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Apply For Funding to Support Your Open Pedagogy Projects
Open educational resources (OER), particularly open textbooks, have become widely used at USask since the first adoption for a large class in early 2015. More than 8,000 students used OER instead of commercial materials during the 2020-2021 academic year. That growth has helped to raise awareness about open educational practices overall, including open pedagogy. Taking an open pedagogy approach to assessment allows students to contribute to the creation of knowledge and resources that not only demonstrates their learning, but also provides opportunities to show how their learning and the discipline can contribute to helping local communities and the world address the challenges we face today. This approach increases engagement and…
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Imagining Reconciliation
The following was created as an introduction to a panel discussion about how to build pathways toward reconciliation. What are the qualities that help people along this journey for a more inclusive society? As a Manager at the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning, I have been helping the University move forward in building reconciliation for more than 5 years. Over this time, I have witnessed our institution take significant steps forward. Unlike many other universities, we are well on our way to acknowledging the truths about colonization and the harms that Canada has committed against Indigenous Peoples. So many educational institutions, including our own, have not provided culturally…
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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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Easy ways to make your course more accessible
There are 3,000 students at USask who have some form of accommodation, so there is an excellent chance that your class has a student with a disability. Ideally, we’d all design courses that are universally accessible and reduce the need for accommodations by using Universal Design for Learning. If you feel like you don’t have time for a rethink right now, you can make simple changes that make it easier for all students, not just your most advantaged students, to have an equitable opportunity to succeed in your course. Accessible Online Environments Here are four simple ways to make your online class more accessible for your students: Record and Share:…
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Using Oral Assessments to Collect Evidence of Learning
Photo by Christina Morillo from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-wearing-blue-top-beside-table-1181712/ Summary: Boost learning engagement with oral assessments! Discover how this dynamic approach can provide richer evidence of student understanding and mastery. Date of publishing: March 30, 2021 Oral assessments can serve as a great method to collect another type of evidence of student learning. It typically consists of a time-limited interview with a student to verbally confirm to what degree they’ve met one or more course outcomes through a series of questions and prompts to guide the conversation. Collecting assessment evidence this way can be especially helpful while teaching remotely. Please review this video to learn more about this assessment strategy. Additional Resources…
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Canvas Integrations Bring New Opportunities For Student Projects
Panopto and various homework systems integrate with Canvas allowing for users to access materials without any additional account create or sign-on. This integration for homework systems helps to link homework systems to the Canvas grade book and protects students from any potential risks associated with purchasing access from a publishers website. There are also new tools that instructors and students can make use of that can be accessed either directly through Canvas integrations or outside of Canvas, but using the same single-sign-on that they use to access Canvas and PAWs. Canvas doesn’t have its own blogging tool, but USask has had WordPress available for instructors and students to use for…
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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…