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Perusall or Discussion Boards
Previous Educatus blog posts have introduced Perusall to turn pre-class readings into social learning. In this post, I discuss how instructors might use Perusall to overcome discussion board fatigue and provide resources on using Perusall along with sample learning activities. Perusall is a free social learning tool that students can access through Canvas. Students have discussions in the same space as they read course material. The image below shows what a student would see in Perusall, with the reading in the middle and the conversation on the side. Throughout this post I only refer to the use of readings in Perusall. However, videos, images, podcasts, and webpages can all be…
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Collaboration technical tools
One of the essential goals of the Learning Technology Ecosystem at USask is to allow students to connect to others. While collaboration skills are one of the essential skills most employers describe, the need for collaboration tools is actually more immediate. When students have the opportunity to think through things actively with others, they learn more than they if they only listen to a professor talk about them, and they are more likely to be able to apply what they learn. Best ways to support collaboration Focus on talking to others during the learning, like working on questions or discussing, instead of group projects. When you do group projects, don’t…
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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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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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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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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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How Canvas Supports Learner-Centred Assessment
By Roberta Campbell-Chudoba This post is part of a series about using Canvas to integrate the eight Learning Technology Ecosystem Principles. You can find more about these principles here; in this post, we look at the eighth and final principle. Inclusive of learning-centred assessment: Learning and feedback are iterative, and assessment comes from multiple sources, including self, peers, teachers, and outside experts. Effective assessment practices follow from a learner-centred teaching approach, with practices designed to produce evidence of the kind of learning you want to measure, aligned with the learning outcomes for the course. Feedback needs to be both affirming and corrective in order for any of us to learn, and if…
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How Canvas Tools Can Enable Connection
By Roberta Campbell-Chudoba This post is part of a series about using Canvas to integrate the eight Learning Technology Ecosystem Principles. You can find more about these principles here; in this post, we look at the seventh principle. Designed to enable connection: Learners exist in accessible networks, and connect to the experiences, concepts, people, and ideas that they need. The importance of connection Research across disciplines – from anthropology, to developmental psychology, to cognitive neuroscience – demonstrates that our sociality is interwoven with our learning processes. Important factors in social pedagogy and in establishing a social learning space include building a sense of belonging and a sense of community, and instructor…
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How Canvas’ intuitive interface makes it easy to use
This is the seventh post in a series about how you can use Canvas to integrate the eight Learning Technology Ecosystem Principles. You can find more about these principles here, but in this post, we’ll be looking at the sixth principle. Efficient and easy to use: Learners need to work in a system that is fluid and requires a minimum number of steps in systems that are intuitive and integrated. Efficient and Easy to Use During the search for a new LMS, instructors said ‘ease of use’ was a top principle for choosing technology to support student learning. If a platform is intuitive and easy to navigate, students can focus on their course work…
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How Canvas supports student control and ownership of learning
By Roberta Campbell-Chudoba This is the sixth post in a series about how you can use Canvas to integrate the eight Learning Technology Ecosystem Principles. You can find more about these principles here, but in this post, we’ll be looking at the fifth principle. 5. Designed for student control and ownership of learning: Learners create and control spaces for learning, understanding and retaining ownership, and purposefully choosing how and when they share. Student Control and Ownership of Learning Practices that facilitate student choice can have a positive impact on their participation and motivation, and thus, academic performance. Students with choices can engage in higher-level learning for many reasons; feeling more…