Teacher Pedagogy Notes

(8)

I'm busy writing curriculum for next year and am wanting to leave myself pedagogy notes (that kids can't see) about assignments directly within that assignment so I won't forget when it's time to publish it.  This seems to be an issue that was overlooked for no clear reason.

11 Comments
Steven_S
Community Champion

This would also be a helpful way to communicate expectations to adjunct expectations to adjunct instructors that are given responsibility for teaching a section of a course created by someone else.

 

bwarner1
Community Explorer

As a teacher, I'd love to see a backend only field for Teacher's Reflections where we can leave notes to ourselves about individual assignments, pages, etc. This would just be a blank field that teachers could use as reminders when they copy assignments from one semester to the next. 

Potential uses:

  • Remind ourselves of names of attached documents to external tools (Google Course Kit Assignments, for example, never copy over, so we have to go back and find the link in the old semester's assignment)
  • Give ourselves suggestions for how to improve the assignment next semester.
  • Put in a link to a relevant resource that could be used next time around.
  • Save text/directions that we aren't using this time, but will be useful to keep available for the future.
  • Etc, etc.

It's pretty common for teachers to record reflections on their lesson plans, but it makes more sense to have that kind of reflection available on any given page/assignment so that we can tie it directly to the work at hand when each subsequent semester rolls around.

cmgardner
Community Participant

I could see this being a great feature for sub plans as well and also super helpful when sharing content among colleagues.  Think it could have even more impact than just the initial idea behind this feature request. 

bwarner1
Community Explorer

@cmgardner I love the idea of using it for sub notes, and also @Steven_S 's comment on putting notes in for adjuncts who are taking a framework. 

The more I think about this, the more it has huge potential for impact.

Hildi_Pardo
Community Champion

This is a GREAT idea!  And I think it could be done easily! 

lcmassey
Community Member

One of our teachers made the suggestion that the "Grading Notes" feature in the quiz builder would be a good addition to other assignments too. This would be very helpful when temporary teachers or marking assistants are helping with grading.

GECMSadjj
Community Novice

I'd like to be able to add my teacher notes/class plans/link to answer keys/ whatever to individual assignments. If I wanted to share the assignment with other teachers, they should be able to see the notes.

 

I would most frequently use it to link to my lesson plans (so that the canvas assignment allows me to open a document with my lesson plans), and as a way to keep track from semester to semester of what worked and didn't, tweaks to make, etc. 

As a secondary function I'd use it to have things like links to answer keys (so they are stored "with" the assignment), extra resources link, notes to other teachers, and notes about how the assignment scaffolds/spirals (to assist with planning)

nmvandermeid
Community Member

This would be so helpful and make planning year after year much more streamlined.  

ToddDaily
Community Member

Did this feature of teacher notes get integrated? I'd like to be able to add notes to assignments that only I can see or even a simple document that would pop up after importing for the next semester that the same course is taught. Comments like: This exercise was great! It was a good idea to move the field trip to earlier in the semester. Explain this assignment better. Etc.

One idea we came up with would be to upload a word doc into the files at the end of the semester.

Have any updates been made? Or has anyone found a workaround?

bwarner1
Community Explorer

@ToddDaily It hasn't. I was just thinking about how much I want this feature again yesterday, so your timing to bring it up is good.

Unfortunately, it feels like Canvas often chooses features to work on based on how popular it is here, but of course that can be easily skewed by a popular educelebrity sharing a link to a feature request on twitter, etc.

Regardless, this is still a GREAT idea, and I hope that it gets implemented sooner rather than later.

ProductPanda
Instructure
Instructure
Status changed to: Archived
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