Quotes from the students' nominations
I am nominating this course because all of the instructors for this course have made it an incredible experience. They are all in unison with their responses and teachings. All the material they have provided has been done so in a cohesive manner. They are very quick with grading and supportive in their feedback.
Recipient Q&A
What are you most proud of in your Canvas course site?
One that stands out is how much the Canvas site tries to simplify navigation for students and reduce the mental load of finding course content and figuring out what they need to do that week. It was encouraging the students commented on the organization of the course and how much they appreciated that aspect. It feels like we have a Canvas site that supports student engagement and learning rather than being a barrier or something else they have to figure out.
What is one lesson you learned while building or using your course site that might help other instructors who want to improve their use of Canvas?
So many! The biggest one is to utilize instructional designers or academic technologists whenever possible! Sarah Maxwell is the course coordinator for this course and designed and built the Canvas site. She has deep knowledge of accessibility best practices, instructional best practices, and how to use each tool and it shows in the Canvas site.
How have you noticed your Canvas site supporting student success? What does student success look like in your course?
This is a writing intensive course and so students submit writing in multiple modalities and across multiple tools. Our goal is not necessarily to help students get "right" answers but instead be able to articulate multiple points of view on an issue in the healthcare system and then to use evidence to support their own argument. This requires engagement with their peers and instructors throughout the semester and so designing a Canvas site that supports this goal is vital. We've seen how using simple tools effectively, such as discussion boards, allows conversation to happen. We make full use of the tools in Canvas with everything from creating groups, to using Speedgrader for individualized feedback, to library course pages. When helpful, we've also integrated other tools such as Feedback Fruits to facilitate peer feedback. We were worried that using a number of different tools could be confusing or overwhelming for students and so have tried to incorporate them thoughtfully and with guidance. It's encouraging to watch students engage with the content and see that they're not getting stuck with the technology.
When building this course site, what was your process?
We started with our course objectives and how we envisioned student engagement and then worked from there. I know I've said it already, but working with Sarah Maxwell as a academic technologist was foundational to the success of the course. We have taught the course over a number of semesters and so are constantly making improvements. Sarah paid particular attention to student feedback or common student questions and worked to address those in the Canvas site design. Changes included things like creating nested drop-down menus for assignments to make it easier to students to navigate and find answers to their question as well as creating demo videos to show students how to use the tools.
Is there anyone you would like to acknowledge that you collaborated with or who helped you on your course site?
Yes, this course is taught with a robust course team. This includes our course coordinator Sarah Maxwell and lecturer Kristyn Williamson. Kristyn has shared course director responsibilities and the course has been a collaborative effort from the beginning.
What were some of the benefits (or challenges) of using DesignPlus to build your Canvas course? What suggestions do you have for others to get started?
Yes, our course coordinator did use DesignPlus to set up the Canvas site. Benefits include increased options for the design of pages as well as tools like interactive activities. Challenges include learning how to use the tool effectively. It can be so helpful to set up a sandbox site for the Canvas course site to try out tools without worrying about messing up the actual course site.