How do most instructors run an online course? This will be my first online course I'm running soon!
That's a great question, @donnie!
What I like to do is focus on three areas: competence, connection, and completeness. By competence, I mean what it is I want my students to learn in the class, how they will demonstrate what they have learned, and what content they need to consume to help them with that demonstration. Connection is the relationship that I have with each student and they have with each other. If they don't make connections with other people, they are much less likely to persist and succeed. Finally, completeness refers to the presentation, details, etc. of a class. Anytime we use a learning management system, the classroom is open 24 hours a day. That means our students can effect their learning at any time, but we are not available at any time to provide the clarity that some may need. So a course is complete once its instructions are clear, rubrics are easy to read, content is accessible, etc.
Your question inspired me to provide a succinct answer, and I hope that it is helpful. Each of the steps I describe can be detailed in a zillion ways, but if I focus on a few important topics the details fall into place.
I hope that others in the Community share their perspective too.
I recommend that you organize all of your course content in modules. Many instructors create weekly modules; others create unit modules. I recommend that each module have a uniform look. Start with a page that provides an overview of the content, learning objectives, and tasks that must be completed. Organize each module in a similar way with text headers for the major sections. A clear, consistent structure is key.
Emphasize to your students the importance of going through the Modules. Set up module requirements so that your students will get green checkmarks for completing each item, and you can view their progress. You can also set up "prerequisites."
Enable "Modules" in the student navigation bar, but disable Assignments, Discussions, Files, Pages and Quizzes. It's much better for students to click on Modules and access everything from one place.
Canvas appears to have changed something this year with the intergration from Canvas to the Class Notebook using OneNote. Last year we were able to have class notebooks linked to each course that would automatically add new students when they were enrolled into the Canvas course. This year when we log on we get the…
Among all the things that I wish Canvas had is that one! Is it something that is been worked on? We had it in Blackboard (legacy) and I sorely miss and need in Canvas (we just transitioned to it from Bb). Please add this very needed feature!
I have Canvas set to drop the lowest quiz score, however, my students can only barely tell that the grade text is slightly grey when dropped. Can it have a tag like the "missing" and "exempt" ones in the student gradebook?
My Canvas shell has three different sections that all meet at different times throughout the week. I need to be able to batch edit assignment due dates by section, but right now Canvas can't filter by section for batch edit. My only option is now to manually (tediously) edit due dates for each assignment individually.
Morning! One of the more frustrating aspects of Canvas are groups and the issues that show up when copying courses that have them. But now we have yet another issue. Most recently we have had instances where people mark an assignment/discussion as a group assignment but then do not link the discussion or assignment to any…
