Welcome & Introductions!

[tdw]

This content was part of our Early Adopter Program. We're keeping it available to provide historical context and highlight how the feature has evolved.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the IgniteAI Canvas Rubic Creator Early Adopter Program!

You were invited to participate in this program because of your familiarity with instructional design, competency-based education, outcomes, rubrics, and other educational strategies in this realm.  Thank you for joining us!

One of the things you'll find out quickly is that we have a broad group with diverse needs and implementations of learning outcomes; skills-based credentialing, state-level standards, program assessment, course-level outcomes, and so on.

But don't take my word for it, please take a minute to introduce yourself.  Tell us your

• Name
• Institution
• Role
• Experience with competency-based outcomes
• Favourite ice cream flavour.

[HeatherSaigo]

Hello, everyone! I'm Heather Saigo and I'm an instructional designer at Oregon Institute of Technology. I've been in this role since July 2025, and my first full week of work was at InstructureCon. It was jam-packed, and things haven't slowed down.

My background is in biology (BS), environmental science (MS), and education (EdD), and I have been building websites and using technology to help people learn since 1994.

Previous to joining Oregon Tech, I have been an adjunct instructor in environmental science at Southern Oregon University, and an online adjunct at Southern New Hampshire University. I've taught biology, earth science, sustainability, and recently I helped develop a new first-year course focused on growth mindset and lifelong learning for SNHU. 

Rubrics were new to me when I went back to school in 2020. When I was in school, nobody talked about rubrics! I imagine there are other teachers who grew up during that time who also aren't familiar with how to create and use rubrics. I find rubrics are great for communicating clear expectations to students. A good rubric lets students know exactly how their work will be evaluated, and they can use a rubric almost like a checklist. Rubrics also help instructors evaluate students fairly, making sure to compare student work to the rubric criteria instead of comparing students to each other. Humans aren't perfect, but a good rubric can help us do our work better.

My preferred approach to competency-based outcomes is to use backward design. I like to identify the learning outcomes first and then figure out how I will know whether those outcomes have been met successfully. What goes into competently achieving the objective? What "proof" will I look for to determine successful learning? Then I design assignments/assessments that will allow the student to demonstrate the learning/skills. Then going backward more, I figure out what instruction, activities, materials, etc. will support teaching the desired knowledge/skills, and so on. 

The rubric is a distillation of all of that into some discrete, well-defined criteria that should add up to a picture of what constitutes successful learning. And marking the rubric gives the student a clear evaluation of how well they met those learning objectives.

Thanks for inviting me to participate here. I'm very excited to try this tool because I think it will be very helpful to faculty, especially those who aren't familiar with rubrics. 🙂

Chocolate chip cookie dough or peanut butter cup. 

[betsys]

 I am excited to read of your experience and expertise. While I am a long time veteran of teaching online, my newest challenge is helping faculty create and delivery engaging learning experiences for science and science related courses. I have a faculty member developing an Environmental Science course that I would love to connect to you for ideas and support. 

[HeatherSaigo]

Hi Betsy!

Yes, I'd love to connect with other environmental science folks. It can be a challenge to teach science online, and I'm always looking for ideas and strategies that work to engage students. 🙂

Heather

[tdw]

Hi Heather, thanks for sharing!  UBD is a great way (the only way?) to really ensure competency.  I also love your focus on the student lens, why shouldn't they know what the standard is?

I look forward to hearing your feedback on the tool now that it's enabled in your account. You can turn it on in your course(s) whenever you're ready.

[betsys]

Hello to the group! My name is Betsy Stringam and I am a Professor and Director at New Mexico State University. I have been teaching Hospitality courses online for about 20 years. My newest challenge is helping to move a College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Science online. A lot of brilliant, hardworking scientists who are new to online teaching and learning.

Competency-based learning outcomes help keep me and my courses grounded. I love to try new things, and sometimes they don't align. So, competency-based outcomes help to keep me focused. 

Moose tracks for sure! 

[tdw]

Hi Betsy, so glad you're here! Very insightful about the healthy tension between wanting to experiment and play with instruction but still keeping the outcomes ultimately in mind, thanks for sharing.

I look forward to hearing your feedback on the tool now that it's enabled in your account. You can turn it on in your course(s) whenever you're ready.

[TrentMcMahon]

Hi y'all! My name is Trent McMahon and I am an instructional designer at Franklin University in Columbus, OH. We are a relatively small, mostly online university that utilizes blueprints in Canvas for all of our course design. Our design team does all the building and creating of our courses, and we have a requirement at Franklin that every assignment that is not a courseware assessment or quiz/test have a rubric, so we use rubrics A LOT and have specific standards and point allotments depending on degree type that I hope IgniteAI's rubric generation will be able to solve. We have already created a separate AI agent to help with rubrics so I am also tasked with seeing the differences and ways to utilize the Canvas native tool to our own. Looking forward to it 🙂

As a Columbus native for the last ten years now, I would be remiss if I didn't shout out Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams as the best around 🙂 Their Middle West Whiskey and Pecans flavor is EVERYTHING. 

[tdw]

Hi Trent,

I'd love to see your in-house agent in action, and I'm particularly excited to compare and contrast results.  I'm already a big fan of whiskey + pecan (or walnut) bitters, adding in ice cream definitely sounds like a win.

I look forward to hearing your feedback on the tool now that it's enabled in your account. You can turn it on in your course(s) whenever you're ready.

[TrentMcMahon]

Thanks! I had posted this in Yasi's initial post, but I am encountering some issues. See below.

Question: In our prod instance, where I see the AI Generated Rubrics feature as a course setting, we do not use Enhanced Rubrics, so the option to turn that feature on at the course level is not available. Are we still able to use the feature even without Enhanced Rubrics, or will it cause issues?

[HeatherSaigo]

Hi Trent,

I'm not an expert on this but I was not able to use AI Generated Rubrics without also turning on Enhanced Rubrics.

[TrentMcMahon]

Yeah, I suspect that's the case, the only place I am able to enable Enhanced Rubrics is at the root account, which would turn the feature on in all our courses. Obviously this is less than ideal during a pilot, and would likely cause panic for those who are used to seeing the traditional rubric layout. 

@tdw can AI Generated Rubrics be enabled in the test account? My institution has Enhanced Rubrics on in Test.

[tdw]

Hi Trent, I saw that comment earlier but couldn't reply, I'm asking our engineering team to take a look at it and should have an answer for you later today.  Thanks!

[HeatherSaigo]

I'd also like to know if it will work outside the production instance. That would be a great option for testing. For now, I'm hoping folks won't notice and get confused.

[ajrodenborn]

@tdw I am in a similar position to Heather. Could we get it in beta instead of prod?

[kapjones]

Mine was not there yesterday in Beta but is today.

[kapjones]

Hello everyone!  My name is Kim Jones and I am the Instructional Coordinator/Designer for the online program at Ouachita (wash-i-tah) Baptist University.  We are a small private university in Arkansas and yes it's a complicated name but a lovely school full of tradition.  I've been in this role since June 2024.  I have a BSE in Business Education and an M.Ed. in Instructional Technology.  We just made the transition to Canvas this year from Moodle - how's that for first year in my job?  We've had a busy but relatively smooth start this fall with Canvas both online and residentially.  I think our biggest issue with rubrics has been trying to get the rubric template to work correctly for us with our migration so it will be wonderful to see how generating rubrics using IgniteAI's rubric generator will make the process hopefully easier and less time consuming.  I love trying out new technology and figuring out all the possibilities.  

Ice cream is probably my favorite dessert - chocolate chip is always my favorite!  But if you haven't tried Ben and Jerry's Milk and Cookies - RUN and go get you some.  Worth every penny.

[AllisonMascagni]

My favorite thing to do is ask people how to say Ouachita, ha. I went to grade school in Louisiana, so I got familiar fast with all the parish names!

[kapjones]

Love it!  I lived in New Orleans for about 2 years (when the Saints actually won the Superbowl!) and man, I had to learn a lot about pronunciation - Geaux Saints! 😀

[tdw]

Hello Kim,

I'm a former moodler myself, although I beat you to Canvas by about a decade 😁. Please keep us updated on how/if the Rubric Generator is able to help you out.  And thanks for jumping into the world of Canvas with both feet, right from implementation into Early Adoper, wow!

I look forward to hearing your feedback on the tool now that it's enabled in your account. You can turn it on in your course(s) whenever you're ready.

[AllisonMascagni]

Hi, y'all!

I'm Ali (pronounced Allie) Mascagni (I'll just let you figure that one out 😉 ), and I'm our Instructional Design Coordinator at Pearl River Community College in south MS. I've been in an ID role at PRCC for 4 years now, having transitioned out of K12. I taught maths, sciences, various English levels, fine arts, coached, and served as our Multilingual Student Coordinator/point of contact. I did that for about 8 years or so. My background is a BS in Linguistics and English with a pseudo-minor in Environmental Science from Tulane University, a master's in teaching, and an EdS (30 hours above a master's/doctoral hours) in educational technology.

With my background in K12, I have a lot of experience with competency-based outcomes. We also use QM for course evaluations internally, so I get to really know what our state's outcomes are!

Favorite flavor of ice cream is Phish Food from Ben and Jerry's!! My dad would stock up on it when I came home from college.

[tdw]

Hey Ali,

I'm really curious to hear your feedback with the combo of K12, HE, and course evaluations.  It sounds like you really have the bonafides to put us through our paces.

I look forward to hearing your feedback on the tool now that it's enabled in your account. You can turn it on in your course(s) whenever you're ready.

[embleton]

Hi everyone.

I am Karla Embleton, and I work as an Instructional Support Specialist (i.e., Canvas help desk/trainer/tester/document writer/etc.) for Iowa State University's Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching.  I have been at ISU since 1998 and was the first trainer for our first commercial LMS program. I have 3 degrees in engineering and was drawn to this field originally by an interest in creating educational software. I find it fun and rewarding to puzzle out where problems exist, how to solve them, and devise ways to avoid them.  So, while I don't have formal training in "competency-based outcomes," I do see the value and impact!

Favorite ice cream = coffee with dark chocolate swirl/topping.

Karla

[ajrodenborn]

Hi everyone! I'm Amanda Rodenborn, Instructional Designer at Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) in Iowa, but I live in California. I transitioned from a faculty role about 6 years ago, so I have experience in competency-based outcomes from the instructor side and as a designer. We align all our courses to competencies. Many of our faculty use rubrics, but our college also uses them for districtwide and program assessments, so I'm excited to see what IgniteAI can do. 

I love pretty much any ice cream, but my favorite at the moment is called "Midnight Mallow" from my local Scoops on Tap shop. They describe it as, "Deeply toasted marshmallow and chocolate ice cream with chunks of fresh-baked fudge infused with a Stout." They have new flavors every month, and I'm not ashamed to say I go there nearly every weekend. 😄

[ldew]

Hi everyone!

My name is Lindsay Dew, and I am the Manager of Learning Tech Support here at Iowa State University. My role entails my fabulous team and supporting faculty in everything that is Canvas and integrations with Canvas. In addition, I oversee Canvas Administration. 

I have a strong amount of experience with competency-based outcomes from my previous position as a high school art teacher and adjunct instructor in both graphic design and education. My courses heavily focused on project-based learning with projects that were real-world applicable from not only a content perspective but also a transferable skill perspective. Assessments in both the high school and collegiate settings were all focused on rubrics with strong scaffold indicators. 

Ice cream flavors that pull in anything chocolate or peanut butter are always my faves, in addition to any flavors that are a bit eclectic. 

[nkhan3]

Hello everyone,

My name is Nadia Khan. I work at MiraCosta College, California as an instructional designer. I have also been teaching Linguistics and ESL courses for over 15 years.

As an educator and an instructional designer, I have been part of multiple outcomes based projects ranging from mapping courses to institutional outcomes to being part of Outcomes committees with a focus on rubric creation, calibration, and measurement of outcomes. A huge part of my job both as a teacher and an instructional designer is to create and develop course objectives and student learning outcomes.

I am excited to try out this new tool and learn from everyone in the community.

My favorite ice cream flavors are chocolate hazelnut and strawberry shortcake. 

Nadia

[JenniferRopa]

Hello! My name is Jennifer Ropa and I am an Instructional Designer with Samford University. I have found competency-based outcomes invaluable in my work. A key part of my work is aligning course content, assessments, and real-world applications. We develop detailed course maps for each course review we do to ensure that every activity and assessment is directly tied to a specific learning objective. We also develop rubrics (quite a few) so this tool is quite exciting to try!!!

My favorite flavor of ice cream is strawberry.

[lharris17]

Good morning! My name is Laura Harris; I am English and EMLS (English for Multilingual Students) faculty. I am a Peer Online Course Reviewer in Online Education, teaching face-to-face and online courses. I also serve on the Online Education Committee. My institution is Kern Community College District with three colleges in central California; I work at Bakersfield College. I strongly believe in competency-based outcomes, revising my transfer level English courses along with college success studies, speaking, listening, reading, and writing and even literature and advanced critical thinking courses to follow the CBO formats. I begin by teaching students neuroscience and how the brain learns; then teach them to become agents of their own learning by showing them how to become content-developers in their coursework. Their success is phenomenal when their learning and agency is demystified. Ice cream is my greatest weakness with multiple favorite flavors like Jamocha almond fudge, chocolate chip hot fudge sundae, mint chip, pralines and cream, salted carmel . . . . I am very excited about AI powered Rubric Generators; I got to try them at the Customer Discovery Session I was privileged to attend at InstructureCon25! I had a lot of feedback coming from the "boots-on-the-ground" background knowledge of community college student diversity and language learners. It will be wonderful to develop clear, outcomes-related/based, relevant rubrics my students can utilize to increase their comprehension of our assignments and successful execution. That is why we are all here after all! Nice to be with you!