New to Canvas

[chefpartz]

Personally, I have been using Canvas since 2018 in the K-12 world. I am now in Higher Ed (Technical College) and I am responsible for assisting/training our faculty on Canvas.  My big hurdle now is how to convince others to make the leap.  The site used a Moodle for many years prior.  

Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions for making it fun? Competitions? Etc... I can talk all day about the benefits, but now comes the execution.  I know some falls on our Admin team, but I need to assist.  With hurricane season coming (located in Florida) being able to use a Global Announcement would be helpful. 

[ericwhitmer]

You could have a pilot group do a scavenger hunt regarding the different elements of Canvas. From that scavenger hunt, they can train their other colleagues about the different features of Canvas. The Global Announcement is reserved for the Account Admins as far as I know.

[DrNufer]

I agree.  When we migrated to Canvas back in 2013, we did scavenger hunts for both students and faculty.  We created swag and had competitions.  It might also be fun to have contests and showcase interesting things people are doing with Canvas pages.

[John__Lane]

We had a pilot group from the spring who we've engaged to help us be 'champions' in our training sessions.  They're able to provide feedback from their experiences.   We've also video recorded some of their how to's and added them to our newsletter which gave them a confidence boost and an 'attaboy' from their chairs.    Offering a lunch seems to be a big draw but with budgets being tightened, a brown bag session with coffee is also an attraction.   I've thought about how if we could get student perspectives about how much improved the LMS was (we're moving from Blackboard) but finding a student who isn't intimidated is a challenge.     I've also assigned staff members to each new person who signs up to be their "Partner in Change" or internally, we call them friends.  This person also has a back up that we share on a TEAMS spreadsheet.  We've used this to approach for an initial email to welcome them to Canvas and to monitor their status for the Growing with Canvas training and encouraging them to finish and to be there for them for any additional help.  Kind of like a 'white glove' treatment.  Granted, it may sound daunting with over 700 faculty and only a handful of us, but most faculty seem to be DIY, anyway so it isn't that bad.   Seems to be working, so far.  We have a 40%+ committed for the fall and the balance will happen in the Spring.   Wishing you positive thoughts and luck!

~JL

[knoxd]

Good luck to you! When we implemented in our K12 and had a lot of skeptics, my best tactic was to find the people who were interested and willing to make a change.  These people jumped in, learned, and talked it up to others.  Students also shared what they were doing in so and so's class which helped to bring more people into the fold.  

I've seen some really neat gamified challenges.  I think there might even be one in the commons that you could import and modify for your instance. I know I attended a session at InstructureCon 23 that demonstrated a classic video game theme with challenges the teachers could choose to complete.  They earned their names into drawings for conference attendance and such.  I thought it was a clever approach.