S2023 Welcome Back Day Student Panel

The student panel at Welcome Back Day was full of information. To recap and provide tips and tricks for implementation, including time saving pathways, the Office of Educational Technology has developed the following resource.

Avenues of Communication

We can't even begin to predict the life experiences our students have - English as a second language, work, child, and elderly care, housing insecurity just to name a few. One thing we can do to make life easier for them and you is to be very intentional and clear with the communication channels and timelines.

The following are some of the more well-known areas in Canvas and how they can be used for all course modalities, including Announcements, Discussions, Gradebook Feedback, and Communicating Expectations.

Announcements

In the panel, students mentioned the benefit to using Announcements for introducing new modules, to highlight what can be expected of students during the week, and to make practical application connections between classwork and the real world. Advise students to set their notification for Announcements to the ASAP setting to get these messages in a timely manner.

To make effective use of your time and to support student learning, use Announcements to:

create module opening and closing messages (text and or video) before the term starts entering in future posting dates.
Share if a class meeting (in-person or online) needs to be altered or cancelled.
clarify instruction. If you are receiving multiple emails on the same topic, use the Announcements tool to send one message to the whole class with clarification information.

Discussions

The discussion boards are community-building spaces that mimic in-class discussions. A student on the panel highlighted that they liked how discussions let them see other ways of thinking from classmate replies. Other students agreed and appreciate the time to think about responses vs face-to-face class discussions.

An effective use of the Discussion boards will consider the following:

Students should have clear expectations of what to expect in terms of instructor feedback. Your responses can be summative for the class, individual in the gradebook, or perhaps just part of the ongoing discussion, and you are likely to see the results you wish for when your students know what to expect.
Openly discuss how online discussions feel different than face-to-face discussions. Online discussion boards give students space to work through their own thoughts and feelings, and the create a community feeling among the students, which in turn fosters humanization, collaboration, and persistence.

Gradebook Feedback

This is probably the most mentioned topic during the panel. Students value feedback and panel participants said it helped them persist in the course. How can you provide the type of feedback students crave without spending hours responding to each student?

While rubrics take time to create, they make the grading process more efficient with clear instruction on how students can improve in each of the areas being graded.
“Message Students Who” feature found in the gradebook. Canvas makes it easy to reach out to students to send reminders on upcoming assignments, to give kudos to those scoring at a certain level, to encourage and support those scoring less than a certain level, and to let students know when assignment may not be completely graded. Although one message will be sent to multiple students at the same time, each student will receive an individual message.
Video based feedback. Instructors may choose to use the video feature in Canvas to leave students feedback on assignments. Seeing and or hearing your comments not only shows you care, but also students can pick up on the tone and inflection in your voice helping them to understand the meaning behind your words.

Communicating Expectations

The best practice for course communication is to provide a page in your orientation module/syllabus module that explicitly states your plans for communication - what is expected from the students and what students can expect from you. Here are two examples:

Additional Valuable Topics

Hybrid Courses

During the panel, one participant mentioned not realizing they'd registered for a hybrid course. With the many modalities we now have for students, getting confused, missing the details of class times, and simply forgetting is completely possible. Your welcome letter, sent within the week before the term starts, clarifies this information for students, giving them time to plan for child care, work schedules, or to switch to another course.

Technology Tools in the Class

A student panelist requested more instruction when including technology tools are used in the flow of course work. There are a couple ways to tackle this:

a page in the orientation module outlining each tool and where to get support or,
at the point of need in an assignment.

For example:

If you utilize publisher content, who does the student contact when they have trouble using it?
Do you need students to submit files in PDF format - share how they do this (or contact Educational Technology for help writing the instructions 😁)
Canvas Guides for Students are a great thing to include in assignments, discussions, and quizzes to support students new to online or new to Canvas.

Video Content

Online learning can be as effective and engaging as physical classrooms with the use of tools like video content. There are many ways to use video in a course, here are two examples.

Support resources:

Group Projects

Group projects in online courses can be an effective tool to mimic real world work scenarios, to foster community in online courses, and as a great way to engage in the learning content when the project has a clear purpose and is very organized. In Canvas, student groups are given its own space, or homepage, with access to tools to facilitate their projects. The instructor is capable of visiting each group's homepage, and students do not have access to groups they are not enrolled.

How to use Canvas Groups Resource page (includes support for students).

When Students Have Non-Course Questions

Students will come to you with questions meant for other areas of campus - PACE, Admissions, Tutoring, etc. There is no need to be expert in all these areas, simply knowing where to direct the students will place them on the right path. No need to recreate the wheel gathering all names, emails, and phone numbers, the Office of Educational Technology has added a page to the Canvas Commons for easy adding to your course that contains all pertinent information.

How do I import resources from the Canvas Commons?

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