Canvas @ GT

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.)

By Dr. Vincent M. Spezzo; Center for Teaching and Learning

Starting this semester, the Georgia Tech community gained access to Turnitin within the Canvas system. At its core, Turnitin is a web-based program that checks submitted work for unoriginal content that has been published elsewhere on the web or submitted previously to the Turnitin database. While some instructors are satisfied to simply leave it there and just use this tool as a plagiarism checker and deterrent to catch students cheating, others have taken a different path and found that Turnitin can be a very powerful tool to help students develop better writing habits and submit more thoughtful work regardless of discipline.

Several research studies have been conducted over the years using Turnitin as a means to improve student writing (Baker, Thronton, & Adams, 2011; Davis, 2007; Graham-Matheson & Starr, 2013; Rolfe, 2011). Some found by giving students access to submit drafts to Turnitin and receive their own reports, students were able to become aware of their own unoriginal content and submitted final papers that contained large reductions in unoriginal content. In a lot of cases student unoriginal content seemed to be unintentional and often a surprise to students who were unaware they were not paraphrasing and citing correctly or realized just how much of their paper was comprised of direct quotes. Researchers pointed out that this seems particularly the case with international students who may come from a different academic culture where the copying and drawing upon previous authors tends to be a common practice rather than considered plagiarism.

This passive usage of simply letting students run drafts through Turnitin not only resulted in better final papers due to a decrease in unoriginal content, but it also largely resulted in a positive experience for students. Graham-Matheson and Starr (2013) had students comment on their survey that “The draft facility (of Turnitin) enables you to double check that all information is appropriately referenced and not plagiarized.” and another who stated “It teaches me how to avoid it (plagiarism). It encourages me to read more and support my ideas with empirical evidence.” Similar positive comments were found in the various studies that allowed students access to run drafts and read their reports. This seems to show that the simple act of allowing for draft runs can largely impact how students view and use the Turnitin tool.

While providing students with the ability to submit a draft to Turnitin and see their unoriginality report seems to be a useful method on its own, some researchers went even further and actively utilized Turnitin to provide a learning opportunity for students. In her research, Mary Davis (2007) found positive results when using Turnitin in an academic writing class as a means of refining student writing. In her usage, Mary not only provided students with their Turnitin report, but held a session with students where they could openly discuss the report, what it meant, and why certain things were flagged as unoriginal content before beginning to rework their draft into a final submission. Mary found that while students were able to see where their submissions were flagged as unoriginal they sometimes were left confused as to why it was flagged. Through utilizing Turnitin in this way, Mary was able to positively impact student’s ability to cite correctly, diversify their sources, and paraphrase appropriately; all of which leads to helping students become better writers. As a result of this study, Mary advocates for the usage of Turnitin not just as a self-referenced report for students, but also as a possible tool for tutors. In this way, tutors can have students bring their reports with them and expedite the review process and allow students and tutors to make the most out of sessions.

As the research seems to indicate, there is great value and a positive impact on student learning to be found in going beyond the basic usage of Turnitin as a checker of unoriginal content. Just the act of allowing students to run drafts and see their reports seems to make for a more positive learning experience and increases student writing abilities. Going beyond that and engaging students with their reports so that they can truly understand what it is they are doing wrong and have their confusion about writing cleared up is certainly a method that can enable student to improve their writing even further. All of this is just with the basic usage of Turnitin’s unoriginality report; which is actually just one part of several tools Turnitin users have available to them. There are other additional tools inside of Turnitin, such as a grammar and style checker and an instructor feedback system, which can also be used to further educate students about their writing. In the end, educating students to recognize the unoriginal issues with their paper, as opposed to just catching them plagiarizing, is a much more effective method of using Turnitin and has been shown to lead to positive learning opportunities, increase student satisfaction, and create better overall student writing.

If you’re interested to learn more about using Turnitin at GaTech, please visit the GaTech Turnitin webpage to find resources, such as instructor guides and getting started documents, as well as information about upcoming workshops.

References

Baker, R.K., Thronton, B., & Adams, M. (2011). An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Turnitin.Com as a Tool for Reducing Plagiarism in Graduate Student Term Papers. College and Teaching Methods & Styles Journal 4, 9. Doi: https://doi.org/10.19030/ctms.v4i9.5564

Davis, M. (2007). The role of Turnitin within the formative process of academic writing: a tool for learning and unlearning. Brookes eJournal of Learning and Teaching, 2. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281848114_The_role_of_Turnitin_within_the_formative_process_of_academic_writing_a_tool_for_learning_and_unlearning

Graham-Matheson, L., & Starr, S. (2013). Is it cheating – or learning the craft of writing? Using Turnitin to help students avoid plagiarism. Research in Learning Technology, 21. doi: https://doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v21i0.17218

Rolfe, V. (2011). Can Turnitin Be Used to Provide Instant Formative Feedback? British Journal of Edcuational Technology, 42, 4. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2010.01091.x

Are you a faculty member or TA who would like to combine your courses within Canvas? Good news: there’s a Georgia Tech tool for that!

Check out the New Course Combining tool here. Built by Georgia Tech, this tool simplifies the process of combining your courses within Canvas.

Not sure whether you can or should combine your courses? Make sure to check out the following links before you decide:

1. More info on Combining Courses: http://canvas.gatech.edu/combine-courses  
2. Georgia Tech’s policy and procedure for FERPA considerations when using Canvas: https://registrar.gatech.edu/info/optional-confidentiality-flags-student-records