[Tim Robicheaux]: The Canvas SpeedGrader is -- the way it's set up, is really nice.
So, you have on one box in Canvas you have the answer that the student gave or the
paper or whatever it is.
On the right-hand column, you have a place to write comments.
You have your place for your grading rubric and you can enter grades there.
So, everything is side by side.
You are able to read and comment at the same time. That's really efficient.
You don't have to flip back and forth across two tabs.
That makes it easier to grade.
I'm able to just click the rubric.
Again, to compare to ANGEL, when you would open a grading rubric on ANGEL, it would open
in a separate window. If you're using two monitors, it wasn't horrible, but if I'm
working at home on my laptop, it was really--it could be a pain.
So, this is so much more efficient. Big time more efficient.
And the nice thing, too, is when I enter a comment I know it goes straight to the student.
It actually emails to them so I don't have to go and write a separate email if I have
a concern or something like that.
[Christian Fishel]: Whenever I go and click grades, it gives me a list of all the
things that I've--all the assignments I've had.
There are individual grades and then it gives me my final grade at the bottom that's always
added up.
[Bill Goffe]: On communication with the students it's very convenient. You have two basic ways of doing it.
You have a broad announcement you can send to the class, and if the instructor wishes,
students can comment upon those announcements.
It can be a real plus.
You can also send individual emails, and that's quite flexible. One of the very nice
things is, any email you send inside of Canvas, it can go to your regular email and
back and forth. And finally, when students do an assignment, they can leave a question
with that assignment and then you can respond to it. [Christian]: It's good, because they
have the messages and so there are ways to communicate with the class and also with
the professor so there are different forums that you can use.
And every time my professor gives me a message, it pops up so I have the little icon and
so I know that there is something that I need to see and I can reply to it right there.
[Tim]: Canvas has been easy for me to learn from a teaching side of things.
I've been lucky enough to have someone set everything up for me.
So, I've only had to learn from a grading side and from a presentation side. I've
started migrating many of my other classes for the fall and spring, and it's very
intuitive. I think that at the end of the day it becomes more intuitive than ANGEL. It's
just a new software to learn, but certainly from the side of delivering content, I've
had no problems with it.
And the SpeedGrader was probably the most intuitive thing that I've dealt with.
[Christian]: I think it's a lot easier to use.
I think it's a lot more straightforward.
Anytime I need to find something I can find it within a couple seconds.
There's no hoops to jump through or anything like that.
[Tim]: One thing that really helps with Canvas, is that students can see everything they have to do for the semester
up front.
They don't have to click an individual folder to see what's inside it. And I believe that
lets them see the bigger picture earlier. So, for example, in a research methods course I teach,
the entirety of the course is set up to--there's a final paper in the course.
And the way that Canvas sets things up is the students get to see how each part interconnects
if they look ahead of time.
Whereas, in the past, they would have to click a folder for each lesson.
And it's just not right in front of them.
So, I think, that it lets them see the bigger picture a lot easier.
|[Christian]: Whenever I took my class on Canvas, they have modules instead of--where
you can go and look at different assignments and what not.
And so if I want to use Canvas, they break it up where they have different lessons and
then each lesson has a video.
And so I can just watch those videos along with what's going on.
And so there's more for me to be able to use whenever I need to learn something.