Creating a Departmental Sandbox
A departmental sandbox course allows you to centralize resources in Canvas, which is where most instructors work with their courses. These sites are currently in use across many UWM departments and allow departments to onboard adjuncts, TAs, and new faculty in a quick and efficient way.
What can go in a departmental sandbox course?
Once you have requested a Canvas sandbox specifically for departmental use, you are now ready to centralize resources without affecting active courses. Materials you may want to include in the sandbox:
- Meeting Agendas and Minutes: Organize agendas, minutes, and meeting recordings into clearly labeled Modules.
- Sample Assignments and Quizzes: Provide exemplary or template assignments, quizzes, and rubrics for departmental consistency and faculty inspiration.
- Faculty Onboarding Module: Create a comprehensive module containing teaching resources, best practices, policy documents, and relevant departmental guidelines.
- Shared Templates: Include standardized syllabi, grading rubrics, and assignment templates to ensure consistency across courses within the department.
- Faculty Development Resources: Share targeted professional development resources, such as Canvas tutorials, pedagogical guides, and technology integration tips.
- Assessment and Evaluation: Provide centralized access to assessment criteria, program evaluations, and accreditation documentation.
Department-Specific Canvas Site for Students
Department-specific Canvas course sites (such as this demo site created by CASL) are great ways to keep program major and minor students informed about department news and information. Enrolling students in a department into a Canvas course site brings the department to where students spend most of their time digitally – in Canvas. By enrolling students into the site, departments are able to communicate information directly to students via Canvas announcements as well as share information like major requirements, department or disciplinary news, job or internship opportunities, student club activities and much more. Further, departments can share university resources for students here, enhancing awareness and reinforcing the usage of services like the writing and tutoring centers or the library. Request a course from CASL and get started!
Using Canvas Outcomes
Multiple departments currently use Canvas Outcomes for program assessment and for accreditation or professional licensure reporting. By using Canvas outcomes at the account (program) level, you can easily run a report that tallies all outcome scores into one unified report, streamlining information with less aggregation of reports across courses.
What is needed to use Canvas Outcomes?
To use Canvas Outcomes as a program, program learning outcomes must be clearly defined and written in a way they can be mapped to courses.
- Aligning Learning Outcomes: Clearly define and upload departmental learning outcomes into Canvas to ensure consistent tracking across courses.
- Tracking Student Performance: Link outcomes to assignments and quizzes to easily measure student achievement against established standards.
- Outcome Reports: Generate outcome reports to evaluate student learning, inform departmental assessments, and support accreditation processes.