Canvas course list unmanageable?

Now that we've been using Canvas for a couple years, chances are that you may have a rather long list of courses in your Canvas "My Courses" list.  You may have worked on past search committees, been part of a departmental group, or had a course development site created to allow you build course content outside of a "live" Canvas classroom. These Canvas sites may still be listed and may be making it hard to find your current courses quickly in the menu. Did you know that Canvas gives you some easy ways to manage your course list so that you only see the courses you want to see in your Courses menu?

When you hover your mouse pointer over the Courses menu at the top of the screen in Canvas, your My Courses list appears.  Note that there are a couple options here.  At the bottom of the list in the lower right is a "View all courses" link.  If you click on that link, you'll see a list of all the courses you have access to in Canvas, including course sites from previous semesters and any future courses that are in the system. They will be grouped with section headings - My Courses for current courses, Past Enrollments for past courses, and Future Enrollments for upcoming (unpublished) courses.  This link gives you access to see any of the courses you have had access to at any time since we started using Canvas.

Because you can go back and view all your courses through the "View all courses" area, it's a good idea to customize your My Courses list under the Courses menu so you only see the courses you need to access during a particular session or semester.  When viewing your My Courses list, click on "Customize" in the upper right and you'll see a list appear on the right (shown below).  You can check or uncheck them to select what appears in your My Courses list.  If you have access to a Canvas course that has been created for other purposes, such as a search committee or other group, you can uncheck those when they are no longer needed.  This gives you full control over what appears in your Courses menu, so you can set it up however you'd like and still be able to access any other courses through the "View all courses" link when you need them.

UPDATE! New Canvas Conversations available on 9/14!

Instructure has been working hard on improving the Canvas experience for us and the upcoming change to the "Conversations" tool is a testament to that fact!  The latest redesign aims to make it easier for students and faculty to communicate with each other within Canvas.

Please Note:  The new Conversations is an opt-in feature. To try the new Conversations after 9/14, click the question icon and select the Try New Conversations option.  You will be able to switch back to the old view using a similar process.

To learn more about the updates to the "Conversations" tool, including how to search and reply to important messages and compose new messages, check out Canvas' Beta Release Notes.  Remember, this new feature won't "go-live" until September 14th!

The details for these new features have been sourced from Canvas’ User Guides and Product Release Notes.  Please feel free to contact me (ptestori@baypath.edu) for any questions you may have about using Canvas for your Bay Path class.

It's that time of year again...

As we approach the start of a new academic year, I'm sure you're all thinking about your upcoming classes and possibly new ways to reach your students using technology.  Whether you're teaching online or on campus, there are many ways you can use technology to reach your students.  Here are some cool suggestions from an article from THE Journal.

Create a short video - The COL has consistently recommended that faculty record a welcome video for their online courses. Welcome videos can easily be recorded directly within Canvas or uploaded into Canvas if you use other software to create them.  These videos help students get to know you and what to expect from class.  But have you thought about having students create videos for class projects? Students can easily upload videos into Canvas, too, so it's very easy for them to submit their work. This is fun project that keeps students engaged in learning.

Podcasting - Creating podcasts is another way you can engage your students with multimedia technology. You can use them in your teaching, and you can have students produce their own podcasts.  If you're using iPads in your classroom, there are many apps to use for recording audio.

Creating Infographics - You've probably seen infographics online - we've shared a few here on this blog before...  Infographics are a great way to visually display information, often statistical data.  They can also be fun to create.  I created one for a recent conference presentation on orientations for online students using Piktochart, a site that provides limited free access and more sophisticated features for a fee.  Creating an infographic can be a great assignment for students - it's a fun way for them to be creative and display the results of their research.

Using screencasts to explain things - Screencasting is the term for recording what is on the screen of your computer and narrating it to make a video.  These videos are a great way to demonstrate how to do something on a computer.  Screencasts can be made with many free and low cost software applications.  I use Snagit for recording quick screencasts.  Snagit is inexpensive with educator pricing, and the company that makes it also has a free version with reduced functionality, Jing.  You can also record screencasts using Tegrity, a software solution supported by the ITS department. Contact them to get information about training and access to Tegrity.  Want to do screencasts on your iPad? EdTechTeacher has a great list of recommended screencasting apps. You can make screencasts to provide instructional content to your students, or you can ask your students to create and share their own screencasts.

As the new academic year approaches, remember that the COL is available to support online faculty and students in the use of Canvas and other instructional technologies for online education. Did you know that the Center for Online Learning is now part of Academic Affairs? This summer our team became part of the Division of Research and Academic Resources and we're looking forward to working with our new team to provide more exciting professional development opportunities and support services for all our online faculty! We are still located in the lower level of Deepwood Hall with the ITS department to allow us to work closely with the Tech Support Center team to ensure the best technology-related support for online faculty and students.  The new COL office space is amazing - if you haven't seen the newly renovated Technology Suite in the lower level of Deepwood, please stop by and visit us sometime! We look forward to seeing many of you back on campus soon!

Canvas Brings Back Chat (plus new Profiles)!

EXTRA, EXTRA: Exciting Canvas News!

Effective immediately, the “Chat” function has returned to your Canvas classrooms.  As you may recall, the chat feature was disabled a few months back while Canvas worked on a more appropriate and effective tool... and they have delivered!

The Chat tool in Canvas allows students and teachers to interact in real time. Chat makes it easy to communicate with your students live and all in one place.  Instructors can use chat to:

• Give students an opportunity to immediately contact them when they are online
• Conduct virtual office hours
• Conduct group discussion
• Conduct study sessions
• Regularly contact students who are challenged by course content and need encouragement

To enable “Chat” in your classroom, be sure that you’ve enabled the feature in the left-hand navigation menu of your course.  When you click on “Chat”, you immediately enter the chatroom!

BONUS!:  Check out the Canvas Guides to learn how you can view Chat history!

A new and improved “Profile” tool has also just been released.  Until today, we’ve been able to add a picture, contact information and connect services like Google Docs and Facebook.  Now, by popular demand, we can also add a “Bio”, custom web links, and more!  The Canvas Guides detail each new feature; if you’re curious to learn more, check them out!  To get started with editing your new profile, log into Canvas, click on your name in the upper-right corner, then click the “Edit Profile” button.  It’s as simple as that!

The details for these new features have been sourced from Canvas’ User Guides and Product Release Notes.  Please feel free to contact me (ptestori@baypath.edu) for any questions you may have about using Canvas for your Bay Path class.

Resources for Integrating Technology in the Classroom

If you're looking for ways to enhance your classes using technology, you'll want to check out and bookmark these resources!  The sites below provide some great ideas about apps and other online tools you can use to make your courses more interactive, engaging and exciting for students.  Also, if you're teaching future educators, these are good resources to share with your students.

Google Tools - This article is entitled "25 Ways Google Can Make You a Better Teacher," but they're continually updating it and the list is actually up to 36 items as of this posting.  This list contains easy ideas and covers topics such as Google Drive, Google Earth, Google Scholar and YouTube (which, if you didn't know, is a Google service). It's a great article because the list is written in a very brief and easy to read manner, and gives ideas that are good starting points to get you thinking of how you can use Google tools.  And since Bay Path students and faculty all have Google accounts and access to these tools, they're easy to integrate into your curriculum.

Lots of Online Tools for Education - You've probably heard of tools such as Jing, Vimeo and VoiceThread, but you may not be familiar with what the tools do and how to use them.  The image in the middle of this page shows icons for a number of popular (and not-so-well known) online educational tools, and each icon is a link to information about the tool.  It's a great resource to quickly learn about a tool and get started using it.  It's certainly worth taking a look at this page.

Writing Apps - This one is particularly useful to share with our Early Childhood and Elementary Education students.  This site showcases apps, most for young students, that helps students develop their writing skills.  From sentence building, to mind mapping, to learning to write letters, these apps help with a variety of writing skills.  The site also contains additional lists of literacy apps for topics such as phonics and spelling. My 7-year-old daughter has used some of these and enjoyed them.

I hope you found these sites useful and that you find something new you can use in your next course!