It’s been a busy few months and with the end of the year as well as VELG approaching fast, we’re going to celebrate the recent product victories for the sector as well as reimagine what student engagement can look like for ongoing business success.

Vocational Education Training providers and their students are in for a good year. Why? Global education is trending towards the learning models we are accustomed to. Product enhancements and workflows are being delivered with these educators in mind. There are a lot of opportunities to grow and be the education provider you’ve always envisaged.

This month, we will be talking all things content management within Canvas. We all know that package changes, course updates and versioning control can equate to a stressful time for any provider. We’re going to break down some myths as well as give you the knowledge to confidently control your next update.

Following on from our September Usergroup, we're going to explore ways your trainers and assessors can use Canvas to provide engaging feedback.

It’s good to be back. Following on from our most attended/watched user group EVER, the VE&T team is returning in both September and October for a two-part session focusing on Assessments.

In this User Group, Julian Ridden takes a seat to talk about having a Student Centric approach to Vocational Ed in Canvas. he will be leveraging of his recent work his team created in response to COVID19 pressures on education.

Welcome to 2021! This month we sit down with Kerri Buttery (VETNexus, partner) and discuss all things Assessment in Canvas.

Welcome to our final User group catch-up for 2020!

We're back (and we're organised).
Damian and his incredible wit will be on deck to chair our September installment of the VET user group. We're looking forward to having you involved.

Agenda

• What constitutes a commencement date for a student?
• How can we allocate specific checkpoints within a Canvas to assist with reporting for bodies such as ASQA and State Government?
• Onboarding Canvas tips - Words of wisdom from people who’ve walked the path before or starting a new journey.

Advocates

Meeting Notes

[1:05] - What constitutes a commencement date for a student?
[3:16] - The definition of “commencement date” maybe different based on your funding requirements. Does this information need to be housed in Canvas or should it be housed in your CMS/SIS?
[4:34] - Damien recently discovered that ZOOM keeps meeting attendance. Here is the procedure for accessing Zoom meeting attendees, which is very helpful if you need to have a record of students who attended. If you are using Zoom Webinars, then the procedure is very different.

• Sign in to your Zoom account from the Zoom web app.
• Select ‘Account Management’ > select ‘Reports > select ‘Active Hosts’.
• Set the date of session to generate the report.
• Identify the session for which you want to generate the report and click on the hyperlinked number of attendees.
• Customise your report and download.

[5:30] - NSW business require commencement dates for funding. Suggested the use of New Analytics to demonstrate that the user has logged in and shows activity (note: if you are using SCORM within canvas this will be difficult to capture as they are interacting with the package and not Canvas). The New Analytics reports feature (September 2020 release) has a report called ‘Course Activity’ and this contains a field ‘first viewed date’ which may be helpful (https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Releases/Canvas-Release-Notes-2020-09-19/ta-p/392588#toc-hId-6757...). Remember, you can also use the Access report for individual users available for account admins (https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-view-the-course-access-report-for-an-in...)
[12:40] - Discussion on using Quizzes to determine a commencement date and the type of questions that can be asked.

[15:25] - How can we allocate specific checkpoints within a Canvas to assist with reporting for bodies such as ASQA and State Government?
[18:45] - If you use module requirements in your courses, you can possibly leverage off this customer developed report which illustrates student progress (https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Higher-Ed-Users/Automated-progress-report-of-students-in-modules/...)
[20:45] Question: does it need to be a linear pathway (eg this, then this) or can it be achieved once all the elements are completed (in whatever order). Thanks. Answer: No - it doesn't require a sequence. (https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-use-MasteryPaths-in-course-modules/ta-p...)
[21:20] Question: Perhaps using the Mastery Path as an alternative? Answer: Look at Mastery Paths here: (https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-use-MasteryPaths-in-course-modules/ta-p...)

[26:20] Onboarding Canvas tips - Words of wisdom from people who’ve walked the path before or starting a new journey.
[28:30] - Onboarding staff (assessors, trainers, contractors, admins).

• Using Growing with Canvas/ Be The Hero (admin) or customising/designing your own bespoke variant. Bookmark this page as it’s your one stop shop for all internal training courses: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Training/tkb-p/Training
• If you’ve pulled down courses from commons, you’ll be able to get updated versions when they are available. You can read more about “Updates” here: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Commons/How-do-I-view-updates-to-resources-I-previously-imported-...
• Onboarding sessions with staff
• Pro Tip: Place your Fundamental recordings into these courses as resources for users.

[36:05] - Onboarding Students

• Using Passport to Canvas or customising/designing your own bespoke variant. Bookmark this page as it’s your one stop shop for all internal training courses: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Training/tkb-p/Training

[40:20] - Grace explains their process for onboarding users combining the use of a tailored course and face to face training.
[41:20] - Customising the help menu (for each user level: Teacher/Student) and how do people reach out for help? https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Admin-Guide/How-do-I-customize-the-Canvas-Help-Menu-for-an-accoun...
[42:30] - What are all the things that you need to teach students when onboarding them to Canvas?
[45:39] - What are the minimum requirements to run Canvas on any device? https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Basics-Guide/What-are-the-browser-and-computer-requirement.... https://whatismybrowser.com is a great way to get users to figure out what version is on their computer
[46:07] - Do people have experience of organisations/schools/departments that won’t use Canvas (similar to zoom restrictions)? Whitelisting is very important in some of these cases. You’ll find all the domains that need to be whitelisted to use Canvas here: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Releases/Canvas-Domain-Email-and-Server-Management/ta-p/254465
[51:50] - New feature as part of the October Release notes which we believe will help increase evidence towards competency. Ruth then demos this feature.

• Student Enhancements User Group - https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/New-Student-Enhancements-Users/gh-p/student_enhancements
• Supporting article - https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/The-Canvas-tl-dr/Update-assignments-navigation-for-students/ba-p/...

Recording

Register:

Looking to register for our November 2020 User Group? This will be our final show for the year so bring your bon bons. Click Here to register

It's time for the latest installment of the VET User group. Happening this Thursday (11:00 am AEST), Damian Noud (MrWed) will be chairing with the assistance of Canvas Customer Success team members Ruth Thornton @rthornton  and Adam Ware @adamwarecs .