Bringing Classroom Energy Online
Imagine you walk into your classroom where your students are huddled in small groups critiquing their peer’s work, brainstorming new ideas and asking excellent questions. Sounds great, right? Well, what if you could replicate that exact same energy inside of your Canvas course?
Creating Project Groups
Let’s say your students are working on a project in small groups that they will end up presenting to the class in the coming weeks. Organizing your class into Canvas course groups is a great way for students to collaborate when they aren’t in the classroom. Each student group acts as a mini Canvas course where they can create their discussions with each other, share files and even utilize the “Collaborations” tool to work on documents and presentations with each other.
How to set it up:
Creating Canvas groups are very simple:
- Navigate to the “People” tab via your course navigation, then click on “+ Group Set”,
- Enter a name and you can create all your groups right there!
- After your groups are created and you’re ready to assign students, you can either manually drag and drop them into groups yourself or have Canvas do the work for you by randomizing your students into groups (you can make changes after, too!).
You can learn more about creating groups at:
https://community.instructure.com/en/kb/articles/660877-how-do-i-manually-create-groups-in-a-group-set
and
https://community.instructure.com/en/kb/articles/660876-how-do-i-automatically-create-groups-in-a-group-set
!
Empowering Student Evaluators
Another great way to get students collaborating with each other is by creating peer review assignments! Peer Reviews can be used for more than just grading, it can be a valuable learning experience for students. Back when I used to tutor and a teacher’s aide for a computer science class at a high school, I always did peer review assignments so students could talk through their assignments and explain why they did what they did.
How to set it up:
Check the Require Peer Reviews checkbox in the assignment’s settings. Canvas can automatically and randomly assign peer reviewers to assignments. Then, students who are peer reviewing have the ability to leave comments right in the SpeedGrader interface! Students providing constructive feedback to each other is a real-world career skill, and Canvas makes it super easy for the instructor to include those skills in their classrooms.
You can learn more about creating peer review assignments at
https://community.instructure.com/en/kb/articles/660696-how-do-i-create-a-peer-review-assignment
and
https://community.instructure.com/en/kb/articles/660695-how-do-i-use-peer-review-assignments-in-a-course
!
Class Discussion Boards
Oftentimes, students may find themselves lost on an assignment and are looking for some help, wondering what they missed in class one day because they were absent, or are even trying to organize a study group with some classmates. Creating a class discussion board that everyone in your class can access is another great way to enhance student collaboration in your course.
When creating a class discussion board, ensure it’s easily accessible for your students. I’ve always included mine on the modules page towards the top, and I also leave the Discussions link on the course navigation visible. You’ll want to name it something unique, I usually name it “Class Q&A” or “The Conversation Corner”. Regardless, ensure it feels like a space where students can confidently ask questions, and other students feel comfortable answering them. That way, you’re not only building a supportive community between your students but you’re also saving yourself from repetitive emails in your inbox.
To learn more about creating discussions in your course, I recommend checking out
https://community.instructure.com/en/kb/articles/660780-how-do-i-create-a-discussion-as-an-instructor
!
There you have it!
Those are some of the best practices to enhance student collaboration in your class. Of course, not all of these practices will necessarily work for your class. It’s important to ensure you are promoting collaboration in a way that works for you and your students. Happy collaborating!
