Canvas can provide an effective means for Course Coordinators to communicate across multiple sections to help ensure a consistent instructor and student experience. What might Course Coordinators do with Canvas?
Organizing Course Materials with Pages and Sandbox Courses
- Use Pages within Modules: Pages help to organize content without cluttering the module on the homepage with multiple items. It also allows you to provide context on course materials instead of just including pdfs or links on a module. Structure weekly or thematic content into a page in Modules to guide student progression.
- Sandbox Courses: Sandbox courses are great spaces to experiment and create new modules or learning events without impacting current or previous courses. Sandbox courses are also great for keeping copies of credit courses, so they are readily available to distribute to instructors or TAs.
- Pro tip: Request a Sandbox course to experiment with content and features without impacting live courses.
Supporting Teaching Assistants and Adjuncts
- Unpublished Guide Pages: Create unpublished pages or modules visible only to instructors and TAs, containing weekly teaching guidance, answers to common questions, resources, or instructional notes. If there is a sequence of how you would like things delivered to students or back-up/extra in-class activities they can draw on, include these in an unpublished page only available to those with instructor or TA roles.
- Pro tip: Consider Short Videos within these pages to explain more complex information.
Efficient Course Management with Blueprint Courses
- Blueprint Courses: A Blueprint course can streamline content distribution and save lots of time. For example, if you have a course with 6+ sections, you only update the blueprint and the same content is distributed to all connected sections. This means you have the ability to update multiple courses from 1 course rather than adding resources to multiple sections manually. You are also able to lock certain items, meaning that instructors or TAs in each course do not have the ability to remove or unpublish certain items. Utilize Blueprint courses to maintain consistent course design, assignments, and settings across multiple course sections.
- Pro tip: Keep master versions of frequently used resources, files, and assignments in a dedicated unpublished module or sandbox course to easily copy and reuse.
Communication Best Practices with Canvas Announcements
- Announcements are a core communication strategy with students. Not only are students notified in Canvas, but they also receive an email notification with the announcement. These are a great way to maintain steady communication with students.
- Adding Videos to announcements help with creating community and are especially important in asynchronous online courses. Students often state that it helps them know that instructors are not just a profile picture! Short videos in announcements may summarize the prior week, connect prior instruction to newly covered content, or explain misconceptions that you are seeing in homework/discussion.
- Pro tip: Schedule weekly announcements ahead of time to remind students of upcoming deadlines, provide key information, or clarify common issues.
Assessments and Grading
- Rubrics and SpeedGrader: Rubrics provide a consistent grading experience to students and provide criteria for students to follow as they complete their work. Attach rubrics directly to assignments to facilitate quick, transparent, and consistent grading using Canvas’s SpeedGrader tool. Rubrics open up in SpeedGrader and allow instructors to click each box and automatically tally the score. This approach helps ensure a uniform assessment and grading of student work across all course sections.
- Attendance and Participation: Consider placing a higher value or weight on formative assessments in class for attendance and participation (15-25% of the course grade). These should be short activities such as think pair share, exit slips, polls, etc.
- Pro tip: Attendance and participation as a grade category offer a unique opportunity to put extra points on in-class activities. Consider upping the value if you are looking to increase attendance. By emphasizing activities, it places points on the actual learning rather simply earning points for showing up.
Enhancing Student Engagement
- Interactive polling is a great way to award points in class while also helping with student engagement. UWM students have said through extensive surveys that they appreciate being active and engaged in lectures with polling. This not only improves engagement but also builds classroom community. Integrate polling tools (e.g., Vevox), peer review assignments, and interactive discussions to boost student participation and engagement.
- Pro tip: Student view is a great way to see how your students will see your course. Regularly use Student View to ensure materials and assignments are accessible and function as intended.
Data and Insights
Canvas Analytics can help you identify how often students are accessing your materials. You can use the tool to tailor your messaging to students who may not be accessing the course as desired. Regularly review analytics and student engagement data to identify patterns, intervene proactively, and support student success.