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. …
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…
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…
Term has started and whilst the instructors who are back in the classroom can clearly see who is present in their classes, for those who are teaching virtually it is not so easy to determine. Luckily for the instructors…
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…
If someone asked you “How is online teaching different from face-to-face teaching?”, the first thing you might say is that face-to-face teaching involves real time interaction between students and instructors (synchronous) whereas online teaching happens through a computer, with students typically…
The syllabus is often the first window that students get into a course. An instructor may post it to Canvas, email it, or even still hand out printed copies. While the university sees it as a contract, and instructors and students see…
Oral assessments can serve as a great method to collect another type of evidence of student learning. It typically consists of a time-limited interview with a student to verbally confirm to what degree they’ve met one or more course outcomes…
Co-written by Toni Marchione and Ryan Banow, GMCTL Your course homepage is the first thing that students see when they log in to your Canvas course. It is their first impression of your course. As a landing page, it should be inviting, informative and easy to navigate. Canvas…
We all know that students are more successful when they have a deep interest in course materials or strong thinking skills. Similarly, we know we can help students do better when assessment is transparent. However, we are less aware of…
USask’s version of WebEx recently updated with a few new features worth highlighting. Students can now choose which Breakout Session to join On certain devices WebEx, can now recognize hand gestures, including hand raising Students can now choose which Breakout…
Perhaps you’d like to set up groups in your Canvas course for discussions, assignments, projects or presentations. The process creates smaller groups, as well as a space within the course for group members to collaborate, called a Group Homepage. Group…
The transition to remote learning has been in progress for almost a year now, with many instructors grabbing the Canvas bull by the horns and learning how to use the different Canvas tools to provide their students with the best…