1. Draft it in documents in advanceIt's tempting to jump straight into Canvas and build the course from there. However, most people find it useful to type their materials into organizer documents first. (For example, you could use Microsoft Word or Google Docs.) Course design is a messy process, and you will change your mind often. It's easier to edit documents than it is to edit Canvas. Once you've thought through all the contingencies, built out your assignments, dotted your i's and crossed your t's, and you're satisfied you have the material ready to go, you can copy-paste the text into Canvas. This sounds like an extra step, but take my word for it. The number of seconds you spend waiting for Canvas to load after clicking that "Edit" button 10,000 times, really do add up over time. Here are some documents you could use, to help organize your thoughts as you go along. 2. Use meaningful, not menological modulesApologies for stretching the definition of "menological..." I had to continue the alliteration theme! Expect more stretch, I'll be here allll day. Rather than creating one module per week, create one module per topic. You may end up with more (or fewer) modules than you have weeks. That's OK. This allows you to use the same Canvas shell in the future, whether the course ends up being taught in a 15-week, 7.5-week, 8-week, or 6-week term. This way, the only preparations that Future-You will have to make are changing the due dates for your assignments. You won't have to drastically re-structure your entire course! Win! For example, let's say you are studying a book with 20 chapters. You could build the course with one module per chapter. In a 15-week course students would complete 1-2 modules per week; in a 7.5-week course they would complete 3-5 modules per week; and so on. This approach also has the benefit of being pedagogically sound— material is chunked in meaningful ways, and assignments directly follow the content they assess. 3. Turn to a trustworthy templateMuch of the process of building in Canvas is repetitive and tedious. For example, creating all the pages where your content will go, placing the pages into the modules, adding the headings within the pages... all can become a little monotonous. Templates come with most required building blocks pre-created. All you have to do is replace the placeholder text with your own, delete what you don't use, and customize. There are other benefits to using templates, listed on our Services: Templates page. 4. Definitely draw on the Duplicate featureLet's say you have four essay assignments planned, all worth the same number of points, and which have roughly the same instructions (page length, grading criteria, etc.). Only the topics they cover and the due dates are different. Rather than re-type all the same instructions (or copy-paste between two tabs) and apply all the same settings again and again, you could create the first assignment, then duplicate it in Canvas. You can do the same with Pages and Discussion Boards as well. This can save you several minutes per page. To find the Duplicate option:
5. Copy cross-course with Copy To"Copy To" is an option similar to "Duplicate" (described above), except it works across courses, while Duplicate works within the same course. So let's say you have an excellent assignment in Course A, which you would like to use and modify slightly for Course B. How can you do this? The hard way:
The easy way:
6. Do define due dates in the settings. Don't type them into the textCanvas allows you to enter due dates into the settings of an assignment, and it handles the work of displaying them prominently to students. You do not also need to type the dates into the instructions of the assignment. In fact, I urge you not to. This way, when you copy the course into a future semester, you do not have to go through it, scouring every page for every place where you typed in a date, and changing every one to the new semester. This is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to errors. Instead, just do two simple tasks each semester: 1) change your syllabus, and 2) change the due dates in the Canvas settings. You can adjust all your due dates in one simple page, dust your hands, and move to the next task! 7. Modify due dates en masse... Amazing!Speaking of due dates... a few times so far, I've mentioned the need to change due dates at the start of each term. Well, there's a really handy way to do that! Rather than editing each assignment individually, you can change all the due dates in your course, from a single page! It's a real time-saver.
8. Ready rubrics for reduced marking miseryI told you I'd be stretching the wordplay today... Admittedly, it takes time upfront to create a suitable rubric, so it's tempting not to bother. But the initial investment is well worth the time saved later! Once you have them, well-constructed rubrics can save you time in three ways:
9. Cue the FAQ's, reduce the queue of inquisitive superfluityI know, I know. I'm almost done inflicting these on you, promise. A lot of time each semester is spent answering the same questions over and over. If you create a FAQ's page and link to it from the course home page, you can mitigate this redundancy. 10. Perhaps peer reviews for papers and projects?A week or two before a paper or project is submitted, you can ask students to review each other's drafts. This is another thing that can be tricky to do "right," but when it is, it can save you time in grading later. Students will (generally) catch the minor stuff, so you can focus on the major stuff. Peer reviews also have the bonus feature of bringing up the overall quality of student work submitted for the final drafts. A key to making peer reviews work is to give the students a really solid checklist or rubric to work from. This will guide them as they review each other, so they know what to focus on. Another key is to create peer review groups of three or four students, not just two. This way, each student will get input from multiple people. Unhelpful (or nonexistent) advice from any academically weak students will likely be balanced with advice from stronger students. Canvas has a peer review tool, but it is clunky and leaves a lot to be desired. It's easier to create discussion groups and set up a discussion board for students to post their drafts for each other. Be sure to provide the checklist/rubric within the discussion board instructions. Another tip is to ask students to copy their drafts into Google Docs. This way other students can easily leave inline comments. BONUS: Avoid voicing time verbiage in videosWhen recording a lecture video, simply talk about the topic. Try to avoid phrases like "this week," or "welcome to the fall semester," or "due on Thursday," or "as the President said in a press conference yesterday." If you avoid specific time references, you will be able to re-use your lecture videos in different semesters, and possibly even in different courses that cover similar topics. Similarly, don't mention assignments "coming up," (unless the video is specifically about that assignment) since you might change your assignments in future semesters. BONUS #2: Simplify Scoring SchemesI have seen some pretty complicated grading systems. "Drop the lowest 5 in this category except for X assignment, then average the scores in that category, take the top 4 scores from the other category, and then apply weighting to all the categories but allow 3 points extra credit..." Hold on a minute! Is it really necessary to add all these layers? Alright, I know that's rich, coming from someone who unnecessarily spent hours working on layers of alliteration for a simple blog post about pedagogy. I'll own that. But hear me out. You aren't guarding national secrets. You're not measuring the chemical properties of nanoparticles. And your students shouldn't need a semester of calculus to figure out how they are being held accountable for their learning. The goal of grading is to help students gauge how they are doing. If it requires downloading the scores, importing them into Excel, and applying multiple formulae, it's probably too complicated to meet that goal. Take a deep breath. Hold the KISS principle firmly in mind. Is the world going to end if you simply give assignments and provide straightforward feedback and grades for those assignments? No, it won't. Your students will probably learn better, and you will save a ton of time, not needing to mess with Excel. Now go forth and formulate how you'll fill all your new-found free time!
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Abigail Smith & Tope OnitiriInstructional Design team for SHPRS Archives
June 2022
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