Breakout rooms in Zoom

This feature in Zoom allows you to sort your students into small groups where they can collaborate on projects, discuss topics or brainstorm ideas. If you have a large class, breaking students up into smaller groups helps build connection between students and ensures that everyone in the group has a voice. The breakout rooms in…

Generating an attendance report in Zoom

  Term has started and whilst the instructors who are back in the classroom can clearly see who is present in their classes, for those who are teaching virtually it is not so easy to determine. Luckily for the instructors who are hosting their virtual classes in Zoom, an attendance report can be generated. This…

Canvas Online Attendance

Canvas has just released an online attendance dashboard for instructors who are teaching online and who want to define attendance around students’ interactions within Canvas. You can access the online attendance dashboard through the New Analytics link either from the course navigation menu or through the course homepage. This dashboard gives instructors an at-a-glance view…

Introduction to Teaching Online

If someone asked you “How is online teaching different from face-to-face teaching?”, the first thing you might say is that face-to-face teaching involves real time interaction between students and instructors (synchronous) whereas online teaching happens through a computer, with students typically working through course content like lectures and other materials in their own time (asynchronous). In…

You can only make a first impression once – make it a good one with your Canvas Homepage

Co-written by Toni Marchione and Ryan Banow, GMCTL Your course homepage is the first thing that students see when they log in to your Canvas course. It is their first impression of your course. As a landing page, it should be inviting, informative and easy to navigate.   Canvas allows instructors to customize their homepage and choose between five different layout options: Course Activity Stream, Pages Front Page, Course Modules, Assignment List or Syllabus. It is…

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. …