Pedagogical Possibilities: If You're Drawing a Blank on Canvas

Change is stressful, technological change doubly so. Photo by Keira Burton.

It seems like everything is coming up Canvas these days-- many schools and businesses have been using it for years, either directly or as a framework for their own learning management system (LMS). And now, the University of Illinois has joined their number, with the campus switching away from Blackboard and Moodle to Canvas this year. 

This is understandably stressful to a lot of folks! Everyone just got used to using all the LMS technology that, let's be honest, many instructors I know avoided using much when teaching in person, and now there's a new change, a new system to deal with, and a whole set of materials and assumptions about how things work in your classes that may need to be rethought. The post linked gives some helpful resources to get started with Canvas, but I since I know this blog is most widely read by my graduate teacher colleagues, I want to offer up some ideas about how to get cozy with Canvas as you prepare for your upcoming courses.

• Don't panic. Canvas, in my opinion, is fairly friendly and offers you some pretty powerful options for managing assignments and information in your course. I actually find it more intuitive than the two earlier options, but YMMV.

• Think about your style. Will you be teaching mostly in person, with readings distributed online and that's about it? Or will you be using the LMS to its fullest extent? Do you like the centrality and low paper usage of grading online, or are you going to be grading long papers that need to be printed and stapled and turned in and perhaps shared with a colleague or supervisor? The answers to these questions may determine what aspects of the LMS you want to invest your energy into figuring out. The majority of folks can choose the tools they find most intuitive or useful, and leave the rest to figure out later.

• Think pedagogically. There's a reason for the assignments you give, right? You want students to understand a concept, practice analyzing or remembering something, or collaborate to create or compare something. What's the best way to use the features the LMS offers to enhance that effect? If a tool doesn't work with your pedagogical goals, consider another tool or assignment to get at those goals. Conversely, don't be afraid to take the backwards route, looking at a tool and figuring out what goals that tool could work well in supporting-- this can not only spark creativity in your course planning but also sometimes help you figure out that the tool actually won't work well for your course.

• Don't be afraid to take advantage of resources available. As you may remember from an earlier post, U of I folks have access to LinkedIn Learning for free, which just happens to offer a couple of introductory courses for Canvas that I've found very helpful, especially since Learning is easy to access on your phone when you have a few spare minutes. If you can, you might get a practice space in Canvas that you can use to follow along with the instructor, creating assignments and announcements as he explains how to do them-- I've found this helpful. There's also a Canvas 101 training, available through the U of I. This training is particularly useful for two reasons: one, it uses the Canvas platform itself, so you can get a feel for it from the student side, and two, it has some specifically useful information for U of I users, like Canvas integrations with Zoom and Illinois MediaSpace. There are also an absolute ton of workshops and open office hours where you can drop in for hands-on tutorials or help.

Marrying items 3 and 4 can be a challenge-- many people become bogged down in the details of what's possible and lose sight of what their teaching goals are, or are so convinced that their existing teaching plan is the most pedagogically sound that it cannot be changed to accommodate change in technological frameworks. To aid with this linking, I must plug the upcoming "What You Need to Know: Essentials of Course Design," a recurrent summer workshop series by Lucas Anderson and the CITL Grad Affiliates (which would be a great band name). The series will focus on the pedagogical elements of designing a course, using backward course design as a guiding framework, and each session will feature a concluding segment where participants can explore the tools within Canvas that support the session's theme. Although I won't be participating in delivering the series this year, I encourage everyone who's available to attend one or all of the sessions-- it's sure to be a growth experience whether you've taught one time or twelve.

I wish you the best of luck with the transition, and I hope you'll all let me know how it goes for you!