CourseWorks (Canvas) Faculty Guide

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 Canvas, 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: This training from Columbia provides an overview of how to create CourseWorks assignments 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.

Grades Resources:

• Canvas Instructor Guide - Grades
• Assessment and Grading in Canvas 2.0: This training from Columbia provides an overview of how to use the Gradebook in module 4, as well as best practices around grading
• 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 ensure students don't all receive the exact same quize

Resources:

• Instructor Guide - Quizzes
• Creating Online Exams (From Columbia CTL)
• Assessment and Grading in Canvas 2.0: This training from Columbia provides an overview of how to use quizzes in module 2

Speedgrader is a tool that lets you grade assigments, 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

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 such as 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

Modules Resources:

• Canvas Instructor Guide

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).

Pages Resources:

• Canvas Instructor Guide

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:

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

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

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
• 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 plants. Students will receive notifications when announcements are sent out - how they'll receive these notifications will depend on their notification settings. Announcements will also show up on the Announcements page, which is hidden when are no announcements. 

Resources:

• Canvas Instructor Guide - Announcements
• How do I create an announcement?

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. 

Resources:

• 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.

Resources:

• Canvas Instructor Guide - Groups

Zoom Class Sessions is where you will 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.

Panopto is where you'll find your Zoom course recordings, and can also be used for hosting other instructional videos. Panopto has unlimited video storage, along with tools for editing and captioning your videos. For more information, see Columbia's Teaching with Panopto guide.