Dr. Alice Olmstead had experience with Canvas before she came to Texas State University. She was excited then, when the learning management system came to Texas State. She moved all of her materials into TXST Canvas in spring 2020.
“I found TRACS cumbersome to use and had some past experience with Canvas at a different institution, so I was eager to make the switch,” said Olmstead, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics. “Canvas does all of the things that I need to do for my instruction and my programmatic work with the STEM Communities Project.”
Using Canvas, Olmstead supports students and faculty by improving instruction for College of Science and Engineering (CoSE) courses. In May 2020, using Canvas, she co-led a week-long Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) online training workshop for faculty in CoSE with great success and positive feedback.
“Participants at our online workshop gave positive feedback about its organization, which was certainly helped by our use of Canvas,” she said.
Dr. Olmstead highlighted three Canvas tools as the most used in her courses.
Graded Survey
These surveys can be used to receive feedback from students or give extra points for their responses to a survey and can be found in the Syllabus, Gradebook, Calendar, and To Do Lists. Feedback may include a general understanding of the course material, which have no right or wrong answer, or questions that pertain to active knowledge. Each of these examples can be graded or not.
“I have a few standard surveys that I ask students to respond to regularly, such as asking them to explain their comprehension/confusion about reading assignments and asking them to tell me about their experiences in class that week,” she said.
Pages
Pages are designed to open to the front page of a course (if there is one). When creating Pages, you can also assign permissions for editing the page and choose to add it to the To Do Lists. This helps keep students on track with course activities by showing a To Do List with check boxes (if set up for editing) and visible in the course calendar.
“Pages are completely open-ended, which makes them very versatile. I like using them to pull together other content that participants/students might find on the site, such as an interactive schedule for a day in the workshop that has links to other documents, Canvas discussion boards, etcetera,” Olmstead explained.
Embed videos
With online learning, many times it is helpful to include video content for students. In Canvas, instructors can embed video content within a page and use a thumbnail image to identify the specific content.
The other tool that I have started using frequently since the move to online/hybrid instruction due to COVID-19 is the tool that lets me embed videos from Mediaflo on Canvas pages,” she explained. “This has been helpful for making videos of class or workshop sessions available after the fact, and for uploading videos my team and/or I have made for participants to watch asynchronously.”
Dr. Olmstead encourages her colleagues to move to Canvas – suggesting they allow themselves time to practice with the tools and to be patient with learning.
“I have found that tinkering with features and reading the Canvas documentation have been sufficient for me and I am pleased with the results,” she said.
Now is the time to join Olmstead in Canvas. Canvas will be the only learning management system used at Texas State in January. Whatever your level, the IT Assistance Center provides Canvas training opportunities to meet your needs. Canvas also has many resources available within the system to help you make the transition.
Rebecca Ormsby is a communications specialist in the IT Marketing and Communications office.
