Design Decisions – Things to Know before you Go to Canvas

Thank you for coming to my session today at Miami Dade’s Faculty Retreat. As I noted in the presentation,  this page is your outsourced memory for the session. Feel free to take any of these ideas and remix them and share them as you see fit. If you would like to contact me, please feel free to email me: James May.

80% of you would like to have a Canvas Preview – What to Know Before Moving to Canvas

44% of you wanted Online and Mixed Mode Teacher Tricks

40% of you wanted Ideas for Improving Student Retention

Retention & Engagement

A lot of the literature on student retention focuses on institutional changes that can help to improve retention. Constructs like:

  • Academic Advising
  • Social Connectedness
  • Business Procedures
  • Connect to Financial Resources
  • Connect to Student Support Servies
  • Learning Experiences

Things teachers can change

  • Make a Great First Impression
  • Monitor Students Closely
  • Use Data to Track & Inform Decisions
  • Communicate Early & Often
  • Give Clear Feedback & Utilize Rubrics
  • Build Teams & Community
  • Offer Flexible Scheduling

Suggestions – Get ahead of the ThinSlice 

Behavioral economics is in the classroom and beyond! The concept of thin-slicing, which was popularized in Malcome Gladwell’s book  Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking (2005) (Links to an external site.), refers to the ability of individuals to make rapid, yet reliable judgments or decisions based on relatively modest amounts of information; such an ability, Gladwell argues, testifies to the substantial amount of unconscious, instinctive knowledge that many people have acquired over the course of their lives and professional careers.

  • Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom; teacher expectation and pupils’ intellectual development. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
  • Feldman, R. S., & Prohaska, T. (1979). The student as Pygmalion: Effect of student expectation on the teacher.Journal Of Educational Psychology, 71(4), 485-493.
  • Ambady, N., & Rosenthal, R. (1993). Half a minute: Predicting teacher evaluations from thin slices of nonverbal behavior and physical attractiveness. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 64(3), 431-441.

To get ahead of the Thinslice, consider using Screencastify or Flipgrid to develop introduction and orientation videos/screencasts for your students. Not into video, at the very least provide images of you to humanize yourself to your students. The better they connect with you, the better they will perform for you. 

Things To Know about Canvas

Get a test account

The To-Do List & Notification Settings – The Keys to Success

No matter how you design your Canvas Courses, your students will likely enter and move through your courses via the To Do List. As a result, this should always be something you consider while designing in Canvas.

Your students may be talking to you and you might not even know it. Don’t forget to set your Notification Preferences and check your submission comments.

All Roads Lead to the Gradebook

A Quick Walkthrough the New Gradebook

Course Policies

Messaging Students Who

Speed Grader

Rubrics

Understand the Rich Text Editor (WYSIWYG)

What does that do? A quick walk through the WYSIWYG

CTRL-K or Cmmd-K

Other Key Commands in Canvas

Undeleting things in Canvas

View or restore a prior version of a Page.

Design Considerations

Modular or Page Design?

Controlling the Pace with Locks & Requirements in Modules

Controlling the Student Experience (Course Nav Menu)

The 21st Century, Automagically Updated Syllabus

A quick walk through the syllabus tool

Little known tricks in the Calendar

Am I Compliant?

The person in the Circle

Things Your Students Need to Know

Adjacent Possibilities

Personalization & Notification

The Student App – for Android for Apple

What if Grades

Using the Calendar for Organization

Did I turn that in? How do I know when my assignment has been submitted?  How do I view my user files as a student?

Where is my feedback? How do I view assignment comments from my instructor? How do I view rubric results for my assignment? How do I view annotation comments from my instructor?

Help is but a click away!