Expand support for student-driven learning in Canvas

[AllisonHowell]

Theme Overview

Instructors want additional controls to encourage student-led, self-paced learning in their courses.

What value could this provide to users?

• Rubrics are more accessible for students and students can act as their own peer reviewer
• Instructors have more control over how a student progresses through a course (e.g. the To Do List can be disabled to encourage students to follow the appropriate path)
• Instructors are able to create student pathways via module requirements based on student choice and other differentiating factors
• Students have additional tools that encourage progression and course completion (e.g. a checklist for staying organized)
•  

Why was this theme chosen to open for voting?

October 2023 • Providing additional opportunities for student-driven learning in Canvas will empower individuals to take ownership of their education, fostering intrinsic motivation, critical thinking skills, and a lifelong love for learning.

[ProductPanda]

October 16 - November 15, 2023

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[paulamiranda]

The idea, Extending Course Access, is of interest to me and our support team, as we regularly get these requests for students who have incompletes that they need to finish. The workaround (of creating sections) is clunky (as an example, here is our help article showing the various steps), prone to variables and errors, and creates an administrative burden for faculty.

[mackinnonka]

This theme is particularly important to support the success of our diverse student body. Simplifying the process of customizing learning paths, and creating opportunities for more student control, is very much in keeping with Universal Design for Learning, which maximizes outcomes for students with diverse abilities and motivations. This theme is particularly supportive of the 10-12% of students at my school who identify as having learning differences, but it also has the potential to better connect with and improve outcomes for historically marginalized students through more flexibility in pacing to accommodate their complex lives, and through increasing culturally responsive teaching options.

[mackinnonka]

This theme is particularly important to support the success of our diverse student body. Simplifying the process of customizing learning paths, and creating opportunities for more student control, is very much in keeping with Universal Design for Learning, which maximizes outcomes for students with diverse abilities and motivations. This theme is particularly supportive of the 10-12% of students at my school who identify as having learning differences, but it also has the potential to better connect with and improve outcomes for historically marginalized students through more flexibility in pacing to accommodate their complex lives, and through increasing culturally responsive teaching options.

[dhuston]

Please make the To-Do list that automatically appears on the right side of Canvas courses an optional tool that teachers can turn off. Students often simply go to that list of assignments and completely disregard essentail material postted in the modules. It doesn't matter how many times you tell them not to do that. In an asynchronous course, you can't "tell" them not to do that. All you can do is write it in the announcements and modules that many students ignore. It is infuriating, honestly, because it results in students doing their assignments incorrectly, emailing with questions that were answered in the modules weeks too late. Consequently, students perform poorly, and teachers work harder, teaching the material over and over and over again. Please, please, please, make that list optional ASAP.

[kimmelbe]

Currently many of our 6-12 students are choosing to have the To Do List view on their dashboard and they then missing the majority of their course information.  We can suggest for students to make this change but unless we can turn it off, there is no way to ensure this will happen. 

Instructors have more control over how a student progresses through a course (e.g. the To Do List can be disabled to encourage students to follow the appropriate path)

[JamesSekcienski]

This theme has a lot of great ideas and potential value.  Can you share any more specific information about what aspect of this theme will be focused on if this theme is prioritized?  When ideas were this broad in the first round of voting, they ended up being significantly narrowed in scope for what would be developed.

[bordent]

This theme does appear to be quite broad. For my asynchronous language classes, I see three things that would be very valuable for students (and for me as the instructor as well):

More accessible rubrics. I have designed my discussions with a graphic image and explanation at the bottom (very labor intensive to get into place with 30+ discussions in each class) but it would be so helpful and more intuitive for students to be able to simply click a 'Rubric' button.

The ability as an instructor to turn off the To-Do list for a course. I do think these reminders can be helpful for students but I would love to be able to turn them off, at least for a few weeks at the beginning, to get them used to going through each module to access other content besides assignments. They could still utilize the Calendar tool to see what is due when.

Availability of additional tools to encourage progression and course completion. I think the idea of having the ability to create checklists for students would be amazing. By that I mean checklists where students can actually click on items to produce a check-mark or other completion visual symbol. I currently have created 'checklists' in my Module Overviews to assist students in getting/staying organized each week but they cannot interact with them in any way.

[fisher1]

Please make the "To-Do List" an option admins to disable/enable site-wide or give teachers the option. Teachers feel like they are wasting their time building out modules when students jump right to the To-Do list. The same can be said for the Calendar as well.

[AllisonHowell]

Thank you all for your comments! I'm going to be reaching out for some further discussion, especially around this To Do List pain point. Really appreciate your participation! 

[Morgane]

Ce thème m’intéresse particulièrement. Rendre les apprenants plus actif dans leur parcours, avec le sentiment de gérer leur évolution sera très apprécié par les principaux concernés. J’espère que ces options seront mises en place.

[LMacaulay]

Instructors are able to create student pathways via module requirements based on student choice and other differentiating factors.

• Yes, please! Mastery Paths may approximate this, but we often want students to choose a path based on other things besides a quiz score and making a quiz that allows them to select their preference makes someone's response "incorrect" and that is not motivating...as if they picked the "wrong" path...So, having functionality built in that allowed choice would be awesome.
• Related to this, the module requirements are missing an option. Currently you can choose "complete one" or "complete all" and then include which items in the module are considered "All".  I would prefer that an option is added so we have "complete one", "complete x", and "complete all" (where all actually means ALL so we don't have to sit there and add EVERY item to the list for the setting to work!) This way we could allow students to have choice in what they complete.

Students have additional tools that encourage progression and course completion (e.g. a checklist for staying organized)

• This was mentioned in another one of the themes open for voting also. I know other LMS (D2L) have this feature and it would be a nice option to support student progress through a module. Adding the requirements they can mark as done is ok, but a checklist would be better.  Also, many instructors design a list in the intro to a module anyway, so why not make it interactive so they student can use it to keep track of their progress if they WANT to?