Quotes from the students' nominations
The site is easy to navigate, and she put each week's materials at the top to make it quicker to get to it. I liked how she put links in the week to help us find the things we needed to do for that week. The course was fun to be in, despite being challenging. I believe it was well managed and planned out as well, it didn't seem scattered at all. All in all, I really feel that the site was well formed and the class itself was too (not to mention that it was fun to be in, just because she made it that way).
Recipient Q&A
What are you most proud of in your Canvas course site?
I'm most proud of the initial organization. Because this class is flipped, there is substantial material that needs to be organized chronologically and released at specific times for students to prepare well. This organization took a lot of time and effort upfront, but means that Canvas management is largely hands-off during the semester. This gives me more time to focus on student work rather than helping students navigate the tech.
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?
Have a birds-eye-view idea of what experience the students should have before building the course. In previous iterations of this course, I often added or changed elements throughout the semester, which made the course feel disjointed and sometimes led to confusion about expectations from unit to unit. By having an overall plan of content to cover combined with a roadmap of what each unit of content should "feel" like to students, I was able to make elements of the course (lecture videos, practice questions, readings, and summaries) consistent and predictable throughout the semester.
How have you noticed your Canvas site supporting student success? What does student success look like in your course?
This semester was the first time I fully integrated rubrics in all assignments. While I had used rubrics previously, they were always a linked document on the assignment page. Using the Canvas rubric meant students can see a detailed description of expectations with minimal effort. This also helped speed up grading and organize feedback more efficiently, making it easier for students to read my notes on their work.
When building this course site, what was your process?
I sketched out a general plan for each "unit" throughout the semester, then built a "shell" module that I copied for each unit. From there, building each module was a matter of drag-and-drop and updating details such as due dates and availability dates. Substantial time was spent translating rubrics from my own pdf versions to the Canvas rubric tool
Is there anyone you would like to acknowledge that you collaborated with or who helped you on your course site?
As much as I enjoy collaborating with colleagues, I have to say this was a solo mission!