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Considerations for creating an open-book exam
An alternative to the traditional time-constrained invigilated final exam is the open-book exam. “Open-book” implies that learners will have access to some type of references or resources during the exam, but the level of access to resources and time constraints are variables controlled by the instructor depending their exam design decisions. If you are considering an open-book exam, here are some things to keep in mind: Focus on the Learning Outcomes – When making decisions about exam design and the types of questions you are going to have on your exam, think about the most important things you want your students to come away knowing (your learning outcomes / key…
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What Can You Do About Academic Misconduct?
The causes of academic misconduct have been well-studied and the following points explain most of this concerning behavior. Research shows that very few students plan on doing things like buying papers or crowd-sourcing exam questions when they enroll in courses. Students widely report that their decision to “cheat” was almost always instead taken at the last minute, under pressure, based on one or more of these 3 concerns: Students placed a low value on what was to be learned Students had low expectations of success for themselves, whatever success meant to them Students believed cheating was widespread: “Everybody’s doing it—I’d be dumb not to” Low value on learning required…
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How Do I Set Up My Notifications in Canvas?
As you’re getting started with Canvas, you’ll want to set up a few things to make it work more like the way you’d like. Within Canvas you’ll find a button under which it says Account. When you click on that you’ll see a list of links including Notifications, Profile, Files, Settings, and some other things we won’t worry about for right now. Notifications is where you can specify how and how often you receive notifications about updates within your courses in Canvas. These may include posts to discussion forums, submission of assignments, students signing up for appointments, etc. This resource created by Canvas details how to set up your notifications: How do I set…
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What to Do First in Your New Canvas Course
By Roberta Campbell-Chudoba Canvas offers faculty and instructors an exciting online platform with efficient and effective tools to improve the teaching and learning experience, especially during this time of remote instruction. In mid-June of 2020, Canvas courses will be available to all those who elected to be ‘Early Adopters’ and faculty whose college, department or school is implementing Canvas across courses for Fall 2020 term. We’ve decided as a Canvas implementation team, not to reinvent the wheel and instead, point you to great resources Canvas has to offer! Most people want to get familiarized first with the look and feel of Canvas. So, let’s get started by accessing your Canvas Dashboard at canvas.usask.ca (available in mid-June). Once you have…
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Office Hours, Remotely
When we move to remote teaching, we need to consider how we will continue to provide students with student-instructor interaction. One way of offering this is through office hours. While we used to offer office hours outside of lecture or class time, now we might be able to leverage our scheduled class time to engage with students to discuss problems, specific questions, or examples. Transmission of content (powerpoints, videos, readings, etc.) can then be reallocated to asynchronous hours. Determine if it best suits your course to offer: group discussions, individual consultations drop-in sessions Be consistent with whichever options you choose. Remind students often via email and course notifications. Use the…
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Copyright and Remote Teaching
As you prepare for remote teaching this fall, you need to keep in mind issues related to copyright. The following key points were made in the USask version of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARLs’) copyright guidance released as the University quickly shifted to remote teaching in March: Most of the legal issues are the same whether the teaching is done in person or online. If it was okay to do in class, it is often okay to do online – especially when your online access is limited to the same enrolled students. You can continue to apply the University of Saskatchewan (USask) Fair Dealing Guidelines. The following resources have…