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USask Moving to Poll Everywhere for Student Response System
Beginning this month the University of Saskatchewan will be transitioning to Poll Everywhere as the integrated polling tool at USask, replacing Top Hat. This decision was made after extended consideration and demonstrations from vendors. Instructors will be able to use Poll Everywhere to: • Gather information from formative assessments, such as polling questions or open-ended responses, from their classes • Embed polls in PowerPoint presentations, including shared ones • Ask questions of an audience in a regular conference presentation • Gather information about student preference Poll Everywhere allows for: – Results to be updated live as more answers come in – A variety of types of poll questions including multiple-choice,…
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Helping Students Build Resilience
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased stress and mental health challenges for many people, including instructors, staff, and students. To help our students, and each other, to build or rebuild resilience we need to take a multi-pronged approach. While the university offers a variety of resources, there are things instructors can do within their classes to help students build resilience. A new resource created with funding from the Government of Ontario and eCampus Ontario offers information and methods on how to increase resilience for students and educators in the areas of Community Resilience, Personal Resilience, Academic Resilience, and Career Resilience. The Thriving in the Classroom is a “toolkit [that] shares the…
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Improving Accessibility with Canvas’ Rich Content Editor
By Roberta Campbell-Chudoba Small formatting changes on Canvas Pages, Assignments, Quizzes and the Syllabus page can make your course more accessible. Using the suggestions below will improve clarity, readability, and navigation for all your students. In the Rich Content Editor (RCE) menu bar, illustrated below: The drop-down menu on the Paragraph option [1] has three levels of heading choices. Using headings, rather than just enlarging the text, helps a screen reader to interpret new sections and provides consistent spacing between materials. Keep headings under 120 characters. Avoid skipping heading levels. Canvas uses Microsoft Immersive Reader for text-to-speech functionality. After inserting an image [2] click on the Accessibility Checker icon located immediately…
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Assigning Students to Act as Discussion Moderators
During in-class discussions, the entire class and the instructor may be part of the same discussion, but sometimes instructors put students into smaller groups, with multiple discussions happening around the room. While the instructor may be able to walk around the room and listen in on what the students are saying, they can’t catch everything that is said throughout the room. In such cases, instructors need to rely on students to facilitate the group discussions on their own. The instructor may then ask a representative from each group to share the key points of what was said. Online discussions in Canvas can work the same way. If the class is…
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Discussions in Canvas – Asking Good Questions – Part 2
By Roberta Campbell-Chudoba The exchange of questions and responses is vital to teaching and learning. The types of questions we pose as instructors should grab our students’ attention and curiosity, reinforce key points, encourage reflection, and foster active learning. Discussions in Canvas – Asking Good Questions – Part 1 explored creating open-ended questions by using Bloom’s hierarchy of cognitive skills. Part 2 looks at categorizing questions by type and using divergent, higher level questions in discussion forums. Categorizing Questions by Type1 The type of questions used in the discussion forum is dependent on the purpose of the discussion and your learning outcomes. Some question types are useful for redirecting,…
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Discussions in Canvas – Asking Good Questions – Part 1
By Roberta Campbell-Chudoba Asking questions is one of the most powerful tools we have as instructors. Just like asking good questions in class, promoting discussion with questions that capture students’ attention and stimulate intellectual engagement can be facilitated online, using Canvas Discussions. Crafting questions for a discussion forum depends on the purpose of the discussion, and your learning outcomes. Open-ended questions with multiple possible responses challenge students and can help to deepen the discussion, supported by your facilitation (or your TA’s) in the forum. One way to create open-ended questions with multiple possible responses is by using Bloom’s hierarchy (1956; Anderson & Krathwohl, 2000) of cognitive skills, a framework that…
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Aligning Your Discussion Questions With Purpose and Desired Outcomes
Many instructors indicate that they struggle with how to come up with good questions of students, whether during a synchronous session (in-person or on Zoom) or in the discussion forums in Canvas. The purpose of this post is to help you consider three key factors when trying to decide what questions to ask in these situations: What is the purpose of the discussion? Which course outcomes do you want the discussion to align with? What evidence will you accept that students are meeting or making progress on those outcomes? The Purpose When planning for a discussion, you want to be clear about why you’re having the discussion. Is it to delve…
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Serious (about) Academic Misconduct? A lesson plan
Students encounter mixed messages when it comes to the seriousness of different forms of academic misconduct. As instructors, we may be assuming that our colleagues teach about and respond to academic misconduct issues in a similar way to ourselves, when very often, they do not. This post provides a lesson plan (using the “BOPPPS” model) for helping students see what the most serious mistakes would be in your course and why. Lesson Plan for Clarifying Expecations B is for “Bridge-in” What the instructor does What the students do Notes, Materials, Tips Introduce topic (2 – 5 min) Listen, reflect Ideas: tell a story of confusion over expectations you…
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Writing Learning Outcomes for the Sustainable Development Goals
This is a series around the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) written in 2021. Each post dives into one of the goals and how we as educators can strive to embed these into our own courses. It is in the author’s opinion that any course or class can connect with one of the 17 goals or 169 sub-targets. You can view the 2021 blog posts below or you can view the 2023 revised open resource here https://openpress.usask.ca/sdgs/ SDG 1 No Poverty SDG 2 Zero Hunger SDG 3 Good Health and Well-Being SDG 4 Quality Education SDG 5 Gender Equality SDG 6 Clean Water and Sanitation SDG 7 Affordable and Clean…
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Choosing a mix of F2F and remote online? Tips for smoother hybrid approaches
The University has announced a return to campus stating Feb. 7th. With the exception of some specific programs designed to provide hybrid options, instructors are not expected to teach students face to face (F2F) and online at the same time in their F2F course(s). However, you may be trying to provide some extra options for your students in these complicated times, and if you are, here are some tips you may wish to use to help your students avoid pitfalls: Help students hold the details: Review where to find everything in your Canvas course, and remember that half of USask students access Canvas through the app. (see how to video…