After about 15 minutes listening in a large lecture hall, many students’ minds are likely wandering. An easy way to make your class more active and allow your students to see if they are understanding is to use polling software. …
The university recently announced that Poll Everywhere will be the new integrated polling tool at USask. As you begin planning for the fall term, you may be considering how you will make use of formative assessment in your courses, including…
Beginning this month the University of Saskatchewan will be transitioning to Poll Everywhere as the integrated polling tool at USask, replacing Top Hat. This decision was made after extended consideration and demonstrations from vendors. Instructors will be able to use…
Small formatting changes on Canvas Pages, Assignments, Quizzes and the Syllabus page can make your course more accessible. Using the suggestions below will improve clarity, readability, and navigation for all your students. In the Rich Content Editor (RCE) menu bar,…
Asking questions is one of the most powerful tools we have as instructors. Just like asking good questions in class, promoting discussion with questions that capture students’ attention and stimulate intellectual engagement can be facilitated online, using Canvas Discussions. Crafting…
The University has announced a return to campus stating Feb. 7th. With the exception of some specific programs designed to provide hybrid options, instructors are not expected to teach students face to face (F2F) and online at the same time…
The Immersive Reader option in Canvas helps students access your course materials, whether they have a certain learning or medical disability, use English as an additional language – or could simply benefit from its text to speech function. The Immersive…
One of the essential goals of the Learning Technology Ecosystem at USask is to allow students to connect to others. While collaboration skills are one of the essential skills most employers describe, the need for collaboration tools is actually more…
The University of Saskatchewan is a leader in Canada around open educational resources (e.g. textbooks) and is moving toward wider integration of open pedagogy (students as contributors, not just consumers of knowledge). As part of this, and in the spirit…
Many USask classrooms have been designed with one thing in mind – successful transmission of information from the faculty member to the students. Even as technologies changed over time, that model did not – we just added screens, data projectors…
When we design courses, we carefully choose readings or videos for students to review before coming to class. We then plan for the fantastic discussions and activities that will occur in class. All too often, when we arrive in class,…
Zoom is a web conferencing tool available in Canvas. To be enabled, it has to be added to the course navigation menu. Zoom can be used to schedule lectures, group meetings or appointments. Students can join any virtual meeting directly…
When you have certain learning disabilities or you are studying in a language you aren’t fully fluent in, it is easy to miss important details of what your professor says. As an instructor, you can make what you say accessible…
Canvas has just released an online attendance dashboard for instructors who are teaching online and who want to define attendance around students’ interactions within Canvas. You can access the online attendance dashboard through the New Analytics link either from the…
The move to remote instruction with COVID-19 forced a pivot that was frustrating for educators and students alike. USask collected data about the student learning experience in focus groups and surveys throughout the pandemic. Students consistently told us they missed…