Educational Technology
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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 of which students are engaging with Canvas-based activities and on which days. Instructors can use the Weekdays dropdown menu to select their class days, so they can easily see online attendance for these days & Instructors can filter the results to show students who have met (or not met) the attendance criteria, making…
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Keep recording when you present content
The move to remote instruction with COVID-19 forced a pivot that was frustrating for educators and students alike. USask collected data about the student learning experience in focus groups and surveys throughout the pandemic. Students consistently told us they missed community and direct connection with their professors. However, they also told us how much they value recordings of the times when the professor is presenting information in class – a practice they would like to see USask educators continue as we return to traditional classroom formats. What research says A recent meta analysis of video in higher education using only randomized controlled trials found that while recorded video is not…
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Personalizing Feedback with Canvas Audio Visual Tools
By Roberta Campbell-Chudoba As instructors and teaching assistants, we invest a great deal of time in giving feedback to students to enhance their learning and improve their performance. Giving meaningful feedback involves describing what we experience when excellence catches our attention, building on the strengths demonstrated, and guiding learners to see what excellence looks like. Students generally appreciate feedback that is specific, detailed, constructive, and encouraging – and is given within a couple of weeks of assignment submission, before they’ve moved on to other learning activities and topics. In face-to-face (F2F) courses, feedback may be explanations or questions on written work, corrections with the class after a quiz or lab, or…
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How Do I Subscribe to This Blog, and Other Sites
There have been some recent inquiries about how to subscribe to this blog, which is great. We love to hear that readers are finding this site helpful. This post will explain how to use RSS (Real Simple Syndication) to subscribe to Educatus and other sites. What Is RSS and What’s It Good For? RSS allows you to subscribe to any website that includes an RSS feed, which many do. Think of a magazine subscription. If you subscribe, the magazine will come to your home, or if a digital edition, to you email inbox. If you don’t subscribe, you either need to go to a store or website to see if there’s…
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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 simple to change How do I change the Course Home Page?. Course Modules is the most common option that instructors choose. If you would like to customize your homepage you must first create a page and then set it as the Front Page – How do I set a Front Page in a course? Whichever homepage layout you select you also have the option of displaying recent course…
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How Students Interact With Your Online Course Predicts Their Success
We all know that students are more successful when they have a deep interest in course materials or strong thinking skills. Similarly, we know we can help students do better when assessment is transparent. However, we are less aware of the impact that our course design has on likely student persistence and success. In online and remote environments, here are some key predictors of success controlled by how you design your course: Key factors: Student engagement with learning activities like posting on discussion boards or taking optional online quizzes to check their understanding (Zacharis, 2015) is a likely predictor of student success. Interestingly, time logged in and reading or viewing…
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Let Students Choose their Breakout Session and More – Now in WebEx!
USask’s version of WebEx recently updated with a few new features worth highlighting. Students can now choose which Breakout Session to join On certain devices WebEx, can now recognize hand gestures, including hand raising Students can now choose which Breakout Session to join This feature opens up new pedagogical opportunities in class sessions. There are a few obvious examples that come to mind: use this to help students form groups for class activities. Create a session for each potential topic and then allow students to self-enrol in the session for the topic of their choosing you could lead an activity where students choose a position in an argument. For example,…
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Create Groups for Collaborative Learning Spaces in Canvas
By Roberta Campbell-Chudoba Perhaps you’d like to set up groups in your Canvas course for discussions, assignments, projects or presentations. The process creates smaller groups, as well as a space within the course for group members to collaborate, called a Group Homepage. Group creation can help our courses to be more active and social, and enable connection with the people, ideas and concepts students need to support their learning; using groups is aligned with USask’s Learning Technology Ecosystem Principles, characteristics of effective digital learning spaces, and can support skill development and learner achievement for our students. By bringing students together in smaller groups and inviting them to communicate and work…
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Using MEETS in Canvas
By Roberta Campbell-Chudoba When we listened to students in facilitated focus groups this fall about their remote learning experiences, they said it would be helpful to have a central place to meet virtually with their instructors, eliminating the need to search for meeting links and access different platforms. Your integrated Webex room in MEETS provides a consistent and easily accessible space for hosting virtual classes, office hours, and individual student appointments. Students know where to meet and do not need a special link to join the session. However, the space serves more than just utilitarian purposes. Coming together with students in MEETS also provides what many students are hungering for…
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What can I do using the Canvas mobile app?
The Canvas Teacher mobile app provides quick access to grading, communicating, and updating your course. It delivers added convenience with day-to-day tasks once your core course structure is set up. That’s the philosophy behind the app and it helps us meet the USask Learning Technology Ecosystem Principle of our courses being efficient and easy to use (get the app here: Apple iOS, Android). What typical course tasks work well on the app? Communicating with students (Inbox and announcements) Reading and replying to full-class discussions Editing assignment and quiz details, including due dates Editing pages Providing annotations; text, audio, or video comments; and grades on assignments This works especially well if…