Reading Time: < 1 minuteIt’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. Is…
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Transform Your Teaching: Mind Mapping for Systems Thinking with Dr. Larry Cox
Reading Time: < 1 minuteWe’ve discussed how mind mapping can impact teaching and learning, but what other applications exist? How can mind mapping help solve problems or organize thinking? Join Rob and Jared as they chat with Dr. Larry Cox II (Senior Instructional Designer at Virginia Tech) about his presentation on using mind mapping techniques in systems thinking while at the 2025 OLC Accelerate Conference. View a transcript of this week’s episode. Podcast links Resources Chat with us!
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How I Used ChatGPT to Reimagine “Introduction to Literature”
Reading Time: 2 minutesWhen I was asked to teach a face-to-face section of LIT-2300 this semester, I was a bit hesitant. While I have experience teaching literature to high schoolers, I had never taught it at the college level. With the campus-wide subscription of OpenAI’s ChatGPT EDU in place, I decided to integrate AI not as a grading shortcut or a novelty (although a Gatsby bot that appends every answer with “old sport” is very tempting), but as a teaching assistant. Using a dedicated ChatGPT project (“LIT-2300 TA Bot), I developed lectures, discussions, and creative learning materials grounded in Cedarville’s theological framework. My first steps were to start like any…
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Student Perspectives: GenAI and the General Writing Major
Reading Time: 4 minutesIn August, Cedarville University became the first evangelical Christian university to implement campus-wide educational ChatGPT. This has been met with a lot of different responses—enthusiasm, fear, disdain, apathy. I know some people who use it for everything. I know others who would equate AI use as an unforgivable sin. I’m Sophie, a senior studying Professional Writing and Information Design, and I land somewhere in the middle, if a bit on the “less AI” side. But there are some specific contexts where I do (or do not) use genAI—so let’s take a look at those! In my education The first day of class, all of my professors banned…
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Highlights from OpenAI on Campus: 5 Takeaways
Reading Time: 3 minutesOpenAI was on campus earlier this week to run some training sessions for both staff and faculty about how to effectively use ChatGPT in your workflow. Sessions covered everything from prompt engineering to effectively using the various tools accessible through our Cedarville workspace. We’ve got a quick recap of the biggest takeaways from the sessions, so let’s dive right in. Set up your personalization/memories settings This is super simple to set up! When logged in to ChatGPT, click on your name in the bottom left corner, then click “Personalization.” From there, you can enable customization, set the style and tone ChatGPT uses when responding, add custom instructions…
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Summer 2025 Canvas Roundup
Reading Time: 2 minutesWelcome back for another semester! Summer is always a busy time and a welcomed break from the school year. Because of that, we’re going to highlight some of the Canvas changes to make sure you’re up to speed with the current status of things. Assignments Canvas has made a few tweaks and adjustments to Assignments this year – they made it simpler to update due dates for assignments with “assign to” available in more places, they added a way for students to self-assess their work with the assignment’s rubric, and they have an annotation assignment type! For full details on each of these changes or features, check…
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Beginning of Semester Reminders and Tips
Reading Time: 2 minutesWelcome to the start of a new semester! Today we’re going be chatting about some tips and reminders to make the first week (and the rest of the semester) easier. We know there’s a big chunk of time between semester starts, so it’s easy for some of these things to slip your memory. Combining Canvas sections You may be teaching multiple sections of the same course but want to combine all your students into one section so you have a single place to work on the course. Canvas makes it simple to combine those multiple sections into one. A brief note: you’ll need to combine them before…
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State of Canvas 2025: Quizzes
Reading Time: 2 minutesSo far, we’ve covered the current state of Assignments and Discussions in Canvas. This week, we’ll be chatting about (New) Quizzes! It’s been a relatively quiet year for New Quizzes so far – the biggest update we’ve talked about has been the update to the moderation settings. But there are a few exciting things that have either already landed or are on the horizon! Text blocks in New Quizzes Have you ever wished that there was an easy way to provide directions or additional information inside a New Quiz? Previously, you could to that through using a Stimulus – but you had to attach questions to it, and…
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Transform Your Teaching: Generative AI with Dave Leitch
Reading Time: < 1 minuteHow can Generative AI limit the number of syllabus questions you get? Can students use it as a reviewer before they submit their assignments? In this episode, Rob and Ryan chat with Dave Leitch (Associate Professor of Special Education in the School of Education and Social Work at Cedarville University) about how to leverage Generative AI tools with students. Have questions about some of the topics we’ve discussed recently? Drop all your burning questions in our form for an upcoming Q&A episode! View a transcript of this week’s episode. Podcast links Resources Chat with us!
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State of Canvas 2025: Discussions
Reading Time: 2 minutesLast week, we took a moment to review the current status of Assignments in Canvas. This week, we’re turning our focus to Discussions. We’ve talked about Discussions a few times over the last several months because of some big updates to the tool. We’ll be going over those and more today! Discussion Checkpoints Canvas has finally added multiple due dates for discussions with their Discussion Checkpoints update earlier this year. Now, you can set one due date for students to submit initial replies to the prompt and a second due date for students to submit replies to other students. There was a moment of oddness with how…