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Five Instructor Feedback Essentials

September 24, 2021
Providing student feedback is a key component of an instructor’s role and an important part of effective instruction. Research shows that ongoing feedback keeps students engaged and improves their morale, motivation, and learning (Best, et al, 2014). Yet, providing high quality feedback can be a time-consuming commitment, especially in courses with large class sizes or numerous written assessments. Instructors should keep in mind the tools, structure, and best practices that can help them provide feedback.

Enhancing Student Learning Through Course Consistency and Accessibility

October 04, 2024
Course developers (those who build individual courses) play a crucial role in the success of an online degree program by providing expertise and bringing unique perspectives. Accordingly, it is valuable for faculty to customize their course spaces by infusing them with their own knowledge and personality. At the same time, it is also crucial to prioritize structural consistency within and across courses in an online program, as course consistency is a key aspect of accessibility and a key contributing factor to student success. In particular, students must be able to perceive, operate, and understand the course and course materials using program-standard devices and certain assistive technologies, and this should be true across all of the courses in a program. This is where program chairs and administrators can help support faculty in standardizing key elements of courses to facilitate a seamless student experience. In this piece, we discuss how maintaining structural consistency within and across courses can positively impact accessibility.

SpeedGrader Best Practices

September 20, 2024
SpeedGrader is a Canvas learning management system (LMS) tool for viewing and grading assessments, including assignments, quizzes, and discussions. The interface is similar for all three types of assessments, with a few slight differences. To understand the basic functionality of SpeedGrader, consult the collection of guides and overview video provided by Canvas. This piece outlines best practices for how instructors can leverage SpeedGrader when leaving timely feedback and grades for their students, which is an important aspect of student engagement and success in online education.

Five Need-To-Know Rubric Grading Tips

October 13, 2021
Rubrics provide a framework for students, helping them submit stronger assignments while decreasing confusion as they write and create. While leveraging Canvas to provide clear, efficient, and consistent access to rubric, take a minute to learn a few settings, saving yourself valuable time and a possible headache.

Five Ways to Succeed as an Online Instructor

September 24, 2021
Whether experienced or new to online teaching, following these tips on online instruction can make the process more intuitive. The online environment may seem vastly different from the classroom, but these tips will make it feel natural, allowing you to improve student experience, increase teaching efficacy, cultivate engagement, and ensure successful course management.

Case Study Best Practices Guide

October 07, 2022
Case studies are an effective and powerful pedagogical tool. They present realistic narratives to students and require them to analyze possible outcomes or solve a dilemma or challenge associated with the narrative, and they are often followed by a series of questions or prompts that ask students to demonstrate their learning. Case studies can be based on real-world situations or fictional scenarios modeled on authentic occurrences. Regardless of the source and format, case studies provide students an opportunity to practice solving problems that they might encounter in the future.

Academic Integrity in Assessment

September 29, 2022
To foster academic integrity, pair anti-plagiarism tools with clear conduct expectations and authentic low-stakes assessments. When designing and teaching online courses, maintaining academic integrity is frequently top of mind. In many cases, faculty may opt to adopt third-party tools to monitor student work. Despite the prevalence of academic monitoring software in online courses, however, the most powerful tools for promoting academic integrity are introduced much earlier in the course build process.

Instructor Presence in Online Courses

September 24, 2021
Consistent and meaningful instructor presence is one of the most important drivers of student success and satisfaction in online courses (Roddy et al., 2017). However, establishing instructor presence online can be challenging. In fact, studies have shown that many online students feel their instructors are largely invisible (Tichavsky et al., 2015).

LMS Analytics: Supporting Your Students With Data

December 29, 2022
With the help of tools like Canvas New Analytics, faculty can leverage learning management system (LMS) data to hone their instructional techniques and improve their online students' experience. In this piece, we provide an introduction to learning analytics in online higher education and detail some analytics best practices.