Monitor Online Attendance in Canvas
You’ve created a great online class. Your students have started the semester eagerly digging in to your course content and submitting assignments. Everything is going great, but is it really? Are you students really engage? Are they all even logging in to Canvas? With online instruction it can be challenging to gauge how engaged students are in your online course on a daily basis, especially if you only require assignments every few weeks. What are students doing in between those big assignments? Are they reading? Are they watching your videos? Are they discussion a course topic? Do they have smaller assessments to help keep them engaged weekly in your course? All of these additions would make a good online course and make it easy for you see how your students are doing on a weekly basis.
If you design an online course that requires some of these elements, you will be able to check online attendance in Canvas using the New Analytics tool. What exactly does online attendance track? It tracks posts to an announcement or discussion, assignment submissions, conferences using Big Blue Button, page creation, and quiz submissions. Previously the feature only tracked student log ins, but that didn’t really tell us anything. Students log in all the time, look at their failing grade, get discourage and leave again. That would previous count as attendance. But now they’ve turn on the criteria listed above, so it gives us a better picture of who’s doing what in the course.
Here’s a quick video showing you how to set up New Analytics in your Canvas courses and view online attendance.
An added note about assignments: Does the criteria Assignments: Student submits an assignment include assignments that use ‘external tool submission type’?
It depends. If the external tool is using the Canvas API endpoint for submission, it will count toward that criteria. For many tools that use assignment-level integration, this will be the case.
However, if you are using a third-party tool that only passes average grades back to Canvas, those assignment submissions will likely not be included in the Online Attendance Criteria.
Have Students Engage with Guests in the Classroom via Video Discussions
Most of us are missing the normal student engagement we used to have in the classroom. Even I, who taught mostly online except for two hybrid courses, am missing those one day a week meetups in the classroom. What I miss most is seeing and hearing the enthusiasm and excitement about a topic or discussion from my students. You can’t really see or hear that in a regular asynchronous discussion. But you can bring a little of that back with a video discussion tool like FlipGrid. I’ve written about FlipGrid in the past, but today I want to share how I use it to bring guest speakers into the classroom as a way to have students engage with professionals in the field.
Luckily for me, I work in a wonderful district full of people passionate about teaching and helping students. One such person is the talented Sam Fraulino who works at PVCC as a Senior Software Developer. He works in the Center for Teaching & Learning helping faculty with their online courses, but his talents go far beyond that. Last semester I invited Sam to be a guest speaker in my JRN203 Writing for Online Media class. I thought he would have a lot to share with my students who are predominately Digital Media Arts students, and many are aspiring artists and very talented. We have a module on Citizen/Participatory Journalism where students learn how to capitalize on social media for their own benefits whether it be self-promotion or news dissemination. And Sam is a great example of someone who does that with his own artwork on Instagram.
After the pandemic hit and this hybrid course moved fully online, I didn’t want for students to miss out on this experience, so I invited Sam to visit the class virtually. But instead of making it a live webinar, I had Sam record a short video showing students his art studio and talking about his job, art, and experience using social media. Students were then asked to compose questions for Sam about his presentation and ask them in the discussion. To make all this flow, I used FlipGrid so both sides could see and hear each other. I hadn’t actually planned for Sam to respond to individual posts/questions, but he volunteered and it worked out better than expected.
Students were truly appreciative of his time and excited to engage with him online. And Sam had similar sentiments. He said,
All of them were so well-spoken, confident and so appreciative of my time; that was very nice and this was a very cool experience.
Sam Fraulino
Here’s a quick video showing how I set this up and how it works in Canvas and FlipGrid.
Is There Value in Having Students Do Collaborative Group Projects?
Collaborative group projects in online and hybrid classes – Is there value in having students do them?
I go back and forth with whether I should dump it or keep it. Students hate it, but I think there is value, and it’s a lesson students need to experience. Things don’t always go the way they should, and students can learn a lot from having to deal with this adversity.
I’ve been using a group project in my ENG102 hybrid course for about two years now, and I think it teaches students a lot about collaborating, working in a team, and sharing in the learning process with others. In the video below, I’ll share my process with you, as well as a few tools in Canvas that you may or may not be familiar with: Collaborations, Groups, Perusall and NoodleTools.
Purpose: The purpose of the project is to teach students the process of writing an argumentative research paper. In groups of four the work through the whole process in four weeks. The only thing they don’t do is the actual research. I provide that for them. Let’s take a look, and I’ll show the tools as they are integrated into the process.
Defending Modules in Online and Hybrid Courses
I just recently returned from a conference and was intrigued to find that a presenter didn’t particularly like the idea of using modules in his hybrid course. In fact, he said that “all that extra junk” was confusing to students. I was assuming all the “extra junk” was referring to some of the standards Quality Matters suggests we add to our course in order to have quality. I often find that many online courses don’t bother to list course objectives or link them to the learning, something many students couldn’t care less about. But even if there is just one student who wants to know why they are doing a particular assignment, we should make the effort to tie it all together for him/her.
Basically this instructor had a problem with the modules option in Canvas and avoided setting up a modules page in lieu of a front page with links to weekly pages. In the weekly pages, which could be considered mini modules, he posted everything the students would do for that week. I failed to see how that was better than using the modules. In fact, you can create the same effect in modules.
The whole concept behind using modules is it benefits students; first by providing consistency. “By incorporating the same types of components in each course module, students quickly pick up on the course’s rhythms and patterns and have a better idea of what to expect than if the course were designed using a varying structure,” says Rob Kelly in his article in Faculty Focus titled “A Modular Course Design Benefits Online Instructor and Students.” He goes on to quote Andrea Henne, dean of online and distributed learning in the San Diego Community College District, who said, “Often online students get a little bit lost, and they don’t understand what they’re expected to do. But if the course follows a format that’s recognizable and comfortable, then the second week and subsequent weeks are consistent.”
For me, I use the end of a module to trigger major assessments like an essay and/or a module quiz. I want to evaluate students to see if they are ready to move on to the next sequence or module. I have smaller assessment in each week (assignments) to keep student actively learning and building skills for the larger assessments. But when my students move to the next module, they can expect the same pattern, smaller assessments, lessons, discussion, major assessments (quiz and essay) at the end. Take a deep breath and move on to the next.
Consistency should follow through within the week pages as well. For my class, Read more
Conducting Peer Review Assignments in Canvas
At GCC we have another option for conducting online peer review assignments in the composition course. I previously posted about the option I use in Connect Composition, but today I want to share with you a 2nd way that a few of our faculty are using. Below is the method that Gary Lawrence uses. I posted previously about his heads up about this process, but this post will give a few more details on how it all works. He even shared a video below that he made for students to show them the peer review process.
It’s not a perfect process, but it works well enough if you don’t have access to Connect Composition. It requires that students have MS Word to be able to “track changes” and leave comments on the documents. There are work arounds for that, but it might further complicate the process. Below is an image Gary created for students to explain the peer review process to them. Read more
A Heads Up for Creating Peer Review Writing Assignments in Canvas
Below is a guest post from Gary Lawrence, adjunct English faculty member teaching online and hybrid at GCC. He shares his experience with doing peer reviews using Canvas and points out one minor flaw in Canvas that everyone should be aware of to help out this process. If you have any questions, let me know and I’ll pass them on to Gary.
This is the way the peer review process works in Canvas: As part of a draft assignment, I usually let Canvas assign the peer reviews automatically. The cleanest way to do that, I think, is to “lock” submissions, so you don’t have a bunch of late contenders to deal with. So under the draft assignment, I give a due date, and then I select “more options” (shown in blue box below) and check “require peer reviews,” “automatically assign peer reviews,” pick the number of reviews per student, tell Canvas when to assign the peer reviews (default = assignment due date), and then “lock submits after (date)” to keep it clean. I also happen to restrict inputs to .doc or .docx files so students can use “track changes” features of MS Word for line comments.
Apps & Browsers, Oh My!
I’ve been sharing with my students this semester that they can use apps on their smartphone to help them stay connected with their courses in Canvas. These are the links to the apps:
All you need is your MEID and password to get it set up. The course URL you need to set it up is: maricopa.instructure.com. I’ve tried it both on my iTouch and my Android phone. It works pretty good for checking in on the courses. I also shared with them the apps for Piazza since we’ll be using that too.
Then there are browsers. So what’s the best browser to use with Canvas? I’d say Firefox. I’ve been telling students to download and install Mozilla Firefox. I warn them if they decide to use Google Chrome, they will need to give permission to view some content, like some videos. If you only see a black box or don’t see a video that is supposed to be there, you must be using the Chrome browser. For all flash content you have to give it permission in Chrome. Just click the shield up in the address box and choose Load anyway –>
I end by telling them to please stay away from Internet Explorer, although that’s a hold over warning from when we used Blackboard. I might just have to give IE 8, or whatever number they’re up to, a try.
What Annoys Me Most About Canvas #30in30
I have to begin by saying that most of these annoyances are probably from user error and/or ignorance, so feel free to educate me in the comments below. Then other annoyances probably have more to do with our (MCCCD) administration of Canvas than with Canvas itself. Canvas is by far the best LMS I’ve used, BUT nothing is perfect and somethings just drive me crazy. Anyway, with that disclaimer, here we go.
First off, Canvas is making me think I’m senile. I will spend a couple of hours making little changes here and there to content pages, and sometimes when I go back the next day or a few hours later, some of the changes are gone. Cue the Twilight Zone music. This has happened on more than one occasion. “I know I changed that,” I say. “I’m not crazy!” It happens enough that I don’t even trust it or me any more, so I have to add an extra step to “check” my work later.
I’m all for change, but sometimes I miss the “old” way things were in Canvas. You can never get too attached to anything in Canvas because it can disappear just like that. One day you have a colored yellow quiz icon and the next you don’t. Little things you never thought you’d miss are just gone. Please come back yellow quiz icon. They even changed their logo. But of course with change bring progress and growth, so I’ll never really complain about this one. Just kidding.
Another annoyance I experienced this past semester was with the surveys. Read more
It’s Really Time to Start Using Those Smartphones in the Classroom #30in30
What is everyone waiting for? Just about every students who walks through your classroom door is carrying a powerful computer in his/her pocket. We need to start using them and stop just talking about mobile learning. And we don’t have to make it all fit in the classroom. Put those phones to use outside the classroom too. I’ve surveyed my students for the last 3 years and look at how many have cell phones. Only 1% (3 students) didn’t have one.
Survey of ENG102 students for past 3 years.
Ninety-one percent of my students have text messaging on their phones and indicated that I may contact them via text with important information. Yet, I didn’t take advantage of that. No, I haven’t sent one important information text message to my students in 3 years. However, they’ve undoubtedly received text messages in regards to my classes. How is that you may ask. Well, let me tell you. Many of the educational tools many of us use today, including our LMS have built in tools that allow for students to set up text alerts. For instance in Canvas, students have the option to add their phone number to receive SMS notifications. And in Canvas there are a ton of notifications that can be set up. We just have to tell them about it and encourage them to use it. Read more
Technology I Loved in 2012 – #30in30
Photo by me using my Nexus 7 tablet
2012 was not a very big technology year for me, at least not for new technology. This is probably good since a really good year would certainly mean I spent way too much money. I’ll share what little I did use in this post and then follow up later with more substantive posts on each technology then. Look in the Tech I Love category for these new posts. I’ve broken technology into two categories: web tools/software and hardware. Let’s start with the web tools/software. This list could be longer, but I only want to focus on the tools I actually used in my classes with students.
The most significant tool I used, and one that everyone in Maricopa will be using next fall is our new LMS – Canvas. I’m an early adopter, so I started teaching in the free version of Canvas last spring (2012). And this fall I taught in the official Maricopa version. I’m really surprised I haven’t blogged more about it, but I really like this LMS, and Instructure sure knows how to throw a party; I mean conference. Next up is Google+. We don’t have G+ turned on for our students yet in MCCCD, but a few faculty have been using it with students via personal Gmail accounts. We had our learning community students use it for blogging and sharing content for the past two semesters, and it’s worked really well. We created a circle for the class and had students posting twice weekly. Students on their own turned it into a way to communicate with each other as well. Read more
