Canvas Essentials: Facilitating Student Collaboration & Group Assessments
In this scenario-based video you’ll follow "Dr. Grace Thompson" and her student "Chloe Nguyen" as they navigate student collaboration and group assessments in Canvas. You'll see, through this mini-demonstration of Canvas, how it's easier for students to collaborate in groups and we'll also highlight some of the timesavers for teachers/instructors in the setup and management of these groups
In this scenario-based video you’ll follow "Dr. Grace Thompson" and her student "Chloe Nguyen" as they navigate student collaboration and group assessments in Canvas.
You'll see, through this mini-demonstration of Canvas, how it's easier for students to collaborate in groups and we'll also highlight some of the timesavers for teachers/instructors in the setup and management of these groups
Video Transcript
Personas:
- Coordinator: Dr. Grace Thompson
- Student: Chloe Nguyen
Background:
Part A: The Instructor’s perspective: Dr. Grace is the coordinator of Introduction to Educational Technology , a course with 200 student enrolments. Grace wants to foster collaboration between her students and leverage Canvas to run and assess group projects. She wants to randomly assign students to small groups of 5 and create opportunities for students from multiple campuses and delivery modes to collaborate together.
Part B The Student’s Perspective: Chloe is a student who wants to use Canvas to seamlessly collaborate with her fellow group members in both synchronous and asynchronous ways. Her group has been assigned a task that must be submitted as a PowerPoint presentation. As group leader, Chloe wants to create this presentation using Canvas and enrol her fellow group members. Once the group project is complete, Chloe wants to submit the presentation on behalf of the group.
Scenario: Part A
Grace has begun teaching the 200 students within her Introduction to Educational Technology course. Last semester, Grace successfully fostered group collaboration in Canvas for a project, and wants to build on this success to connect students from multiple locations and delivery modes.
Grace accesses EDUC100 and navigates to the People link in the Course Navigation menu. As these groups have not been automatically created by the Student Information System, Grace will need to manually create the groups by adding a new group set. The first group set will contain small groups from existing tutorial class data that has been populated from the Student Information System.
Grace uses the Group Structure section to automatically create new groups of five students and only assigns group members from the same Canvas section. This results in 40 new groups and corresponding group spaces to be created within Canvas.
For the second group set, Grace wants to ensure that all groups contain a range of students from different locations that may not typically collaborate. To facilitate this process, Grace downloads the class roster and uses the group name column to manually assign students into a group of 25.
Grace uploads the class roster back into Canvas and the 8 new groups are created with students assigned to the correct group.
To scaffold the group spaces, Grace creates a new discussion and designates this as a group discussion - Canvas automatically creates a copy of this discussion topic within each group for students to collaborate within.
To complete the setup of the Project Groups, Grace creates a new group assignment to allow each group to submit their presentation into Canvas. Grace limits the file submission type to ppt files and configures the group assignment to target the Project Group groupset. In this setup, Grace leaves the group assignment default of assigning marks to all group members.
Grace could optionally enable Peer Review on this assignment, to allow students to review other group submissions. Peer Review allows students to leverage the same marking tools as the teacher to provide feedback to their peers. Grace chooses not to enable peer review for this task.
Grace sets the default due date for the class and differentiates the due date for Project Group 10, as she understands this particular group requires additional time to submit.
When it comes time to mark group submissions, Grace can leverage SpeedGrader to annotate submission files, mark using a rubric, or assign a letter grade and provide supplementary text, files or multimedia feedback. SpeedGrader allows Grace to quickly move between each group submission and release all grades and feedback once all groups have been graded.
Part B
Chloe has accessed her group assignment task and has read through the assignment description. As the group leader, Chloe wants to access her group space and create a PowerPoint presentation to begin planning the final submission.
Chloe finds the relevant group from the Global Navigation menu. Chloe can see that there are several unread posts in this group space that she’ll review later. Within the Collaborations menu, Chloe is able to interface with Office 365, create a blank PowerPoint Presentation and enrol her group members in one quick and easy step.
Once Chloe and her group have finished their presentation, Chloe wants to submit the file into Canvas. As Chloe was working on the group presentation using the PowerPoint app on her iPad, she can submit directly via the sharing options available on the device. Choosing the Canvas Student app from the sharing options, Chloe can navigate to the relevant course and assignment.
Chloe accesses the assignment from her iPad to ensure the group project was correctly submitted.
Finally, Chloe noticed that she is enrolled in another group that contains students from all locations in Australia. She finds the group space in the Canvas Student app, and introduces herself in the discussion forum.