Dartmouth's Canvas Connection

Canvas is updated every three weeks. The next update is scheduled for Saturday, December 6th. In this newsletter you’ll find highlights of the current production release, but for the full list of upgrades and enhancements from Canvas, click here: Production Release Notes 12.06.14. You can also watch the video below.

Occasionally the Speedgrader tool in Canvas is slow to load a student's assignment, which prevents you from being able to annotate the document. Now Speedgrader will generate a message letting you know that a document is still loading.

Canvas has numerous features that have been invaluable to promoting organization, efficiency and communication across a new experiential and team-based Public Health Course:

The course calendar, featured on the Syllabus tool, provides both a big picture view and in-depth details for all course material. The calendar also provides a basis for orienting students to course topics and requirements. This feature allows for individual student readings, reflections and exercises and team-based projects to be listed and viewed by class topic, due date and time. Listings can be easily edited and serve as direct links from the calendar to the detailed assignment to be completed for submission.

The assignments feature includes multiple categories and can be pre-programmed for team members and weighted to reflect the appropriate grade distribution. This feature saves time, as group assignments will automatically post and calculate grades for all team members after the assignment is submitted by one student from the group and can be reviewed and graded using the Speedgrader.

Catherine Florio Pipas, MD, MPH

Course Director, Introduction to Public Health: An Experiential Approach to Individual, Community, and Population-Based Health

Please join us next week as Educational Technologies and DCAL offer a two-part workshop series on integrating best practices in course design with the various tools offered by Canvas.

Part I will focus on developing student learning outcomes. It will take place on Monday, December 8th, from 10:00 am to noon. Coffee and snacks will be served. Please sign up here: http://libcal.dartmouth.edu/event.php?id=856604

Part II, which will focus on designing effective assessments, will take place on Wednesday, December 10th, from noon to 2:00 pm. Lunch will be served. Please sign up here: http://libcal.dartmouth.edu/event.php?id=856621

The Canvas Team will be holding Open Office Hours twice a week in December. We will be in Berry Library 183 (RWIT), which is located next to the library offices, just down the hall from KAF. Please feel free to drop by, and instructional designers will be available to offer assistance with your course sites. No appointments necessary! Our Open Office Hours schedule is available here:

http://sites.dartmouth.edu/canvas/

If you're using Canvas for the first time in Winter 2015, we encourage you to register for an introductory workshop, which will prepare you to start designing your courses in Canvas. You can register for a workshop here:

http://libcal.dartmouth.edu/edtech

Contact us: educational.technologies@dartmouth.edu

Dartmouth & Canvas | Review Past Newsletters