Category Archives: Tips and Tricks

What’s the Best Web Browser to Use with Canvas?

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web-browsersAlthough Canvas officially works on all of the latest releases of Chrome, Safari, Firefox and IE, there are a couple of instances in which Safari or Firefox may not be the best choice. Which browsers does Canvas support? in the Canvas Community is regularly updated with the latest browsers supported.  We recommend having the latest version of at least two browsers installed on your computer. For Canvas, Chrome should be one of those browsers.

Below are two known issues with Safari and Firefox.

Safari Issue with Student Turnitin Submissions

If students attempting to submit a Turnitin assignment are prompted to enter their login and password, they should switch browsers from Safari to Chrome or Firefox.  Turnitin requires the use of browser cookies and some versions of Safari may not be set up correctly.  If students want to continue using Safari, they should

1. Click on the “Safari” menu and select “Preferences.”
2. Click on the “Privacy” tab.
3. Set “Block Cookies and other website data” to “Never”

Note: You may need to close and then re-open your browser window, clear your browser cache, and/or log out and back into Canvas for these settings to take affect. After you are finished using Turnitin, you may revert your privacy settings.

Firefox Issue with Online Grading Using Speedgrader and Crocodoc

If an instructor is using the online commenting tools with Canvas’ Speedgrader (Crocodoc), there is a known issue that Firefox may not save the last comment.  Since comments are automatically saved, you may not notice that the last comment entered is not saved when you navigate to the next student’s assignment submission.  We recommend using Chrome when grading online.

Viewing Your Current Courses in Canvas

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Is your Canvas Dashboard and Canvas Course List too crowded?  Are Fall 2015 classes obscuring your Spring 2016 courses? Do you have problems finding your current courses?

You can customize the active courses you want to show in your Course list and Dashboard. Courses you want to show in the Courses drop-down menu or Dashboard are called favorite courses. You can favorite any published course that appears in the My Courses section on the course list page. When no courses are favorited, the courses list automatically displays up to 12 courses alphabetically in the drop-down menu.

To favorite your current semester courses and remove old courses from the list, click on Courses (1) from the Global Menu.  Click on the “All Courses” link (2) at the bottom of the list of courses.

Courses menu with All Courses indicated with 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the All Courses display, click on the “Star” to the left of the courses you want to appear in your Course List and Dashboard.  If you no longer want to see a course in your list, click on the “Star” to unfavorite the course.
List of courses with stars to the left of each course

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Canvas Guide to using the new Canvas Dashboard explains all of the features of the Dashboard.

For more information on using Canvas, please contact Instructional Technology at instcom@stedwards.edu.

Canvas Commons: Where Educators Find and Share Teaching Resources

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Canvas-Logo

What is Canvas Commons?

Commons is a community that allows you to share your course content or access others’ shared course content. You can import and export Canvas pages, modules or the entire course.

  • Share course materials among faculty who are teaching the same course.
  • You can create a personal learning object repository
  • Build a course from scratch by using the shared materials from other Canvas users.

Continue reading →

Canvas Commons for Qualtrics

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q_logo_vertical

Qualtrics is a research survey software that allows survey data collection and provides an analysis platform  to meet research needs. St. Edward’s now offers a Qualtrics self-paced online course on the Canvas Commons. The course gives students instructions to get started with Qualtrics, set up their own survey, distribute the survey and collect and analyze data.

If you wish to add the Canvas Qualtrics course as part of your course or if you simply wish to learn about the software, you can 1.) request to add students to take the self-paced course, 2.) take the course without registering or 3.) import the course into your own course

 

To request your students to be added to the self-paced course:
Send a request e-mail to lchen1@stedwards.edu with a list of student email addresses.

To take the course:
The course is open for public, you do not need to be a Canvas user to access this information. Go to the course URL here.

To import the course into your own course:
Canvas allows the training course to be imported into your course. Once you are logged in to your Canvas account, go to the Commons Tab and search for “Qualtrics Training”

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To import the Qualtrics common into your own course, follow the instructions here

Introduction to Qualtrics: A Tool for Building Online Surveys

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Qualtrics

 

Qualtrics is an online survey application for creating, distributing and analyzing survey data. Qualtrics may be used for:

      • Academic research
      • Course evaluation
      • Experiment design
      • Student and Alumni outreach
      • Program administration

 

Getting Started

To get started, you will need to check out the basic interface of Qualtrics, which will allow you to  browse the pre-made survey questions, create survey questions, adjust account settings and launch your survey.

Check out how to set up your own account and the introduction to Qualtrics from the St. Edward’s ITTraining YouTube Channel

Account Settings

Before you start creating your own survey, you might want to check out the Account Settings, which will allow you to change your password, change time zone or change language.

Account settings

Creating Questions

Once you set up your Account settings, you are ready to start creating your survey questions. The following page explains how to add, delete, copy and edit questions in your Survey Tab.

View the instructions on creating your Survey Questions

Collaboration

If you want to collaborate on the survey with your teammates, the Collaborate feature allows your teammates to access your survey and modify it if needed.

Collaborate on a survey with teammates

Libraries

Want to store your survey questions or need some survey ideas? Qualtrics offers My Library for your own questions as well as pre-made survey questions

My Library

If you have additional questions about surveys, research tools or using Qualtrics, please contact Instructional Technology at instcom@stedwards.edu.

Student View of Assignment Feedback in Canvas

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Canvas has several ways to provide student feedback on assignments they have submitted online. Faculty can provide text comments as well as use the SpeedGrader and Crocodoc annotation tools to markup submitted papers with additional feedback and comments. If using TurnItIn, faculty can use Grademark to annotate and comment on student assignments.

When students need to view feedback, it’s important that they know where to go in Canvas in order to view ALL feedback, not just text comments entered on the initial assignment grade screen. In order for student’s to view ALL feedback provided by the instructor, they should follow these steps:

  1. Log into the course and click on the ‘Grades’ link.
  2. Find the assignment and click the assignment name.
  3. Click on ‘View Feedback’ to view all feedback including comments and any additional annotated comments made on the submission.

View and share the video below with your students for more details about the student view of assignment feedback.

Effective Strategies for Online Disscussions in Your Course

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Planning Your Online Course v2 -Giulia ForsytheOnline discussions can serve as a great opportunity for your students to reflect on the ideas presented in your course and allow them a safe place for challenging academic discourse. This blog post shares a few starting points for thinking about the format of your discussions, the roles students can play in the discussion space, and ways you can assess and incorporate the online discussions back into your face-to-face class. Illustration by Giulia Forsythe

Continue reading →

Grading and Providing Feedback in Canvas

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The Canvas gradebook has many features that are useful for providing feedback on various types of assessments and assignments.

In the following video, we will review how to grade assignments, provide feedback (comments) as well as how to provide annotated feedback (mark-up and comments) using the SpeedGrader.

gradebook screen

Whenever you create a new graded assignment, you will get a corresponding column in your gradebook[1]. Use the cells [2] in the grade book to input grades for your assignments. All assignments must be entered as points but you can change how the students see the grade in their gradebook (e.g. percentage, letter grade, etc.) or you can ‘Mute‘ the column so students won’t see the grade at all (you can always ‘unmute’ or reveal the grades to students later.)

You can provide feedback and comments on an assignment by clicking on the comment icon [3] in the corner of a gradebook cell. Comments are great for short notes and questions. Students can respond to your comments, and the conversation can continue for the duration of the course. The comment will appear on the Dashboard, on their “Grades” pages, and in the comment stream of the SpeedGrader display for the assignment.

Canvas has a tool called SpeedGrader which lets you quickly preview, comment and/or annotate a student’s assignment submission. Using the SpeedGrader and the Crocodoc toolbar, you can mark-up and add comments. NOTE: If you use the SpeedGrader, make sure you tell your students to click on the ‘View Feedback’ link when they view their submission grade in order to see ALL annotations and comments made on their assignment.

If the assignment being graded is a TurnItIn assignment, you can access the TurnItIn Originality score and report by clicking on the TurnItIn score icon [4] in the gradebook. Once you view the TurnItIn Originality report, you can use the TurnItIn Grademark tools to provide annotated comments and feedback.

 

Creating and Editing your Faculty Profile on www.stedwards.edu

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Faculty, have you created or updated your faculty profile?

The faculty profiles on www.stedwards.edu are intended to be flexible and allow for you to accurately showcase your professional academic career and highlight unique achievements. This profile framework was developed in conjunction with St. Edward’s University faculty (full time and adjunct) in late 2014 and early 2015.

As faculty, you are responsible for the accuracy of your own information and maintenance of your profile. You may access your profile at anytime. You may also access the faculty profile guide with instructions on how to update your profile. Note: It is important to get an official St. Edward’s University photo taken by Marketing for your faculty profile. Please contact marketing to see when the next photo session will take place.

Website Goals

The current version of the St. Edward’s University website was launched to the public in July 2015. In Fall of 2014, the following goals were established as the guiding principles for the web presence. It is critical to keep these goals in mind as new content is added.

  • Goal 1. Increase awareness of the St. Edward’s brand and enhance the reputation of St. Edward’s as an intellectual and scholarly center.
  • Goal 2. Increase quality and number of students in all academic programs.
  • Goal 3. Establish a website that provides a consistent user experience for internal and external stakeholders to gather information and execute tasks quickly and efficiently.

How Often Should I Update Content?

Any outdated or incorrect content can and should be updated regularly. However, it is recommended that your profile be refreshed every 6 to 12 months.

For Help

Please contact: