OBTP Commons Initiative

In partnership with the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), several UWM instructors submitted teaching artifacts from their fully online courses to share through the Canvas Commons. The goal of this partnership was to provide examples for CETL to use in the Online and Blended Teaching Program (OBTP) that would inspire UWM instructors teaching online courses to engage and support their students in new and effective ways.

OBTP Commons Artifacts

Feel free to peruse the accepted OBTP Commons Artifacts for examples that might inform your own online teaching! A teaching artifact is any specific content related to teaching a course and may include: an entire Canvas course site, a module, or more specific teaching materials, such as assignments, quizzes, discussions, pages, documents, or videos. The artifacts submitted as part of this initiative come from a wide range of disciplines and pedagogical approaches.

You can access the OBTP Commons Artifacts in three easy steps:

  1. Log into Canvas
  2. Click on Commons in the Canvas global navigation menu
  3. Type “UWM OBTP” in the search bar (see below)

Image of the Canvas Commons with UWM OBTP highlighted in the search box

Funding for this initiative was provided by the UW System’s Office of Academic Programs & Educational Innovation.

About Canvas Commons

Canvas Commons is a feature built into Canvas that allows instructors to explore, adopt, and modify teaching materials that have been shared by other Canvas instructors at UWM and beyond.

The following course items can be shared through the Canvas Commons:

  • Courses
  • Modules
  • Assignments
  • Quizzes
  • Discussions
  • Pages
  • Documents
  • Videos

Instructors who find useable teaching artifacts in the Canvas Commons can copy them directly into their specific courses and then adapt them to meet their pedagogical purposes. The Canvas Commons provides access for new and experienced online instructors to find examples of teaching artifacts and to contribute to an ongoing learning object repository. Any instructor—not just those as part of the OBTP Commons Initiative—can submit their materials to the Canvas Commons. Feel free to do so!