We held the first Canvas training on Friday, July 15, for fifteen Early Childhood Education faculty. Our Canvas coaches for the morning were John Sim, and Alexis Chatelle (an accounting major, who has spent time as Bonni’s teaching assistant this summer). Jim Evans was also there to help with questions and troubleshooting.
The group was full of energy and seemed to really enjoy exploring Canvas. Here were a few of the features that got them particularly excited about teaching with it:
- Dates show up at the bottom of a syllabus, without needing to manually enter them. They just appear when you make an assignment or enter a date for a discussion board, etc.
- The calendar makes adjusting dates as simple as dragging and dropping an item to a new date.
- Seeing John Sim’s course design helped to give a vision for the power of linking photos and text to help students navigate a course.
Of course, that’s only mentioning a few of the tools that generated enthusiasm. The class was structured around four step-by-step modules that allowed people to go at their own speed and get questions addressed when they had them.
We played a few rounds of a quiz game called Kahoot to help reinforce what they were learning. They were disappointed to learn that I had forgotten the prize at home, right until I told them it was a Canvas tattoo sleeve I had received at their trade show booth during the Online Learning Consortium’s conference.
Vanguard’s EdTech department offer in-person training classes on Canvas, like the one that the ECE crew went through. We also have live online sessions, for those who would prefer to learn from the comfort of your own home, but still be able to see everyone’s faces and get questions answered right away.
Congratulations to ECE for being the first at Vanguard to embark on your Canvas journey. We look forward to reconnecting with you, again. We can continue to learn from what we are all experiencing, as we experiment more with Canvas.