C4E: Anyone have thoughts on 6-12 users?

[audra_agnelly]

Canvas for Elementary beta testers, particularly fellow Canvas Admins, I'm curious on your thoughts moving into next year with the new UI. Since C4E was originally presented I haven't seen any features that are so elementary-specific that this could not be turned on for our middle and high school subaccounts. The additional information on the subject cards and the ease of navigation between Home and Schedule (essentially card view and list view in classic Canvas) are particularly useful for all grades. If a student doesn't have a course identified as Homeroom, that announcements space is collapsed and students just see the navigation tabs and their subject cards. We do provision school-wide courses for middle and high schools, so we could potentially add an additional school-wide course that would be used for school announcements and manage school-wide LTI integrations through that course to configure the links under the Resources tab. For parents with children across schools, I also like that they see a uniform navigation flow when their children are using Canvas.

My main holdback is the burden this would place on teachers to re-think how they organize their course content. Covid brought us a long way to using modules for content organization, but our middle and high school teachers were using Canvas widely before Covid, and Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions links were typically enabled and used to navigate the course. I worry about the frustration of losing direct access to those areas and forcing teacher to rethink and redesign the organization of their course after a particularly stressful year. 

Is anyone else considering enabling this for K12 next year? Am I overlooking something obvious that would make this a really bad idea?

[timothy_kohl]

In Oshkosh, Wis. we are not going to turn on the Elem UI for secondary.  Our secondary teachers have been using Canvas for 4-5 years.  The tile make up for them in the elem UI would be a mess for students and parents.  What course would be the homeroom?  Who would control the homeroom?  Are you thinking that each course would be it's own homeroom?  A regular Canvas UI could be made to work like the new elem UI with a simple homepage set up and the use of announcements.  Go to modules for the work.

Our elementary is just starting in Canvas, so the new UI make sense. All the core tiles will separate the subjects.  Our pilot teaches used one core tile this year will all of their subjects.  With virtual learning this year, their courses are huge!.  Going back face to face has made using Canvas more manageable.  Using the new UI next year should help that even more.  

We are also worried about what it will look like for parents with students at multiple levels.  I saw something in the Q & A about switching students for parents.  Maybe that will help.  In our practice with the new UI, it's not very nice.  The Elem UI takes over everything it seems. 

[audra_agnelly]

For homeroom we would either

1) not designate a homeroom. Students would see the navigation tabs at the top and below that the subject cards. The tab labeled homeroom becomes the quirky title for the "home" screen (card view) rather than a true homeroom course.

2) use a school-wide course (1 section per grade) which we already provision to Canvas from our SIS. Rather than teacher-announcement, the course would be school-wide announcements and we'd manage the Resources tab through the external tools in that course.

[cunninghama]

@audra_agnelly I just started looking into the elementary dashboard and I had the same thoughts as you.  The "schedule" and the information on the course cards is very valuable, especially for secondary.  My only hesitation with the entire dashboard, PreK-12, is the workflow for teachers.  It appears as though if you have any course that is housed within the subaccount that has an elementary dashboard designation, you inherit the elementary dashboard.  Maybe I'm missing something here but I am listed as a teacher in the subaccount and I have the elementary dashboard.

One thing that I have found that is critically wrong with the elementary dashboard is the workflow for the teacher.  There is no longer a to-do list for grading purposes.  I have to know to go into the assignment and click on speedgrader.  This does not allow teachers a great workflow at all.

Please tell me I'm missing something here!