Use directly below the tabs to navigate between topics.

Welcoming Students
Communication Strategy
Conveying Content
Student Practice
Showing Mastery
Canvas Gradebook
Using Grades
Rubrics

Welcoming Students

In your class, you will want to have a place to welcome students and introduce your course. You may want to create a module called "welcome" or something similar.

However you do it, there are two keys tasks to accomplish at this point:

Setting the tone for how learners will engage with the course.
Introducing the subjects, ideas, and content that students will grapple with.

On this page, we will go over how to set the tone for the course. In setting the tone, you will want to get started on the right foot and set in motion a sustainable method of interaction.

Consider:

Creating an "About your instructor" page, introducing yourself and and building your presence in the course.
Specifying your communication policies. This includes your preferred contact methods, and how and when students should expect communication and feedback from you.
Having an introductory discussion for students to introduce themselves to the class and become comfortable with Canvas Discussions.
Creating a "Raise your Hand" discussion topic for students to ask you and their peers questions about the class. This may help save you from answering every question, or the same question repeatedly.
Having students fill out a "Getting to know you" survey in Canvas. This can help you build relationships with your students and also gauge other factors like their availability (for online and hybrid courses) and technical ability and resources (where necessary).
Creating a course orientation page, including things like your course description, course goals, and tasks for the first week.
Providing "getting help" resources like Phoenix Cares, GBOSS, Disability Services, Dean of Students, Health and Counseling, The Learning Center, etc.
Check your syllabus against the requirements put forth by the Provost's Office

Develop your Communication Strategy

Communicating is paramount in any course - this is especially true at a distance where even incidental contact is absent. Good communication correlates strongly with positive student feedback. The materials and content in your course could be entirely mute if students don't know fully how you expect they interact with them.

You will want when and how you communicate with students to be authentic to you and your course. Much as you want the materials and activities of a course to align with your course objectives, you want how you communicate to align with you.

Take a moment to consider what communication strategy is most authentic to you.

For now, think of this in general terms what is your "style" of communication? Are you a better listener or informer? Do you prefer one-on-one conversation or group-think? Can you be more often found waiting for others to pose questions or proactively providing answers?

Consider what you'll need to communicate, to whom, how, and when.

As one example: I need to provide the instructions for lab and safety information to each section. The instructions need to be transparent because the sections will be at different places in the text. The safety information has to match the language in the safety manual. Students need to have received and comprehend this information at least a week before lab.

Consider what method you would follow to communicate with your students about these materials. Put another way: What would you like communication to look like in this course? One method you may use for deciding is the "SAMR" model. This framework was developed by Ruben Puentedura to categorize classroom technologies. Consider these "degrees" (rather than "levels"). Each has their place. Let's look at the acronym using a typical classroom lecture as our example. This is, of course, only an overview for you to consider as you decide the best ways to communicate with your students. To go into any of this in more detail, always feel free to meet with someone in CATL.

S—Substitution: The new medium replaces the old medium but does not change the task. An example might be going from chalk to dry erase—the lecture remains the same.
A—Augmentation: The new medium is still a substitute but adds functionality. In our example, let's say you have some magnetic models to put on the board—you can supplement your lecture with these illustrations and save time re-drawing the same figures.
M—Modification: The technology is used to re-design the task. For example, students use a classroom response system to steer the lecture—the lecture is taking on a new form; it's still recognizable as such, but even the material will vary depending on how the students interact.
And R—Redefinition: Designing and creating a new task altogether. If lecture just doesn't cut it, you might instead build a site your entire class can use to develop an Open Educational Resource.

You may decide on some of this later in the module, so keep the SAMR as one resource as you do. It's also a valuable tool to use as you're considering how you might best use technology in other areas (like course materials or assessments) to get at your other objectives.

Finally (and this is the step that's easy to forget), look again at your workload and consider your teaching style. As an example, do you have final papers due in four different courses in the same week? You'll want to make sure you have the capacity to be true to your own teaching. If you're the sort of person who would like to do one-on-one conferences leading up to the final paper, that's something to take into account.

In summary:

Consider what is authentic
Consider what is realistic
You may wish to use the SAMR model as a way of approaching this problem

Consider these options for communicating with students:

Email	A "distribution list" will allow you to send a message to your entire class at once. Familiar to you and to students.	One-on-one communication can get "noisy" and relies on the class list in SIS or Canvas (not Outlook). Media limited.
Canvas Discussions	Engage the whole class or specific groups of students. Keep related things together. Familiar in principle to students. Less formal.	Requires regular/frequent interaction for best results. Small learning curve in Canvas initially. Task needs clarification. Less formal.
Announcements	Intuitive and in Canvas. Alert the whole class or sections of students all at once. Allows for rich media (video messages, images, etc.) Students get notified. Allows for student comments (optional).	Students can disable email notifications—but still see announcements when in Canvas. Can get noisy with frequent use.
Synchronous Sessions (Blackboard Collaborate Ultra)	Feels more like being in the classroom. Sessions can be recorded for review (or those who miss). Varying levels of interactive options (whiteboard, breakout groups, chat, polls, etc.)	Steeper learning curve the first time. Relies on a good connection and technology. Logistically, some students cannot make it to synchronous sessions.
Canvas (Synchronous) Chat	Intuitive and familiar to students. Easy to use. Synchronous. A "history" of the chat is available to the entire class making it good for Q&A-type sessions.	Synchronous. Whole-class only. Cannot be limited to specific students.
Course Calendar	Displays course due dates automatically Can add other items (like reminders)	Requires "due dates" Only the names of events appear directly on the calendar
Appointment Groups	Create blocks of time for students to sign up to meet one-on-one (e.g. office hours) Can use a "feed" to add these blocks to Outlook	Required additional communication so students know how and to use them.

You'll want to at let students know which tools you'll be using, for what, when, and how to get support if they need it.

Example: I will be posting twice-weekly announcements in Canvas to help you stay on task and remind you of upcoming due dates. I ask that you reply to these announcements with questions you may have so we can clarify any sticking points as a class. I will reply to announcement comments the next day at the latest. If you need any help with the announcements tool in Canvas, Canvas support can be reached through any of the contact methods in the syllabus.

Conveying Information

Presenting information for students is at the heart of most courses. Typically, instructors wish to have students do some reading, watch a video, or listen to a podcast. While this seems straightforward, the art of presenting information comes in framing information for students in a way that signals

how the material connects to the learning goals of the course
when the students should access the material, and
what technological requirements they might need to access the information.

When courses frame information in this way, students do not have to waste cognitive energy - and send their instructors lots of emails - trying to figure out when and how to access the information they need to learn. The tasks below show how to add many of the common types of materials to your course.

Upload your files:

Putting your materials in the "files" area of Canvas ensures that they will stay organized. When your materials are in the files area, you may use them anywhere in the course. You can upload files one at a time (Links to an external site.) or multiple files at once (Links to an external site.).
Canvas will allow you to upload most common file types: Word, PowerPoint, Excel, .pdf. When in doubt, .pdfs converting a file to a .pdf is the most accessible type of file for students.

Record your lectures:

You may wish to record lectures for your students. Canvas has a video platform called Kaltura (also called MyMedia) which allows instructors to create and manage their videos. It is similar to a personal YouTube channel.
Here are written instructions (Links to an external site.) for creating videos in Kaltura as well as a video tutorial.

Collect other materials:

You may have YouTube videos, podcasts, or webpages that you wish students to absorb. Be sure to have these links handy so that you can add them to the "Learning resources" page in the template.

Add materials to a Page:

Once you have all your learning materials put together, you will want to add them to a Pages (Links to an external site.) in Canvas for each unit or module.
- While you will want to have all the readings, etc. listed in the syllabus, you will want to have the materials themselves separated out for students by module or unit. This will keep all the learning materials together with the assignments for which students will need them.
- Be sure to articulate for students 1) when they should read, watch, listen to the learning materials and 2) which assignments will make use of these materials.

Pro-tip:

Using multiple types of content has practical as well as philosophical benefits. On the practical side, multiple types of content - videos, readings, podcasts, etc. - means that more students will be able to access and make sense of the course material. Also, on a practical level, if one type of content is somehow rendered un-viewable - say slow video speeds or a Kaltura upgrade gone wrong - your course does not have to go off the rails.

On a philosophical level, representing the same material in multiple ways is a key element of universal design (Links to an external site.) and will ultimately help open your course up to as many students as possible.

Practicing Skills and Ideas

Once students have read the readings, watched the videos, or listened to the podcasts, you will likely want to have them start to use the information they have learned. While exams and assignments will allow students to show mastery, Canvas also has tools where students can practice what they have learned, explore ideas, or refine their disciplinary skills. This page will help you use create discussions and quizzes where students can build toward the mastery you will want them to show on midterms and finals.

Cultivate a discussion:

Set the terms for discussion
- Many courses will ask students to make an initial post by a certain time and then reply to their peers by another time.
- Often, instructors will default to having discussion posts due at 11:59 pm because that is Canvas's default. While students get habituated to this, your peers are probably doing the same thing. You may get better responses - but also more complaints - if you use a different time.
Ask yourself: what type of "discussion" do I really want?
- This is an important question because if you want students to develop ideas and marshal evidence, they are really not engaging in a discussion, they are writing impromptu essays and seeking feedback from their peers.
- If you want to cultivate a lively give-and-take, you will want to encourage students to make shorter, but more frequent, posts - just like you would have in a face-to-face class.
Be explicit with students:
- Which course materials should students use in the discussion?
- How should they use the course materials (quotes and citations or are just references o.k.?)?
- How long should their posts be?
- When are posts due?
- How many replies should they make?
- How will the instructor participate in the discussion (will you respond to every post, will you only set people back on track, etc.)?

Example:

You may wish to take a look at an example of a formative discussion for inspiration.

Create a quiz:

When you create a quiz, Canvas will present you with two options: "New Quizzes" or "Classic Quizzes." This course uses "New Quizzes" by default because Canvas will discontinue "Classic Quizzes" in the summer of 2021. You may do many of the tasks in either Classic or New Quizzes without much of a loss in functionality - and Canvas should transfer all quizzes to the New format in summer 2021. But, we wish to habituate instructors to New Quizzes from the get go. You may wish to consult the full chart of feature comparisons (Links to an external site.) to decide whether New or Classic is the route for you.

A quick quiz can be a great way to guide students toward important aspects of the learning materials or to let them know that they are picking out the important elements of the readings and lectures. While your exams will also use the "Quizzes" tool in Canvas, it is useful to get students habituated to using quizzes in a formative sense so that they are comfortable - and have fewer problems - when they are taking exams.
The template already has empty quizzes that you can use for your course. You may follow these directions (Links to an external site.)to enter questions into your quiz, or watch this video tutorial (Links to an external site.).
See the next page if you would like a chart that lists the various types of questions.
You may be lucky enough to have a test bank from a publisher. If so, be sure they give you a .qti file (If your publisher tries to pawn off a Word document, ask for a ".QTI package".) You can then import the quiz directly into Canvas (Links to an external site.). If all your textbook rep. has is a Word file, contact CATL at catl@uwgb.edu; we may be able to help.

Example

You may wish to look at an example of a formative quiz for inspiration.

Showing Mastery

Exams, essays, projects, and presentations are common ways that students show their mastery of learning. Canvas collapses all of these items into two types of items: Quizzes and Assignments. We discussed quick quizzes for formative assessment on the last page. Your midterms, finals, and unit exams will also use the "Quizzes" tool in Canvas. But you may wish to explore some more of the question types for your exams than multiple choice, true-false to include matching, hot spot, file upload, and fill-in-the blank question types.

Just as "Quizzes" encompasses exams, so too does "Assignments" cover more than it appears. The "Assignments" tool is likely where you will have students submit their essays, projects, and presentations. You can use Assignments for individual or group-based work.

Create Assignments

Assignments in Canvas allow students to submit their work for instructors to grade. This can range from essays to videos to projects.
Enter the assignment instructions
- click on one of the assignments and enter the "edit details" (Links to an external site.) area
- swap out the highlighted text for your own instructions. Be sure to include
  - the purpose of the assignment
  - the tasks for completing the assignment
  - the criteria for being successful on the assignment (how will the instructor discern an "A" paper from a "B" paper, for example)
- This "purpose, task, criteria" structure comes from the transparency in learning and teaching project. This framework (Links to an external site.) also is what we are following for all the pages in this course.

Example:

You may wish to look at an example of an assignment for inspiration.

Build your Exams

Explore the question types (Links to an external site.) for an exam to which types of questions would be suitable for students to show mastery of their learning:

Question type	Brief explanation
Categorization* (Links to an external site.)	Students drag and drop items into their proper categories (e.g. drag and drop birds into the types of habitats where they live)
Essay (Links to an external site.)	Students write longer responses which the instructor grades manually
File upload (Links to an external site.)	Students attach a file which instructors grade, similar to attaching a file to an email.
Fill in the blank (Links to an external site.)	Students complete a statement where key words are missing.
Hot spot* (Links to an external site.)	Hot Spot questions allow teachers to upload images and have their students identify a specific area in that image. (e.g. click on an image of the abdomen where the heart lies)
Matching (Links to an external site.)	Students are required to match answers from a drop-down menu with a list of questions.
Formula (Links to an external site.)	Students do a calculation and provide a numeric answer
Ordering* (Links to an external site.)	Students place items in a specific order (e.g. put these five presidents in the order in which they were elected)
Numeric (Links to an external site.)	Questions where the answer is a number (including years)
Multiple Answer (Links to an external site.)	Multiple choice with more than one answer
Multiple Choice (Links to an external site.)	Questions where students select the best answer among many options.
True/False (Links to an external site.)	Similar to multiple choice, but only two options.
Stimulus* (Links to an external site.)	Allows instructors to ask multiple questions - from all question types above - based upon a single piece of content (graph, chart, passage of reading, etc.)
* = question type only available in New Quizzes

Enter your Exam Questions

Once you have decided upon the question types that suit your exams, you will want to write your questions directly in Canvas.
It is possible that you will want to use questions from a textbook publisher. If so, ask that they give you a .qti file (If your publisher tries to pawn off a Word document, ask for a ".QTI package".) You can then import the quiz directly into Canvas (Links to an external site.). If all your textbook rep has is a Word file, contact CATL; we may be able to help.

Example

You may wish to look at an example exam for inspiration.

Setting up your Gradebook in Canvas

Canvas distributes the work of the gradebook across three different tools: Grades, Settings, and Assignments. The purpose of this page is to help you harmonize the work of those three areas of Canvas so that Canvas reflects student performance accurately and so that instructors can avoid some common unnecessary headaches.

Pro-tip: you may want to get a cup of coffee for this page ☕.

Set grade policies in "Grades"

The "Grades" area of Canvas collects and displays the points your students have earned over the course of the semester. In order to have an accurate tally of points and to ensure that students see their grades when you want them to, it is important to set the "late policies" and the "grade visibility policies." Setting these policies will allow students to know that their grades are up-to-date.

Automatically apply "0" to missing work

Go to the "Grades" area and click on gear icon in the upper right corner.
When the tab opens, check the box that says "Automatically apply grade for missing submissions."
Enter "0" in the box that says "Grade percentage for missing submissions."
(Optional) You may also wish to set a policy for automatically deducting points for late submissions .

Entering "0" automatically for missing submissions (Links to an external site.) saves instructors from having to do this manually if they want students to have an accurate reflection of their grades. Canvas simply won't calculate missing work otherwise and students may think that they are doing well in the course if they have not turned in any assignments.

Grade posting policy

Now that you have set non-submissions to automatically become "0," set the visibility policy (Links to an external site.).
Click over to the "Grade Posting Policy" tab. Canvas will present you two options:
- Select "Automatically Post Grades" if you wish for students to see their scores as you grade their work (Note: students who are graded first will see their grades before anyone else.)
- Select: "Manually Post Grades" if you prefer to have students see their scores after you are done grading all the students (This is typically preferred, but it requires that instructors post grades manually when they are done grading an assignment).
Click "Update" to save your changes.

You can change the grade posting policy for individual assignments (Links to an external site.) (have Canvas hide grades when the default is to show them automatically and vice versa). But, you can save yourself some headaches by knowing when students will receive their scores.

Set grading scheme and grade distribution in "Settings"

The settings tab is where you set a grading scheme (what counts for an "A" and "AB" etc.). Settings is also where you choose whether students will be able to see the class distribution for an assignment (and thereby know where they fell compared to the class average, etc.)

Set a grading scheme

Go to the "Settings" area.
Check the box that says "Enable course grading scheme."
Click the link that says "set grading scheme."
If you want to use the default UWGB grading scheme, click the link that says "select another grading scheme."
Then select "Sample Grade Scheme."
Then click the button that says "Use this Grading Standard."
Follow these instructions (Links to an external site.) if you prefer to set your own grading scheme.

Setting the grading scheme will help you send your final grades to SIS at the end of the semester.

Set grade distribution

The final item in "Settings" is to determine whether you would like for students to see the class grade distribution. Canvas shows the grade distribution to students by default. If you would like to change this - which is common - follow these steps (Links to an external site.):

Scroll down to the bottom of the "Course Details" tab in Settings.
Click on the link that says "more options."
Check the box that says "Hide grade distribution graphs from students."

Once you have your grade scheme and grade distribution set how you would like, press "Update Course Details" and this will save the changes you made.

Set grade categories in "Assignments"

The "Assignments" area is where you set the overall percentages for your various grading categories. For example, if you have exams worth 50% of your final grade, discussions worth 20%, and essays worth 30%, then you will set those percentages in the "Assignments (Links to an external site.)" area of Canvas. You do not need to do this if your final grade does not break down by percentages. If students accumulate points instead - and all points have equal weight - then you can skip this step.

Navigate to the "Assignments" area of Canvas
Create Assignment groups (Links to an external site.) to match the percentages in your syllabus. For example, if you have exams worth 50%, essays worth 30%, and discussions worth 20%, you will want three grade categories. You may drag and drop your assignments into these categories.
Once all your assignments are in groups, click the three dots in the upper right corner and select "Assign group weights" from the dropdown menu.

Check the box that says "Weight final grade based on assignment groups."
Enter the grade weights.
Press "Save."

One final note on Assignment Groups: Canvas distributes the weight within an assignment group based on the number of points in the assignment. For example, if Exams were worth 50% of the overall grade, and the mid-term was worth 100 points and the final was worth 200 points, the final would count for twice as much of the 50% as the mid-term. (The mid-term would be worth 33.33% of the 50% and the final would be worth 66.67% of the 50%). If, however, the mid-term and the final were both worth 100 points then they would be worth an equal amount of the 50%.

Optional: Extra credit

Canvas does not have a default way of giving extra credit. Rather there are numerous workarounds for giving students extra points.

Canvas does, however, allow you to give more points than possible on an assignment and it allows you to have your "Assignment Groups Weight" equal more than 100%. This allows you two options for giving extra credit. One for points-based grading (where students accumulate points and get a grade based on overall percentage) and one for percent-based gradebooks (where essays, exams, discussion, participation, etc. all earn a different percentage of the overall score.

Points-based extra credit

If you have a points based grade book, the easiest way to give extra credit is to create a "no-submission assignment" (Links to an external site.). Set the number of points possible to "0" and then whatever students earn will be more than the possible.

Percentage-based extra credit

If, however, you have a percentage-based grading scheme (essays worth 20%, exams worth 50%, etc.) then you can create a grade category called "extra credit" and give it a percentage based on how much you would like for it to count towards the overall grade. Then put all the assignments that count toward extra credit in that group.

If you have questions

Extra credit is a legitimately confusing topic in Canvas. You may wish to consult this guide (Links to an external site.) for further questions (and methods) for how to give extra credit. Also feel free to contact CATL with your questions at catl@uwgb.edu.

Using the Gradebook

This page will provide guidance for how to use the "grades" area as you teach to ensure that students get their grades when you expect. Also, this page will show you the student view of grades - especially the "what if" grades - so that you know what students see so that you can plan accordingly.

Changing visibility of grades

On the last page, we discussed how to set a global policy for whether to post grades automatically in Canvas. While having a consistent policy is helpful, sometimes you will wish to have a different policy for a particular assignment. In those cases, you may wish to change whether Canvas releases grades automatically for a particular assignment.

For example, many instructors have Canvas automatically grade quizzes with multiple choice questions. In this case, you may wish to have Canvas release those grades automatically rather than having to release them manually yourself. In that case, you will want to change the visibility settings for your multiple choice quizzes only. Use these instructions (Links to an external site.) to do this.

Posting grades to students (if you manually post grades)

If you have set your course to post scores manually, then you will have to release the grades to students on your own. Canvas provides two options for doing this. You may post grades from:

Message students who...

After grading, you may wish to email a congratulations to students who performed well. Or, you may wish to email encouragement to students who did not perform well. Or, you will want to remind students who did not turn in their assignment that they should do so. In these instances, you may wish to use the "message students who..." feature (Links to an external site.) in the gradebook so that you can compose one email that Canvas will send to all students who meet any of those criteria.

"What if" grades

Once your gradebook is all set up, students have a feature that instructors do not, "what if" grades. (Links to an external site.) This feature allows students to estimate their final grade based upon how they might do on future assignments. Students can enter grades that they wish to achieve so that they can plan how those grades will affect their overall score. These what-if grades do not ever become real grades.

As an instructor, it is important to know about this feature because, if your gradebook is not set up properly - if you did not set unsubmitted work to automatically get a "0", (Links to an external site.) for example - the "what if" grade calculator will give students an inflated sense of their final score. This is because unless unsubmitted work automatically receives a "0", Canvas will not calculate it in the what-if grade and students will think that the unsubmitted work is not counting against them. It happens.

The next module will have you practice viewing grades from the student perspective and you can try out the "what if" grades then.

Sending grades to SIS

One reward for all the work you did to set your gradebook up is that you can automatically send grades to SIS from Canvas. Here are instructions (Links to an external site.) for how to do that.

Rubrics

Investing time in creating rubrics now will pay off in the future. One way is saved time. While there will always be students who fall between categories in a rubric, grading with a rubric will streamline the process of assessing student work and writing comments. Also, once you create a rubric in Canvas, you can use it in any course. So, if you grade Discussions in every course, you only have to write one rubric (you can also modify the same rubric slightly to fit the particular nuances of each course).

Second, rubrics pay off in increased transparency for students. Students will know at the outset how instructors will discern "good" work from "acceptable" work from "exceptional" work (or "B" work from "C" work from "A" work). This is especially important for those students who fall between categories. The art of grading with a rubric often lays in describing the ways that particular students blur the lines between categories. But, having those categories in the first place sets the table for a nuanced discussion of student work.

Create a rubric:

Click on the "Rubrics" link in the course navigation menu.
Click "+ Rubric."
Think of an assignment that you wish to grade with a rubric and enter the name of the assignment where you see "Some Rubric" next to the rubric's title.
Add your grading criteria down the left side of the rubric and add the "ratings" for each criteria horizontally to assess the levels of mastery. You can decide if you would like to use points for each level or assign a range of points to each level.

Canvas instructions for creating a rubric:

Add rubric to something

Once you create a rubric, you may add it to (links below are to instructions):