Student-Faculty Partnerships in Curricula
Contributors:Kari Goin, Sophia Ryker
There is a growing movement to not only include but also involve students in curricula decisions. Students in higher education have challenged the notion that they are customers receiving a transactional education and instead call for higher levels of participation and agency in their learning (Matthews et al., 2017). Students collaborating with institutions, programs, and faculty to design curricula is a framework known as students as partners, or student-faculty partnerships. At Portland State University, student body President Nya Mbock has called for more student involvement with faculty in the curriculum (Swordfisk, 2021).
Positive outcomes of student-faculty partnership include increased student engagement, motivation, and ownership for learning, a positive shift of power dynamics between faculty and student (toward more equitable power), engagement and empowerment for students who are historically excluded, and increased student confidence and self-determination (Cook-Sather et al., 2014).
With any approach to curricula, the intention of including students can end up harming students. It’s important to set intentions, to be transparent, and to reflect on how power affects the partnership. Without these intentional pieces, partnership work may end up tokenizing students and essentializing the student experience (Cook-Sather et al., 2014; de Bie et al., 2021). As a result, and despite good intentions, partnerships can reinforce the inequitable learning environments that they seek to disrupt. For example, partnership work may focus on an increased sense of belonging for students, which may be problematic when the institution students are invited to feel connected with has a history of erasure and colonization for some student populations (de Bie et al., 2021).
Example Partnership Approaches
Here are three examples of partnership approaches you can include in your own practice:
Student-faculty course design
This happens before a course is taught and when you are designing the course. A student or group of students collaborate with the faculty member on the design of a course. This might include a redesigned syllabus or elements such as course outcomes, a course assignment, or an entire course.
Students create and choose
This includes students in a course you are teaching. This might include having students choose the weekly discussion topics or create and vote on quiz questions, embedding students’ social bookmarking annotations to shape course content, or having students collaborate to create course content (Cook-Sather et al., 2014).
Partnerships in assessment
Invite students to identify grading criteria for an assignment or final essay or invite students to co-assess their own final presentations. Another example is to bring a rubric with past student papers (used with permission) and have current students grade the papers based on that rubric. Have a discussion about the rubric and invite students to offer suggestions on adapting it for their course term.
Getting Started
Step 1
Begin by reflecting on how you currently involve students in your curriculum.
Step 2
Create a list of when students get to make decisions within your curriculum. (If this is currently “never,” consider starting with a negotiated syllabus.)
Step 3
Acknowledge that this iterative process never really ends.
Examples in Practice
Provide a diversity of materials in formats that remain consistent from week to week. Students choose which materials to engage with to learn the concepts outlined for that week. The focus of the negotiated syllabus is to highlight student agency within their learning by creating opportunities for students to choose the way they want to learn a concept.
For example, provide lecture slides, supplementary texts, and external videos covering the information being taught each week. From this collection, students can choose which items are most useful to them and will have reliable access to their preferred materials for each new topic.
Reflect on the level at which students make decisions and identify opportunities to increase student involvement: Hold a discussion with students in class to determine course learning outcomes and discuss how predetermined assignments will help the class reach their goals.
Be prepared to make small changes to assignments based on the class discussion. This is expected, as every class will have different students. The discussion may also yield ideas for new or different assignments to help the class meet their co-created learning outcomes.
Alternatively, hold a discussion with students in class to create course assignments based on predetermined course outcomes and how these assignments will help the class reach their goals.
Integrate the student voice into your course by providing ample room for identity expression and application of the material to students’ own lived experiences — in ways such as including languages spoken beyond English and encouraging cultural and community practices. This engages more parts of the brain and allows for greater communication between them, along with deeper integration of the learned material into long-term memory (Johnson et al., 2006).
This eReader is a great example of storytelling that showcases stories written by diverse students in University Studies courses at PSU:
Develop a syllabus, in partnership with students, that reflects your collective values. Co-creating a syllabus is a chance for students to democratically participate in their own learning. It signals that a course is designed to share power and encourage not only student involvement but also engagement and agency.
The syllabus might include co-created community guidelines, flexible deadlines based on the class’s needs for that quarter, or opportunities for students to self-grade. You might also consider including a list of linked resources (where to find cost-considerate course materials, necessary technology, internet access), a land acknowledgement, and an acknowledgment of bias.
Cook-Sather, A., Bovill, C., & Felton, P. (2014). Engaging Students As Partners in Learning and Teaching : A Guide for Faculty. John Wiley & Sons. https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/lib/psu/detail.action?docID=1650837
De Bie, K., Marquis, E., Cook-Sather, A., & Luqueño, L. P. (2021). Promoting Equity and Justice through Pedagogical Partnership. Stylus. https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/lib/PSU/detail.action?docID=6647714
Johnson, S., & Taylor, K. (2006). The Neuroscience of Adult Learning: New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. Wiley. https://search.library.pdx.edu/permalink/f/p82vj0/CP71182273540001451
Matthews, K. E., Groenendijk, L. J., & Chunduri, P. (2017). We Want to be More Involved: Student Perceptions of Students as Partners Across the Degree Program Curriculum. International Journal for Students As Partners, 1(2). https://doi.org/10.15173/ijsap.v1i2.3063
Swordfisk, K. (2021, September 27). In pursuit of student success: ASPSU president prioritizes student involvement, improving the post-COVID learning environment. PSU News. https://www.pdx.edu/news/pursuit-student-success
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The Teaching and Learning Institute at Bryn Mawr and Haverford colleges
Equity and Inclusion Practices
This guide introduces a few pedagogies you can adopt into your inclusive teaching practice. They can help facilitate connections and conversations leading to inclusive and equitable learning — but this is not an exhaustive list.
Contributors: Raiza Dottin, Kari Goin, Megan McFarland, Harold McNaron, Janelle DeCarrico Voegele
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy
Culturally sustaining pedagogy builds on the work of culturally relevant teaching and culturally responsive pedagogy. It affirms and sustains students’ connections to their culture, language, and community. It focuses on students as active contributors of unique lived experiences essential to learning. It also resists monolingualism and deficit student framing by promoting cultural equality (Paris, 2012).
In Practice
“I Notice, I Wonder” is a useful culturally sustaining practice in many teaching contexts. It’s an introductory brainstorming activity in which students from all backgrounds and abilities can participate.
Further Reading
Universal Design for Learning
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) attempts to minimize barriers and create equal opportunities for all students to express what they know. UDL creates multiple paths to learning and understanding that benefit all students, regardless of disability. This framework focuses on adding flexibility, choice, and relevance to three key areas of instruction: expression of knowledge, representation of information, and engagement.
In Practice
Further Reading
Trauma-Informed Pedagogy
Originating in neuroscience, trauma-informed pedagogy acknowledges and attempts to mitigate the trauma’s impact on learning. Trauma can come from sources including but not limited to adverse childhood experiences (or ACEs) such as physical or emotional abuse, institutional and systemic oppression, and COVID-19. While trauma affects each individual differently, it’s likely to impact cognitive functions such as memory, emotional regulation, stamina, and focus. Strategies within this framework include a focus on community, relationships, routine, and flexibility.
In Practice
Further Reading
- Leveraging the Neuroscience of Now
- What Does Trauma-Informed Teaching Look Like? (Note: You may need to register for a free account using your PDX email address in order to access this article.)
Community-Engaged Learning Pedagogy
What is the role of a university in a community? How might curricula contribute to students’ civic identity? How does a course honor the life experience students bring to the classroom? Community-engaged learning (CEL) pedagogies attempt to address these and other foundational questions concerning the intentional interplay between movements for justice, academic knowledge, and the spaces we share.
In Practice
Further Reading
Contemplative Pedagogy
Contemplative pedagogy encourages deep learning through focused attention, reflection, and mindfulness practice. It engages students in an introspective, first-person way of knowing the world around them through an embodied educational experience, which allows students to see themselves in their courses. “Inviting the contemplative simply includes the natural human capacity for knowing through silence, looking inward, pondering deeply, beholding, witnessing the contents of our consciousness…. These approaches cultivate an inner technology of knowing….” (Hart, 2004, pp. 29–30).
Many common classroom practices — such as close reading, writing, and reflection — can draw from contemplative practices to help students focus deeply, retain new information, and integrate learning into meaningful situations.
In Practice
Further Reading
Student Voice
Student voice “aims to signal not only the literal sound of students’ words as they inform educational planning, research, and reform, but also the collective contribution of diverse students’ presence, participation and power in those processes” (Bovill et al., 2011, pp. 2–3). Notably, student voice work is shared decision-making between students and faculty that involves value, agency, and action for students and aims to be transformative for both students and faculty.
In Practice
Further Reading
Anti-Racist Pedagogy
Anti-racist pedagogy is a “paradigm located within critical theory utilized to explain and counteract the persistence and impact of racism using praxis as its focus to promote social justice for the creation of a democratic society in every respect” (Blakeney, 2005, p. 119). Further, anti-racist pedagogy reveals the structural inequalities within U.S. society while fostering students’ critical analysis skills as well as their critical self-reflection (Kishimoto, 2018). Per Kishimoto, incorporating anti-racist pedagogy at the classroom level begins with examining one’s own pedagogy and curriculum to implement change. This could involve understanding how inequitable education structures impact students differently, reevaluating assumptions we may make about students’ backgrounds, inviting a colleague to review syllabi or other course materials to identify where bias might impact curriculum and organization, meaningfully incorporating the work and voices of minoritized scholars, and incorporating high impact learning practices that create the foundations for collective exploration of historical, social, and cultural biases in the field of study.
In Practice
Further Reading
Blakeney, A. M. (2005). Antiracist pedagogy: Definition, theory, and professional development. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 2(1), 119–132.
Bovill, C. (2020). Co-creation in learning and teaching: the case for a whole-class approach in higher education. High Educ 79, 1023–1037.
Bovill, C., Cook‐Sather, A. & Felten, P. (2011). Students as co‐creators of teaching approaches, course design, and curricula: implications for academic developers. International Journal for Academic Development, 16(2), 133–145.
Bovill, C., Cook‐Sather, A. & Felten, P. (2014). Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching: A Guide for Faculty. John Wiley & Sons.
Carello, J., & Butler, L.D. (2014). Potentially perilous pedagogies: Teaching trauma is not the same as trauma-informed teaching. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 15(2), 153–168.
Hart, T. (2004). Opening the contemplative mind in the classroom. Journal of Transformative Education, 2(28), 28–46.
Kishimoto, K. (2018) Anti-racist pedagogy: from faculty’s self-reflection to organizing within and beyond the classroom. Race Ethnicity and Education, 21(4), 540–554.
Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93–97.
Managing Your Canvas Site
Managing Your Canvas Site
This article was last updated .
Need to log in to Canvas? Follow this link to the Canvas log in portal.
This website and resources are intended for Portland State instructors. For PSU students looking for help with Canvas and general tech support, please contact the OIT Helpdesk.
Additional Canvas resources for PSU students can be found in OIT’s Canvas Resources for Students.
Canvas has many features and tools for teaching a course. But you also need these “under the hood” functions for managing your course site.
Personal Settings
Before getting started in Canvas, be sure to update your personal settings. It’s an important step to make sure you stay connected with your classes. You’ll need to do this only once, unless your preferences change.
The following list outlines the main settings you should consider reviewing and are linked to detailed guides:
Course Import Tool
Copy a course when you want to use or repurpose previously created content — including course settings, syllabus, assignments, modules, files, pages, discussions, quizzes, and question banks. You can also copy or adjust events and due dates. Not all content can be copied as part of a course. (Learn about “Import Limitations.”) Canvas lets you copy all content from one course site to another or select specific content.
Course shells for each new term will be available in the preceding term. For example, winter course shells will be available midway through the preceding fall term. If you need a place to work on your course sooner or just want a sandbox where you can test new ideas, create a new Canvas course shell from your Canvas Dashboard.
Student View
It’s always a good idea to check your course from the student’s perspective. This helps you identify what elements a student can access and how the course navigation menu displays for them.
To enter Student View, select “Settings” in the course navigation menu. Next, select “Student View” from among the settings area’s options.
Student View has a highlighted frame or border.
You can navigate the course as a student, with some slight exceptions:
- Groups: As an instructor in Student View, all group information will be available to you, while students will only have access to their own group.
- Inbox: The Test Student doesn’t have a Canvas Inbox, so you won’t be able to test communications.
- Other tools: Some other tools (e.g., Panopto, VoiceThread, etc.) may not function as expected.
To exit Student View, select the “Leave Student View” button.
Canvas Link Validator
You can check all external links throughout your course with the course link validator. It finds invalid or unresponsive external links in both published and unpublished content. However, some links it flags as unresponsive (to Canvas servers) will still work for students.
Additional Course Settings
These settings are available only to the course instructor:
- Set a course image: This allows you to change the dashboard image associated with your course.
- Enable a grading scheme: This gives students a letter grade for assignments and the overall course.
- Allow students to attach files to discussions: This allows students to include files and images on discussion boards.
- View course analytics/statistics: This offers insight into student engagement in your course.
- Publish your course: This makes your course visible to students. You must “publish” your course for students to have access.
- Important note: Each item in your course needs to be published for students to access it. This includes all pages and links in your modules as well as assignments, quizzes, and discussions.
- Display announcements on the course home page: This allows you to show announcements on your course home page, so students notice them upon entering. You control how many announcements to display.
Adapted from “Managing Your Canvas Site” in Start Here 102: Best Practices in Online instruction, licensed CC BY 4.0 by Grace Seo, University of Missouri.
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Communicating in Canvas
Contributors:Misty Hamideh
Need to log in to Canvas? Follow this link to the Canvas log in portal.
This website and resources are intended for Portland State instructors. For PSU students looking for help with Canvas and general tech support, please contact the OIT Helpdesk.
Additional Canvas resources for PSU students can be found in OIT’s Canvas Resources for Students.
Canvas has several ways to communicate with your students. Here are two of them:
- Announcements are course-wide.
- Inbox messages may be private between an instructor and a student or group of students, or a message between students.
Announcements
You can use Announcements to give students news, updates, and reminders. Students receive email copies of your announcements in their campus email. This is based on their notification preferences; by default, they receive the message immediately — but they can opt for less frequent notifications.
From the Canvas Tutorial Video Series for instructors
Note: A default Canvas course is set to show the latest announcement at the top of the page. You can set how many announcements to display, but we recommend just one to make sure students notice the most important and current information.
The primary use of an announcement is for news and reminders:
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- Notify students of class cancellation, if a class location has moved, if you will be out of town or delayed in providing feedback on an assignment, etc.
- Remind students of upcoming due dates.
- Notify students of campus events or news items of interest or relevance.
You can also use announcements to engage students at the beginning of each unit (week). Doing this consistently helps participants stay connected and recognize that you are a human with a personality (and not just a computer). It helps define your “presence” in an online course.
When writing an announcement, use the “inverted pyramid” model from journalistic writing. Open with the most important facts or information and then progress through less important details. Most people will read only the first sentence or two unless they perceive a need to keep going.
Guiding announcements generally include two or more of the following:
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- Introduction to the main idea for the week — short, one sentence, to motivate and encourage engagement in the topic of the week.
- Any scheduling information such as days the teacher will not be available, a changed due date, holiday, etc.
- Summary response to previous week’s discussion (or assignment submission). Provide positive feedback; whenever possible, mention student names and take quotes directly from their postings. This should be only a paragraph highlighting just one or two exceptional comments. (This recognizes and motivates, as well as demonstrating that you actually read the discussions.)
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- By default, students receive an immediate email copy of a course announcement. However, faculty do not automatically receive copies of announcements they have created. If you want email copies of your own announcements (e.g., as reassurance that the announcement went out), edit your notification preferences.
- You can schedule Announcements in advance or post them immediately. Delaying release — even by a little — gives you time to proofread (and revise if needed) before students receive it.
- If multiple sections are loaded to your Canvas site, you can post an announcement to just selected sections if necessary.
- Announcements are also available in Canvas Groups. You can post an announcement to just one group, and group members can post announcements to each other.
- When you copy an entire Canvas site from one semester to the next, the announcements are included. You will need to go through them and delete any that are no longer needed or edit the release date for those you wish to reuse. Be sure to also edit out any information that was only relevant to the previous class!
- You can use the Rich Content Editor and Content Selector when you create an announcement. Use these to format the text of your posts or to link to the items you reference; for example, if you are reminding students that an assignment is due, you can link to that assignment.
The Inbox
The Inbox allows Canvas users to send messages to one another within Canvas.
Both faculty and students can configure their notification settings to receive Canvas Inbox messages at the email address of their choice. You can also choose how often to receive these notifications.
Use the Inbox to:
- Send information or updates to an individual student, a section, or a group.
- Record a media comment (audio or video) to send to an individual student, section, or group.
- Send file attachments to an individual student, a section, or a group.
- Use the “Message Students Who…” feature in the Gradebook to contact students who have not submitted an assessment, who scored less than a given grade, or who scored more than a given grade.
Adapted from “Communicating in Canvas” in Start Here 102: Best Practices in Online instruction, licensed CC BY 4.0 by Grace Seo, University of Missouri.
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Assignments in Canvas
Need to log in to Canvas? Follow this link to the Canvas log in portal.
This website and resources are intended for Portland State instructors. For PSU students looking for help with Canvas and general tech support, please contact the OIT Helpdesk.
Additional Canvas resources for PSU students can be found in OIT’s Canvas Resources for Students.
Assignments in Canvas is both a specific kind of assessment and any Canvas activity associated with a grade. This video provides a basic overview:
How to Use Assignments in Teaching
Students can submit several assignment types in Canvas:
- A “no submission” assignment helps you track activities not completed directly in Canvas, such as attendance at a Zoom session.
- “Online” assignments provide a space for students to turn something in online. You can select one or more types of online submissions to accept:
- Text entry provides a text box with formatting tools where students can write a submission directly in Canvas.
- Website URL provides a space for students to share a URL as their submission.
- Media Recordings allow students to create and submit recordings directly within Canvas or to upload recordings created in another application.
- Student Annotation allows you to provide a file that students can annotate directly in Canvas.
- File upload allows students to submit file types including Word documents, PowerPoint slides, spreadsheets, PDFs, images, and videos. (You can restrict file types if necessary.)
- “On Paper” assignments allow you to track hard copies handed in.
- “External tool” assignments allow you to create assessments with tools not native to Canvas, such as Turnitin or PebblePad.
- Graded discussions and quizzes are also considered “assignments.” These are listed under both Assignments and on their own respective Canvas index pages.
Assignments and Grades
The Canvas Gradebook is closely tied to the Assignments index. Anything you want a Gradebook column for must have an Assignment associated with it.
By default, assignments are listed in the order you create them. This also determines the order they appear in the Gradebook, but you can drag and drop them into the order you prefer.
You can also create Assignment Groups on the Assignments page. This gives you:
- Subtotals in the Gradebook for each assignment group. For example, if you want a subtotal for all discussion assignments and another for all quizzes, you could create groups for each.
- A place to assign weight for weighted grades. You could assign a weight to each group (e.g., 20% for discussions, 50% for quizzes).
- A place to assign other rules for assignment groups, such as dropping the lowest score.
Adapted from “Assignments in Canvas” in Start Here 102: Best Practices in Online instruction, licensed CC BY 4.0 by Grace Seo, University of Missouri.
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Tutorials
Student Interactions in Canvas
Need to log in to Canvas? Follow this link to the Canvas log in portal.
This website and resources are intended for Portland State instructors. For PSU students looking for help with Canvas and general tech support, please contact the OIT Helpdesk.
Additional Canvas resources for PSU students can be found in OIT’s Canvas Resources for Students.
Student interaction plays an important role in learning and overall sense of community. Whether you’re teaching fully online, blended, or in-person, you might consider developing space to support such interaction in your digital classroom. Canvas has many tools to help students digitally interact.
Groups
Student interaction plays an important role in learning and overall sense of community. Whether you’re teaching fully online, blended, or in-person, you might consider developing space to support such interaction in your digital classroom. Canvas has many tools to help students digitally interact.
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- Create student groups to use with Canvas Discussions, Canvas Assignments, and Canvas Peer Reviews.
- Create student groups randomly or manually, or allow individual signups.
- Have student group members create and edit their own Canvas pages.
- Have students create their own groups in your course (if enabled).
Peer Review
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- Facilitate students reviewing one another's work and giving substantive feedback.
- Allow students to serve as an audience for one another's presentations, performances, etc.
- Assign peer reviews randomly, manually, and both within or among group memberships.
- Have students use associated rubrics to leave peer feedback.
Collaborations
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- Add a Google Doc as a collaborative document and share it with individuals or groups in your Canvas course.
- Have students add their own Collaborations (if your course uses Collaborations). Student collaborations will automatically be visible to instructors.
- Use Collaborations to co-create certain course elements (e.g. syllabus, discussion guidelines, rubrics).
Discussions
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- Share learning resources with one another.
- Teach topics or information to one another.
- Help one another troubleshoot issues or answer content-related questions (e.g., course Q&A forum).
Integrating these instructional strategies and technology tools helps cultivate a safe learning community, foster peer interaction, and give timely and meaningful feedback by involving students in both doing things and thinking about the things they are doing.
Adapted from “Learner-Learner Interactions” in Start Here 102: Best Practices in Online Instruction, licensed CC BY 4.0 by Grace Seo, University of Missouri.
Discussions in Canvas
Need to log in to Canvas? Follow this link to the Canvas log in portal.
This website and resources are intended for Portland State instructors. For PSU students looking for help with Canvas and general tech support, please contact the OIT Helpdesk.
Additional Canvas resources for PSU students can be found in OIT’s Canvas Resources for Students.
Discussions are threaded conversations on a single topic. They are asynchronous, which means participants do not have to be online at the same time, making them an especially flexible communication tool. You can use Discussions for communication and for assessment.
This video provides a basic overview:
Using Discussions in Your Teaching
- Have students introduce themselves to the class at the beginning of a semester.
- Create a Q&A thread for the class and ask students to post questions instead of contacting you by email. You can even encourage students to respond to each other in this thread rather than waiting for you to reply.
- Create a “water cooler” thread for students to chat about topics unrelated to the class. While this is not teaching per se, it allows students to connect with each other and helps build social presence in the course.
- Ask students to use the media tools in the Rich Content Editor to post their responses. For learners who are more comfortable speaking than writing, this provides a means for them to respond more fluently. In a language course, this allows you to assess students’ pronunciation, grammar, etc.
- Have students work through a case or problem.
- Embed a media prompt (a diagram, video, etc.) for students to respond to.
- Students can create their own discussions within Canvas Groups.
Setting Discussion Guidelines and/or Expectations
In your syllabus or on an introductory page in the Modules area, be sure to define exactly what you expect from students when posting to discussions. This can include general netiquette information, use of full sentences, citing sources, and specific information on how you will assess discussions (include quantity and quality of posts).
Considerations for Using Canvas Discussions
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- The “threaded discussion” option will make conversations easier for everyone to follow. Remember to select it when creating a discussion. (It’s not selected by default.)
- You can use the Rich Content Editor in Canvas to format the text of your discussion prompt, add links (to other parts of the Canvas site or to other webpages), and embed videos.
- For a graded discussion, you can review student responses in SpeedGrader. When you select a student in SpeedGrader, you will find all of that student’s posts to the discussion — which is helpful if you require students to reply to their classmates in addition to posting their own responses to the prompt.
- You can attach a rubric to a graded discussion or require peer review for discussion responses.
Using Discussions with Groups
In a large class, consider breaking students into smaller groups and then having each group respond to discussion prompts.
- Discussions in Groups allow for collaboration on projects.
Writing Good Discussion Questions
Asking the right question(s) is vital to creating a good discussion in your course. Consider the following discussion prompt:
After reading textbook chapter 5, please describe challenges that social workers face due to the social climate, economic changes, and political environment.
Once a few students have responded to the question, it’s likely they will have covered all potential answers. The rest will have little to add without being repetitive. Additionally, fact-based questions like the one above don’t help students identify their own knowledge gaps, explore multiple perspectives, or negotiate content meaning.
Instead, ask open-ended questions or questions that have more than just one or a few correct answers. These can offer additional discussion opportunities. For example:
How do you perceive that plan as adequate to the problem? What makes you think so? Where might that plan derail? What other plans are possible?
Questions that invite students to share their own point of view from their personal and/or work life can generate multiple perspectives.
Important Takeaways
Make sure responses are not “right” or “wrong” and cannot be answered with “yes” or “no.” The best discussion prompts ask students to reflect and to demonstrate higher order thinking (analysis, synthesis, comparison, evaluation). Otherwise, discussions risk becoming “homework out loud.” Students perceive them as busy work, and you won’t enjoy reading and assessing the responses.
Discussions are meant to be interactions among learners. You may want to ask students not only to post comments to the discussion questions but also to respond to one or two other students. If so, give different due dates for initial posts to discussion and for peer-to-peer interactions. This will help you avoid a situation where learners post the discussions and interactions on the last day of the discussion, giving learners no time to interact with each other.
Adapted from “Discussions in Canvas” in Start Here 102: Best Practices in Online instruction, licensed CC BY 4.0 by Grace Seo, University of Missouri.
Using the Home Page in Canvas
Need to log in to Canvas? Follow this link to the Canvas log in portal.
This website and resources are intended for Portland State instructors. For PSU students looking for help with Canvas and general tech support, please contact the OIT Helpdesk.
Additional Canvas resources for PSU students can be found in OIT’s Canvas Resources for Students.
When students log in to your course for the first time, they need something friendly and welcoming that orients them and explicitly communicates what to do.
You have several options for your course home page, but OAI recommends setting it to a page you create (also called a Front Page). Starting new students on a syllabus page or a modules list isn’t nearly as welcoming as a page with your contact information, a picture of you, a personal welcome, and/or instructions on what to do first.
By default, your Canvas course will display announcements at the top of the page. This is where you can post important reminders or other course information. You can set how many announcements show up on the home page —but limiting to just one can help make sure students notice the most important and current information.
Course Navigation
When students log in, they will notice the course navigation bar. Canvas lets you simplify navigation by hiding items not used in your course. This can reduce confusion for your students and keep them focused on the relevant course materials.
OAI recommends using Modules to organize all your instructions, content, activities, and assignments. This gives students one central location to look for everything. By doing this, you can hide the Assignments, Quizzes, Discussions, Pages, and Files pages from the navigation bar in the student view.
That means fewer “where is” questions for you and less frustration for your students!
Example Home Pages
Templates
Use a template from the Commons resource library to create your own homepage! To find one of these templates, log into your Canvas course, and click on the Commons link in the Global Navigation bar. Then select the Filter button and check the box labeled Only Portland State University Approved Resources.
Note: These homepage templates will all import into the “Pages” section of the selected course.
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from Teaching@Sydney (University of Sydney, Australia)
Grading in Canvas
Need to log in to Canvas? Follow this link to the Canvas log in portal.
This website and resources are intended for Portland State instructors. For PSU students looking for help with Canvas and general tech support, please contact the OIT Helpdesk.
Additional Canvas resources for PSU students can be found in OIT’s Canvas Resources for Students.
The Gradebook stores all information about student progress in the course, measuring both letter grades and course outcomes. This video provides a basic overview:
From the Canvas Tutorial Video Series for Instructors
Assignments and Grades
The Canvas Gradebook is closely tied to the Assignments index. Anything you want a Gradebook column for must have an Assignment associated with it. By default, assignments appear in the order you create them. This also determines their order in the Gradebook, but you can drag and drop them into the order you want.
To create weighted grades or set specific rules for groups of assignments (such as dropping the lowest score), create Assignment Groups on the Assignments page, not within the Gradebook.
Using SpeedGrader
SpeedGrader is the Canvas tool for viewing student assessment submissions and giving feedback. Using SpeedGrader should help cut down on the time you spend grading, and make grading easier. A video overview of SpeedGrader is also available.
You can use SpeedGrader to:
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- Read written submissions in the DocViewer and use the annotation tools to give feedback within the document.
- Give feedback comments — written, multimedia, or as a file attachment — on the student’s work as a whole.
- Give a score.
- Use a rubric to assign points and add comments. If you use the rubric for grading, the rubric score will transfer to the student’s grade for the assignment.
- View individual student responses to quizzes as well as logs of each student’s quiz attempts.
Accessing SpeedGrader
You can access SpeedGrader either directly from the assignment or through the Gradebook.
Adapted from “Grading in Canvas” in Start Here 102: Best Practices in Online instruction, licensed CC BY 4.0 by Grace Seo, University of Missouri.
Using Canvas Modules
OAI recommends using Modules to develop course organization and navigation. Correctly using Modules simplifies navigation for your students. Modules let you organize instructions, content, activities, and assignments in the order you want students to progress through them. Using Modules avoids the problem of telling students to “go there and do this” and then “go somewhere else and do that.” This can be frustrating — as you may have experienced yourself in poorly designed online training.
(Re-)designing the navigation and organization of your Canvas learning environment can reduce the cognitive overload on your students and allow them to engage with what really matters — the unit material.
— From [Don’t] Get Lost! Using Good Navigation and Organization to Improve Your Canvas Site
By organizing all your instructions, content, activities, and assignments in Modules, you can hide the Assignments, Quizzes, Discussions, Pages, and Files pages from the left navigation list in the student view. This gives students one central location to look for everything. That means fewer “where is” questions for you and less frustration for your students.
The more doors students have to the same items, the more confusing it is for them and the harder it is to be sure they are in the right place. In Canvas, all the other tools organize these items differently than in Modules. For example:
- Discussions are ordered by time of the most recent comment. So if an earlier discussion is still attracting comments, it could appear above the current module discussion unless you have ordered discussions under the “pinned discussions” area.
- Assignments are in the order created unless you grouped them by assignment and dragged-and-dropped them into your preferred order.
- Files are grouped in folders to the extent that you build a folder structure for them. Generally, it’s best to hide the Files area from your student regardless of your planned course structure.
- Quizzes and Discussions appear on their own tool page — and also on the Assignments Tool page if they are graded.
All these can lead students to lose their place in the course, which causes more confusion and delay.
Examples
There are two schools of thought about how to organize items in Modules.
Short Version
Each module begins with an overview Content Page that includes a list of the books or chapters for the module as well as links to other items the students are to read, watch, and explore.
Long Version
Each item is a separate part of the module, including links and readings as well as activities and assignments. For reference, this course uses the long version.
In Review
Making each item a separate module element can significantly increase the length of the module. Long modules can appear overwhelming to students and reduce motivation.
On the other hand, students may skip over readings and not explore links unless they are required to progress through them one at a time.
A Big Takeaway — Consistency Is Key
Once you choose your organization strategy, the best thing you can do for your students is to implement it as consistently as possible.
Face-to-face students get in the habit of going to class at the same time and the same place every week. Online students need to form habits as well, to maintain consistent performance across the term. Consistent organization in your online spaces benefits all students, regardless of your teaching modality. Making sure assignments are always due on the same day of the week and modules always begin on the same day of the week goes a long way to providing structure.
Students also benefit from consistently having a written or video overview of each module describing what they are to do and learn. The overview should also include a list of reading (identifying chapters from books or linking to digital resources) and brief assignment descriptions or links to Assignments, Discussions, or Quizzes. Some faculty members like to put the overview description or video on one page, and then readings and resources on a subsequent page — and then have assignments and activities follow individually in the module. Either way is good as long as you pick one approach and use it consistently.
Templates
Use these templates from the Commons to help you get started organizing your own modules in Canvas. (For help, review how to import and view a Commons resource in Canvas.)
Adapted from “Using Canvas Modules” in Start Here 102: Best Practices in Online instruction, licensed CC BY 4.0 by Grace Seo, University of Missouri.