Student Choice in the Classroom

[oneala]

I will try to explain my idea for my classes and I am thinking Canvas can accomplish this but I am new to Canvas and would like some help setting it up for the first time.

I would like my students to have complete student choice over their path of learning while in my classroom.

Oh yea - my class is entitled Computer Science and Innovation and looks similar to a maker space. My classes are all 70min block classes and I see my freshmen for 1/2 a semester and 10th - 12th graders for a semester each.

Theoretically, I would like to make 1 Canvas class and within that class have "paths" (I dont want to confuse terms with existing Canvas tools) that each grade level of student would follow through. Freshmen would receive much more direct instruction and less time to work independently within Canvas vs. Seniors who will have very little direct instruction and mostly independent work time to accomplish tasks in Canvas and on individual projects.

I would like to be able to assign a requirement of a specific number of points each student will need to acquire each week - this requirement would vary per grade level. Students then have the option of completing ANYTHING they have access to within the, let's say, 25 different modules to achieve those points. If they want to knock out 10 intro assignments in 10 different modules that is fine. The following week those assignments would not be available for them to complete again and they would need to focus on something else.

I am the most concerned with the setup of the grade book to accomplish this task. Has anyone completed anything similar to this? Is this just a bad idea???

Thanks ahead of time for your help.

Tony

[kona]

 @oneala , greetings! I think this is an amazing and totally cool idea - so yes, I think you should do it!

That being said, if each grade (10th, 11th, 12th) was in a different course in Canvas I think this could be done. With all grades in the same course, I'm not sure it would work that well. 

Just this semester, I worked with a faculty member who wanted to do contract grading with his students. The students had, for example, 15 options of things they could do to show their competency of course content. If a student does 13-15 they get an A, if they do 12-10 they get a B, etc. These assignments were done as complete/incomplete. So students had to do a certain quality of work on an assignment in order for it to count. In the gradebook, we turned off the show overall grade and instead helped the students to understand that they would need to keep track of the number of "completed" assignments they had. So far the students seem to understand the concept and were excited to have the course be run like this. 

Hope this helps! Kona