by Jonathan Wade | Oct 26, 2021 | Blog, Canvas, O365, Student Engagement, Student Performance, Teaching and Learning, Teaching with Technology
Canvas New Features
October 2021
Canvas provides updates to the platform every month without disruption to service. Some of them are minor fixes and others provide additional features and functionality to users. As we reach the middle of the first full semester with Canvas we thought we’d highlight for you some of the most recent updates that may make your work in the online learning environment more efficient and effective.
New Feature Details
Navigation Menus will be “Sticky”
In the past, the left-hand navigation items would scroll with the page so that users would have to scroll back up to navigate. With this change, the navigation menu will “stick”, making the menu visible at all times without having to scroll.
SpeedGrader: Ability to Edit Submission Status
The SpeedGrader sidebar now includes an Edit icon that can be used to change submission status for assignments. Status can be edited the same way as was previously only available in the Gradebook. Adjusting a status in SpeedGrader, will, of course, also update the Gradebook.
Some details about Status
- Setting the status to missing will add a “missing” label. This additional signal could be used to help nudge students toward the completion of assignments.
- If a late policy is enabled, setting the status to late displays the “late” label. Additionally, a text field allows the grader to enter a value for the days/hours late.
- Setting the status to “excused” displays the Excused status, and the grade field displays as “EX” and is grayed-out, and will not be counted in the total for that assignment category. (The excused function will not work well if you are using total points and not using the assignment category weighting).
- Setting the status to “None” removes any labels that were previously displayed for the assignment.
Figure A: SpeedGrader Status Edit Menu Examples
The Edit Status icon is not displayed in the following assignment scenarios:
- Previously submitted submissions (only the most recent submission is supported)
- Concluded user enrollments
- Inactive student enrollments
- Assignments that require moderated grading
- Assignments in a closed grading period
Gradebook: Assignment Search
Another updated feature is the addition of a search field in the Gradebook that can search for assignment names. This gives instructors another way to sort and control their workflow. This allows for a search of student names as well in a separate search box.
Improved Navigation for Course Notification Customization
Canvas allows users to customize their notification preferences for their entire account and to create special notifications for specific courses. For example, an instructor might choose to create a more frequent notification schedule for a fully online course than for a course that is only offered face-to-face. In the past, making granular course level changes took going deeper into the course settings. Now course notification preferences can be customized on the main notifications page using a drop-down menu.
Please note: Students are also able to set their own notifications per course. If you are using notifications to students as a strategy for engaging them, make sure to specify how they should set their notifications for your course so they are not missing out on communication from you.
Figure B: Notifications Page screenshot
User Settings: Microsoft Immersive Reader Additional Feature Areas
To help engage students at all levels of learning and with all learning differences, we have long advised the use of the accessibility checker in the Canvas page editor. Our Microsoft 365 account and the Canvas integration now enable a new tool that allows any user to use the Microsoft Immersive Reader to use the Microsoft AI to give students more options for accessible use of content. Students will have this option visible on their screens so they can use it when they need to.
Figure C: New Immersive Reader Button
If you really want to stay up-to-date with Canvas’ new features, become an insider by subscribing to Canvas Releases in the Canvas Community.
Or Feel Free to Watch the Highlight Videos for Each of These Updates
Release Screencast: 2021-10-16 Navigation (Sticky Navigation Menu)
Release Screencast: 2021-10-16 SpeedGrader (Submission Status Label Edits)
Release Screencast: 2021-10-16 Gradebook (Assignment Search)
Release Screencast: 2021-10-16 Notifications (Course Customization)
Release Screencast: 2021-10-16 User Settings (Microsoft Immersive Reader Additional Feature Areas)
by Jonathan Wade | Oct 18, 2021 | Blog, Canvas, Panopto
Digital Storage for Teaching and Learning at WCU
What you need to know:
- As an instructor, your ‘teaching’ Canvas courses have 1 GB of cloud storage.
- Canvas storage should be considered temporary and not for long-term curation or archiving.
- Live Canvas courses (the teaching shells with students) will be maintained for two whole academic years before deletion.
- Do not upload video and audio files directly into Canvas. The Panopto video authoring, storage, and streaming system are integrated into Canvas. You have unlimited video and audio storage in Panopto.
- Canvas development shells are not meant for student interaction but are designed to be the “sandbox” for faculty. Your Canvas development shells will remain active as long as you are an employee of Western Carolina.
- Departments and Programs can request access to a non-credit course area in Canvas where specialized master courses, template courses, and student-centers/non-credit courses will be kept.
We created the following chart to help you navigate all of your storage options.
Alternative Version for Screen Readers
Digital Storage for Faculty 2021
Image from https://www.recordnations.com/2015/08/what-to-post-in-cloud-storage/
by Eli Collins-Brown | Aug 19, 2021 | Canvas, Educational Development, Educational Technology
WCU does not have a tool that will translate Word documents into Canvas Quizzes, and we do not have the resources to create or manually transcribe any assessments for instructors.
We recommend and fully support instructors authoring their tests/quizzes/exams inside of Canvas. Canvas questions are edited through the rich content editor, which allows for cut and paste actions from Word documents and other word processing files on a question-by-question basis. Below are links to several resources for creating questions in Canvas.
If an instructor would like assistance in creating an assessment, from a pedagogical perspective, they can make an appointment with one of the faculty partners at the CFC for a consultation. (https://affiliate.wcu.edu/cfc/consultations/)
Quiz Question Creation Guides
- Create a Multiple-Choice Question – Link
- Create a True/False Question – Link
- Create a Fill-in-the-Blank Question – Link
- Create a Fill-in-Multiple-Blanks Question – Link
- Create a Multiple Answers Question – Link
- Create a Multiple Drop-down Question – Link
- Create a Matching Question – Link
- Create a Numerical Answer Question – Link
- Create a Formula (Simple Formula) Question – Link
- Create a Formula (Single Variable) Question – Link
- Create an Essay Question – Link
- Create a File Upload Question – Link
Deeper Dives
Collected Resources
by Eli Collins-Brown | May 3, 2021 | Blog, Canvas, Student Engagement
Canvas offers instructors some incredibly powerful tools to view course analytics, individual student analytics and quiz statistics.
The wealth of information provides instructors with a comprehensive view of student engagement as well as insight into areas for improvement and redesign.
Course Analytics using New Analytics
Learning how to use Course Analytics in Canvas is essential to those Instructors primarily using Canvas to teach online. The information provided in New Analytics will guide instructors to better understand overall participation and engagement from their students. With New Anayltics, Canvas also offers the ability to recognize positive and negative trends to make improvements and adjustments to course quality; easily identifying those students who are struggling, problematic items or areas in your course that may need adjustment.
New Analytics provides:
- Student Analytics using New Analytics
In Canvas the analytics shown for each student can give instructors valuable insight about engagement, activity, and performance. Canvas’ ability to view individual student analytics allows instructors to disemminate
Quiz Statistics
Another feature provided to instrucors using quizzing in Canvas are quiz statistics. The feature is available to instructors when a quiz has been published and at least one submission has been recieved for the quiz. The quiz summary will show all score percentages as well as the quiz average score, high score, low score, standard deviation (how far the values are spread across the entire score range), and average time of quiz completion. Instructors can view and download a CSV file to view a Student Analysis or Item Analysis for each question in the quiz.
Available info from Quiz Statistics:
- Student/Item Analysis – Instructors caDownload CSV files to view Student Analysis or Item Analysis for each quiz question to count all student attempts in the statistics.
- Quiz Item Analysis – Item analysis may not generate results within specific quizzes. For more detailed information about item analysis limitations and calculations please refer to the Quiz Item Analysis PDF for detailed information about Reliability, Difficulty, and Item Discrimination Index.
- Question Summary – Instructors can view an entire quiz summary that shows all score percentages. The quiz summary also shows the quiz average score, high score, low score, standard deviation (how far the values are spread across the entire score range), and average time of quiz completion.
- Question Summary Chart – The quiz summary chart is interactive; users can focus on a specific segment of the chart by selecting a range with their cursor, such as viewing the number of students who scored between 0 and 50 percent. Scroll down the page to see data for each question in the quiz.
- Question Breakdown – Quiz question shows the total percentage of students who answered the quiz question correctly. Each question includes a breakdown with each question answer choice.
To access Quiz Statistics, Click the “Quizzes” link in your Course Navigation menu, then click the title of the quiz you would like to open. On the right sidebar click “Quiz Statistics”.
Listen to how Dr. Viji Sathy and Dr. Kelly Hogan, instructors at UNC – Chapel Hill are using the insight provided by their LMS to redesign courses for inclusion, encouraging student success while reducing achievement gaps. We hope this inspires you to explore the possibilities with our LMS by using New Analytics in Canvas when redesigning your course while applying Universal Design for Learning and inclusion best practices for all student success.
by Eli Collins-Brown | Apr 26, 2021 | Blog, Canvas
Instructors at WCU will be teaching in Canvas beginning in summer 2021 and beyond.
WCU faculty will be teaching in Canvas beginning in summer 2021 and beyond. One of the major differences between Blackboard and Canvas, as far as courses go, is a feature in Canvas called Publishing.
Faculty will need to publish their course in order for students to access the content, and it’s a simple as clicking a button in their course. This is equivalent to making the course Available in Blackboard. When you look at your Canvas Dashboard, if the course tile has a button in the upper left corner that says Publish, then is not available to your students. Click on that button and you’ll be prompted to set a Home Page – the place your students will see first when they enter the course (equivalent to Blackboard Entry Point). Click on Choose and Publish and your students will be able to see your course. How do I publish a course?
Each item within your course will need to be Published as well. If there is circle with slash through it in the upper right corner of an item, it isn’t visible to your students. A green circle with a check means the item is available (visible to students). You can click on the button to toggle between Published and Unpublished (useful if you find discover you need to make an edit). How do I publish a module?
The course menu (all items, top to bottom, in the left navigation menu) should only show a few links/options. This improves student navigation and what is often called ”findability.” Course resources can be Disabled (the Blackboard equivalent of made unavailable to students) in the Navigation tab under Settings. You can drag them to the bottom window on the Navigation tab or click on the three-dot menu and select Disable. Disabled items will be designated by the eye with a slash through it.
It is a best practice to be as consistent as possible in the layout of your modules. That way, as your students move through your course they know where to expect to find resources, assignments, and other activities. In fact, according to one study about online students, “findability is paramount – if they cannot find important course components, they cannot ‘use’ them; having to search for assignment instructions or a course introduction may likely result in frustration, lowered motivation, and decreased self-efficacy — all of which could impact both student learning and course attrition” (Simunich, Robins, & Kelly 2015). Take a look at the SUNY OSCQR rubric where it addresses usability in Standard 13.
Accessibility
Canvas Accessibility Standards
When you are in a Canvas course you will see the spectacles button in the upper right corner. Clicking on it will take you to a student’s view of your course. It is highly recommended that you check your course in the student view to make sure that the course is being presented in the way you intended. How do I view a course as a student?
Review the article “The Impact of Findability on Student Motivation, Self-Efficacy, and Perceptions of Online Course Quality” for more information about course readiness on day one.
by Eli Collins-Brown | Apr 21, 2021 | Blog, Canvas, Teaching and Learning
One of the reasons that WCU chose Canvas was for the shift in student engagement and consumption of media using mobile devices. The best way to design your courses is, of course, using your computer, but your students will appreciate efforts to make the course more engaging, immediate, and easy to access.
Canvas has two apps for smart devices, the Canvas Student App, and the Canvas Teacher App. As an instructor, you will use the teacher app most of the time. It will allow you to do many of the things that you can do in the full web-browser but will be more accessible. Pilot faculty report that using the Speed-grader function on their tablets is especially convenient. With the Teacher app you can keep track of the progress of your course and interact with students.
Most instructors will also want to download the Canvas Student App if only for the fact that when the Teacher app is accessing a common element with both Apps, it will open the student app to give the most accurate representation of the student’s view.
At WCU, the Panopto video storage and streaming platform is also integrated into Canvas and for full video functionality both you and your students should download the Panopto app. In the same manner downloading, installing, and logging into your Microsoft Outlook App, the Microsoft Teams App, and the Microsoft OneDrive App will add even more functionality to both of your Canvas Apps.
Canvas SpeedGrader on IPad or Tablet
App Capabilities and Limitations
With the Canvas Teacher App, You Can:
-
- View Your Course Materials
- Email Students
- Email Photos and Audio Clips to Your Students from Your Phone
- Do basic grading of Assignments, Quizzes, Tests and Discussions
- Add simple text pages to existing Canvas modules
- Create spontaneous non-graded group discussions
Your students can use the App to:
-
- Send and reply to course messages
- Record and submit short audio and video clips to discussions and assignments
- Attach files to discussions and assignments from devices and from OneDrive (if installed)
- Take quizzes (low stakes – will not work with Respondus Lockdown or Monitor)
Meeting students where they live often encourages deeper engagement with subject matter.
In Canvas you can encourage the use of mobile apps to help the students:
- Remain engaged with your course and activities
- Get reminders of due dates and upcoming meetings
- Access course material in a variety of environments
- Remain more organized and use their time and resources wisely
While the basic Canvas layout and the full use of Canvas tools like the calendar, the syllabus tool, and modules will help make your Canvas course more mobile friendly, there are ways to improve it more. A travel or experiential learning class, for example, might want to adjust all the online material in such a way that it could all be accomplished on cell phones.
Canvas has a special guide for optimizing courses for mobile work.
We also urge faculty to use caution when using the app to build courses. It is best to start on a full computer browser. The app does not allow you to create quizzes or exams, to add graded discussions, to create a module or group, or to create or modify a rubric
DOWNLOAD APPS
| Download and Install the Canvas Teacher App on Your Phone and/or Tablet – iPhone/iPad, Android |
| Download and Install the Canvas Student App on Your Phone and/or Tablet – iPhone/iPad, Android |
| Download and Install the Newest Panopto App on Your Phone and/or Tablet – iPhone/iPad, Android |
| Download and Install the Newest MS Outlook App on Your Phone and/or Tablet – iPhone/iPad, Android |
| Download and Install the Newest Microsoft Teams App on Your Phone and/or Tablet – iPhone/iPad, Android |
Encourage your students to download the Student App, the Panopto App, the Zoom and/or MS Teams App, and the OneDrive app for full functionality.
There are Additional Training Courses About Mobile Apps available in the Canvas Training Services Portal which is available under the help tab in the WCU Canvas environment.
Banerjee, Robert. The Effect of Mobile Apps on Academic Success. (2019, March 7). EdTech Digest. https://www.edtechdigest.com/2019/03/07/the-effect-of-mobile-apps-on-academic-success/
