Canvas News

When collecting evidence towards your standards, you have many options for how you provide feedback to your students. Canvas allows you the ability to completely differentiate your assignments for your students all the way down to the due date.

Assignments Overview Video

I have recently started using the data analytics feature on Canvas. (The button is found in the upper right-hand corner of your course homepage.) This feature allows me to quickly see how many times a student has accessed my page, how many late assignments they have had, how many assignments are still outstanding, as well as their current grade. I started to aggregate things like total page views and current grades. When I grouped these data points together, I was able to see that there was a correlation between overall class proficiency and the number of times the class resources were accessed. A good data analyst knows that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but it gave me somewhere to start my conversations with my non-proficient students and their families.

I try to make data-focused decisions when it comes to learning, but we all know the process can be overwhelming and time-consuming. Leveraging the features of Canvas has made the data-gathering process easier and more efficient. I used the data gathered from Canvas to set up an Encore session for my students who had some of the lowest page views. (Most of these students were also not showing proficiency on one or more standards/outcomes.) During the Encore session, my students and I reviewed how to access various parts of my Canvas page. I explicitly modeled how to access specific features of the course, including where to find the daily agenda, missing assignments, study guides, and keys, as well as the message feature. I had just assumed that many of my students knew where to access this important information, but many of them did not. My next steps include using this data when completing my first round of Essential Life Skills rubrics for each student.

We have spent a lot of time this past month working with parents to get them connected to Canvas and helping them to better understand how to access their student's information, including attending parent-teacher conference nights in most secondary buildings, meeting with the School Community Network, hosting a Community Education ParentQuest class that was also streamed to Facebook Live and available on the website, and meeting with parents to individually to provide one on one support as needed. We will continue these efforts by meeting with individual PTO groups, offering more parent classes, and working with our Community Engagement Team to keep building our website.

Parent Canvas Video

Parent Canvas Resources School website page

What can the parents see?

As with learning any new system, parents start out frustrated. But once we show them the nuts and bolts of the system, they are loving all the details that they can see about their child's progress in their courses. Students and parents have a much different view of the gradebook than teachers. Teachers have a more big picture course view and students and parents see a more detailed view. For example, under each essential life skill, they can see the date and assignment and what each individual score is each time it was assessed. They can also view feedback that the teacher gave for the individual assessment. When we talked to parents, they appreciated this because the more the skill was assessed, the more information they had about their child and how they ebb and flow throughout the year.

We know that Canvas feels very overwhelming, so each month we will include suggestions for new tasks to try out.

Elementary

• Choose a homepage
• Create a task for students to do in Canvas (morning bell work, comprehension quiz, book discussion, reflection journal, exit slip, formative assessment, or talk to an instructional coach for ideas)
• Have your students login to Canvas and complete the task

Secondary

• Create an assignment and have students submit it through Canvas
• Use Speedgrader
• Use the “Message Students Who” feature in the grade book
• Visit the Canvas Feature Ideas list and create a feature idea or vote on something you would like to see happen

Please take a minute to "vote up" for these feature suggestions that WDMCS staff have found or suggested to Canvas. Remember, you need to click "log in" at the top right for your vote to count.

1. Gradebook nicknames

2. Post Letter Grade Based on Selected Outcomes

3. Color Code Assignment Groups in Gradebook
   

4. Partial Credit for "Matching", "Categorization", and "Sorting" question types in Quizzes.Next tool

5. Parent/Guardian Observers Listed Under the Student

6. Message Students who are complete or incomplete from Gradebook

7. https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/6648-missing-assignment-report

8. Edit Default Grading Scheme on Account

9. Accessing Team Drives on Google Cloud Assignment

Online Learning Coordinator

Email: cunninghama@wdmcs.org
Website: http://www.wdmcs.org
Location: 3550 Mills Civic Parkway, West Des Moines, IA, USA
Phone: (515)633-4545
Twitter: @mrs_c_ham

Online Learning Coordinator

Email: jacobsc@wdmcs.org
Website: http://www.wdmcs.org
Location: 3550 Mills Civic Parkway, West Des Moines, IA, USA
Phone: (515)633-5159
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thetiedyedteacher/
Twitter: @tiedyedteacher