[ARCHIVED] Dont's in Canvas?

[jomontuori]

An administrator in my K-12 district just asked me a great question -- and I need your help answering it! :smileyplain:

Question: Is there anything that one should NOT do in designing and developing a Canvas course? 

Some Considerations:

1. The instructor is developing this "in-service learning" course for adults (faculty)
2. This will be the instructor's first Canvas course (or LMS course of any kind).
3. The course instructor has (mostly) completed our online instructor training course.
4. The course will be blended: about 2/3 face-to-face, 1/3 online.
5. Many of these teachers have no familiarity with Canvas, but others have some. (We've only rolled out Canvas to our 9-12 high school so far).
6. The instructor hopes to maximize student-to-student online collaboration.

Thoughts?

[laurakgibbs]

What a great idea for how to solicit input! Next time I ask my students to give advice to their instructors about using Canvas, I will add a second question: what should your instructors do AND don't do!

This was first semester of soft roll-out of Canvas at my school this semester (opt-in, next semester will be opt-out and then next year, only Canvas, no more D2L). I've collected my student feedback about Canvas in various blog posts including a new one just this morning at semester's end. If you are looking for some student voices, here you go:

More Student Voices from Fall 2016 – Teaching with Canvas

And here's their advice to instructors (and next semester I will be sure to pose that question in terms of dos and don'ts!)

Student Voices about Canvas – Teaching with Canvas

Thanks again for the great way you framed this question! Now I will go see what I can learn from people's responses. 🙂

[sphinney]

There are some excellent suggestions in this discussion! Here are my 2-cents...

Don't leave assignments ungraded, if the student missed the assignment and the intent is to penalize students for assignments they missed. The reason is that Canvas ignores ungraded items when calculating the course total. Therefore, if you leave a missed assignment ungraded, and the student checks his/her total score then s/he will see a skewed score since that missed assignment is not being factored in to the overall grade.

There is a handy feature called "Set Default Grade" in the gradebook that many instructors will use to give zeros to those who did not submit the assignment, once the final cut-off date for submissions has passed. It's also a good idea to educate your students on how to interpret their course total based on your grading schedule and what Canvas is displaying at any given point in time.

[awilliams]

Please for the love of all things holy and sacred in this universe, don't try to manually set the point value of the quiz even though technically there is a way to do it. It will just come back to bite you hard later. If you want to manually set the point value for something, use an assignment.

[kmeeusen]

At least not until Quizzes 2.0 is released!

[Chris_Hofer]

Don't refer to the Inbox/Conversations/Messaging as "E-mail"

The messaging system inside of Canvas is not e-mail.  It's messaging, and there's a difference.  For example, you cannot start an e-mail in your favorite e-mail client (Outlook) by addressing the message to people in your class and then expect to get that message inside of Canvas.  However, you can start a message in Canvas, and people may receive it via e-mail notification.  Also, you cannot assume that everyone will chose to receive notifications about messages you send through Canvas to his/her e-mail account.  Some people may choose to turn that completely off and only get notified via text message, for example.

[Stef_retired]

This is one of my biggest pet peeves,  @Chris_Hofer ! By calling Canvas messaging "email" people inadvertently conflate the functionality of messages and emails; they are not at all the same.

[cholling]

True, but I sure wish it were consistently referred to as either "messages" or "conversations".

[jomontuori]

Amen, cholling​! Many of my colleagues don't even look at this great tool. The lack of consistent naming adds confusion and deters wider usage. 

[Stef_retired]

Heh, awilliams​ made me think of another one:

If you're going to use the Attendance tool, don't delete, rename, or unpublish the Attendance assignment it creates. This is documented  in How do I edit the Roll Call Attendance assignment? --but seasoned users of the Attendance tool have told me the best way to use it is to leave the assignment exactly as it is created out of the box. Don't fiddle with it, just leave it be as a 100-point assignment. If an instructor doesn't want attendance to count in the final grade, he or she can move it into an assignment group worth 0% or set it as an assignment that doesn't count toward the final grade; that's as much as I would mess with it.

[Stef_retired]

In light of a certain commonality among questions I've been seeing as we approach the end of the year, here's a Don't:

Don't wait until the course is over to create your grading scheme and build your Gradebook structure. If you do, you're asking for trouble, as you might (1) be facing an impossible task and (2) be opening yourself up to grade challenges. Build the Gradebook before the first day of classes, even if you have to use assignment placeholders to do it.

[tdurbin]

I'm not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but my biggest peeve...

DON'T make everything a download - There is nothing worse than forcing a student to download everything beforethey can even view it. Make a page & paste the content there. Have the download available if you want, but there is nothing worse than, a student having slow intermittent internet connectivity, forced to download a word document (taking about 20 min.) to open it only to have a 4 sentence paragraph telling them to refer to another downloadable document...

DON'T rely solely on publishers content or websites - There is some great content out there, but the most valuable thing you can give a student is your time, knowledge & attention. Be proactive with the students & respond in a timely manner.

DON'T ignore your inbox - One of the biggest concerns is students getting frustrated with never hearing from their instructor. It is really easy with the online course to put things off. Take the time & respond, it does really matter!

Hope these help! ~TYE

[jomontuori]

Great "Don'ts"  @tdurbin ​!  Regarding the inbox, I set a weekly reminder to prompt myself to check for student submissions, scoring I need to do, and now... to double check for messages that may still need a response.

[kmeeusen]

Hi  @jomontuori 

Tye is spot-on! Teacher presence is a documented best practice in online education. As an LMS admin the number one complaint we hear from students is "I sent my teacher several messages, but...............", followed by "I submitted my assignment three weeks ago (or longer), and my teacher hasn't graded it.". Glad you are setting reminders!

You can learn more in this great piece provided by the Arizona State University for its faculty: https://teachonline.asu.edu/2014/10/important-instructor-presence-online-course/

KLM

[jbuchner]

Don't forget to get into your profile page and check on your notification settings. Remember that they are GLOBAL, and apply to courses you take AND courses your teach. Getting EVERY notification can be overwhelming, so picking and choosing your notifications is key to a good user experience. (And may require it's own learning module on it's own.)

Don't ignore all the messages and indicators on the Dashboard, don't think the To Do list updates without some occasional manual input. (Again, more on the what you might need to teach your users side.)

[Chris_Hofer]

Don't forget to Validate Links in Content

If you have a lot of links to other websites outside of Canvas, they can change on you in an instant without you knowing (due to changes on the company's/organization's website).  :smileyangry:  Nobody likes a broken link on the web, so it's important to verify that your links are in working order.  Go to Settings >> Validate Links in Content to run a scan of links in your course.  Or, just check out this Canvas Guide: How do I validate links in a course?​

[rowlandl]

We just started with Canvas this year. One thing that drives me nuts as a parent is when a teacher puts an assignment in the announcements section in Canvas. I would think that's a no-brainer, but I have seen it a lot. I would say an assignment reminder there isn't a bad idea or thing but I would say DON'T use announcements for anything other than announcements.

[sphinney]

As we're getting ready for a new semester here, this particular "don't" reared it's ugly head. Although, it is not a Canvas specific issue, it can nonetheless affect a Canvas course and so perhaps warrants reminding folks about it.

• Don't procrastinate in getting your Canvas course set up.

Even the most techie among us can run into problems, and if you've waited until the last minute to set up your course, you may be setting yourself up for rocky start to the term.

[biray]

For those who are looking for a take-away from this awesome conversation thread that  @jomontuori ​ authored, he and  @abunag ​ will be sharing their top tips here: Don'ts in Canvas on Thursday, January 19 @ 10am MST. Be sure to RSVP and keep adding to the conversation!

[kmeeusen]

Cool Biray!

Thanks  @jomontuori  and  @abunag  you two are true Canvas heroes! Pandas, even!

KLM

[jomontuori]

Aw, shucks... (Thanks, Kelley!)

[cholling]

wow -- now THAT's a panda!

[kmeeusen]

Nope, that's a super Panda!

[garciah]

These are all great suggestions!

I make this suggestion all the time, Sarah Phinney, and advise faculty to Set Default Grade to 0 after the assignment closes:

Don't leave assignments ungraded, if the student missed the assignment and the intent is to penalize students for assignments they missed.

Here's one of my favorites: Don't forget to log into Student View before the start of the term.

[sphinney]

Excellent reminder,  @garciah ​! I must not forget to remind instructors to not forget about the "Student View".

[jomontuori]

That IS a very good one,  @garciah ​! I'm going to mention it (and you!) in tomorrow's Canvas Live event. Hope you join us!

[cholling]

 @jomontuori ​ - Nice session yesterday.

[jomontuori]

Thanks so much, cholling​! It was a first for me, so I'm glad you got something out of it.

[ellisonj29]

I organize my courses by modules and those contain the assignments so I don't give access to the "Assignments" link to students. Otherwise they see the assignments in two places. Students only have access on the left panel to the six links I want them to access.

[jomontuori]

I do the same,  @ellisonj29 ‌. One reason for my preference is that I sometimes use pages with prerequisite instructions, content, etc. I don't want students missing those learning opportunities if I can help it.

[scain]

I really appreciate this idea, and I encourage it too. The only thing that's worth noting is that students can still get into assignments through the calendar, grade book, or syllabus pages. I still find it better to put assignments into modules and hide the Assignments link, but you may want to be careful about having prerequisite material in the modules.

[ellisonj29]

Don't load your syllabus as a .docx file, use .pdf  Some students don't have Word. Haven't run into anybody yet who can't open a pdf, and they can't edit the pdf

[tom_gibbons]

So, I know that this thread has already served its purpose, but there are some things that struck me as I was reading through:

Re: Navigation and hiding links--When working with adults, I leave access to the Assignments, Quizzes, Discussions, etc. I also organize in modules. And I require completion of an orientation module to access any other content in the course. In that orientation, I explain clearly how the course is organized, and that the course navigation will allow one-click access to different kinds of content, while the modules and calendar will provide the structure. Because I can't control how people think, I want to give them flexible ways of navigating the course content. I also want to embrace and subsume any previously-established ways of navigating an LMS that may have developed in other spaces. I make sure to pair this with robust use of the module requirements and prerequisites. So I guess the don't here is Don't assume that there's one best way to do things.

And on the subject of an orientation module: Don't assume that modules are intuitive and Don't assume that the starting point is obvious (aka, Don't hide the Welcome Mat.) Providing a low-stakes orientation that requires students to complete all of the different kinds of tasks that will be asked of them later in the course can go a long way toward building confidence in the use of the LMS. Plus, it irons out the problems before they become real problems.

And to echo Don't get all texty, yes: Canvas makes it easy to include many types of content. Make use of that ease. Provide the instruction in text and in video. Use screenshots. Sing a song and provide the sheet music. All the things.