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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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Single Sign-On Brings New Opportunities For Student Projects
As I write this, USask has almost completed the transition from Blackboard to Canvas. While Canvas may be a lot different, many of the same tools and integrations instructors and students used in Blackboard are still available. 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 (access codes can usually be purchased through the USask Bookstore, which the university strongly encourages). There are also new tools that instructors…
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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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In Testimonial: Collaborative Online International Learning
Lecturer in the Department of Political Studies, Dr. Martin Gaal, shares about his COIL experience in a recently produced testimonial video. COIL is a framework of teaching and learning that promotes intercultural opportunities through a short-term virtual exchange program. It involves an instructor from the university partnering with an instructor from a partnering institution abroad to develop a course-based project or experience. His COIL journey began last Spring after he initiated planning arrangements with a partner instructor at the Florida International University. Together they developed a discussion topic that brought together their respective course subject matter and students of different backgrounds. USask students who participated in the course were also…
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Elaborations on Canvas collaborations
The transition to remote learning has been in progress for almost a year now, with many instructors grabbing the Canvas bull by the horns and learning how to use the different Canvas tools to provide their students with the best learning experience possible. With what feels like the whole world working remotely right now, collaborating with peers and colleagues is a necessary skill that we can help students develop and refine. Learning to work collaboratively is important because it not only helps to prepare students for careers but it elegantly highlights that it is often easier to succeed at tasks when working in a team. Canvas gives you the ability…
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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…
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Office hours in Canvas
Office hours are important because they allow our student to connect with us and ask questions, but they can be time consuming to set up in a remote environment. Using Meets in Canvas, you can quickly and simply set up remote meeting times as “office hours” so your students can sign up for a time to meet with you. You’ll want to do it this way instead of some outside tool because: You can set a block of time, and divide it into any length of appointments You can auto schedule short breaks between appointments You can push one set of office hours to all your classes, so student from…
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Initiating Peer Conversations
It’s been a while since I wrote a conversational blog post – in a pre-pandemic world, more of our content on this site was first-person and took the tone of a friendly colleague. In the pandemic context, our blog quickly became a knowledge base to help you get the help you needed, when you needed it. The dropping temperatures in Saskatchewan are reminding me of last winter, when work felt like a much different place. While most of us aren’t currently walking, biking, skiing to campus, the days are still just as beautiful with the crystalline quality of light and crisp skies. I hope that this post is a moment…
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Just the Right Amount of Workload
In the story of Goldilocks, the main character tries bowls of porridge that are too hot and too cold. Finally, Goldilocks settles on a porridge that is just the right temperature. Figuring out the right, or adequate, amount of work for students is a Goldilocks opportunity – tweaking and adjusting to find the right mix, amount, consistency, and taste. The video below summarizes how we can reflect and plan for an appropriate amount of student workload. We were inspired by conversations in the College of Agriculture and Bioresources. How much work are we asking students to do in the remote context? More/less than in face-to-face, more/less engagement, more/less synchronous, asynchronous,…