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How Canvas’ intuitive interface makes it easy to use
This is the seventh post in a series about how you can use Canvas to integrate the eight Learning Technology Ecosystem Principles. You can find more about these principles here, but in this post, we’ll be looking at the sixth principle. Efficient and easy to use: Learners need to work in a system that is fluid and requires a minimum number of steps in systems that are intuitive and integrated. Efficient and Easy to Use During the search for a new LMS, instructors said ‘ease of use’ was a top principle for choosing technology to support student learning. If a platform is intuitive and easy to navigate, students can focus on their course work…
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Using Canvas New Analytics to see how students are doing in your course.
Having to teach remotely may have left some of us feeling like we are teaching in a vacuum. Without the usual cues that face-to-face teaching provides, it can be difficult to tell whether students are engaging or participating with their course materials. Even if you feel like you have a good sense of how your students are engaging with the course, New Analytics can help confirm these feelings. What is New Analytics? New Analytics is a tool that can track and report student activity within Canvas. Student activity is defined by two data points: Page Views and Participations. The table below shows the difference between the two. How to access New Analytics. You can easily access New Analytics through the course Home Page or from the course navigation menu (if you have set it to…
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How Canvas supports student control and ownership of learning
By Roberta Campbell-Chudoba This is the sixth post in a series about how you can use Canvas to integrate the eight Learning Technology Ecosystem Principles. You can find more about these principles here, but in this post, we’ll be looking at the fifth principle. 5. Designed for student control and ownership of learning: Learners create and control spaces for learning, understanding and retaining ownership, and purposefully choosing how and when they share. Student Control and Ownership of Learning Practices that facilitate student choice can have a positive impact on their participation and motivation, and thus, academic performance. Students with choices can engage in higher-level learning for many reasons; feeling more…
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Posting Feedback and Grades in Canvas
Once students start completing quizzes and assignments in your course, you may start wondering how students access this feedback. You may also be wondering if you need to do anything to release the feedback. You may also wondering, to be frank, about a lot of things. Grade Posting Policy for an Individual Assignment By default, feedback, comments, and grades in Canvas are automatically shared with students as soon as they are generated. This means that as soon as you grade an individual student’s submission, these details will become visible to them. Students may even receive an email notification about this, depending on their notification settings. If you want to keep…
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The Canvas Inbox (is better than you think)
Did you know that messages in Canvas are also called Conversations? And that when you send a message you are actually starting a conversation thread which is stored within Canvas? Since all messages (or conversations) are stored within Canvas you never have to worry about missing or losing any messages. The Canvas Inbox is an internal messaging system that allows you to send messages to: specific courses specific groups sections in a course all students in a course, groups of students in a course, and if you click the Send an individual message to each recipient checkbox, then each person in this group will not be able to see who has been included in the message individual students in a course people in your courses with specific roles (such as TA’s or instructors) …
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Exploring the Many Ways of Using Canvas Classic Quizzes
Quizzes are an extremely flexible tool that can be used to support many stages of learning. For example, quizzes can be used to pre-assess (prior to learning), provide practice and feedback (during learning), or as post-assessment (after learning). Experimenting with these various methods can assist you in finding ways of making your course more supportive of our USask Learning Technology Ecosystem Principles (e.g., “Designed for Reflection and Growth”). Here are some approaches to using quizzes that you may want to consider: Using the same quiz at a different stage in learning Using a quiz prior to learning and after learning can help make learning visible to students. Allow multiple attempts…
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Students Finished Writing my Canvas Classic Quiz: Now What?
Once your quiz or test availability period ends, there are a number of tasks that you might want to complete, such as reviewing how the entire class performed, reviewing an individual student’s quiz, and manually grade questions. This post and video will outline these different tasks and how you can accomplish them when using Canvas Classic Quizzes. Reviewing the class’s responses As an instructor, one reason to use quizzes is in order to identify areas where students are doing well and where they need further support. The most efficient way to view question-by-question results in Canvas is to navigate to the quiz via Assignments or Quizzes. Click on the quiz…
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How Canvas supports students remixing and / or creating
This is the fifth post in a series about how you can use Canvas to integrate the eight Learning Technology Ecosystem Principles. You can find more about these principles here, but in this post, we’ll be looking at the fourth principle. 4. Designed for students who are remixing and/or creating: Learning is most effective when systems are designed to help learners find, create, and/or repurpose significant content for the value of themselves and others. Remixing and/or Creating Bloom developed a classification of thinking skills, which he ranked in order of complexity – remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. These six skills are used to design learning objectives that describe…
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Student presentations in Canvas
By David Greaves, ICT Support Services What does a good student presentation look like in an online learning environment? Take a moment to think about it. While you were thinking, you likely made the realization that the learning environment makes a difference. This post will guide you through the technology selection process as you design your student presentation. Let’s start with some assumptions: It is not best to try to recreate a live student presentation in an online learning environment The technologies we choose should allow our students to showcase their learning in the best possible light Students should spend more time learning your course’s actual content than learning new technologies You are using Canvas to host your course (since…
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How Canvas supports learning through Reflection and Growth
This is the fourth post in a series about how you can use Canvas to integrate the eight Learning Technology Ecosystem Principles. You can find more about these principles here, but in this post, we’ll be looking at the third principle. 3. Designed for Reflection and Growth: Learning is refined and extended through prompted and supported opportunities to focus on understanding and next steps. Reflection and Growth Reflection is integral to the learning process. Giving students the opportunity to reflect allows them to consider how what they have learned fits in with what they already know. This active process helps students construct meaning and retain knowledge. Students grow as learners…