Category: Classroom Management

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8 Strategies to Amplify Student Engagement in Online Courses

Online courses have opened avenues for both students and educators. They provide flexibility, accessibility, and convenience that cater to diverse learners and busy schedules. However, among these advantages, one significant challenge often remains: fostering meaningful student engagement in the virtual classroom. The absence of face-to-face interactions and the potential for distractions can make cultivating active participation seem like a daunting task. In this blog post, we delve into the art of overcoming these obstacles.    Continue reading “8 Strategies to Amplify Student Engagement in Online Courses”

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Using Announcements in Your Online Course

Course announcements are one of the simplest and most effective ways to communicate with your class, whether you are teaching an entirely online, in-person, or a hybrid course. Particularly for online asynchronous learners, announcements offer a primary channel for regular information to be passed on from the instructor, and a significant tool for building a sense of instructor presence. In this article, we’ll cover some reasons you might send an announcement, a few good practices to keep in mind, and some options and tips particular to using the Announcements tool in Canvas.

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DEU EdTech Quick Tips – Issue 76

In this Issue: Events for SDG/OE Week, and More EdTech Tidbits

      • Open Education Events during USask SDG Week and #OEWeek2023
      • Using Perusall in Online Courses
      • Buy, Borrow, Bend, or Build?: A Framework for Course Material Selection
      • Enhance Course Navigation with Emojis 📖 ✏️ 💡
      • Canvas Quick Tip: Disabling YouTube Inline Preview in Canvas
      • DEU Support and Contact Information

Continue reading “DEU EdTech Quick Tips – Issue 76”

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Hidden Gem: Canvas Chat

The Chat tool in Canvas is a very simple and low-bandwidth real-time communication option that, if used deliberately, could provide a quick and easy-to-access way to aid communication in your class, improve your presence as an online instructor, or be a convenient way to structure engaging learning activities in your blended course. 

This post will include a brief overview of the Chat tool, and cover a few ideas for incorporating it into your online or blended teaching plans.

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Considerations for Concurrent Hybrid Teaching

Teaching in a concurrent hybrid (or, possibly more accurately, a concurrent hyflex) classroom is when you teach both in-person and remote students at the same time, usually by physically being present in the same classroom space as the in-person students. While this teaching modality has certainly been used more widely during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is also an interesting one to consider for a variety of situations in which students might require additional freedom and/or flexibility to choose either an in-person or remote learning experience. The possibilities of concurrent hybrid/hyflex teaching to increase the accessibility of courses and degree programs are the key part of why they are being considered more and more in higher education settings.

However, the challenges of concurrent hybrid teaching are real. For many instructors and students, this is an unfamiliar way of teaching and learning, and it is a unique approach that requires unique teaching solutions. While simply setting up a camera feed so that virtual students can “tune in” to the in-person event is a start, there is a lot more to consider with regards to the technical setup and, importantly, the instructional design of a high-quality concurrent hybrid course. The goal is to ensure that the remote students do not experience an inequity of teaching attention or a compromised quality of instruction. With that in mind, here are some things to consider in taking hybrid teaching beyond simply livestreaming a lecture.

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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 this 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.

Continue reading “Effective Feedback in Online Courses”

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Using the LMS to Support F2F Learning

If you’re going back into the classroom this fall after several terms of remote-only instruction, don’t abandon the LMS (i.e., the Learning Management System) just yet! LMSs like Canvas have a lot to offer for your face-to-face classes. Here are some ideas for how to enhance your F2F course using the LMS and some related online learning tools and strategies.

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Multi-Access Delivery Models for Uncertain Times

With President Stoicheff’s announcement that “we will see a significant increase to in-person, on-campus instruction for Fall 2021”, many faculty and instructional staff are beginning to think about how best to design their fall courses. With uncertainty still lingering in all our minds, we may all be looking for some flexible options for teaching and learning design that not only provide autonomy and flexibility for students, but provide a little insurance against emergency measures as well.

Blended, HyFlex, and Multi-access design models all leverage face-to-face (F2F), synchronous and asynchronous activities to deliver flexible learning options for students. But how do we implement these designs in our classes and what are the considerations we must look at when increasing the flexibility in our course designs?

In this post we’ll compare these different designs and show you how you can leverage both your F2F teaching and your remote course materials to create flexible delivery options for you and your students this fall. Continue reading “Multi-Access Delivery Models for Uncertain Times”