During Fall22 Flex, MOST hosted a Canvas Crawl in which attendees got to see Canvas shells of our MOST coaches in live Zoom breakout rooms. This is the asynchronous version of that activity.

MOST Canvas Crawl sdmesa.edu/crawl

MOST Canvas Crawl

Mesa's Online Success Team (MOST) has bravely shared their courses for this Asynchronous Canvas Crawl. Please select the tabs below to self-enroll & crawl through the Canvas shells of our MOST coaches. We've asked each of them to share:

The name of the course that they've shared
Self-Enroll Link: The link SDCCD Canvas Accounts can use to access the shell.
A Rose: This is a something that they like about their course. A highlight, a teaching strategy that is working, an activity that they enjoy, etc.
A Thorn: This is something that they are working on to improve in their course.

When you see something that you want to learn more about as you crawl through these courses, feel free to reach out to that MOST coach to ask them questions and learn more.

Prof. Bernal (MATH)
Prof. Crosby (PSYC)
Prof. Frankie (CISC)
Prof. Kushkaki (ENGL)
Prof. Lacher (ENGL)
Prof. Smulevitz (ARTF)
Prof. Spoon (MATH)
Katie Palacios (LOFT)

Prof. Juan Bernal (MATH)

Prof. Juan Bernal

Math 119: Elementary Stats

✅Self-Enroll into Juan's Canvas Crawl shell

Rose

🌹Rose 1: I really like my homepage and my usage of bitmoji's all throughout my Canvas modules. Students have told me how hilarious they can be especially when the material can get a tad overwhelming. I also have an orienation page where students can talk about their feelings about math (good or bad) and something new they picked up. Students can use a video to answer these questions or just type them out. I am incorporating more discussion boards into my class as well. When I gave my end of semester reflection, students said that they wanted more discussion with classmates and less Desmos so I will be incorporating that a bit more.

Thorn

Thorn: My assignments and assessments need lots of work. Right now, they are download a pdf and upload onto canvas. This mimics a lot of what a traditional face-to-face class would be like but I want to explore more authentic assessments. Currently, I am working on redesigning one of my exams and making it into a mini-project in the probability section. Stay tuned for that

Prof. Christina Crosby (PSYC)

Prof. Christina Crosby

Psychology

✅Self-Enroll into Christina's Canvas Crawl shell

Overview of Shell

This shell does not have any content as it is focused on the organization of the setup of the modules for the course with specific prerequisites and requirements for all components of the course.

🌹Rose 1

If you haven't utilized these features before, it might seem overwhelming to have everything with a requirement. However, students continuously express how they like always being able to know exactly where they left off in the course and having a feeling of completion as things become checked off in the modules. DAS, increasing clarity and motivation for students!

🌹Rose 2

This set up makes it very clear how much still needs to be done if a student falls behind. That's not only helps them pick up where they left off, but it makes it very tangible why they would not want to procrastinate as they can see not just assignments, but content and other requirements that must be done. I find that if a student falls behind once, they don't tend to do it going forward.

🌹Rose 3

This set up prevent students from accidentally moving forward too soon. In other words, trying to complete an activity without having first completed the content exposure needed for success on that activity. This also allows for me to be able to easily view exactly where a student has left off in the class when looking at student activity.

Potential Thorn #1

If students are not used to this set up it may take them a second to understand it. However, this can be overcome with a clear how to navigate our Canvas course instructional segment/video in the orientation. I have to stress to students that using the todo list is not going to be a great way to navigate our canvas course because the todo list may only have assignments but there are content requirements in the modules that they must complete first. After about the first week students understand this really well and turn to navigating the course through the modules successfully.

Potential Thorn #2

Depending on the arrangement of your course, this set up could potentially make the modules appear to be quite lengthy. If this is the case, you can emphasize to students how to collapse previously used modules. Or, some things can be moved from the modules to pages -- for example, in the shell you will see interspersed practice activities, these could be moved as a link into the content pages in order to shorten the module itself.

Potential Thorn #3:

You must remember to fully set up everything! For example, remembering to set up the prerequisites, relocking the modules when a new one is published. If you forget, then student won't be able to move forward ...speaking from learned experiences 😅

Prof. Tasha Frankie (CISC)

Prof. Tasha Frankie

CISC 191 - Intermediate Java Programming

I recorded this video to show you around my Canvas Crawl CISC 191 Tour. This course was co-designed with Allan Schougaard as part of MOSAIC.

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✅Self-Enroll into Tasha's Canvas Crawl Shell

Rose

🌹Rose 1: The standards based grading setup leads to very consistent modules that allow students to demonstrate proficiency at each level as they make progress. It also allows students to skip to the level of understanding they are ready to demonstrate, potentially saving students from doing busy work if they are already familiar with a concept.

🌹Rose 2: One assignment that is in each module is an explanation video of the module concepts. While creating this video, students can self-evaluate and notice gaps in their understanding (the things they have trouble explaining!), which allows them to focus on the aspects of the module concepts that they need to spend more time learning. Students share their videos with each other, and also provide feedback via sandwich reviews to their classmates; the videos and reviews are a great way for students to interact asynchronously, and works well in both an asynchronous class and a hybrid class. Students quickly realize whose videos they like watching, and are more likely to reach out to each other to collaborate.

Thorn

It would be great to have multiple ways for students to demonstrate proficiency at each level, and is an area for future improvement.

Prof. Mariam Kushkaki (ENGL)

Prof. Mariam Kushkaki

ENGL 202: Introduction to Linguistics

✅Self-Enroll into Mariam's Canvas Crawl Shell

Roses & Thorn

🌹Rose 1: The introduction module is meant to be very inviting / humanizing--there's a Chill Beats page for students looking for music recommendations, a campus resources page that is meant to support students beyond the classroom, and an introductions activity that presents me (hopefully) as an approachable instructor.

🌹Rose 2: The modules for each unit are organized using chunking / multiple tiers. There's a Resources / Handouts section that includes files for class, a Lecture Slides section that links to relevant PPTs / Slides, and an Assignments section for turning in all homework and completing exams. The tiered list helps students keep track of the content for each module (instead of having everything all on the same level / tier).

Thorn: Because the course content can get quite technical (and there are a lot of smaller pieces to the class lectures), some students might not be able to find the content their looking for when trying to navigate through the PPTs / Slides. For instance, a unit might have five PPTs / Slides--if the student is looking for information about a particular concept, they might click through several of those links to find what they're looking for. A workaround might be to create a single Lecture Slides page and link the files there while including a short blurb about the contents of each.

Prof. Kim Lacher (ENGL)

Prof. Kim Lacher

ENGL 101 Reading & Composition

✅Self-Enroll into Kim's Canvas Crawl Shell

Roses & Thorn

🌹Rose 1: My home page gets students the information that they need to get started as well as a prominent orange button to get them to the next step: the course orientation module.

🌹Rose 2: My orientation module creates a space to introduce myself, build community, and provide all the support my students will need. It's also setup as a pre-requisite that they must complete prior to starting my Week 1 module.

Thorn: I am learning new ways to incorporate #ungrading into my courses. This Fall, I'm trying new more wholistic rubrics that allow students to resubmit assignments as many times as they need to. So I'm working on these more equitable assessment strategies in my courses.

Prof. Cara Smulevitz (ARTF)

Prof. Cara Smulevitz

ARTF 107: Contemporary Art

✅Self-Enroll into Cara's Canvas Crawl Shell

Roses

🌹Rose 1: The two 4-week units I've included here each have an overview video right at the top of the module for that unit. I've found those videos to be particularly successful- after I added them I noticed students going into the units with a better sense of the overall theme, of how to pace themselves, and, most importantly, with some increased confidence about approaching 'difficult' contemporary artworks that can sometimes be intimidating to beginners. Students have told me that these videos (which I have at the start of every module) have made them feel like I was really there, in the class, even though we never met in person.

🌹Rose 2: Creating interactive discussion boards that are relevant to the course content, fun, and genuinely collaborative can be a real challenge in asynchronous courses, but one place where I think that works particularly well is my "Week 2 Discussion, Event Scores" that I've included here. Students share really funny, creative, and interesting things for that one, everyone has a good time with it, and it allows people to give glimpses into their real like (their pets, their home, a hobby) if they want to. I almost always see good learning relationships between students form as part of this particular discussion board, and since it is early in the semester, they can keep relying on those relationships throughout the course.

Thorn

There is a LOT of reading and lots of videos to watch in this class, and since I don't use a textbook, they are all in my modules. I've broken them up into weeks and added some images, but even so, it can be very difficult for students to take in such a dense page of text, and they also would need a tab open with their study guide, and other tabs open for all the articles and videos i link to. Managing all those pages while still taking notes is an organizational challenge for students-- so that is something I want to figure out how to simplify. I'm not sure how yet-- that will be one of my course revision goals for the coming year.

Prof. Kelly Spoon (MATH)

Prof. Kelly Spoon

MATH 119: Elementary Statistics

I recorded this video to show you around my Canvas Crawl Kelly's MATH 119 Module 2 Tour.

✅ Self-Enroll into Kelly's Canvas Crawl shell.

Roses

🌹Rose 1: The module flow igniting curiousity with some introductory activities to tap into what students know, then chunked information, then practice, and finally ending with students connecting content to their interests.

🌹Rose 2: The content presentation within Canvas quizzes. By chunking the content into text, video, and formative assessments, students can check in on their understanding as they work through the content.

Thorn

Thorn: Canvas quizzes are less than ideal for the formative assessment questions. Students don't see if their understanding was correct until they finish the whole quiz / section. Students have given good feedback, but something that graded by question would be better. I also need to add video options for all the text as apparently younger generations prefer video.

Katie Palacios (LOFT)

Katie Palacios

MOST Refresh

This example is unique from the others in that this Canvas course shell is a Professional Learning course, right? So, this is not a course for students, but instead it's a course where faculty are our students. (Perhaps some of you were in our MOST Refresh course). I recorded this video to show you Roses & Thorns in the Canvas Crawl MOST Refresh shell.

✅We invite you to Self-Enroll into this Canvas Crawl snippet of the MOST Refresh shell

Roses

🌹Rose 1: Our MOST Refresh Home Page is a great example of A4, A1, B3, D1, and humanizing! It's very clear exactly where we want our participant to navigate to next.

🌹Rose 2: Another thing that I like about this course is that we used a hiking analogy throughout the course. This was an effective way to create some cohesion for our course designs and activities. We also were able to leverage the idea of the course being a journey with places to push ourselves, but also there being times to reflect and rest along the way. I think this was a nice way of building in that same reflective/growth element into the professional learning practice.

Thorn

One way that we can improve Refresh (and perhaps incorporate into future cohorts) is to more clearly/intentionally link our course reflections/activities to the faculty evaluation domains. That way, as participants complete our cohorts, they are simultaneously working on evidence for the corresponding domains/criteria of our faculty evaluation process.

Want Flex Credit?

Nice! You're halfway there. Our Asynchronous Canvas Crawl is available for Flex Credit if you take it one step further and complete our Canvas Crawl Reflection Activity.