As instructors, you want to provide your students with the best chance at succeeding in your courses. Chances are you have had a student ask for a deadline extension. Maybe the student needed accommodations in your course, or maybe life (or in some cases technology) just got in the way of the student’s time management. […]
Category: Canvas Spotlight
Formula questions are an easy way for math and science instructors to create numerically-randomized questions for their students. To make a formula question, the instructor adds a mathematical formula with variables and variable ranges to the quiz question. The value of the variable will be different for every quiz attempt. This means that students will […]
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Sharing Files with Students
Tools: Canvas Files Giving students access to digital files is important for online courses and can add value to in-person teaching as well. Powerpoints, PDFs, spreadsheets and more can be used to present content to your students as effectively as possible. The built-in tools in Canvas make sharing files with your students easy and simple […]
Occasionally, you might find yourself repeating the same feedback again and again when reviewing multiple students’ submissions for an assignment. Canvas has a Comment Library in SpeedGrader to help with this problem. You can add frequently used comments to the SpeedGrader Library and then insert them into the grading comments box for multiple students or […]
Tools: Canvas Quizzes Many instructors new to teaching online count on the assessments traditionally used in a face-to-face course. That could mean uploading or sending tests as a Word document or PDF to students. Students would then need to download that document, complete the assessment, and then reupload it with their answers, which the instructor […]
Tools: Assignments The Submission Type setting has a significant impact on how students interact with and submit a Canvas assignment. The No Submission and On Paper options create a column in the gradebook but do not allow students to submit a file to the Canvas assignment. This is a great way to grade assignments that […]
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Extra Credit Options in Canvas
Extra credit opportunities can be an excellent strategy for encouraging students to go above and beyond and explore certain areas of a course in more detail. Extra credit can also provide struggling students with chances to correct any misunderstandings related to their course content and potentially increase their overall grades. Canvas allows instructors to customize […]
Items with due dates such as assignments, quizzes, and discussions automatically get added to the Course Summary and student To-Do List once a due date is set, but what about other elements of a course like readings and videos? Marking these items as “to-dos” in the module will add them to the Course Summary and […]
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Add Items to Modules
Tools: Modules Modules are the “building blocks” of a Canvas course. Modules help organize a course and ensure that students will access all materials in the desired order. A wide variety of different items can be added to a Module, including pages, discussions, assignments, quizzes, files, headers, and links. Adding different types of items to […]
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Weighted Grading
There are many advantages to using a weighted grading scheme. For example, you don’t need to manipulate points to make your total points work out to a nice even number (like 1000), and you don’t need to shuffle points around when you add, remove, or change an assignment. Also, you can easily ensure that major […]