New Year, New Changes in Canvas!

As most of you are aware, Canvas continually makes improvements to the learning management system to allow for a better, richer experience for faculty and students… many of these improvements take place behind the scenes with relatively little noticeable impact to the typical Canvas user.  Some changes, however, are strikingly obvious… like the recent changes to discussion boards and the improvements made to the Recent Activity stream.  The rest of this blog entry outlines some of the changes you may have recently seen (or will be seeing soon).

Some already-implemented recent improvements include:

New Dashboard

The Dashboard is now more simplistic and better organized to give students and faculty a clear understanding of "What is going on and what do I need to do?" The Dashboard is filtered into categories such as Announcements, Conversations, Assignments, Discussions and other Notifications that have indicators to show what is read or unread. Clicking on the x to the right of the item can clear these recent activities.  Users can now drill down into each category further to view numerous older items within a specific category.

Discussion Search & Pagination

First, Canvas added search functionality to Discussions.  From any individual Discussion Topic, a user can search the entries (or comments) on that topic.  As users type text into the box, discussion replies are filtered and displayed on-screen. There is also an "unread" button that lets the user filter the search results even further to view all discussion threads they haven't reviewed yet.

The second enhancement Canvas made was the addition of pagination to Discussions. This means that a known maximum number of discussion threads are displayed on the screen. This assures that discussions can render correctly in supported browsers.

Quizzes – One Question at a Time

Faculty can now choose to deliver one quiz question at a time for all types of quizzes and surveys. This checkbox is titled “Show one question at a time” in the quiz options. Faculty can also restrict students from going back to questions they have already answered using the additional checkbox titled “Lock questions after answering”.  Lock Question After Answering is only available if One Question at a Time is selected. Faculty must set the one-at-a-time question options for each quiz they wish to enable.  

If Lock Question After Answering is chosen, students will be warned in one of two ways:

•       When students first take the quiz, or resume the quiz, they will be warned that once they have submitted an answer they will not be able to go back and view or change that answer later.

•       When students leave a question blank and attempt to move to the next question, they will be warned that they can’t return to answer the blank question.  

Students won’t be able to use the back button in the browser, manipulate the URL, or leave the quiz in hopes of returning to access the previously locked question.  

New improvements coming on or about January 5^th

Discussion Expand and Collapse Buttons

Discussions will now have expand/collapse functionality to help with readability. Collapsing is “sticky” across pages, so if the first page is expanded or collapsed, subsequent pages will also be expanded or collapsed.



These details for these features have been sourced from Canvas’ Release Notes page.  Please feel free to contact the Center for Online Learning at Bay Path College (online@baypath.edu) for any questions you may about using Canvas for your Bay Path class.

Annotate Directly in SpeedGrader!

Since Canvas debuted at Bay Path last year, many of our faculty have made mention of the fact that it would be great if they could annotate student submissions from directly within Speedgrader.  Up until now, this hasn’t been an option.  Beginning on September 29^th, we can!

Canvas now integrates with a took known as “Crocodoc” that can be used to preview and annotate homework submissions in the Speedgrader application.  Instructors can now annotate using a variety of tools directly on assignments to provide specific feedback for their students.  

Annotating student submission in Speedgrader with Crocodoc

Keep in mind that Crocodoc will only be used for supported file types: .doc/.docx, .pdf, .ppt/.pptx and .xls/.xlsx.  When another file type is submitted for a homework assignment Canvas will fall back to the previous previewing tool, which won’t have the annotation feature.  Also, Crocodoc will not be available in the iOS app at this time.  

For more information on these changes, please visit Canvas' Release Notes page.  If you are a Bay Path faculty member and need assistance with using Canvas in your classroom, please contact the Center for Online Learning and Instructional Technology via our Technology Support Center at 413.565.1487 or its@baypath.edu.

Managing Your Social Media Presence

The world of social media is changing rapidly.  Many of us have played around with tools like Twitter and Facebook, usually for personal uses, but these tools can be very useful as professional resources, as well.  They can be used in the classroom for educational purposes and also for marketing programs or communicating and networking with others in your field. 

One common issue that comes up in discussions about managing social media networks is that it can become overwhelming to keep up a profile with so many different sites.  How does one manage so many online identities?  A tool that I’ve found that works well is HootSuite.  HootSuite is a dashboard that allows you to manage multiple social network accounts from one place.  You can even schedule tweets/status updates and submit the same text to post in multiple accounts at one time.  The free version lets you connect up to 5 different accounts from sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. 

               

I’ve found this very useful in managing my own social media presence.  While I have a personal Facebook profile, I also manage a Facebook page for a community service organization to which I belong, and I also manage their Twitter account.  I use HootSuite to schedule updates of upcoming events to both Facebook and Twitter for their accounts simultaneously.  I can go through the organization’s event calendar and schedule repeated reminders for events to be posted as they get closer without having to do it the minute I want the message posted.  It’s very convenient!  I also use Twitter myself personally to follow ed tech topics.  I find the interface on HootSuite is easier and I use this site whenever I use Twitter.

If you’re using social media and want to find out about how wide your circle of influence is, you should check out Klout.  Klout is a site that creates a score for you based on your interactions within social media.  Anyone who has a Twitter or Facebook account can sign in; then you connect your various social media accounts to Klout and it calculates a score based on who has “liked” or “retweeted” your comments. What these scores actually mean has yet to be seen, but it is interesting that people (and employers) are looking at this.  Wired magazine recently featured an article on Klout.

If you’re curious about exploring these tools, or learning to use HootSuite, feel free to contact me and I’d be happy to show you what I’m doing and what your options are.

New Semester, Refreshed Features in Canvas

Those of you who have been teaching in Canvas for a while know that Canvas is continually trying to improve the learning management system to make it more user friendly for both students and faculty.  Canvas is modifying a few of our favorite features to make them even easier to use!

For a complete rundown of the upcoming release, visit Canvas' Release Notes page. For a brief synopsis of a couple of the most relevant changes, keep reading below.

The "Quizzes" Tool

The Quiz Results feature has a new look.  To create more consistency between the quiz taking and quiz result experience for the students the Quiz Results page has been altered to look more like the Taking a Quiz page. For instance, the radio buttons that are on the Quiz page now show up on the Quiz Result page too. This will help the students clearly see what answers they picked.

"Discussions"

Discussions are getting a bit of a update as well!  There is a new filtering option which allows users to type in a phrase to filter by discussion title, body, or the author. There are also options to filter by unread discussions and/or assignment discussions, which are graded discussion threads. You can also multi-select discussions to mass lock or delete them. The locking feature prevents the students from continuing to make comments on the discussion thread.

The student view is very similar. The only difference is that a student can’t re-order discussion topics, lock, or delete discussions.

For more information on these changes, which should debut on 9/1/12, please visit Canvas' Release Notes page.  If you are a Bay Path faculty member and need any help using Canvas in your classroom, please contact the Center for Online Learning and Instructional Technology via our Technology Support Center at 413.565.1487 or its@baypath.edu.

The Google Art Project

Every week, without fail, I stumble across someone or something that amazes me from a technology perspective.  A few weeks back during a webinar on online curriculum development, the presenter introduced us to the Google Art Project.  If you haven’t heard of it, “…the Art Project is a collaboration between Google and 151 acclaimed art partners from across 40 countries.” Using Google’s technology and the wealth of knowledge from their museum partners, Google has created an amazing online art experience (http://www.googleartproject.com/faqs/).  With the Art Project, Google has provided the world with instant access to crisp and clear images of some of the greatest works of art from some of the most renowned museums and collections.

If you haven’t visited the Art Project yet, I strongly suggest you check it out at http://www.googleartproject.com/.  Not only does this site bring you some of the finest works in breathtaking detail, the Art Project includes an “education section” that provides tools to learn about the featured artwork.  “Patrons” of the Google Art Project are also provided with tools to discover different pieces of artwork and share some of their favorites via their preferred social networking site.  Check out how to use the site by watching the video below:



Your student’s next trip to the museum may very well be taken from the comfort of their own home!  How might you be able to use this tool in your classroom?