You can use the Assignments feature for anything in the course that you'd like students to submit to you. Students can turn in assignments in a wide-variety of formats, and assignments can be graded or ungraded. You also set up your grading system through using Assignments and Assignment Groups.

Tip: When creating an assignment that will be submitted through CourseWorks, you can choose what sort of file types students are allowed to submit. We recommend allowing as many as file types as possible for assignment submissions - this is helpful for students who might not easily have access to specific types of technology or software.

Resources:

• Canvas Instructor Guide - Assignments
• Assessment and Grading in Canvas 2.0 (assignment overview is in module 1)

The Gradebook feature lets you enter student grades and will calculate a final grade for your students. You can also use this tool to set your late policy and set your grade posting policy (which determines when students can see grades). The link to access the Gradebook is entitled "Grades."

Tip: By default, students will be able to see their grades as soon as you post them. If you'd like to prevent that from happening, take a look at Canvas' guide to grade posting policies.

Resources:

• Canvas Instructor Guide - Grades
• Assessment and Grading in Canvas 2.0 (grading information is in module 4)
• Using the New Gradebook in CourseWorks (From Columbia)
  

The quizzes tool can be used for both short quizzes and full-length exams, though it generally works best for assessments that use multiple-choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, or other question styles that have a single-correct answer. Quizzes using those types of questions can be graded automatically by CourseWorks. However, you can also use the quizzes feature to create essay-style or short answer exams. 

Tips:

• For online courses, take-home exams are recommended when feasible. This makes it easier to take into account student testing accommodations, varying time zones, and any technical issues (like an internet outage) that may occur during the exam period.
• Become familiar with how to give students extra time on quizzes
• You can use the question bank to randomize questions and ensure students don't all receive the exact same quiz

Resources:

• Instructor Guide - Quizzes
• Creating Online Exams (From Columbia CTL)
• Assessment and Grading in Canvas 2.0 (quiz overview in module 2)

Speedgrader is a tool that lets you grade assignments, quizzes, and discussions within the Canvas interface. Using Speedgrader, you can leave comments and annotations for students, as well as a final grade.

Similarly, rubrics can be used with graded assignments, quizzes and discussion. With the rubric tool, you can create an online rubric with categories and point values. Rubrics can be accessed from the Speedgrader tool.

Resources:

• Instructor Guide - Speedgrader
• Instructor Guide - Rubrics
• Assessment and Grading in Canvas 2.0 (Speedgrader overview in module 1)

TurnItIn is a service that runs originality checks on submitted documents. Instructors can add TurnItIn to their CourseWorks Assignments or upload files individually to see a similarity score that compares the file to documents across the web.

Use TurnItIn with a CourseWorks (Canvas) Assignment

TurnItIn can be enabled for CourseWorks (Canvas) assignments that use File Upload or Text Entry. Note that TurnItIn must be enabled before any students submit their assignment; it cannot be added after submissions have been received. To start, create a new assignment and set the Submission Type to “Online”, then check off Text Entry or File Uploads. Selecting either of these options will make the Plagiarism Review section appear further down the page. Select “TurnItIn”, then review the settings to ensure that they are configured to your liking. We recommend the default settings.

Finish configuring the assignment, save, and publish. Each submitted assignment will receive a similarity score report that can be reviewed in SpeedGrader by navigating to a student’s submission and clicking the colored flag and percent icon that appears next to the uploaded file’s name.

Submit Individual Documents to TurnItIn

TurnItIn can be accessed outside of CourseWorks (Canvas) through https://www.turnitin.com/. This option is recommended for those looking to submit individual documents for review. Please see this guide for submitting individual documents to TurnItIn.

AI Writing Detection

Some faculty may have noticed an AI detection report included within their Similarity Report last semester. However, there are serious and acknowledged concerns about bias and reliability, including the risk for false positives with this tool. For this reason, and in keeping with the approach of the majority of our peer institutions, the Barnard Provost's Office, in consultation with IMATS, DEI, CEP, and Columbia has disabled Turnitin's AI detections report.

The SSOL tool allows instructors to pass their grades from CourseWorks Gradebook directly to our SSOL platform.

Resource:

• Submit CourseWorks (Canvas) Grades to SSOL

Modules are ways of grouping and organizing your course content for students. You may want to use modules to separate your course into units or topics; this can help make it easier for students to understand relationships between content and find relevant information. Modules can contain all types of CourseWorks content including assignments, discussions, pages, and quizzes.

Tips:

• Consider starting your course with an "Introduction" module that contains information such as the syllabus and course expectations
• At the beginning of each module, present the learning objectives and topics for the module

Resources:

• Canvas Instructor Guide - Modules
• Introduction to CourseWorks (Canvas) Online 2.0 (information on modules in module 2)

Pages are where you can include all sorts of information that you want to share with your students, whether it's instructional content, course policies, or anything else. You can easily add text, images and video to pages.

Tip: When designing pages, please keep the layout and formatting simple. This will help ensure that your pages are easy to read for students with learning or visual disabilities, as well as students who may be accessing your pages from devices other than a computer (such as a phone or tablet).

Resources:

• Canvas Instructor Guide - Pages
• Introduction to CourseWorks (Canvas) Online 2.0 (information about pages in module 2)

The syllabus feature lets you post your syllabus to your CourseWorks site. A syllabus in CourseWorks will have two parts:

• On the top of the syllabus page, you can put whatever information you want. You can attach your course syllabus as a document, copy and paste the information, or write your syllabus directly in CourseWorks.
• On the bottom of the syllabus page, there is a chronological list of all assignments and due dates in the course. This is generated automatically by Canvas and can't be turned off.

Tip: For accessibility purposes, it is often best to write your syllabus directly in CourseWorks.

Resources:

• Canvas Instructor Guide - How do I use the Syllabus as an Instructor?
• CUIT Canvas Tips & Tricks - Posting Your Syllabus

Files are where you can store all sorts of documents you want to share with your class: photos, slides, text, pdfs, etc. You can also use your files throughout your Canvas site, such as in your pages or assignments. To add files, you can just drag and drop them from your computer in the files interface.

Tip: Organizing your files into folders will help students find important content, such as lecture slides.

Resources:

• Canvas Instructor Guide - Files
• Introduction to CourseWorks (Canvas) Online 2.0 (information about files in module 2)

The discussion feature allow for students to engage with each other in an asynchronous manner. Students can reply directly to the prompt, or to other students. Discussions can be graded or ungraded.

Tip: While most people type text into discussions, students also have the option of uploading video or audio. This is something you may want to encourage, as it may be easier or more natural for some students to contribute using those formats.

Resources:

• Canvas Instructor Guide - Discussions
• Online Discussion: Tips and Strategies
• Assessment and Grading in Canvas 2.0 (information about discussions in module 3)
• Best Practices for Online Discussions in CourseWorks
  

The Announcements tool lets you send an announcement to the entire class. This is useful for important reminders, or when there's a change in plans. Students will receive notifications when announcements are sent out; how they receive these notifications will depend on their notification settings. Announcements will also show up on the Announcements page, which is hidden when there are no announcements. 

Resources:

• Canvas Instructor Guide - Announcements
• How do I create an announcement? (From Columbia CTL)

Collaborations allow students to work together on a single Google doc or Google Drive file through CourseWorks. You can assign a document to a group of students, or to the whole class. When using the feature, you will be asked to authorize Google Drive to have access your account; you'll need to grant access for the feature to work. Students must also register their Google Drive account with CourseWorks for this to work; they can do so through their account settings.

Tip: Because of certain gBear settings, Columbia students may have difficulty accessing Google Drive collaborations through CourseWorks. So, the collaborations feature works best in classes with Barnard students only. 

Resource:

• Canvas Instructor Guide - Collaborations

Groups can be used to help students collaborate together. When students are placed in groups, they can participate in discussions within just their group, and also submit assignments as a group. Groups can be set up and managed from within the People page. You can manually assign groups to students, have CourseWorks automatically sort your students into groups, or allow students to select their own groups.

Tip: When teaching online, you may want to consider assigning groups to students based on their time zone so they can more effectively work together.

Resource:

• Canvas Instructor Guide - Groups

This Canvas tool allows instant messaging between instructors, students, and other class participants. Note that messages can only be sent to people who are currently online. Chat is automatically available in the left-hand navigation bar of all CourseWorks (Canvas) courses, and can also be found in the bottom-right corner of all course sites.

Resource:

• Use Chat as an Instructor in Canvas

Mailtool allows instructors and TAs to send emails through CourseWorks to individual students or the entire class. Mailtool was developed by CUIT, and is not a native feature to Canvas.

Resource:

• Tips and Tricks for Using Mailtool

Zoom Class Sessions is where you can set up and access your synchronous Zoom calls for your course. For more information on Zoom, take a look at our Zoom Faculty Guide and Columbia's Teaching with Zoom guide.

The Class Video Recordings (Panopto) tab is where you'll find your Zoom course recordings. Panopto can also be used for hosting additional instructional videos. Panopto also has tools for editing and captioning your videos. For more information, see the Course Recordings section of our Zoom Faculty Guide and Columbia's Teaching with Panopto guide.

Roll Call (Attendance) allows instructors to mark whether students are present, late, or absent, and set grading policies related to attendance.

Resource:

• How do I take roll call using the Attendance tool?

Photo Roster allows instructors to view student names and profile pictures together, and to practice remembering them with the use of a flashcard game.

Resource:

• Photo Roster - CTL Knowledge Base

Faculty are required to provide accurate textbook information for their courses under the Higher Education Opportunity Act, and the Textbook tool is where you can do this. Please note that even if your course does not have any required textbooks, you are still required to use the Textbook tool to indicate that your course does not require textbooks. Textbooks can be entered using an ISBN, or the information can be provided manually.

Resource:

• Posting Textbook Information in a CourseWorks (Canvas) Course

Name & Pronoun Recordings allows students and instructors to record the correct pronunciation of their name and provide their pronouns. Both students and instructors can listen to the recordings for anyone in their course(s).

Resources:

• Name & Pronoun Recordings - CUIT
• Pronouns in Use: Resources for the Columbia Community

New Analytics enables instructors to see individual student data and aggregate data for their CourseWorks courses, including average grades for individual assignments, sections, and courses. Additionally, you can send messages to students based on their course grades and participation metrics.

Tip: Participation metrics in CourseWorks are derived from page visits and completed assignments; while this information is useful, we do not recommend using it as a direct assessment of student engagement.

Resource:

• Getting Started with New Analytics in Canvas