I’m halfway through the development stage of my fully online Learning Framework: 1^st Year Experience course I’m building in Canvas. As I’m learning about the Canvas LMS, I have run across a few quirks and have had to make some adjustments.

For instance, Desire2Learn (D2L) allows a deeper navigation structure with endless sub-module opportunities. Canvas only allows one level within each module. Instead, I’ve managed to delineate and group areas within a module using Text Headers and indenting. In some regards, I’m not sure this is the most efficient way to arrange the content within the modules. But, if I break it apart into smaller modules (such as individual weeks) I lose the adaptability this design has to be reduced to a 14, 12, or 8-week course by just changing the course schedule, four module titles, and four module directions. I like how in D2L I can group materials in a sub-module and if for some reason the materials all need to be moved to a different area of the course I only have to drag the one sub-module instead of each individual piece.

I found the Canvas Rubrics Tool to be straightforward. But the layout does not line up if the level numbers for each criteria are not the same. There was no apparent way for me to fix the cell widths of the rubric so I had to settle on the bad breaks in the text. It also kept trying to predict and change my criteria scores for each level if I did not use a regular descending pattern of values. I had to be extra careful reviewing each level score to make sure it hadn’t been auto-updated.

I found the SoftChalk LTI Tool App, but it required a code and secret password that I’m not privy to. So instead of having the SoftChalk lesson score feed directly into the gradebook, I embedded the lesson and the instructor will have to read the score in SoftChalk Cloud and then manually enter it in Canvas. I may also need to adjust the size of the images in the SoftChalk lesson because the width of the lesson is constrained to just 800 pixels in Canvas. The SoftChalk lesson itself is responsive but the images I placed in the lesson are set to 400 pixels wide and they are causing the text to wrap around the images in narrow columns.

I may need to reconsider how to supply the course evaluation survey. I want the students to submit their suggestion anonymously, but be able to receive extra credit points. The Canvas quiz tool does allow anonymous surveys. But the quiz/survey does not seem to provide a submission confirmation message or email that the student could then use to submit to an assignment folder for extra credit.

I cannot find a place to assign a due date on non-graded discussions. Therefore, I had to make it a graded discussion with a point value of 0. I also had to assign a point value of 0 to my extra credit items, this way I can add 10 additional points over the set score. This was the solution offered by the Canvas community. D2L has a way to designate a grade item as bonus, but Canvas does not.

Despite the few quirks I’ve encountered, my design model has helped my development smoothly progress. I am able to make the slight adjustments needed without diverging from the main course plan.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2018 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Canvas, Instructional Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.