Canvas @ GT

By Danea Manson, 4th Year Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Student at Georgia Tech 

One of my favorite parts about the transition from T-Square to Canvas has been the mobile app. Grades, assignments, files, and announcements have never been so easily accessible. With the Canvas app, I have real-time access to my courses to ensure that I am always on top of my schedule. Additionally, the Canvas app allows me to learn across multiple devices, picking up where I left off. Some of the features that I find most useful are:

1. To-Do List. Canvas automatically consolidates the due dates for my upcoming quizzes and assignments in all my courses into a single to-do list. Being able to view all my assignments in one place and in chronological order helps me plan for the week and allocate my time efficiently. 
2. Messaging. Canvas’s messaging platform is fully functional within the mobile app, which allows me to communicate on the go with classmates, TAs, and instructors. 
3. Submissions. Not only can I view all the course content from the mobile app, I can also actively participate in the course from my phone by submitting assignments, taking quizzes, and posting to the discussion board.  
4. Push Notifications. I get notifications every time files are added to my course, an announcement is made by the instructors, and grades are updated.  
5. Canvas Widget. With the Canvas widget, I can view my overall course grades at a glance without logging into the app just by swiping left to the Today View (iPhone).  

What I appreciate most about the Canvas app is that its interface is user-friendly; it’s intuitive and extremely easy to navigate. The Canvas app is so similar to the desktop view that the learning curve is minimal. 

By Dr. Michael Smith, Full Time Lecturer in Information Systems

I have keyed many questions into Canvas quizzes to create short quizzes, but that process would be tedious and slow for tests. Since I have many tests already created as Word documents, I sought a way to upload them into Canvas. However, Canvas cannot import directly from Word documents and I didn’t want to rekey so many questions, so I had to find a way to migrate questions from Word to Canvas, including images referenced in questions.   

Canvas accepts mass question uploads in several ways. A review of options and discussion on the topic led me to select the QTI .zip file upload method using the Respondus 4.0 exam authoring tool. Respondus 4.0 is the only program I have found that can convert questions in Word documents into QTI .zip files. The product is offered by the same company that makes the LockDown Browser. I spent $80 for a single-user license. A site license is also available. 

Before importing the questions into Respondus 4.0, they must be reformatted to indicate correct answers, among other possibilities, and saved as a .txt or .rtf file. The help system in Respondus 4.0 indicates how to accomplish these tasks for different kinds of questions.  

I find it useful to create titles for the questions, as that helps me group them later according to topic by sorting them in Respondus 4.0. Here is a sample MC question indicating title and correct answer. The title formatting is my own.  

TITLE:  GT History – mascots – Stumpy’s bear 
1.Which GT “mascot” was a gift from a defeated football rival? 
*a. Stumpy’s bear 
b. Sideways 
c. Burdell the Bulldog 
d. The original Ford Model A Ramblin’ Wreck 

Since I direct Canvas to scramble answers when it creates quizzes, I usually put the correct answer first just to make creating questions more regular. For the same reason, I must change answers such as “b and c” to answers that don’t depend on any specific answer order, since Canvas will order the answers when it generates the quiz for each student. If I didn’t scramble answers, I would not need to do these things. 

If a question refers to a graphic, that graphic must be uploaded into Respondus 4.0 and embedded in the question. If the same graphic is referenced in several questions, all can refer to the same image file. Respondus 4.0 provides an editor for doing fancy formatting of questions and placing images within them.  

Respondus 4.0 provides for the export of groups of questions into QTI .zip files, among other formats.   

In Canvas, the upload process is accessed through Settings | Import Course Content | Content Type = QTI .zip file. After having uploaded the questions into a bank linked to the appropriate Canvas course, I import them into a question group in a quiz.  

In my next post, I will write about managing questions in a quiz.   

By Matt Lisle, Director of Digital Learning Technologies at C21U

Around the same time that Georgia Tech implemented Canvas as its new learning management system, the new Faculty Grade Entry (FGE) module was introduced in Banner. This module makes it much easier for faculty to import and finalize grades in Banner. However, we needed to make a few minor improvements within Canvas to streamline the process.

Last Fall, we launched a pilot of a newly-developed “Banner Grade Publishing” tool created by my team in the Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U). Around 50 faculty members volunteered to try the new tool and provide feedback. We are taking those suggestions into account and will be rolling out version 2 of the grade publishing tool to all Canvas courses in the coming days. 

To access the tool, look for “Banner Grade Publishing” in the left-hand menu of your Canvas course. This tool exports your grades into a Banner-ready spreadsheet that can easily be imported into FGE. If you’re teaching a Canvas course in which you’ve combined multiple sections, you can export one spreadsheet and import it into each of your sections in Banner.

We hope to continue improving this process, and we have high hopes for some of the emerging standards coming out of IMS, including EDU-API. As our platforms continue to recognize and adhere to industry standards, this process can be streamlined even more.

As always, email us at canvas@gatech.edu if you have any questions about this new tool.

What is Respondus 4.0?

Respondus is an exam authoring tool used to create and manage exams, which can then be printed to paper or published directly to Canvas. Whether you are a veteran of online testing or relatively new to it, Respondus will save you hours on each project.

For more info, visit the Digital Learning Team’s Respondus page here.

Download Respondus 4.0 from OIT Software Distribution here.

(Please note: Respondus 4.0 is currently only available for Windows.)

What is LockDown Browser?

LockDown Browser is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within Canvas. Used at over 1000 higher ed and K-12 institutions, LockDown Browser is the top choice of educators for securing online exams in classrooms or proctored environments.

How can I find out more or attend an online training?

Click the links below to access a variety of online training videos and webinars:

Video – LockDown Browser (Instructor Training)
Video – Respondus 4.0 (Create and Manage Content)
Instructor Training (Live Webinars) for LockDown Browser

By Matt Lisle, Director of Digital Learning Technologies at C21U

In October, Canvas quietly added a new feature called Analytics Beta. As the name implies, this is not a fully realized tool, but it does provide some helpful insights and tools for your Canvas courses. Here are three things you can do with Analytics Beta:

1) Spot an assignment that’s giving students trouble

In the screenshot below, you’ll see a chart that displays assignments and grades. Each assignment appears along the X-axis, and its average grade appears along the Y-axis. At a glance, you can see that the “Lab Grouping” assignment received abnormally low grades (when compared to other assignments’ grades in this course). The teacher can click on that assignment to reveal more details. In this case, the teacher might consider revisiting this content in an upcoming class session.

2) Send targeted messages to groups of students

Teachers can also easily intervene with students using the dashboard. In this case, the teacher clicks on the problematic “Lab Grouping” assignment to reveal more details. The detail card displays a grade distribution for the assignment. By selecting the 80% range, the teacher sees that eight students fall into this category. By clicking the envelope icon in the top right, the teacher can quickly send a customized message to those eight students. He or she might send a different message to the six students in the 20% range by following the same steps. This allows the teacher to send targeted messages about this assignment to six groups of students with just a few clicks.

3) Spot when a student is particularly struggling

Let’s suppose a student arrived at office hours to ask why his or her overall grade is so low. The teacher could quickly compare the student’s grades to the course averages by adding them to the filter at the top of the dashboard (in this case, the student’s actual name has been disguised with grey rectangles). The student’s scores appear as green squares, and the class scores appear as blue circles. The teacher can quickly spot that this student scored a 40% on the “Lab Basic queries” assignment, while the rest of the class scored an average of 82% on that same assignment.

If you’d like to start using this tool, follow the step-by-step instructions at https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-15581-canvas-release-analytics-beta-student-grade. Be sure to provide feedback to Instructure’s product team as you use the tool, as it’s under active development.

Are you a faculty member who is still getting the hang of Canvas? Or perhaps you’ve got the hang of Canvas, but are interested in learning more about its capabilities? We know spring semester is a busy time, and it may seem nigh impossible to fit in time for a training, but there’s good news: Instructure hosts a variety of live trainings, all of which can be accessed when it’s convenient for you!

Below you’ll find a round-up of a few upcoming training sessions which might be helpful as you finish up the first month of classes:

“Outcomes and Rubrics for Instructors” – Monday, January 28th, 2019, 10:30am – 11:30am (EST)

“Outcomes & Rubrics for Instructors” reviews best practices and classroom applications for utilizing outcomes and rubrics in Canvas assignments, discussions, quizzes. Instructors will learn also learn how to make use of the Learning Mastery Gradebook and the Canvas Magic Marker app.

Register here! (Note: Please use your Georgia Tech email address to log in or create an account and gain access to Georgia Tech’s enterprise license.)

“Gradebook and Speedgrader (version 1.0)” – Tuesday, January 29th, 2019, 4:30pm – 5:30pm (EST)

“Creating Assessments with Quizzes.Next” – Thursday, January 31st, 2019, 11:30am – 12:30pm (EST)

 (Note: More information is available on Quizzes.Next on our blog, including how to enable the tool within your Canvas account. Click here to read the post!)

Register here! (Note: Please use your Georgia Tech email address to create an account and gain access to Georgia Tech’s enterprise license.)

To check out additional upcoming trainings that might be of interest, click here for the full list! (Note: Please use your Georgia Tech email address to create an account and gain access to Georgia Tech’s enterprise license.)