How To Use Canvas For Teachers

Faculty member online

Kinesthesia member, Melissa Melby (Evan Krape / University of Delaware)

If you accept been asked to teach online or take been because the possibility, this post is a cursory review of several tools within the Canvas Learning Management Arrangement (LMS) that tin be used in designing and developing an interactive and engaging online course. Similar your face-to-face class, you still need to gear up goals and objectives for your class, define criteria enabling you lot to appraise when students take met these goals, and design learning activities and relevant assignments providing learning opportunities for students to main the content or develop the skills. Where an online form differs is discovering what the "online" environment provides in new instruction and learning opportunities. You will want to add to what you already know past using new tools and techniques especially suited to teaching online. Canvas has some tools to aid you with your pedagogy.

On a side note, if you are a current user of Sakai, information technology doesn't mean y'all cannot continue to use Sakai for your online teaching. We only accept a preference for a few tools that Canvas has included with the LMS that work really well when teaching online.

Speedgrader™

If you have not tried using the Speedgrader™ tool with Canvas, you are missing an opportunity to streamline your grading time. SpeedGrader™ allows yous to view and grade student assignment submissions in one place (most importantly, without downloading files in most cases) moving from one student to the next without a lot of boosted clicking. Canvas accepts a multifariousness of document formats, including URLs, media submissions, and Google Docs. Some document submissions (i.east. doctor, docx, pdf, ppt, pptx) can be marked upward for feedback straight within the submission using built-in note tools in your web browser of choice. Information technology is possible to grade assignments using rubrics that can be every bit unproblematic or circuitous equally you make them. You tin can also provide feedback to your students with text or media comments.

Embedded media elements

In an online surroundings, using media tin can assist to personalize your grade, making you more than than only text to a educatee, but a existent live person (audio or video). Canvass provides a ready tool, assuasive yous or your students to easily brand a quick audio or video file equally a submission, feedback, instructions and more. It is integrated with the Speedgrader tool allowing media comments. It is role of the editor allowing for media to be included in pages of content, discussions, announcements, instructions, quiz questions, and peer review.

Conferences

The conferences tool inside Sheet allows you as the instructor or your students to initiate a video conference. Conferencing can be used to come across with your students for role hours, to teach a particular lesson, to share a guest lecturer and more. Yous can have every bit few as two people in a briefing or upwardly to 50. Students can use them to work in groups. They tin can even be recorded, and are stored online for up to 2 weeks.

Modules

The Modules tool allows you lot to set up a framework or sequence of activities for your students to know how to progress throughout the course. There is flexibility in setting prerequisite tasks, linking to assignments, discussions, quizzes and your content pages. Sakai has a Lessons tool which serves a similar purpose, just nosotros believe the Modules tool has a clear edge in user-friendliness. You tin expect at the modules and have a sense of how the grade is organized. If indentations are used, it is like having an outline of what yous need to do in the course. One caveat, there is only one modules tool in Sail which can be gear up with any number of modules. In Sakai, you can accept i or more than Lessons pages, which some faculty really like.

Peer Review, Peer Evaluation

Hither at UD, y'all have a couple of options for Peer Review. In that location is a built in Peer Review tool enabled through the settings for any assignment. This tool allows for anonymous or non-anonymous peer reviews. Assignment rubrics can too be used by the peer reviewers along with the other Canvas commenting features. In that location is besides a Peer Evaluation tool which can be enabled inside Canvas. This tool was adult here on campus and is intended for bearding peer evaluation. Canvas rosters, groups (by category) and outcomes (by group) can be imported directly into the Peer Evaluation tool. For those users of Sakai, it is possible to utilise the Peer Evaluation tool as a stand-alone system.

Although there are other features within Canvas to aid enhance your didactics, nosotros have just picked a few of our favorites. Bank check out what Canvas has to offering, if you lot are thinking of didactics online. Retrieve teaching online is not the same as teaching face-to-face, but there are many rewards and satisfying experiences that tin happen online!

What has been most encouraging and rewarding to see as nosotros work with faculty teaching online is how kinesthesia are carrying over what they learn to their face-to-face courses besides. Working through the process of designing, developing and teaching an online course has helped them become proficient online teachers, and has enhanced their face up-to-face teaching too. Consider exploring what the online surround has to offer in your pedagogy!

We, in Academic Engineering Services, are always available to help. You tin can find u.s. at the Faculty Commons (116 Pearson Hall, 302-831-0640, ats-info@udel.edu).