It is recommended that Canvas be used for all assignments and grading for your courses. Consistent use of these tools across all courses will help students be as successful as possible. Creating Graded Assignments To create a gradebook item you create an assignment and Canvas then automatically creates a place in the grade book for that assignment.…Read More
Create and Organize Your Content in Canvas
There are a lot of excellent tools in Canvas to help you engage your students both inside and outside your classroom. Creating and organizing your content is much easier when you understand how to use Modules, Pages, the Rich Content Editor, and Discussions. Use Modules The Modules Tool is the easy way to organize your…Read More
Using the Hyflex Template to Build Your Course
IFD has designed and built Hyflex course templates that incorporate principles from James Lang’s “Small Teaching” and a Flipped Learning version of Blooms Taxonomy that detail pre-class, in class, and post-class best practices. These templates allow you to build your course in such a way that you can offer it as: a FlexVU-Campus or FlexVU-Virtual…Read More
Decisions Regarding Recording Zoom Sessions
Recordings of live Zoom sessions are sometimes used to allow students to watch a missed class session, to review an earlier session, or shared with a future class. Depending on who is shown in the recording, they may constitute educational records that are protected under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) — the…Read More
Course Outcomes, Activities, and Student Workload
The first step in creating/recreating your course is to establish or revisit the learning outcomes of the course. Establish Learning Outcomes Writing measurable learning outcomes for your course, module/unit, and individual assignment is essential in creating a robust and engaging course that will help your students understand what they are learning and why they are…Read More
Teaching Online
Faculty in colleges and universities across the country often learn about teaching and classroom management informally through observing faculty whose classes they enjoyed taking as a student, discussions with colleagues, or consultations with your teaching and learning center staff. When you begin to teach online, your exemplars and experiences from the face-to-face classroom may not…Read More
Types of Teaching Presence
Teaching presence includes both the planning and forethought that go into building your course and what you do “in the moment” when interacting with your students. The parts of teaching presence that occur while the course is in session include facilitation of discourse and direct instruction. Direct instruction is the more straightforward of the two…Read More
Supporting Active Learning
Keeping students actively engaged with you, the content, and each other promotes student success. When students are observing, doing, communicating, and reflecting, they are actively working with concepts and people. We describe these activities as interactions. Interaction is at the center of the teaching and learning process. When we move some or all of that process online, the way…Read More
Foster Group Work and Participation
Group work is challenging for many students in a face-to-face class. When you add the extra layers of complication from technology and asynchronous communication, it is not surprising that some faculty simply avoid assigning group work in an online class. However, group work provides students with opportunities to connect with one another, lessening the isolation…Read More
Communicating with Your Students
Communicating with your students is the core of an online class. Active and timely communication supports teaching presence and when instructors participate supportively and frequently students perceive the instructor as both enthusiastic and as an expert in the field. It’s also more than student satisfaction on course evaluations. The US Department of Education has defined the difference between “distance…Read More
Cognitive and Social Presence
Cognitive presence is central to successful student learning. The quality of cognitive presence reflects the quality and quantity of critical thinking, collaborative problem-solving, and construction of meaning occurring in student↔student and student↔faculty interactions. You can model and support cognitive presence in your interactions with students in discussions, assignment feedback, and other communications. Cognitive Presence Cognitive presence is based on…Read More
Establish and Maintain Instructor Presence
The concept of presence in teaching builds on the body of work on teaching and learning including Dewey, Chickering and Gamson, and many others studying the psychological and sociological aspects of learning and computer-mediated communication. Several of the Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education refer to active presence in the learning environment. For…Read More
Planning Active Learning Experiences
In the framework of Backwards Design, learning activities include any type of activity that students undertake to work with the concepts and skills that lead to reaching the desired learning outcomes. This means that most assessments – especially authentic assessments – are also learning activities, so much of this module will also be helpful as…Read More
Gather, Make and Structure Content
As you design your course based on your desired learning outcomes, it is important to think through what parts of your content are critical to support student achievement of those outcomes and what parts are less critical. By continuing the process of backward design, the foundational content should directly support students as they complete activities and…Read More
Exploring New Content Sources
It is usually easier to adapt or use existing materials than it is to design your own materials from scratch. Here are some repositories that may provide media or course materials that you can use in your course. Please keep in mind that just because something is on the internet that does not mean that…Read More