Reading Time: < 1 minute Canvas has updated how New Quizzes function when they contain at least one manually graded question (short answer or essay questions). Previously, the quizzes would not show up in an instructor’s “to-grade” list, and students would automatically see their grade for the quiz – a grade that didn’t take into account the questions that needed to be graded by the instructor. New Quizzes will now be listed in an instructor’s “to-grade” list inside Canvas to make it obvious there are questions that need their attention. Additionally, students will not see their grade for the quiz until after the manually graded questions are marked. Questions? We’d…
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Canvas Update: New Quiz Fill in the Blank Question Type Modification
Reading Time: < 1 minute Canvas has updated one of the New Quiz question types. With this change, it’s easier to create fill-in-the blank questions. Previously, you had to type all your text then highlight specific words or phrases and hit “enter” to create blanks. With this update, you can easily mark the blanks as you go. Each fill-in-the-blank answer needs to be surrounded by backticks (just above “tab” on your keyboard. It took me way too long to find it since I don’t use that key frequently). Once you have your blanks marked, you can choose the answer type (open entry, dropdown, or word bank) for each blank. These…
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Submitting Final Grades from Canvas to the Registrar
Reading Time: < 1 minute It’s a simple process to submit your final course grades to the registrar from Canvas. Before you start this process, however, you’ll want to follow these three tips for checking your Canvas gradebook to make sure you’re all squared away. Once you’re ready, follow these three steps: 1. Click the “Submit Grades to Registrar” link in your course menu. If you don’t see the link there, click “Settings” in the course menu then the “Navigation” tab. Drag and drop “Submit Grades to Registrar” from the inactive items list to the active items list and click “Save.” 2. Scan the information on the “Submit Grades” page. …
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Three Tips for Checking your Canvas Gradebook before Submitting Final Grades
Reading Time: 2 minutes Finals are coming up, so it’s time to start thinking about wrapping up your courses and preparing to submit grades. Submitting grades is a quick process, but there are a few items you’ll need to do before you click that button. 1. Check your course grading scheme You should have a grading system defined in your syllabus with the values defined for each grade letter. Canvas can display that letter grade to both you and your students, but you need to make sure you have this setting enabled with the correct values set. In your course, go to “Settings” in the course menu Scroll down to…
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Microsoft Teams and Canvas Round Up
Reading Time: 2 minutes With Zoom soon going away, now’s the perfect time to do a brief recap of everything we’ve talked about so far with Microsoft Teams. Teams provides an easy replacement for Zoom – it’s integrated directly into your Canvas course, and you can access many helpful Microsoft products from inside a meeting. Let’s review some of the most pertinent information you’ll want to refer to as you get up and running with Teams. Setting up the Integration and Creating Meetings The first thing you’ll need to do is turn on the integration in your course from the settings page. After that, you’ll be able to create meetings…
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How Can I Quickly Adjust Multiple Canvas Assignment Due Dates and Times?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Previously, Canvas has made it easy to adjust due dates for all assignments in a course. You’d go to the assignments page, click that little “three dots” icon in the top right to expand a menu, and select “Edit Assignment Dates.” Canvas would display all assignments from the course and any dates associated with them currently. From there, you could either manually change dates or use the checkboxes and “Batch Edit” button to update multiple dates at once. But with these, you were stuck with whatever times were associated with an assignment. And if there wasn’t a time associated with an assignment, Canvas would default…
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Canvas Feature: Microsoft Immersive Reader
Reading Time: 3 minutes We’ve talked a lot about the Canvas/Microsoft partnership and how more Microsoft products and features are being incorporated into Canvas. Today, we’re revisiting one of those features – the Microsoft Immersive Reader. The Microsoft Immersive Reader is now available through more of Canvas. Initially only released on Canvas pages, it’s now also available on the syllabus, assignments, and a course’s home page. This reader presents the page text in a more accessible format where the user can choose the text preferences, grammar options, reading preferences, and to have the page content read to them. To launch the reader, click the “Microsoft Immersive Reader” button at the top right of a…
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Using Rubrics for Grading in Canvas
Reading Time: 2 minutes We’ve talked before about some aspects of adding and using rubrics in courses. As a brief refresher, Canvas has excellent resources on creating and adding rubrics to assignments as well as creating and adding rubrics to discussions. We’ve also talked about how to add existing (already created in Canvas) rubrics to an assignment or discussion. Today we’re turning our attention to a setting that’ll make your grading life easier – using a rubric for assignment grading. You may think that you’re doing that by default, and in some ways, you are. The rubric is still tied to the assignment, and you can give scores and comments…
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How Can My Students Join Teams Meetings Scheduled through Canvas?
Reading Time: 2 minutes If your students can’t see scheduled Teams Meetings in the “Microsoft Teams meetings” Canvas navigation link, there are four ways they can access those meetings. Before we dive into those, we have two quick notes: If you have created a repeating meeting, the join link will be the same for each scheduled meeting. To ensure students get all notifications and can join meetings easily, they should download the Microsoft Teams app. Without further ado, let’s look at the different ways students can join your scheduled meetings. Through an email notification When you create a Teams meeting (or series of meetings) inside Canvas, each student who…
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Three Tips to Start Your Semester Strong
Reading Time: < 1 minute Welcome back! We’re about a week into the spring semester already – time flies! Across this semester, we’ll be digging deeper into Canvas features, offering tips, and sharing educational best practices as well as information shared by your colleagues. But today we’re going to pause and review a couple tips to help you start the semester strong. 1. Be aware of Canvas Announcements and use them Announcements allow you to communicate quickly and easily with your students. Sending an announcement is the best way to get in contact with your entire class in one fell swoop (and it doesn’t entail making a list of email addresses).…