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 tools to help students digitally interact:
Groups
- 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
- 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
- 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
Students can:
- 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.
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Need more help?
Talk now with a teaching support specialist at Portland State University.