El Centro de Desarrollo Docente de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile ha generado una serie de videotutoriales para  para orientar el uso de Canvas a los estudiantes de nuestra universidad. Hemos distribuido las herramientas en diversos módulos, según los principales propósitos que posee cada una de ellas:

• Acceso: https://cursos.canvas.uc.cl/courses/299

Estaremos constantemente actualizando este espacio.  

El Centro de Desarrollo Docente de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile ha generado una serie de videotutoriales para el uso técnico y pedagógico de las principales herramientas de Canvas. Hemos distribuido las herramientas en diversos módulos, según los principales propósitos que poseen para  la generación de una buena docencia. Además hemos complementado este espacio con una serie de recursos que orientan al uso de videos para la creación de clases online. 

• Acceso: https://cursos.canvas.uc.cl/courses/298

Estaremos constantemente actualizando este espacio. Estaremos atentos a recomendaciones de toda la comunidad habla Hispana. 

This write up is based on a webinar I provided to my institution today.  I am sharing it with the Canvas Community for anyone who would find it useful.  My target audience is traditional faculty who are transitioning from brick classrooms to online classes.  

As faculty across education are rushing to shift from traditional classrooms to online formats, our priorities are to focus on content delivery. As we transition to virtual meeting spaces and digital classrooms, it is important to create a community of online learners through meaningful interactions and social technologies. Keeping students engaged is not only important to foster learning, but it is also essential as we identify and support at-risk student behavior. Supporting students and mitigating attrition is important throughout our transition to online.

This webinar will provide faculty with the theories, tools, technologies, and strategies for proactively engaging students in your online learning environments.

This write up is based on a webinar I provided to my institution today.  I am sharing it with the Canvas Community for anyone who would find it useful.  My target audience is traditional faculty who are transitioning from brick classrooms to online classes.  

Abstract

As we engage in campus closures, this webinar will provide tips and resources to help faculty transition their classrooms to online courses. Learn how to leverage Canvas to create a learning space that is engaging and socially interactive for your students.

Description

Has your campus closed or is it preparing to closure? Many of our faculty are very proficient and comfortable teach in a traditional classroom, but may be wary transitioning to a fully online classroom. Fortunately, Canvas incorporates a lot of functionality designed to enable effective teaching and learning outside of our traditional learning environments. This webinar will examine the essential tools and functions of Canvas used in online learning. We will explore strategies to increase student interaction and collaboration, as well as highlight common pitfalls encountered in online education. We will also allocate time for participants to ask questions or discuss concerns.

Learning Objectives:

1. Explore the basic functionality of Canvas
2. Design lessons that ensure visible teacher presence
3. Assess options that facilitate student engagement and meaningful interactions
4. Discuss concerns and solicit feedback from participants

Presenter Bio: Sean Nufer is the Director of Instructional Technology for TCS Education System.

In response to disease epidemics (Covid-19 Coronavirus) many schools are transitioning to online courses, ready or not.  

Ideally, online courses are thoughtfully produced using multimedia, Universal Design (UDL), backward design, and flipped-classroom approaches, with quality assurance tools like QM Quality Matters Rubric ensuring a student-centered result before launch. 

1. Orientation module template.  Template all of your courses with a consistent Preparation Module to fix issues before they start, including helping students set up their computers properly for Canvas and Webinars. View an example list of contents here: Start Here: Course Materials and Introduction (Includes: How to set up your computer for Canvas; How to get tech help; Introduce yourself Discussion; and practice Assignment with 4 parts--email your instructor, set your Canvas notifications, add a profile pic, and practice submitting online in Canvas.)
2. Canvas Discussions.  Use them each week (or day) and make them meaningful. Even in face-to-face classroom courses, discussions add instant value. Well written question prompts = meaningful student-to-student learning.  
3. Powerpoint *done right.  Make the old “groan” lesson-plan sedatives come to life with simplified tools and approaches. (Focus on narration, images, low text density, video format)
4. Live Webinars.  Time-constrained synchronous online courses are the least common format for good reasons, but tools like Big Blue Button/Conferences, Webex, Adobe Connect, and Google Hangouts provide instant contact for instructor-led learning remotely.
5. Organize, organize, organize.  Review any area where your course expectations are not clear. Unpack any information that lives in your head until you can see it in the course. 

1. Use an existing or new PowerPoint. 
2. Allow 10 slides maximum. 
3. Use slide title lines for your lesson outline. Plan the trajectory visually. Begin and end in 10 slides!
   If this is difficult, save the last  3 slides for 1.)  What do I want students to take away from this lesson and remember a week from now?, 2.) Summary, and 3.) Reference list and/or suggested readings and videos for further exploration. 
4. Use as little text as possible on slides. 30 point font or larger. One word is great. No words--even better. 
5. Include links to videos you’ve curated.
6. Provide context above and below the video.
   (Video embeds make for large files; capture a screenshot image of the Video’s opening slide and turn that into a hyperlinked button instead.)
   Tell students what they should watch for and provide a list of questions in advance that they will be asked after the video. 
7. Include lots of pictures! Creative Commons search through Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons, and Canvas media. 
8. Speak! 
9. Powerpoint allows you to record your Voiceover slide-by-slide. You can practice, rehearse timings, and re-do your bloopers.
10. Video! Export your PowerPoint with audio and slide forwarding/timings as an MP4 or .wav video, host,  and embed in Canvas. Voila'! 

• Tips: To avoid sounding wooden or recording long pauses filled with “Ummm,” (since you aren’t a voice artist) make a short outline of bullet points you want to be sure to mention. Speak as if you are standing in front of your class. Speak quickly and enunciate clearly. Spend as much time as you need and forward each slide manually to record again. 

  Caution: Students can listen at about 200-500 words per minute, and you can speak at about 125 wmp, so you are inherently boring. Be yourself, but keep up the pace!

• Enable students to submit video/media assignments. Mix it up from text typing. 
• • Example: Allow students to video themselves solving their math homework. Submit images or scans of work and a video of their process.
• Link Canvas guides for new users in your instructions. Ensure students know about their Canvas user account Files storage, conversion tools for videos, and any other troubleshooting links. 

• Embeds beautifully in Canvas, directly or using LTI.
• Works as a gamified, self-test tool via mobile.
• Printable.
• Free and inexpensive versions with pictures and audio.

• If you are tired of your own talking head giving directions, try Vokiavatars. Cartoon people, animals, and fantasy characters can deliver directions to your students. 
• See VokiAvatars on this Example Online Lesson support page created for K-12 teachers-in-training in the course EDPS 5442/6442 Teaching Sciences Online. 

• Short learning curve, paid software. 
• See this example page of short animation videos created for Diversity Training. 

• Great and terrible content exists on every topic imaginable.
• Select videos shorter than 15 minutes, preferably 1-3 minutes long. Chunk topics and surround it with context. 
• Embed on a Canvas page with context. Tell students what to watch for. Create meaningful questions for students to answer on each video to make sure they got the point. 

When I first began teaching online, I considered using a social media hashtag for class activities and related content. To make it simple and a cohesive conversation, I thought to use the course prefix and number, ie #THE4400. When discussing with a colleague, it was suggested this could potentially violate FERPA. Unsure about this, I researched further.

Often students use social media- different platforms for diverse purposes and at different stages in their life. They share information about themselves publicly. Instructors are seeking to engage with students where they already digitally reside, plus social media a “free” tool to use. Therefore, many are interested in using social media for educational purposes. However, privacy concerns are often raised.

Is social media specifically covered by FERPA? No. Although, if using social media for your classroom activities, should you think about FERPA implications? Of course. Let’s discuss what some of those considerations might be.

FERPA, Protecting Student Records

Universities are required to keep records on students. Directory information is some data that can be released publicly. This includes student names, email addresses, participation in officially recognized activities, and photographs. Most all other student data is educational records, protected by FERPA.

What is FERPA? The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) was instituted in 1974 to provide four rights to students, pertaining to the privacy of their educational records. Students:

• can see information being kept about themselves
• can seek amendment to those records, and in some cases, may append a statement to a record
• can consent to disclose records to others, and 
• can file complaints with the FERPA office if they feel their rights have been violated.
  
  

One of the key points regarding educational records is that it is data that is maintained by the university. Think of examples like social security numbers, grades, class schedules, and medical information. My colleague’s FERPA concern was related to student’s engagement with a course hashtag, thus revealing they were enrolled in my course at that particular time (similar to a class schedule, but less relevant for a fully online class). Canvas messages and university account emails can be considered educational records. However, a WordPress blog or a text message might not because it is not maintained by the university. A safe bet is to always check with your institution regarding FERPA guidelines before using social media for your classes.

5 Tips for Using Social Media in Higher Education

1. Inform students social media will be used in class and how it will be used. Include a FERPA statement on the course syllabus.

2. Do not require students to release personal information publicly. Directly let them know that their material may be viewed :smileycool: by others. Students under the age of 18 should get their parent’s consent to post work publicly. 

3. For those who need or prefer to do so, allow students to use an alias. Provide this opportunity in advance to your students. When possible, offer an alternative assignment.

4. Include a module or lesson on digital citizenship, digital footprints and internet privacy.

5. As the instructor, do not discuss student’s grades using social media; instead use a password protected and FERPA compliant tool, like the Canvas gradebook or Canvas Inbox messages.

 
Read more about FERPA and using social media for education.

• Protecting Student Privacy on Social Media
• Is Your Social Media FERPA Compliant?
• FERPA & Social Media: Thoughts for Social Work Education

Disclaimer: FERPA is public law. All information in this article/post is for general informational purposes and is not a substitute for individualized advice from a qualified legal practitioner.

What best practices do you use or recommend when leveraging social networking platforms in your courses?

This post is part of the "Teaching with FERPA" blogging challenge; have you entered yet?

Keep learning,
Sky V. King

List View shows To Do information plus extras

How students work and what they see

As an instructor, sometimes it’s hard to know what students can do to view their current status in Canvas.  Because we do admin type stuff most of the time, even academic techs can be surprised.

Students live and breathe in the To Do list.  Instructors have discovered that items without due dates won’t show up in the To Do list, and that those items tend to get overlooked by students.  So, the trend is to add dates.  

However, most students have not discovered “List View” which is essentially the To Do list on steroids.

How to see the List View

Canvas by default shows you the very clean and simple “card view” on the dashboard.  Off to the side you see the “To Do” tool. Most people think that’s it. However, if you click the vertical [1] ellipsis (three dots) and select [2] “list view” a whole next level To Do list appears. 

What can students see?

Here’s a really great document created by the Canvas Doc Team that highlights every single feature:  How do I use the to-do list for all my courses in the List View Dashboard as a student?.  (snapshots are borrowed from that page)  Here are the highlights.  

List View things they can see and do:

• "To Do" things included
  • Classes
  • Points
  • Dates
• Extra things on List View
  • If their submissions are missing or late [2] & [3]
  • If submissions are graded, replies, or if there’s feedback [5], [6] & [7]
  • Students can manually mark items complete
  • Students can add their own “To Dos”
• Extra Bonus on List View (Hidden Gem alert)
  • They can see all of their current grades from all of their  courses on one page! [1]

Snapshot highlights

This image shows you communication and submission status indicators

This image shows “My Grades,” a place where students can see current grades for all of their courses.

There are several more items that may excite those that like to have advanced functionality. As for this blog entry, I’m just promoting that this tool is here, and it’s hidden just under the surface.  It is a hidden gem. I hope you and your students find it useful. 

For a deeper dive into each component check out:  How do I use the to-do list for all my courses in the List View Dashboard as a student?

The problem: a focus on faculty

I run a successful twice-weekly faculty engagement program called Active Teaching Labs that gets instructors sharing how they use (want to use, fail to use, figure out how to be successful in using, etc.) technology in their teaching. Since we're a Canvas campus, just about everything we talk about we try to tie back to its implementation in Canvas.

This is all well and good. We've developed an environment where people feel comfortable sharing successes and frustrations. Often, they ask about students — what do students think about [x,y,z]? I've been trying for years to investigate this question, but I'm in the "Faculty Engagement" service here, not in Student Engagement [sigh...].

Helping faculty understand their students

The good news is that I've successfully made the case that knowing more about students helps us help faculty, so I'm embarking this semester on a fellowship where we talk to students about their learning habits and practices. We're developing relationships that are somewhat new to our generally-faculty-facing Academic Technology department — to student-facing organizations like Residence Life, the Center for the First Year Experience, and others. Since our goals are to improve teaching and learning, they tend to align with their goals of supporting students, so they're often willing to work with us.

When we're able to identify and connect with a group of students, we survey them with questions like: 

• What have you learned about learning?
• How did you learn it?
• What were your best/worst class learning activities? (and why?)
• Advice to instructors?

After we survey the students, we meet with as many groups of them as we can schedule to unpack and clarify the results. We find that the survey primes them to think about their learning, and sharing the results back with them gets them talking back and forth. 

What students say

They hate Canvas "Discussions" btw, and mention of the Canvas "To Do" list elicited an exasperated "Murder!" from one of the students in last night's discussion. I find these things fascinating because, while I agree that Discussions is terrible (an online forum ≠ a discussion; calling it that makes people think it should work like one, but it cannot because it has a whole different set of constraints and affordances! But I digress), I would not have suspected a strong reaction against the To Do list.

This isn't a research project by any means, and we won't be publishing or sharing any meaningful results, but rather it's a means to get insight from students in order to learn from them. And yes, we realize that students are not necessarily experts on good learning practices; part of the reason we're asking them is so we can develop useful faculty-created interventions such as Week 0 Modules, and integrating Universal Design for Learning into course design and activities.

How do you get student feedback?

In our faculty development programs we encourage instructors to get formative feedback from students as often, and in as many ways as they can — from reflection elements in assignments and activities like the Muddiest Point (on post-it notes, or in Canvas's graded pseudo-anonymous surveys), to forums in Piazza, to SGIDs or class representative councils — but we know there are many other methods that we don't know about.

• What do you use? What has worked and not worked? 
• Have you done any large-scale surveys? (best questions?)
• How can instructors build mechanisms for feedback into their Canvas courses?
• Other advice?

Thanks!

How do you do Professional Development of Teaching? With >230 sessions reaching 3400+ educators, the Active Teaching Labs at UW-Madison facilitate teaching & learning development for the price of bagels & coffee. We've honed a one-hour highly-rated, dynamic, and respectful format that consistently draws campus educators without a need for stipends. During the campus transition to Canvas, the focus was on how to rebuild courses in Canvas. Now that campus is all Canvas, the focus has turned to pedagogical involving all sorts of technology, and problem-solving how to make them work well with a structure that is centered in Canvas.

BUT...

So, this blog post has two goals:

1. share what we do, and
2. pick your brain for good ideas we're missing!

WHAT WE DO. Our sessions are:

• SHORT: We find that people are willing to come to a 1-hour session (we add 15 minutes to the front on Friday mornings so they can get coffee and bagels), but much more time than that, and they stay away.
• STRUCTURED: Single-page paper Activity Sheets provide topic overview, researched solutions, and challenges for Beginners to Experts. The digital version (bit.ly/eliLab) offers links, shareability, and participant-provided resources.
• RESPONSIVE: Labs solicit and respond to participants’ specific interests in topics, allowing participants to share their own just-in-time questions, and solutions to each others’ challenges — building community connections across disciplinary silos. 
• COLLABORATIVE: Participants learn from others' experiences and have structured time to contribute their own resources, ideas, and experiences. Expert participants learn from each other and also from novices through elaborative interrogation.
• SCAFFOLDED: Labs flow from a topic overview to shared and individual participant challenges, connecting them to educational research — and because they draw on social learning, result in individualized peer-supported development.
• MULTIMODAL: Participants can engage at their comfort level in person or online, and continue digitally afterwards.

EASY: Review some Labs

NB: Rather than provide a “polished” program, we model flexibility, vulnerability, and mistakes. Participants don’t see perfection (realistically impractical for instructors who teach new topics each class), but they see us try, fail, and get better. Our program similarly evolves — 2020 Labs are better than 2015 ones, and we feel some are still pretty bad, but participants love them. See them all (warts and all) in our eText: bit.ly/ATL-ejournal.

• We started in Spring 2015 by inviting different faculty each week to share a way they use technology to teach. They prepared a 10-minute overview. Participants dug into the tool for 15 minutes to get some experience. Then it was Q&A. Counter to ID law, we led with the technology, and then sprung T&L research on them — luring instructors in with Twitter, Google Communities, Wikipedia, etc. See our first Lab on Google+ Communities Lab for a good example of this iteration.
• As UW-Madison transitioned to Canvas, our focus shifted to address it, and the Hands-on Experience component was highlighted with Activity Sheets that welcomed different skill levels (EASY=no experience; MEDIUM=some; HARD= things we haven’t figured out yet). See the Canvas Navigations Solutions Lab for a good example of this iteration.
• When Canvas was familiar, participants wanted to focus more on Pedagogy (WHY) than Technical (HOW), but some still wanted step-by-step directions. We put these in the Activity Sheet (like this one), but now focus sessions on Teaching practice. See the Trigger Warnings Lab for a good example of this iteration.
• Recently, instead of inviting individuals to share a story on using tech to teach, we’ve been inviting 3-4 “ringers” to participate on a topic, we ask all participants what they want answered, and we discuss. It’s not a panel (panels= weird power dynamics); they sit with everyone else, and we carefully facilitate the conversation to address the questions.  See the UDL and Rubrics Lab for a good example of this iteration.

EASY: Set the Mood. Show you Care. Model Vulnerability.

At UW-Madison Labs, we play Jazz (Pandora Herbie Hancock station) before we start so participants don’t walk into a dead room. The instrumental-only background music creates a welcoming ambience while encouraging attendees to chat with each other. We welcome them when they sign in, and we make sure they make a table tent (or name tag) so others can address them by name. If they come back, we say “Welcome back!” and ask them about their semester, week, etc. We have rolling slides up introducing the Lab, setting expectations, and sharing interesting T&L articles, upcoming events, etc. We have coffee and bagels for morning Labs, and cold brew, fruit, and cookies for afternoon ones. Supplying food suggests we value them. 

• What do you do to put participants at ease and generate discussion that meets their goals?

MEDIUM: Let go of preconceived plans to follow participant needs.

We’ve found people often come to events hoping to get something specific answered — often not what the event page describes. But they don’t tell us what they want, and they leave disappointed (and tell us on evaluations), so now we ask! When we start, we ask them to introduce themselves and share what, about the topic, they want to discuss. We put that on a white board and check off the questions as we address them. We start with the basic, or most popular questions, and generally ask our “ringers” (or anyone) to share any answers or suggestions they have. We use the Activity Sheet to address the technical and pedagogical questions on the topic that we anticipated. We refer to it when we can, but often find ourselves going in unanticipated directions. There’s a lot of improvisation in this approach, and we rely on people in the room to help us figure it out. We often say “I don’t know. Does anyone here have thoughts?” At the end of the Lab, we ask them to fill out Reflection Sheets (not “Evaluations”) — this, and their initial questions bookend the Lab and subtly remind them of their agency in their learning. When we get unanswered questions, we respond to them on the Recap page.

• How do/can you personalize learning in sessions you lead?
• How do/can you promote participants’ agency and responsibility in addressing their own learning goals?

MEDIUM: Focus on the folks who most impact campus teaching.

Like many T&L development programs, we initially tried to reach tenure-track Faculty, but struggled to pull them away from research (what they get tenure based on). Recently, we’ve been reaching them through the TAs that help them teach, the support folks they go to for technical questions. We balance better (for students) and more efficient (for instructors) teaching.

CHALLENGE: Try new things. Break rules.

After 10 semesters, 230 Labs, and ~3400 participants (including those coming back multiple times!) We think we’ve got a pretty good framework that we can continue evolving. But each semester we shake things up by trying something new. Starting with technology (Ooh! shiny!) instead of the (boring) educational challenge to lure people in; now we almost always start with challenges. Double-sided, jam-packed paper (the sin of no whitespace!) Activity Sheets became digital (links work — no need to type them in!), and then crowd-sourced (participants now regularly add to the RESOURCES and LAB NOTES sections!). Video recording turned into YouTube live streaming (saves hours of editing/uploading each week) — but we still have not figured out how to live stream effectively (Picture-in-Picture for screen and discussion)

• Have you figured out live streaming?
• Any advice on engaging both face-to-face and online participants?

HELP!

I'd love to hear your thoughts! How have you have dealt with these challenges? What are you doing that avoids some of the issues? Other advice?

My colleagues and I will be presenting on this topic at ELI 2020, so if you're there please stop me for a conversation!

Thanks!

John

As designers and teachers, we are on a relentless quest to present the best quality information for our students in the most effective ways possible. We acknowledge we can always do better and our students deserve this effort!

With that in mind, I offer this support to teachers to help each of your students embrace the Growth Mindset and personal commitment to learning. 

Rachael's Recommendation for Starting Each Semester

I introduce myself and state my commitment:

"My commitment to you is that I will do my best to teach you valuable information that will make your life better. The sum total of my life's knowledge will be your starting point. In return, I'm asking you to be committed to learning. 

Remember, the worst teacher in the world cannot stop you if you are committed to learning."-NRS

***

Heartfelt credits for the inspiration go to the old-school motivational speaker Zig Ziglar:

“If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.”

― Zig Ziglar

There are some common misconceptions in New Quizzes that can be quite frustrating. Here are a few.

• Hot Spot Questions: Click, Not Draw
• The Sky's the Limit (But with Exceptions, Though)
• Availability Dates: Not Just for Taking the Assessment, But Also for Showing/Hiding Student Response...
• Assign
• Trivia
• Looking for something else?
• Ideas
• Guides
• Teacher
• Student

Hot Spot Questions: Click, Not Draw

A misconception about Hot Spot questions is that these questions require students to click on the correct target area, NOT draw a shape. Let's say that in your art class, you want students to discover hidden shapes in the photograph below:

You then ask the following question:

INCORRECT QUESTION

There is one hidden shape in this image. Draw it.

EXPLANATION

You might think that you want students to draw the shape similar to the blue highlight below (in this case, it is a heart), but this is something the teacher has to do, not the students. However, this would make for a great feature idea (see https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/15639-quiz-question-type-drawing" modifiedtitle="true" title="... for more info).

CORRECT QUESTION

There is one hidden shape in this image. Tap/click on the region where you think it might be.

EXPLANATION

It only takes one click or tap to answer a Hot Spot Question. This shouldn't take very long to answer, especially on one-question quizzes with a very short time limit (~30 seconds).

The Sky's the Limit (But with Exceptions, Though)

Some people might think, "Oh well, the sky's the limit, let's turn this quiz into a marathon race," so they set the time limit for a very long time (1 month, 3 months, 6 months, even longer). We've converted to the largest possible time limit (from smallest to largest, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years).

• Less than 1 hour: mm:ss
• 1 - 48 hours: hh:mm:ss
• 2 - 60 days: DD days
• 2 - 24 months: MM months
• 2+ years: YY years

In this example, the time limit shows 9,993,600 minutes, but we converted it to 19 years for students to see it more clearly.

But that's no longer the case with New Quizzes, where time limits are limited to 7 days (excluding time accommodations). Accommodations will be needed to bypass the limit up to a maximum of 16,800 hours (or 100 weeks).

Availability Dates: Not Just for Taking the Assessment, But Also for Showing/Hiding Student Responses

This should probably answer the question for the following feature idea: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/14583-new-quizzes-show-and-hide-quiz-results-by-date" modified...

You know a common question we get is: You thought you can still view your results after the availability date has passed, isn't that right? Wrong. In this case for New Quizzes, once the availability dates have passed, you can no longer take the quiz nor see the items you got wrong, as shown below.

(This has not yet appeared in New Quizzes, but it is a concept...)

A better workaround for this lockout is that in Settings, there should be an item called Disallow Late Submissions. When this box is checked, students can no longer take the quiz, but they will still be able to review the items that they got wrong, provided that the current date is before the Until date (if set).

This will be denoted by the sentence "Late submissions are disallowed for this assessment," as shown below:

Assign

Apologies for the mixed fonts here...

ASSIGN TO

Select the group you want to assign to.

DUE

Select the due date for the assignment. This will be displayed next to the time limit in the New Quizzes Instructions screen (on the right side).

AVAILABLE FROM

Select the date and time when the assessment will become available to students. Students will be able to take the quiz and view their results. This is like "Let Students Take the Quiz and See Their Quiz Responses Starting From..."

UNTIL

Select the date and time when students can no longer submit the assignment nor see their results. This is like "Let Students Take the Quiz and See Their Quiz Responses Until..."

Be sure to keep these tips in mind as you continue to build assessments.

We hope you continue to enjoy New Quizzes!

Trivia

Curious why the New Quizzes text in the banner is pink? That's because it's Valentine's Day today!

Looking for something else?

Ideas

• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/12953-multiple-hot-spot" modifiedtitle="true" title="Quizzes.N...
• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/6643-do-not-allow-students-to-take-a-quiz-after-the-due-date" ...
• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/14583-new-quizzes-show-and-hide-quiz-results-by-date" modified...

Guides

Teacher

• How do I create a Hot Spot question in New Quizzes?

Student

• How do I answer each type of question in New Quizzes? (go down to Hot Spot Question)

Possible Solutions:

• Rubrics clarify assignment expectations, guiding students on where to spend their energy and creativity.
  • Rubrics support teachers in grading neutrally, quickly, and clearly.
• Examples communicate vast amounts of information about quality, completeness, and acceptable work.
  • Multiple examples inspire creativity instead of limiting it. 

Addressing Privacy/Copyright Issues

• Get written permission from previous students to display their work.
• Bite the bullet. Start from scratch and create new project examples yourself.
• State copyright and ownership of the work clearly the course introduction, including that students may not copy or reuse the examples provided.  
• Define plagiarism clearly—with examples--and reiterate the school’s policies. Many international students bring vastly different cultural and institutional perspectives on plagiarism, citations, original work, sharing, cheating, etc. 

Major benefits: 

• Students invest more effort to glean value from the readings and provide succinct evidence for grading.

• Format encourages clarity and expansion for students who write minimally.
• Student writers who provide too much length get to practice refinement and brevity. 
• Instructor gets to grade 4 carefully crafted sentences per student. Done!

1. Reading assignment Title and Author. (May include the full APA/MLA reference for practice.)
2. Summarize author’s thesis statement. (Quote a single sentence or summarize what you believe to the be the author’s main point in a single sentence.)
3. Quote the best line from the writing. (Take notes and be prepared to defend your choice in follow-up discussion. Your personal definition of “best” may be based on sentence-crafting, novel ideals, metaphors, key points, convincing arguments, etc.)
4. Share your response. (State your reaction to the reading. Do you agree or disagree and why? Expand on the topic and share your own opinions and rationale.)

Greetings, Canvas world!

As I am sitting thinking about my proposal for InstructureCon2020, I thought, wouldn't it be a great idea if CanvasAdvocates had space where they can present to other users from a direct end-user perspective! These presentations can stretch from beginner to advanced or even open Q and A panel with a panel of "Canvas Advocates" from varying levels of knowledge, we can bounce ideas off of each other, share experiences and provide much-needed advice to users of all levels. We've all had our struggles and random questions. We can pay it forward in 2020 and lend that helping hand to all users!

If this were an opportunity that Instructure would allow, I'm curious as to what type of workshops you like to see?  

Did you know that you can embed images in a unit that dynamically size, according to your page size?

This is ideal for embedding images into your Canvas unit that can be viewed on a mobile with no issues.

The embed code from the HTML editor will refer to the width and height of the image:

<p><img src="https://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/courses/22607/files/6877530/preview" alt="Adobe Creative Cloud by application" width="1000" height="1600" data-api-endpoint="https://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx//api/v1/courses/22607/files/6877530" data-api-returntype="File" /></p>

If we change the width to be 100%, the image will dynamically resize depending on the resolution of your screen/browser window:

<p><img src="https://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/courses/22607/files/6877530/preview" alt="Adobe Creative Cloud by application" width="100%" height="1600" data-api-endpoint="https://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx//api/v1/courses/22607/files/6877530" data-api-returntype="File" /></p>

The rising popularity of online college courses creates new opportunities for completion and success. Unfortunately, more students who sign up for online courses also fail or wash out!  Students and instructors alike benefit from clarifying the skills needed to succeed and the mental preparation needed to prime students for online success.

While the goal is to encourage enrollment--not discourage it--students must be prepared and personally responsible for their online experiences especially if they are fresh from high school or not yet used to the discipline and organizational skills college courses demand. 

Ideally, the online courses of today are engaging, relevant, and organized with instructors who are truly present online and student-to-student interactions adding immense value. Online courses also demand a higher level of empathetic user experience design (UX), clear instructions, clear expectations, zero instructor "winging it," and superhuman anticipation of all possible roadblocks that diverse students might encounter!

Advantages of Online Courses

• Online courses allow additional schedule options for busy students. 

• Online means less time and money wasted commuting, sitting in traffic, adding to air pollution, searching for parking, paying for parking, etc.

  • Online also means less exposure to diseases, epidemics, violence, and the downsides of social crowding. 
• Online course scheduling may be more feasible if you work full-time or have other obligations. 

• Some online courses may allow you to work a week ahead, for example, if you have upcoming events or vacations. 

• Well-designed online courses allow you to review materials--at any time--to gain full benefit.

• Review and self-pacing can additionally benefit diverse student populations including students who require accessibility accommodations or ESL assistance.

• The online format encourages you to interact with your instructor and other students in writing and discussions even more than you might in a classroom lecture format. 
• The online format provides opportunities to practice higher-level reading, writing, and technology skills.

Questions to Ask Yourself in Preparing for an Online Course

1. Am I prepared to spend the same amount of time (or more) in an online course as I would in a traditional classroom format?  Typically, colleges advise students to plan for 2-3 personal hours of homework time minimum for each credit hour during a week. For example, a 3 credit hour class may require approx. 6-9 hours each week for a typical student or possibly even more homework time.
2. Am I aware that online classes are not easier or faster? For some students, online courses are significantly more difficult. Are the trade-offs worth it for you?
3. Am I self-motivated and organized with completing my homework and scheduled deadlines even without continual guidance from an instructor? 
4. Am I willing to ask questions, persistently communicate, and ask for help in advance of due dates?
5. Am I persistent with technology hassles, including reading directions and solving issues?
6. Do I have continual access to a reliable computer and high-speed internet?
7. Am I personally responsible for gaining the full value from course materials and finishing what I begin?
8. I am prepared to focus my attention and gain meaning from written text or videos with or without additional explanation from an instructor?
9. Am I prepared to complete college-level writing assignments and/or seek assistance from writing centers to bring my writing skills up to expectations?
10. Am I aware of options to take courses for credit, non-credit, technical training, hybrid mixtures of online and classroom interaction, etc. with a clear understanding of financial repercussions in worst-case scenarios? 

***

Resource links:

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/01/16/online-learning-fails-deliver-fin... 

Online Courses Are Harming the Students Who Need the Most Help - The New York Times 

Updated 1/23/2020 with new RCE information

Introduction

A new year and a new semester is a time of renewal.  As you refresh and revise your courses for the coming semester, please consider making your content more accessible.

I hope you've heard that word, but here's what you really need to know about accessibility: it's about making your content easy for everyone to understand.  Yes, there are laws that require accessibility, before you get a student needing it, for those that are differently-abled.  But really, making content easy to understand benefits everyone.

This blog will cover really easy things you can do with the Canvas Rich Content Editor that will make your content much clearer and at the same time, more accessible.

This image below are two images, the current* and the new rich content editor.  The 4 circled icons that have functions that will help you create accessible content in Canvas.

Current Rich Content Editor

New Rich Content Editor

Headings

Headings are the easiest way to start making your content clearer. In the past, you may have simple bolded the font of a heading and made it large.  Stop doing that!  Instead use the rich content editor and choose the heading level.  What this does it is allows a student that uses a screen reader to interact with the content the same way a sighted student would, all through the miracle of the background coding you don't have to know.

When you want a heading, click "Paragraph" in the rich content editor.  In the dropdown, you can choose the heading that fits the level of your content.

• You should use the Headings in order - In Canvas, the list starts with Heading 2, because Title and Heading 1 are already used in the standard Canvas layout.
• Sample Headings could include: Overview, Introduction, Instructions, Examples, Grading.
• When you hit enter after a header, the next line is automatically set to paragraph so you can start entering content.

When you set headings correctly this gives all students:

• chunked content that is easily scanned.
• a quick overview of the type of content on the page. 
• a way to organize the content they read so they better understand and retain it. 
• an easy way jump to the section with the content they need.

It is true, the format for heading 1 comes standard, and it may not be exactly what you want.  You can let that go.  What you loose in control you gain in consistency and accessibility.  (Ok, once you set the heading, you can change its font, but what a lot of extra trouble! Just be sure you set the heading level first and try to be consistent throughout your Canvas site.  This is why using the standard font for each heading is just easier.)

Lists

To further clarify your content, you should consider if a list is better than a paragraph.  When the answer is yes, use bullets for a list with no sequence and numbers for a list where sequence matters.  You may have been doing this, but having you been using dashes or asterisks or typing in the numbers yourself?  Use the rich content editor instead.

When you are ready for a list

1. click the list icon that matches your needs
2. type a list item
3. Hit enter and continue entering items
4. At the end of the list simply hit enter again or click the list icon to return to paragraph formatting. 

If you have already typed a list, highlight all the list items and choose the bullet list icon or the number list icon depending on your needs.

Here's what lists get you:

• Organized, easily read content.
• Content that is easy to rearrange. When you move an item in a numbered list, the list renumbers itself.
• Automatic indenting for nice white space. 
  • Hit tab while in a list item and the numbering or bullets will change.
• Clearly ordered sequences.

Again, using the rich content editor creates background information that will allow sight disabled students to interact with lists in the same way as sighted students, so the lists are useful to everyone.

Images with Alt Text

Ever have an image not load and wonder what it was?  Alt text would have saved your day.  For some students, alt text is essential.  The best time to add alt text is when you are adding images to your content.

1. Click the image icon in the rich content editor.
2. Find your image.
3. Create alt text for your image or designate it as decorative.
   • Note for the new RCE: Once inserted you click on the image and click the options button to insert the alt text.
   • In the current RCE: If you already have an image, select it and hit the image icon to add alt text.

Wow, I made that sound easy, but alt text takes practice.  The text you put in should answer this question: What is the content conveyed by the image?  So it isn't necessarily a description, but the point of the image.  Here are some other guidelines:

• It should not be file names with things like ".jpeg" at the end. At least remove the ".jpeg".
• Keep it under 125 characters.  Longer descriptions should be part of the accompanying text.
• Do NOT use the phrases "image of ..." or "graphic of ..." to describe the image.
• Context matters.  Only you as the content creator really know the point of the image, so you get to decide the alt text.

Just know that having alt text is so essential for some students that you should make an attempt. With practice, it will get easier.  WebAIM Alternative Text analyzes the same image several ways so you can see some examples that will help you improve your use of alt text.

Accessibility Checker

The last icon circled on the rich content editor image above is the stick person which takes you to the accessibility checker.  This will review the content on the page, identify what may need improvement and even give you some guidance on how to fix issues.

A Final Word

Please do not think that Canvas is the only place where you have tools to improve your accessibility; they are in every content creation program!  Hopefully you will now recognize the headings, lists, and image icons in everything from Google Docs to Microsoft Powerpoint.  Make accessibility just a part of how you work, and your content will be better for everyone.

*Please note that this image is from the University of Minnesota Canvas Rich content Editor. Yours may appear slightly different but should have many of the same features.  For more on accessibility, check out Accessibility.umn.edu.

One of the things that I have learned from taking final exams online is the use of the force completion method. 

What is Force Completion?

At our institution, which uses Blackboard, our business teacher activates the Force Completion feature. What that means is that once the test is launched, we must finish it. We may only access the test ONE TIME. Although answers are saved periodically as we work through them, we cannot exit and re-enter the test. From Blackboard, the instructions note that the test must be completed in one sitting once started, and we cannot leave the test before submitting it. Without Force Completion, we may save our progress, navigate away, and return to complete the test.

Let's say that if I accidentally close my browser, leave the test page, or lose power or my internet connection, I can't continue. I must contact the instructor and ask for a new attempt.

Teachers may want to reserve the Force Completion option. Instead, they can require us to take a test on campus, connected to an Ethernet cable instead of Wi-Fi, and with a proctor. If issues occur, the proctor can reset the test.

How is Force Completion different on Canvas than on Blackboard?

In order to effectively create a test with Force Completion, it is recommended that you use the +Assignment button, NOT the +Quiz/Test button, to create the quiz. That is because you cannot use Load this tool in a new tab when using the +Quiz/Test button, to hide the Global Navigation bar on the left.

Consider one effective scenario of using Force Completion. Teachers pass out Access Codes to each student for them to enter.

Once entered, students MUST return the codes back to the instructor after entering it.

The test begins as normal.

However, a few minutes later, a student forgets to plug in her charger, and the device shuts down. They will need to reenter the access code to get back in.

In Blackboard, if a student accidentally closes their browser, leaves the test page, or loses power or their internet connection, he/she can't continue. He/she must contact the instructor and ask for a new attempt. This is not the case with New Quizzes in Canvas. Starting a new attempt is NOT allowed, even if unlimited attempts are given. While some teachers may be nice and show the access code on the board for the students, others hide the code once the test begins. Furthermore, refreshing the page during the quiz will result in a Loading loop. We strongly recommend that you do not use the Force Completion feature unless it is really necessary.

The element that sets successful online courses apart from old-style correspondence courses is: presence. Well-taught, well-designed online courses can allow students to get to know each other and their instructors even better than in traditional lecture classrooms. Interaction is the key. Online course presence may require instructors to communicate much differently than in their classroom comfort zones. Online communication focuses less—or not at all--on body language and tone of voice.

So, how do you communicate online?

Keep in mind, online courses do not run themselves. Effective instructors leverage clear, frequent messaging and considerate planning. Ongoing instructor availability for timely questions is vital. Instructors must stay engaged daily to keep students progressing and adding value for each other. Online teaching takes as much time as classroom teaching; it just happens at different times and locations. Here are some ideas:

Create a Good Beginning

• Create introductory Discussions with detailed question prompts to break the ice and help students connect personally. Example:

"Please introduce yourself to your fellow classmates. Include your name and why you are taking this class. You may also choose to include your major, your personal interests, hobbies, a photo, and something fun or memorable that will help people get to know you. (Approximately 5-10 sentences.) As you reply to your classmates’ posts, ask questions, look for interesting details, and keep your upcoming group projects in mind.”

• Shy students who may not speak up at all in classrooms will often write more in an online discussion post.
• Clarify expectations. In addition to the official policies in a syllabus, be sure to include separate discussion board etiquette instructions and basic explanations of the course structure. Example: “All materials and assignments are accessed through the Modules link. Discussions are due each Wednesday by 11:59 pm and major assignments are due on Sundays by 11:59 pm.”
• Include an Instructor Bio content page with a photo or short, personal video. Avoid reciting information that is already in the syllabus. Reveal what you love about your field, what you want students to gain from the semester, and assure students that you are looking forward to working with them.
• Include Week 1 setup assignments for Instructure Canvas LMS system success (notifications, profile, assignment submissions and system requirements.) Include an email requirement for immediate student questions or comments to you as the instructor.
• Answer each email personally. Use repeated student questions to trigger your creation of general Announcements and course improvements.
• Grade weekly assignments before the next assignment is due. Students cannot improve without timely feedback.
• Post due dates for the entire semester on day 1 so that busy students can plan for success. Lack of pacing and direction is counterproductive. Canvas Assignment Due Dates trigger the To-Do List reminder system and populate the student calendar for your course combined with all of their other courses. (To reduce your instructor communication burden, avoid available and until dates unless absolutely necessary. Example: A Final Exam with a solid end date and no re-takes needs an until date.)
• Use the Canvas Gradebook reminder/messaging feature to quickly remind students who miss assignments, if late work is accepted.
• Be present in your course daily and strive to complete some type of communication with each login.
• Aim for twice-daily [minimum] to respond to messages and questions. State your communication policy in advance to inform students who may be used to a 15-second response to messages.

Design for Success

• Be clear. Detailed instructions are written for the least tech-savvy students. Make no assumptions. Include info links, definitions of terminology and expectations of writing length. Include links to specific Canvas Guides for Students in your assignment instructions for those who need step-by-step tutorials.
• Be sure you understand Canvas and get help from Canvas Instructor Guides to avoid creating navigation dead-ends and frustration for your students. (Example: Make sure that hyperlinks to outside sites are functioning and use built-in modules navigation. Internal Canvas links can open in a neighboring tab. (Use HTML code snippet target="_blank" to avoid links within text that divert your students to another location in Canvas. Students won't finish reading a page if they click a link mid-sentence and land elsewhere.)
• Curate multiple examples of successfully completed assignments for students to emulate and surpass. Varied assignment examples will invite deeper learning inferences and creative thinking.
• Use Rubrics. Students will know where to spend their energy on assignments and have fewer complaints or questions. Rubrics help instructors give consistent, fast feedback without writing the same comments again and again.
• UX. User test your navigation and course layout to ensure it is not confusing. The adventure is in the course materials, not in the navigation. (Research QM Quality Matters Rubric for Online Course Design, QOLT, and other quality assurance standards.)
• Plan your course assignment due dates and pacing with the Academic Calendar and Holiday Calendar. Many students work during the week and appreciate Sunday night due dates. 
• Be available for questions immediately prior to deadlines. Clarify your anticipated response times and weekend availability for questions.
• Include early course feedback—approximately week 2-3 in a semester—to gather student feedback on the course design, not the instructor! Minor course adjustments and clarifications can create major attitude improvements and student success. Use the Quiz tool for a required survey, grading only the student’s participation and not the answers.
• Aim for quality, not quantity. Use the auto-grading quiz tool for low-stakes chapter quizzes to ensure that students read materials. Save precious grading time for the most meaningful projects and writings that require your human touch.

Reward

• Reward Curiosity. Make your ePortfolio assignments the most memorable, impactful part of your course. (Research topics: Problem-Based/Project Based Learning, Backwards Design, and High Impact Teaching Practices.)
• Be flexible. Keep assignment settings unlocked wherever possible so that students can look ahead. 
• Consider. Many students take online courses specifically for flexibility. Allow responsible students to submit early for holidays, vacations, and personal obligations.
• Reward Persistence. Ease student anxiety by using low-stakes quiz settings that allow multiple attempts to raise grades. Allow major writing assignments to be resubmitted after feedback and revisions.
• Reward Contributions. Create opportunities for students to locate and share content from current events with each other in course Discussions.

Maximize Student Interactions

• Participate with your own instructor comments intermittently for strongest results. Watch discussion spaces and participate subtly to allow students to converse more authentically.
• Plan group projects in detail. Include detailed outlines, expectations, and suggestions for group roles that align with grading rubrics. Use collaboration spaces like GoogleDocs and Presentations that allow group members to work asynchronously and visibly.
• Offer forums and opportunities for students to answer questions for each other.
• Create open peer reviews in Discussions and set parameters for meaningful feedback where students take on the teaching & feedback role for each other.

Experiment with Your Role

• Become a coach. Online courses are designed and polished in advance to free instructors for the coaching role rather than being the Sage on the stage.
• Distill your life wisdom to re-examine the most efficient ways to think like an expert. Then, add inspirations for creativity and allow your students to add value by teaching you in return. Courses are improved semester-to-semester by engaged students.
• Help students create their own tools for life and work.
• Help students create proud evidence of what they have learned in the form of research papers, meaningful projects, and creative ePortfolio artifacts.
• Keep feedback positive and encouraging, wherever possible.
• Be specific when revisions are needed. If your requirements are strict, then assignment instructions and rubrics must match that precision. If your instructions are loose and flexible, your grading should reflect this style of teaching.
• Be human. Use a conversational style in your Announcements and assignment directions that balances professionalism and friendliness. Written format is automatically more cold sounding, so account for this in your writing. 

* This article is offered based upon experiences as an Instructional Designer, Institutional LMS support staff member, and online higher ed. instructor. These suggestions are not affiliated with nor compensated by Instructure Canvas.

Canvas Dashboard

The Dashboard is the very first screen when we come arrive into Canvas after successful authentication.  At the University of Minnesota it goes to “Card View” by default, which represents your courses as “cards” but I tend to call them tiles. The cards  may have images, or they may simply be a color.  

Anatomy of a course card

If you do nothing to your cards

If you don’t customize the Dashboard at all, Canvas decides what is on there, and in what order.  Usually it does not do a great job of guessing what courses you want to be in the cards, so it’s best to dictate that yourself.

Customize the Dashboard “Card View”

Customizing the “Card View”  is easy, but not obvious.

The first thing you should know it that if you add even 1 course manually to the Dashboard, the default automatic  list will disappear. So, once you start customizing you control it all. 

Adding & Removing a course from the Dashboard

Use to change the  to change the cards in the .

• First, click on “Courses”, then “All Courses”
• Then click on the star next to each course you want on your Dashboard.  
  • Click a  to become at to add a course to the 
  • Click a  to become a  to remove a course from the 

Once you understand this is the way it works, and you are able to remember this again next semester, you are in business.  You can change your Dashboard quickly to match your semester.

Remove a course from the Dashboard “using” the Dashboard

You can click on your course card menu, click “move” then select “unfavorite”

Next, Rearrange your course “cards”

Drag and Drop your cards into your order of preference. 

Summary

Customizing the “Card View”  is easy, but not obvious. Once you understand how it works, you’ll be able to make your daily interactions with Canvas easier, more feng shui (digitally speaking). 

Related to this:

How do I add an image to my course card in the Dashboard?

One of the big hassles with testing accommodations is having students submit a testing request EVERY TIME for each individual test within any course. This is no longer the case with New Quizzes.

Here is an example from Pasadena City College (PCC), our closest local community college, which also utilizes Canvas as their LMS. 

Students will be prompted to submit their current Accommodation Plans and let their instructors know that they will take tests under accommodated conditions and that the local Disabled Student Program department will contact the instructors. They will need to have their syllabi ready.

For New Quizzes, the same rules apply. However:

• Instead of submitting a test accommodation form for each test, students only need to submit a form only once for each course that they would like to request testing accommodations for. That's because these settings will be applied to all course assessments in New Quizzes for this student, making things more convenient.
• Students will only need to resubmit if there are changes to accommodations.

TEST REQUEST FORM AVAILABILITY

Some institutions have various availability times when the request form will be open. Check with your school for more info.

As always, students should submit their requests as early as possible to guarantee a spot, especially during finals.

Updated 3/19/20: Option 2 Ignore the warning did not work as expected for and assignment that had been graded.

Introduction

Students working in groups to learn just learn better.  That is what years of research have shown us.  Managing groups can be difficult, and not just during class.  Canvas has some group functionality that instructors can use to manage group work:

• Inside a group set in People, you can create your groups and put students in the groups.
• Group assignments uses those groups and affiliates one submission and its score with every group member.
• Group discussions lets you build one discussion, but each group can only see posts from its members.

There are tricks to using groups, group assignments, and group discussions, but today we are focusing on how to change group membership in the middle of a term.

Changing Group Membership - Heeding the Warning

When you attempt to move a student into a new group after group submissions have already occurred, you get a very special warning:

Being safe, most instructors will then Create a New Group Set and Submit.  Here are the problems that follow:

• The change they were attempting to make initially did not occur in the original group, and it was also not done in the cloned group set.  So NO MEMBERSHIP CHANGES ARE MADE!
• The new Cloned group set is not assigned to any assignments or discussions.

You have several more things to do to finish changing the membership. Here's what you need to do next.

1. In People, click on the Cloned group set tab.
2. Change the membership of the groups, including the one you started with that prompted this whole process.
3. Go to every future assignment and future discussion.
4. Edit the activity.
5. Change the group setting from the original group set to the (Clone) group set and save.

Now you have adjusted the groups and all the future group assignments and discussions will be set up for the new groups.

Unless you missed one.  And if you did, once there is a submission, you can't change the group set.  Your only option is to duplicate the assignment, choosing the correct group set and asking students to submit again.

Advantages

• Keeps an accurate history of group changes.
• It is the option prompted by Canvas.
• When you import and copy this Canvas site into a blank course site, only one group set is created and all previous group assignments/discussions are set to that "Project Groups" group set

Disadvantages

• You MUST change the assignment/discussion settings for remaining semester.
• If you want to maintain the group assignments to specific group sets when importing, you must create the exact group sets in the blank course site before importing the course content.

The Other Way - Ignoring the Warning

This way may not work for all instructors because it requires one best practice that must always be done when grading Group Assignments:

Once Group grades are entered, edit the assignment and check Assign Grades to Each Student Individually and save.

There may be reasons you are already doing this.  It allows you to change the scores of group members that did not contribute or were absent.  The key is that this setting LOCKS IN all the grades as individual grades.  That gives you the freedom to change the existing group.

1.  Attempt to move a student into a new group.
2. In the warning box, choose Change Existing Group and Submit.

That's it, you are done.  Future assignments are still using this group set with the newly modified group.  Past graded assignments have the grades locked to the individuals and are not changed.

Unless you weren't done grading a group assignment.  That's the only condition; you must have any group grading done and set to Assign Grades to Each Student Individually.  And this could be a pain if you have many changes to make.

Advantages

• You do not have to change assignment group settings
• The change you were intending to make is made.

Disadvantages

• You have to be sure to check the “Grade individually” settings of assignments BEFORE you make the group change.
• You do not have an accurate running history of group changes.

Which will you choose?

You can imagine that which you will choose will depend on where you are in the semester and what your normal grading practice is for group grades. Because Canvas prompts users to clone the group, that is the easiest, safest solution but the additional work of making the group changes and then changing the future assignments/discussions must be done.  If you always change group grades to the individually graded option, ignoring the warning might be for you.  

Need more information or a different explanation?  Check out Canvas: Changing Group Membership during a Semester.

*The CBS-RLT Tech Tip is written by academic technologists at the University of Minnesota, College of Biological Sciences.  It may contain references to Canvas settings and integrations that are specific to that institution. 

My favorite Ideas for improving groups in Canvas.  The ones without links are feature Ideas I haven't found yet.

• Batch Group Management
• Allow Groups to set Homepage
• Report of group membership
• Show group membership as optional column in gradebook

As a humanities teacher, I love using the RSS feed for Announcements.  There are some phenomenal news feeds and podcasts that support a variety of my course content and it was awesome to have the announcements automatically appear in my Canvas courses.

My biggest frustration, though, was when I found great resources while navigating the internet that I wanted to make available for my students.  I would copy the address, open my Canvas instance, navigate to the particular course, open an announcement, embed the URL with an explanation for my students, and publish it to my course.

What if you're on your phone and find a great link while navigating social media?  The steps to posting can be prohibitive.  You can set up an external feed and "clip" articles to it!

There are two different methods (that we know of): Evernote Webclipper and OneNote Webclipper. This post will address Evernote, but the steps are similar for OneNote!

Steps for Creating a Customized RSS Feed using Evernote:

1. Download and explore Evernote here.
2. Create a specific Notebook that will be dedicated to your RSS feed.
3. Download and install the Evernote Webclipper here.
4. Create a free account with Zapier.  Note: You can create 5 free "Zaps."  If you are creating a feed or two, the free option will cover all of your basic needs!
5. Begin a New Zap: 
6. Follow the prompts to create a "Trigger Event" (the action that starts the Zap process):
   1. Choose App: Evernote
   2. Choose Trigger Event: New Note
   3. Evernote Account: sign in to your Evernote Account to link it to Zapier
   4. When asked to Customize Note, select the Notebook that you created specifically for your feed.
7. Follow the prompts to create an "Action" (the result of the Trigger event created above):
   1. Create the action (this :  When asked, Choose App: RSS by Zapier
   2. Choose action Event: Create Item in Feed.
   3. Customize Item: Create a unique FeedURL 
      1. Make sure to Copy to Clipboard your full Feed URL to use as you set up your Canvas RSS Announcement Feed.
   4. You do not need to enter anything under "Max Records"
   5. Set your Item Title: 
   6. Set your Source URL: 
   7. Provide a brief description of your Feed: 
   8. The remaining options (Author Name, Email, Link, etc) can be left blank.
   9. Select "Continue"
   10. Select "Test and Continue"
8. Use the web clipper to start the process!
   1. Navigate to any website that you would like to add to an RSS Feed
   2. Use your web clipper and "Save Clip" to the pre-determined Evernote Folder that you established specifically for your RSS feed.

NOTE:  There will be a delay between when you clip an article and when it appears in your Announcement feed.  Most of my tests are delayed a few hours, but I have seen shorter and longer!

Enjoy customizing your own RSS feed!!

Over the summer we gave the New Gradebook a good “tire kicking” before releasing it en masse this fall.  Most of the changes are subtle, some changes are powerful but just under the surface. However, some changes are very informational, yet are confusing until you look a little deeper.  Also, there are some advanced features that you may be excited to try. So, “What’s new?”

Let’s start with the cool stuff.  It's cool on an Academic Technology level, anyway.  I'm referring to the new feature that is helpful by filtering the gradebook down to see only the specific group of students you want to see.  The new gradebook makes it possible to filter your list of students assignment groups, by module, by section, and by student group.  

So, it might be used to find the:

• weekly reflection (grade group)
• for the week 2 module
• in section 004 
• student group “the cooliest biologists”

 Of course you don’t have to drill down that far to be useful.  The filter feature is super handy, but you have to pull it into view, or that functionality sits hiding below the surface.

To pull them into view, in Gradebook, go to “view”>”Filters” and then click on the one(s) that you want to try.  

In contrast, there are a things that are immediately in view with the new gradebook that are, let’s say not perfectly clear.  One such item is the color based “status” indication.  By color, you can tell if an assignment is late, missing, or excused.  If the color doesn’t work for you, you can change it.  

The defaults are:

Blue : Late submission
Red : Missing submission
Green : Resubmitted assignment
Orange : Dropped grade
Yellow : Excused assignment

Also in the realm of informative but potentially confusing is the icons that appear in the new gradebook.  With a glance you can tell much about the current grade situation, however, you may not have a clue as to what the iconography means.  I find it easiest to just look it up the key and instructions in the Canvas document specific to the icons and colors in the New Gradebook. 

However, there is one icon, ,that I need to call to your attention right now. The hidden symbol may appear at the top of a grading column, it indicates that the manual grading policy is set for that column.  It also means that at least 1 grade is not visible (posted) to the student(s) for that assignment.  This new icon shows up by default to those that used the "mute/unmute" feature on the previous version of gradebook. That feature allowed you to hide (mute) the grades from view, enter the grades, and later post (unmute) all of the grades at a later time.  The change is that now you can start out with all the grades hidden, and post (make visible to the student) one grade at a time if you want.  So, if you previously used the mute/unmute Canvas assumes that you want to use the manual grading policy.  You do have a choice though, you can also set it to post your grades automatically/instantly by changing the Grade Posting Policy.  but that isn't immediately obvious that is what you need to do from the eyeball on the screen.  You may want to look closer at this one in How do I use New Gradebook?

More functionality includes setting late policies  and  curving grades.  Also, inserting zeros is handy by using the set default grades feature, and you can choose to override your final grades column for whatever reason.  

I hope that helps give you a better idea what the New Gradebook is all about.  If you want help with any of this, shoot us an email, or leave a message below. 

-Evan

It's the start of another school year, so what better time to use a tool that will make communicating with your students so much easier.  Announcements is so much better than just sending an email to your whole class. If you are not using the Canvas inbox, you will have to go through the trouble of getting all your students' emails and making them a group list in your email program.  If you are using Canvas inbox, it's pretty easy to email the whole class, but with the flood of emails students will be getting from instructors and TAs at the start of a semester, it is really easy to lose an email.

Wouldn't it better if you had a tool that:

• automatically notified every student in your class and
• showed up on the course home page the next time students go to the course site and
• had all the announcements you ever sent for the course in one place where students could easily find old ones and read new ones?

Bonus points if that tool would allow you to:

• easily link to things in the course site and
• create your announcements early and have them post later at a date you choose and
• automatically shift those posting dates when you start a new semester!

This is why you should be using Announcements.  Announcements has all of those features, including all the bonuses!

Creating an announcement

When you want to send an announcement to your entire class, choose to add an announcement (instructions).  

1. You create the announcement.  You can add links and images or videos using the rich text editor and link to assignments, pages, or files directly using the content selector.
2. Underneath the text box choose to add a delay date. Even if your delay is minutes, having a delay date will allow the date to automatically shift when importing your announcements to a new Canvas site. (Thanks boles‌ for the clarification!)
3. You can also choose to attach files and allow commenting and liking. 
4. When you save, students are notified there is an announcement based on their notification preferences.  By default this is usually this is email but it can also be by text if students make that choice!

Setting announcements to show on home page

To ensure your announcement shows at the top of the home page you need to adjust the course settings

1. Go to Settings > Course Details
2. Scroll down and click on More options
3. Check the box by  "Show recent announcements on Course home page" and choose how many announcements you want to show.  One is usually enough, or choose two if you communicate often, but avoid three as it takes up a lot of space on the screen.
4. You can also choose "Disable comments on Announcements" as the default.

Shifting posting dates for a new semester

This process is pretty easy.  When you import your course content from one Canvas site into another, choose to shift the dates (instructions).  Not only will the assignments' dates shift, so will your delay posting dates!  Never again will you have to create that test reminder email!

A few warnings:

• If you allow comments on announcements, it looks a lot like a discussion, but it cannot be found under the Discussions.  The announcement and all its comments stay under the Announcements item in the navigation menu.  This can be confusing to students.
• Announcements will not be sent out if the course is not published.  Additionally, students that have never been in Canvas and have never clicked the Canvas agreement (like freshmen) will also not get announcements.  For this reason we recommend that any announcements before the semester starts are sent through your institution's system of record. *For the University of Minnesota, that would be MyU.  Go to your course roster and scroll down to find the Notify All button.
• This doesn't work for sending emails to individual students, sections or groups.  The Canvas Inbox is the tool that will do that for you.
• When you import your course to a new site, if you select all content, all the announcements will also be copied over.  If you did not set a delay date, your old announcements may be visible to students!
  
  • Announcements with a post date before the course is published will be visible to students as soon as the course is published. These announcements are not sent to students unless you edit the announcement. After editing and as soon as you save the announcement, it will be emailed to the address students have set up in their notifications, unless you have set up a delay date.(Thanks again boles.)  
  • Be sure you either delete or set a delay posting date (instructions) on imported announcements before publishing to prevent students from seeing the all the imported announcements immediately.

Did I miss any Announcement functions?  How do you use this tool in your courses?

*The CBS-RLT Tech Tip is written by academic technologists at the University of Minnesota, College of Biological Sciences.  It may contain references to Canvas settings and integrations that are specific to that institution. 

Updated 9/17/19

Measuring contract cheating

"If you can't measure it, you can't improve it"* is the inspiration behind this blog post. In this post, I discuss why a way to measure contract cheating is necessary and propose a measurement metric. 

The motivation behind this (and future) posts is to journal the process of building this cheating measurement tool, collecting feedback and getting some help along the way. So, if anyone has any thoughts or is interested in helping please feel free to comment . 

Okay, so, the question is...

Why do we need to measure cheating?

Over the years, we've all seen interventions in the area of contract cheating increase. And interventions come in many forms: technological (software), political (bans) and pedagogical (less writing assignments/raising awareness). While all such news is great, there is a larger question: how do we know the interventions are working? I feel this is a difficult, yet crucial question to ask (and answer!).

A measurement tool is as necessary as the interventions themselves. Why? Because we will eventually need the measurement tool to gauge the efficacy of the detection/prevention tools. How else can we tell if any government policy/technology is really hurting the businesses of essay mills?

The next question then becomes...

How do we measure contract cheating?

Self-reporting seems like a sub-par method to measure contract cheating interventions in my opinion. Since that approach is a bit biased (un-verifiable), my tiny brain proposes the following way: we measure the popularity of contract cheating websites and essay mills. I mean if cheating is decreasing, contract cheating websites will be less popular and vice versa right? 

Since we obviously don't (and never will) have the actual data of students cheating, I think the popularity of contract cheating websites is the ideal proxy/stand-in to measure the cheating market.

The most straight-forward (and reliable) data we can get on a website's popularity is its traffic/analytics data. But then there are hundreds and thousands of essay mill and contract cheating websites. 

The next question then becomes..

How do we monitor all odem websites?

Fortunately, other people have run into the same problem and they do it as such: they create an index. For example, there are 2,400 companies listed on the stock exchange but the DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average) only pools the data of the 30 largest companies and monitors their prices over-time. This 'average' then becomes a proxy for the entire stock market and the economy (by extension). Much like how how our website traffic data will be the proxy for the entire cheating economy . 

The next question then becomes... 

What do we call this cheating measurement tool?

I'm going to go out on a limb and call it the 'Contract Cheating Index (CCI)'. But if you have any better names, please feel free to suggest. Anyway, I feel we have something to build upon now. 

Which begs the question...

Where do we start?

The plan of action is:

1. Analyze the traffic of a sub-set of contract cheating websites over-time
2. Pick the top 30
3. Create an 'index' which shows an upward or downward movement (much like the DJIA)
4. Automate the process
5. Display it

In the next post I shall do task 1 and task 2 and get a sense of the data. Just a heads-up our traffic data will come from Alexa (not the speaker, the website), so if anyone can find the time to collaborate with me on this that would be fun. Maybe  @kona ‌, with your statistics experience? 

For now, this journey has to stop here. I hope you enjoyed reading, as much as I did writing. What is getting me excited is: in the next post I'll actually have some numbers to play with and data to share! Ain't that fun! 

*I think  the quote is attributed to Peter Drucker. 

This CanvasTip actually came from one of my faculty and I thought it was definitely worth sharing.

In a user's account Notification preferences, there's an option under Alerts called Content Link Error. I never paid much attention to it but if you hover your mouse over it, it explains this preference will notify an instructor the location and content of a broken link that a student has interacted with inside a course. The default setting for this preferences is Daily, which may be fine but I suggest changing it to Right away ✅instead.

Think about it: if you're teaching a course and a student tries to access something and is presented with an error, how do you think that student will feel? My guess is probably annoyed . If you were notified right away about this and could potentially fix it in a matter of minutes, you could help avoid any further headaches for your students. 

Below is a link to the help guide in Google Doc form:

Get Notified Right Away About a Course 'Content Link Error'

Related

How do I set my Canvas notification preferences as an instructor?

How do I add contact methods to receive Canvas notifications as an instructor?

Please share if this is helpful!

New Quizzes will eventually replace the default Canvas quizzing tool, but in the meantime, there's still a lot of development needed to bring it to feature parity. Here's what led The Wharton School to start using New Quizzes sooner rather than later.

Meeting Our Biggest Need

One of the largest core courses taken by all undergraduate students at Wharton is "Introduction to Operations, Information and Decisions" or OIDD 101. Depending on the term, this intro course will have up to 500 students enrolled. The bulk of the course grade comes from six online quizzes--each one has a mix of 10 multiple choice and numeric answer questions. Often, there is more than one way to interpret a question, resulting in the need to regrade quizzes after they are submitted and recalculate student scores.

In classic Quizzes, regrading is triggered by certain actions (eg, changing the correct answer) and is only available for certain automatically-graded question types. Unfortunately, classic Quizzes do not allow regrading for numeric question types. While infrequent, when the need to regrade a numeric question does arises, it's a pretty big headache. In the last instance of this course, even a small handful of regrades resulted in a few hours of manual regrading. And that's just for one course! Even as I was writing this blog post, I received a report of a manual regrade needed for a numeric question in a quiz taken by 240+ students . . . :smileyshocked:

Enter Quizzes.Next

If you've reviewed the Quizzes.Next FAQ or Feature Comparison pages recently or even started exploring the tool yourself, you know that while there are a lot of new features and question types in New Quizzes, there are still several pending features for development. These include some fundamental features, such as the Preview tool, the ability to allow additional attempts, LockDown browser compatibility, Surveys, and downloadable student and item analysis reports. After weighing the pros and cons of the feature comparison chart, the promise of a more robust regrade tool won us over and generated interest in piloting the tool for OIDD 101. 

We had hoped to start small, by migrating a few low-stakes practice quizzes to the new platform first. But when the faculty told us that practice quizzes would be given on paper this year and that New Quizzes would be used for the bulk of the course grades, we quickly went from dipping a toe into the pool to doing a full canon ball. Fortunately, we had the consolation knowing that if anything did go wrong, we could always revert back to classic Quizzes within the same course.

Spring 2019 Pilot

Successes

After securing faculty support (the lack of numerical regrade was a major pain point for the three instructors before, so they were eager to try something new), we enabled New Quizzes for a single sub-account and also enabled the "Quiz Log Auditing" feature option. This was key to accessing the View Logs, which were extremely helpful in troubleshooting issues later on. Two teaching assistants created the quizzes, after which we checked the settings thoroughly before the quizzes were published (our workaround to the lack of a Preview tool). Because the quizzes were named "Assignment 1, Assignment 2,  etc . . ," rather than "Quiz 1, Quiz 2 . . ." students were able to find them easily under the "Assignments" page. Students said they liked the look of the new interface, while the TAs and instructors found it intuitive to build new quizzes and add images to questions. The regrade feature correctly recalculated grades for  numeric answer quizzes (hooray!) and even handled multiple regrades for the same question (a problem with classic Quizzes). Based on this success alone, the faculty have already agreed to continue using New Quizzes in the Fall term.

Challenges

1. No Auto-Submit with "Until" Date [FIXED]: Each quiz was available to students for an entire week and late submissions were not accepted. Expecting the same functionality as in classic Quizzes, faculty told students that any quiz not submitted by the "Available Until" date would be automatically submitted by Canvas. When this didn't happen as anticipated for Assignment 1 and 10-15 students were left with "In Progress" quizzes, faculty felt like they had lied to students. To fix this issue, we re-opened the quiz for the students with an "In Progress" status, masqueraded as them, and then submitted on their behalf the responses they had added as of the due date (found under "Moderate" > "Attempts in Progress" > "In Progress" log).

For the next quiz, faculty stressed the importance of manually clicking the "Submit" button in order for Canvas to process their quizzes. While there were still a few students each quiz who didn't deliberately click "Submit" (or assumed that clicking "Submit" once, without clicking "Submit" again when the Submission Confirmation message popped up, was sufficient), these incidences lessened over the course of the term. 

2. No Quiz Log Data Saved: In a small handful of instances, students claimed to have answered all the questions, but their responses were not recorded in the quiz logs. After much troubleshooting, we came to realize that a specific behavior was causing the loss of data. Since these quizzes were available to students for a week at a time with no time limit, many students were leaving the quizzes open on their browsers for extended periods of time, sometimes several days without refreshing or closing the page. In that time, the Canvas session was timing out, so that by the time students went to input their responses, the data was unable to push out to the server. Unfortunately, when this happens little information, other than a timestamp for when the student began the quiz, is recorded, even in Instructure's server logs. The problem is avoided by students refreshing the page often or preferably, closing out of the quiz any time they are not actively working on it. 

3. On-Time Submissions Marked Late [FIXED]: If a student submitted a Quizzes.Next quiz within a few minutes of the due date/time, sometimes a processing lag in SpeedGrader resulted in the submission being marked late in the Gradebook. This bug could even happen for on-time submissions that were initially marked as on-time, but then manually graded after the due date! In our situation, the faculty were very understanding of this bug and knew that students weren't actually submitting quizzes late because of the availability dates. But for courses that have New Gradebook enabled and set to automatically deduct points for late submissions, this would be a more serious concern. 

Lessons Learned So Far 

With only one course in the pilot and many more developments in the pipeline for New Quizzes, we still have a lot to learn. But we've also gained a lot of experience in this first go-round. Below of some things we've discovered along the way:

• Saving Quiz Logs: For quizzes that are available to students for an extended period of time, instruct students to close out of quizzes any time they are not actively working on them. This will ensure that their answers are recorded in the quiz logs and not lost due to the Canvas session "timing out" or a disrupted Internet connection. 
• Auto-Submit [FIXED]: While classic Quizzes would automatically submit when the "Available Until" time passes, this doesn't happen in New Quizzes. Make sure students know that unless there's a time limit for the quiz, they will need to click the "Submit" button and confirm their submission in order for it to actually process. 
• Question Types: Be sure you're using the right question type when you create a question. The question type can't be changed once you start drafting the question so if you need to switch types, you'll have to create a new question. 
• Accessing SpeedGrader: To view all submissions in SpeedGrader, you'll need to access the link through the Gradebook, not in the quiz itself. Only individual attempts are visible within the "Moderate" tool.
• New Question Types: The stimulus question type is a good replacement for "text only" questions. Note: If you embed an image in the stimulus that is larger than 600 pixels wide, students will need to scroll to see the whole image. The word count for essay questions is really helpful and it's great to finally have ordering and matching question types! 
• Item Banks [FIXED]: Item banks are tied to user accounts, not courses, so right now only the user who created the bank can view, edit, or use it unless they manually share the bank with other users. This presents an issue for co-instructors who want to share item banks. According to this post, the ability to share item banks is a pending feature.

Thanks for reading about Wharton's initial experience with Quizzes.Next/New Quizzes! I'm looking forward to presenting about New Quizzes at InstructureCon 2019 and sharing follow-up blog posts as we continue this pilot. If you have used New Quizzes before and have other tips/tricks, or are holding off because of pending features, please comment below!

Hi Everyone,

I'm usually not one to write too many blog posts, and I really debated the best place to put this.  As Ally is an accessibility tool it could have certainly gone in the accessibility group (and beginning my community college career in DSPS I do have a soft spot for UDL and 508/ADA compliance--so important for student success), but this has more to due with implementation and challenges regarding our processes and complexity of getting a tool of this scope in-place at a multi-college district with over 50k FTES.  I do believe this is more applicable to this Higher Education group, as there are specific challenges that we face in our environment that may not be as applicable to some of the other sectors.  Also, please forgive me as I've left some of this intentionally vague so that I don't identify any specific folks at our district, as everyone is wonderful to work with here.

To begin, we had a subgroup that I was part of that was charged with analyzing which potential tools we could adopt in order to enhance accessibility for students, and after looking at a few options it was determined that our best path forward was to explore Blackboard Ally.  We piloted Ally for a semester, and after positive feedback from the small testing group we then signed a 3 year contract.  The thinking was that after using the tool in a somewhat limited capacity with that small group it was found to be valuable, and we could then begin an opt-in rollout to specific courses where faculty could use the tool the first semester (where we could provide additional training and use those experiences to develop additional resources), then roll it out to all courses the following semester.

The main complexity started when we began to look as a District at how the content that Blackboard Ally identified as needing some level of remediation, was in actuality going to be remediated.  Looking at the sheer amount of content that we need to remediate, it is a daunting task.  As I mentioned above, we're a pretty large district, with four colleges and over 50k full-time equivalent students.  Looking back at just one semester of content that Ally identifies, we can see almost 800,000 pieces of content.  While the course numbers are a bit inflated as we create a course shell for every section, the content number is fully accurate regarding what's in Canvas.  

This leads me into the challenge that we are still facing, and why we have had to delay our rollout--simply that we need a comprehensive plan on how this content is going to be remediated.  Right now we have courses that have content in them that is not fully accessible, and we can see that in the account level reporting.  We are not looking at or evaluating the course specific accessibility reports, though they are available.  The challenges is that content was there before we implemented Ally, as it is there now with Ally implemented, the only difference is that we can't preach ignorance or pass the buck when we have reporting that shows we do have inaccessible content.

We are now having to somewhat on-the-fly come up with plans on how to help faculty remediate content.  Many of the courses we have are fully online (and fully developed) and have been taught and continually have evolved for years.  When there are hundreds of pieces of content, each of which can take between minutes and hours to remediate, there is just too large of a burden to expect faculty members to fully remediate the content themselves in a timely manner.  We are evaluating options such as hiring more faculty coordinators at each campus to help with remediation, hiring district-wide instructional designers to remediate content, having stipends available to faculty for content remediation above their regular teaching load, etc.  With four colleges and so many decision makers needing to be consulted and the ultimate decision needing to be negotiated with faculty, this process is not something that is able to be accomplished in a week or even a month.  It is critical we get this done for students, as they need fully accessible content, but there are so many considerations that need to be made it is quite the process.

In closing, the main reason for making this post was to inform others regarding the challenges that are presented once you begin identifying inaccessible content.  Hopefully you have a good experience using whatever tool or solution that your institution chooses, and I just want to make sure that those charged with making those decisions consider the implications when they choose to implement their solution.  Having a comprehensive plan regarding how to remediate content is very valuable.

Thanks for your time reading this.

Ken