assignment scores and course grades.
Quick Guide for Students
If you are new to Canvas, it is strongly recommended that you complete the PSU: Canvas Student Orientation [4].
You may also want to review the Canvas Student Guide [5] to acclimate yourself further, and watch the following video:
Video: Canvas Overview for Students (3:29)
Credit: Canvas Overview for Students [6] from Canvas LMS [7].
In this video, you will learn how to navigate your Dashboard, courses, and Global Navigation Menu in Canvas.
When you log in to Canvas, the first thing you see is the Dashboard, which provides a high-level overview of your current courses. The Dashboard can be displayed in three different viewing options.
Card View displays a course card for each of your favorite courses. Each card can include clickable icons for Assignments, Announcements, Discussions, and Files. List View displays an agenda view of graded items from your courses, as well as any non-graded items your instructors designate for a course To Do list. You can also add your own items to the agenda.
"Recent Activity View" displays a stream of recent notifications from all your courses, including announcements, conversations, assignments, discussions, and peer reviews.
You can also access the course grades page from the Course Card and Recent Activity Views by clicking the View Grades button. The Grades page displays grades for all of your courses. To view grade details for a specific course, click the name of the course.
To view a course, click the Courses link in Global Navigation and click the name of the course you want to view. The course opens to the home page set by your instructor.
You can use the Course Navigation links, breadcrumb navigation, or the sidebar to navigate to different areas of the course.
The sidebar includes a To Do list that displays links to announcements and other items that require action in your courses, such as assignments, quizzes, discussions, and pages.
If your course includes student groups, you can view a list of your groups in Course Groups. Click the group name to view the group homepage. View recent assignment feedback in Recent Feedback. Click the assignment name to view feedback in the Submission Details page.
Canvas displays a Global Navigation Menu that gives you direct access to your courses and other areas of Canvas.
Click the Account link to log out of Canvas, specify your notification preferences, upload and view personal files, modify your user settings, manage ePortfolios, obtain a QR code to log in to the Student app, view global announcements, and enable a high-contrast user interface.
Click the Dashboard link to return to the Canvas Dashboard. Click the Courses link to quickly access your favorite courses and view a list of all your courses. Click the Groups link to access groups in which you are enrolled or view a list of all your groups.
Click the Calendar link to view your personal calendar and course calendars. Click the Inbox link to view and send messages to your instructors and peers within Canvas. Click the History link to view a list of course content and content areas you have viewed within the last three weeks.
Click the Help link to access help resources for your institution.
This guide covered an Overview of Canvas for students.
Supported Browsers and Computer Configuration
The Canvas Help Center provides extensive, up-to-date documentation [8] on making sure your computer is configured properly for Canvas. Failure to follow these recommendations may result in significant issues while viewing materials, taking assessments, and using drop boxes. Use of unsupported browsers is at your own risk.
Set Your Course Notifications
Set Your Canvas Profile and Notification Preferences
Your Canvas Profile and Notification Preferences
Your Canvas Profile and User Settings let you control your personal information in Canvas. Take a few minutes to personalize your Canvas profile and set your Notification Preferences by following the instructions below.
| Task | Instructions |
|---|---|
| Personalize your Canvas Profile |
|
| If you use PSU OneID |
Students who are enrolled with OneID will not receive emails automatically from Canvas due to not having PSU email access. We advise that students set up a personal email address for notifications.
|
| Set your notification preferences |
You have the option to select how, when, and for what information you would like to receive notifications. This can be very helpful when keeping track of items such as discussion posts, assignment due dates, and exams. Visit Canvas Notification Preference Support [10] and follow the instructions for setting up your notification preferences. The video below this table provides additional information. |
| Set your timezone |
|
| Download the Canvas App | For information on using the app by device, please see the following:
|
Video Tutorial: How do I manage my Canvas notification settings? (3:24)
Narrator: How do I manage my Canvas notification settings?
In global navigation, click the Account link. Then click the Notifications link.
On the Notifications Settings page, you can manage how you receive notifications for your Canvas account, and/or manage how you receive notifications for individual courses.
A banner describes the settings you are managing. Another banner indicates the times when daily and weekly notifications will be delivered. To dismiss a banner message, click the close icon.
By default, the "settings for" dropdown menu displays the Account option. Account-level notification settings apply to all of your Canvas courses; however, any course-specific notification settings override account notification settings.
You can view your current account-level settings. Account-level notification types are listed by category. There are notifications for course activities, discussions, conversations, groups, scheduling, and conferences.
You can also view your contact methods, such as email addresses, and push notifications for mobile devices.
Each notification has a default delivery frequency setting. To view the current notification delivery frequency for a notification type and contact method, hover over the notification icon.
To view details for a notification, hover the cursor over the notification name. View details such as the activities that trigger the notification.
Each notification is set to a default setting.
To change the notification for a contact method, locate the notification and click the icon for the contact method.
To receive a notification right away, select the "Notify immediately" option. These notifications may be delayed by up to one hour in case an instructor makes additional changes, which prevents you from being spammed by multiple notifications in a short amount of time.
To receive a daily notification, select the "Daily summary" option. The date and time of your daily notifications are posted in a banner at the top of the notification settings page.
To receive a weekly notification, select the "Weekly summary" option. The date and time of your weekly notifications are posted in a banner at the top of the notification settings page.
If you do not want to receive a notification, select the "Notifications off" option.
Unsupported notification types display the unsupported icon. You cannot manage unsupported notifications.
If you have enabled "Push Notifications" in the Canvas student mobile app on an Android device or on an IOS device, you can manage your settings in the "Push Notification" column. Push Notifications can only be sent to your mobile device right away or not at all. Daily and weekly notification options are not supported.
Some categories include limited availability for push notifications. For full details about supported notifications for push notifications, refer to the Canvas notifications resource document.
This guide covered "How to manage my Canvas notification settings.
Communication
Meaningful interactions among students and instructors are the hallmark of a successful online class. Canvas supports several types of communication, as described below.
In addition, registered students have Penn State e-mail accounts (<Access Account ID>@psu.edu) that they need to monitor for any official communications that come from the University or from the Penn State World Campus.
Below is a list of communication tools available in Canvas. This course may or may not utilize all of the options listed.
Announcements [14]
These are messages from your instructor that contain important information. Current announcements can be accessed through the Announcements link in Canvas. Announcements may highlight assignment due dates (also published in the course Calendar), lesson recaps, a preview of an upcoming lesson and other essential course information.
Inbox [15]
The Inbox is the equivalent of e-mail in Canvas. It's great for a quick e-mail to another student, instructor, or a whole team. Keep in mind that the text editor is very minimal and does not have much formatting capability. Please use the Canvas Inbox only for private messages to instructors or fellow students.
- Need more help using course mail? Review the Canvas Student Guide section on the Inbox [16].
Discussions [17]
Discussions allow students to interact with the instructor and other classmates. Threaded discussions allow multiple posts and replies. New posts appear in the Course Activity Stream page, so you will know when something has been posted.
- In general, questions and comments about project assignments and course content should be shared with the entire class via the discussion forums. That way, everyone can benefit from the discussion.
- Need more help using discussion forums? Review the Canvas Student Guide section on Discussions [17].
Note:
Whenever you post a message in a forum or send course mail, please use a descriptive subject line. Subject lines that include the gist of a question or comment increase the chances that students and instructors can retrieve the messages we're looking for. Poor subject lines, such as "Question" or "Lesson 1," are not very useful as search keywords. When replying to a prior message, consider whether or not the subject line should be altered to indicate the content of your reply!
Technical Requirements
Installing PyScripter
PyScripter is an easy IDE to install for ArcGIS Pro development. If you are using ArcGIS Pro version 2.2 or newer, you will first have to create and activate a clone of the ArcGIS default Python environment (see here [18] for details on this issue). To do this, click on "Manage Environments" just above "Installed Packages", choose "Clone Default", and wait around 10 minutes or so, while ArcGIS is creating the clone (in version 2.7 you should see a list of packages being installed which will tell you that the clone is being created). If the cloning fails with an error message saying that a Python package couldn't be installed, you may need to run ArcPro as an Administrator (do a right-click -> Run as administrator on the ArcGIS Pro icon) and repeat the steps above (it's also helpful to mouseover that error box in Pro and see if it gives you any additional details).
When the cloning is done, the new environment "arcgispro-py3-clone" (or whatever you choose to call it - but we'll be assuming it's called the default name) can be activated by clicking on the button on the left. Do so and also note down the path where the cloned environment has been installed, appearing below the name. It should be something like C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\ESRI\conda\envs\arcgispro-py3-clone. Then click the OK button. You often need to restart Pro to get this change to take effect, and you may see a message telling you to restart.
Now perform the following steps to install PyScripter:
- Download the installer from PyScripter's soureceforge download page. here [19]
- Follow the steps to install it, Checking the additional shortcuts if you want those features. Create a desktop shortcut does what it says it does. A Quick Launch shortcut is placed in the Task Bar, and the Add 'Edit' with PyScripter' to File Explorer context menu adds the option to use PyScripter in the menu that appears when you right click on a file.
- Click the Install button and follow the prompts. Check the Launch PyScripter and click Finish.
- Once PyScripter opens, we need to point it to the cloned environment we made. To do this, find the Python 3.x (64-bit) on the bottom bar . Your Python might mbe different, and that is ok for now. Click on the Python and it will open a window listing all of the Python environments it found. If your clone is not listed, you need to click on the gear with the plus and navigate to where it was created. You can get this path by referring to the Package Manage in Pro. Once you get to the parent folder of the environment, select it and it will add it to the list of Unregistered Versions.
- Double click on the environment to activate it. If you get an Abort Error, click ok to close the prompt.
- Verify that your environment is active. It will have a large arrow next to it. Close the Python Versions window.
- It is a good idea to close the application and restart it to ensure that it saves your activated environment. If the settings revert back to the defaults, repeat the step 4 through 7 again and it should save.
If you are familiar with another IDE you're welcome to use it instead of PyScripter (just verify that it is using Python 3!) but we recommend that you still install PyScripter to be able to work through the following sections and the sections on debugging in Lesson 2.
Summary and Final Tasks
If you haven't already, now would be a good time to complete the process for setting up your Penn State OneID by following the steps below.
- Setting up your Penn State Account.
- Set up a Penn State OneID account at https://accounts.psu.edu/ [20]
- Select “New to Penn State?”. When you complete this step continue to b,
- Email me at jmk649@psu.edu [21] or (reply to this email) your name, Penn State OneID accounts (both the alphanumeric and 9-digit accounts), and your preferred email address for course communication. You can use this a template:
- name: Student
- User ID: aaaNNNN
- Penn State ID: 123456789
- Preferred email:
- If you would fill out these questions, it will help me gauge your experience level and reasons for taking this course.
- Why are you taking this course?
- Do you have any experience in programming? If yes, what languages?
- What do you hope to achieve with the skills you will gain from the completion of the course?
- I’ll enter your account and add you to the course so you can access Penn State’s Canvas Learning System.