Canvas
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Reading the Remote Room: Surveying your students
It is always a good idea to collect feedback from your students about your teaching, but this importance is magnified while teaching remotely. if you’re teaching primarily synchronously (e.g., on Zoom) you might be getting a sense that things are going well, without realizing that some students are struggling with the content and/or their internet connections if you’re teaching primarily asynchronously and don’t have regular assessment and engagement methods in place, you might be finding it difficult to get much of a read at all Now that we’re a month into the term, it would be a great time to anonymously survey your students for feedback. Canvas has a built-in…
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Grading Discussions in Canvas
By Roberta Campbell-Chudoba You’ve set up and run your first graded discussion in Canvas – and the volume of posts seems a bit daunting. Now it’s time to assess the individual student contributions against the defined criteria and get results out to them before the next discussion goes up. Here are some tips for grading discussions, using tools in Canvas to assist you. Canvas automatically marks posts as ‘read’ when you scroll down the page (changing the green dot left of the post to white). This function might interfere with keeping track of what you’ve read, and be a time waster if you have to backtrack through posts automatically marked…
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What Does a Well-Designed Canvas Course Look Like?
Just as students appreciate seeing good examples of work before doing their own, instructors designing courses often feel the same way. As Canvas is our adopted learning management system, we want to provide you with some examples through the following two courses. In both cases, student information and data has been removed. ETAD 402 – Multimedia Design and Production This course from Professor Marguerite Koole in the College of Education is a blended course in that it’s a mix of asynchronous and synchronous delivery. ENVS 818 – Introduction to Sustainability This course from Professor Maureen Reed from the School of Environment and Sustainability. This is an example of an asynchronous…
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Small group synchronous discussion or presentations using WebEX
WebEx has a new feature that allows you to automatically or manually sort your students into small groups so they can remotely do the types of small group activities you had them do in your face to face classroom. While they are in groups, you can: send a message to give instructions, to all or some of the rooms or people pop into the rooms to observe invite people back to the main room end all the break out rooms to automatically close them When students return to the main meeting room, they have video off and be muted, but they can change those settings once they are back. The…
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Utilizing Peer Feedback in Canvas
Peer feedback involves students providing feedback to each other on work prior to a final or revised version being submitted to the instructor. This creates the opportunity for students to receive formative feedback, improve on their work, and then submit it to the instructor. The integration of peer feedback for assignments or other activities in your courses creates benefits for you and the students. When students can submit a rough draft and receive feedback, they are less likely to engage in academic misconduct due to the need to submit a rough draft, and they also have the chance to receive constructive feedback prior to the work being seen by their…
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Canvas Commons Opens New Ways to Share Materials With Colleagues, and Beyond
As part of our move to the Canvas LMS, the U of S gains the use of the Canvas Commons. The Canvas website describe it as: Commons is a learning object repository that enables educators to find, import, and share resources. A digital library full of educational content, Commons allows Canvas users to share learning resources with other users as well as import learning resources into a Canvas course. As an instructor who is a Canvas user at USask, you will be able to find materials in, and share materials to the Canvas Commons. In addition, there are institution-wide documents, such as a U of S Canvas template available in…
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Why Is My Syllabus Public?
Syllabi within the learning management system (LMS) have long been set to public as the default at the U of S. There are a number of reasons for this, including allowing students to view course syllabi prior to registering for courses. We encourage you to leave your syllabi public for the benefit of students, and to help promote your course (think of your syllabus as the equivalent of the abstract in a journal article. With this in mind, please remember: Do not include any copyrighted material within your syllabus (e.g. images) Do not include contact information for anyone, such as your teaching assistants without their approval Instructors, however, have always…
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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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Three Ways of Delivering Remote Learning
Making some preliminary decisions about the direction of your remote course can help you focus in face of a sometimes overwhelming number of technological options and educational jargon. Here are three ways of delivering remote learning to contemplate before you go too far down any one path. Prior to locking yourself into a method, you should keep in mind that your students may face some constraints or limitations for synchronous learning (e.g., bandwidth, webcams, a suitable space to participate in the call). Check in with your students about any such restrictions. Will you meet virtually with your students at a scheduled time for teaching and learning? “Synchronous” means you and…