What are your best end of term practices to start smoothly next term?

Question

With the end of the semester upon us, I'm already thinking of next fall.  We spend a lot of time talking about how to start strong at the beginning of a semester or term, but really we lay the groundwork for that now…in the final weeks of our current term.

I'm crowdsourcing from the community: What specific steps do you take at the end of a term to set yourself and others up for success in the next one?

Are you:

* Modifying checklists - what tips are you going to include?
* Refining your district-wide course templates based on current feedback?
* Utilizing Blueprints to ensure consistency across large cohorts?
* Setting up Account Calendars to communicate key institutional deadlines early?
* Performing a final check of your Gradebook and "To-Do" lists before the term wraps up?

Share your role (admin/teacher) and your top tips, checklists, or even the "lessons learned" that changed how you handle the term-to-term transition.  I love learning with and from others!

Greg · Answer

Thank you @DiannaDK for asking this question. I'm a teacher, and one of the things I do is keep a running commentary of things I notice during the semester. I have a Google Sheet that's in the same tab group as my Canvas course so it's readily available, and I have a list of the assignment types, etc. and write down things that I think of as they come up. One example from this past semester is my primary source assignments. I included a requirement that they connect their work to one of our course themes (their summative assessment focuses on one theme), but I decided it was not needed and so I wrote a note to drop that from the assignment instructions the next time I teach this class.

Another thing I do is ask students for feedback at the end of the semester. One of my final exams is an anonymous survey (now possible in New Quizzes!). I teach asynchronous online classes, and I ask my students to compare my class with their in-person classes. I ask other questions about my use of technology, specific instructional design things I do, etc. There is also an open-ended question. This survey gives me valuable data that informs how I teach in the future, and the open-ended questions in particular yield nuggets of praise that are golden additions to my self-study when I'm reviewed or when I'm doing a presentation on instructional design. Using the same questions each term also helps me track feedback over time.

BrennyKummer · Answer

Oh this is such a good topic! I'm excited to see what others share. We spent time this semester collecting feedback to review, revise, and potentially revamp our course templates. The original design is about 2-3 years old, and was designed with a large stakeholder group, but we haven't reviewed it in a bit. We did surveys of some students (a la Canvas announcements), some staff, and my teacher tech leader group (who act as school Canvas admins). Interestingly, there were minimal edits that came from these feedback sessions, but they did identify the need to retrain and reiterate the why and the purpose behind the templates, and some dedicated training about it as well - for teachers, but also admin, so they can encourage staff accountability.

Account calendars are not something we are super familiar with but are looking forward to using, especially with some key district dates. More of our students have been using the calendar lately than ever before, so it makes sense to lean into this in the future. I have a student group who have helped me make short videos with students as the intended audience, and several focused on how to use the calendar for academic success.

A piece that is always important for me is reviewing my Terms and Grading menus as the system admin. I like to give my teachers extended access to the school year's classes, even after it has ended, so I manually extend their access so they can still review and access content, especially due to conferences taking place over the summer where they'll want a space to check things out or compare. I also like to review my Grading menu - to double check that grading periods are set up correctly, to allow for syncing beyond the last student day, as teachers often have several days after the last student day to submit grades. This lets them sync to our SIS successfully!

It's not pretty…and could use some cleaning up…but I have a Doc that is my "month by month" as a Canvas admin. Things I need to keep on my radar as the admin, aligned to certain times of the year. I have it set up to create calendar event and task reminders. I am curious if I can make a similar one for teachers. I did create a course setup bot in NotebookLM for teachers this year, that is their own personal FAQ bot, trained on all of our district expectations and resources, for when they have Canvas questions. I wonder if I can lean into that Notebook to create different resources.