In this Issue: Autumn EdTech Potpourri
- Effective Feedback in Online Courses
- Learning Opportunities with OpenPress
- Collaborative Practices Blog: Going further together
- InstructureCon Online: Free Canvas Conference
- DEU support and contact information
Effective Feedback in Online Courses
Feedback is one of the most powerful ways in which instructors engage with their learners, and integral to the simple basis of formative assessment — i.e., provide opportunities for students to practice applying their skills and knowledge, give them feedback on how they’ve done, and then provide subsequent opportunities for them to show their enhanced performance and further their achievement. Because it can have such an impact on student learning, it’s valuable to consider how and where feedback is incorporated into your courses.
In the following DEU Blog post, we’ll look at 3 broad approaches to providing feedback in an online course situation, and some tools that Canvas provides to enable effective feedback. I’ll also highlight some lesser-known Canvas tools, like leaving video comments on assignments or using the comment library to make giving feedback faster.
Learning Opportunities with OpenPress
OpenPress is the University of Saskatchewan’s open textbook publishing platform from Pressbooks. Since 2015 our University of Saskatchewan community has been publishing OpenPress textbooks as a way to support student learning and share knowledge. Visit our diverse collection of open textbooks at openpress.usask.ca. You might recognize some familiar authors from across campus who have been making contributions.
Here are just a few ideas for how you might want to use OpenPress
-
- Write an open textbook
- Adapt an existing open textbook
- Make ancillary resources to add to an existing open textbook
- Create a collaborative open textbook with students
- Design H5P activities to embed into your Canvas course
If you are interested in learning more about OpenPress contact deu.support@usask.ca
Digging into Canadian Soils: An Introduction cover image.
Source: https://openpress.usask.ca/soilscience/
Collaborative Practices Blog: Going further together
Our colleagues and collaborators in Health Sciences Interprofessional Education have been working on a new blog. The blog focuses on teamwork and collaboration, sharing the lived experiences of teams as they work on projects and initiatives in their areas. As a way to pull back the curtain on teamwork and collaboration on different projects, each post reflects on the individual experiences of team members presented through a collaboratively written article.
You can read their previous work, and keep up with the latest articles, on the Collaborative Practices Blog.
InstructureCon Online!: Free Canvas Conference
InstructureCon Online is a free conference focused on the Canvas LMS product line. Hear first-hand how your pedagogical peers and counterparts are using edtech in their classrooms and how customers successfully migrated to Canvas and are using it to support teaching and learning.
Registration is FREE. Find out more!
