Switching Quickly to Online Teaching with Canvas (Guest post by Nicholaos Jones)

Some Suggestions for Switching Quickly to Online Teaching with Canvas

Nicholaos Jones, Professor of Philosophy, The University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, Alabama

I began teaching online four years ago. I have converted three courses into fully online formats. I offered my first online course during a summer semester, for the sake of experimenting with strategy. The next was a proof-of-concept for doing an upper-level undergraduate course online (Asian Philosophy) in a way that students found rigorous and engaging. I converted the third for the sake of gaining flexibility in balancing child-care with an emergent chronic health condition in my family.

My university will transition to online-only instruction beginning next week. As the chair for a joint department of Philosophy and Political Science, with faculty of all sorts and varying degrees of experience teaching online, I created a nut-and-bolts list of suggestions for switching quickly to online teaching, along with some samples of content I provide (when I have ample time to design the content).

My university uses Canvas, and so the suggestions are targeted for that platform. I do not know whether the suggestions are helpful for faculty who use other platforms. So please receive these suggestions with appropriate qualification. (Canvas offers free accounts to teachers and students. But if your institution uses an alternative platform, switching now is likely to cause logistical issues.) 

Like Professor McDonald, I prefer asynchronous teaching online. Disruptions to student schedules, and disparities in student resources and obligations, might interfere with their ability to attend an online session at a set time. Asynchronous teaching avoids this issue. Here's a suggestion for implementing an asynchronous approach.

First, you should structure your course content in a way that guides students through each week. Divide your course content into week-length chunks. Create a Module for each chunk. In each module, create a Page that says what to do for the chunk: what to read, what to watch, which assignments to submit.

Next, you should structure a timeline to guide students through each week. Publish, or unlock, the Module on Monday of the relevant week. (You can publish and then "lock" the module until a set date. Go to Modules. In the header for the module, select the three vertical dots in the header bar. Select Edit. Check "Lock until" and set the date.) Set any assignments to close at the end of the next Monday. Adjust the open/close days as suits your schedule, of course.

(Quick observation on student psychology: Set due dates for assignments to Thursday, but don't set the assignments to close until the next Monday. I find this helps to minimize last-second scrambling and student requests for extension. I find this holds even if I tell students that this is what I am doing.)

After you create a weekly structure, you'll need to have online course content.  Creating lecture videos is a substantial time commitment. In addition to recording, diligence in making lectures accessible requires (by law) creating a transcript.

There are ways to have YouTube create a transcript for you (example). But Google's algorithm makes errors, and so, if you are diligent, you will need time to edit the transcripts too. (There are similar accessibility concerns if you record synchronous lectures using Zoom or some other platform. I am not sure about the quality of Zoom's transcription capacity.)

In my experience, if transcripts are available and students are pressed for time, they prefer to read transcripts over watching asynchronous videos.

Here's an alternative strategy to video lectures if you are pressed for time.

• Record a brief video giving an overview of the week, make a transcript of that, and then upload to Files a PDF of notes that specify where students should concentrate their efforts. Insert a link to this PDF in the Page that says what to do for the module.
• In place of synchronous class participation, create a discussion board that opens at the beginning of the module. Post a link to the board in the Page that says what to do for the module. Set the board due date to Thursday, and set the board to close the following Monday.
• I have found that discussion board prompts that are open-ended and oriented toward applying course content garner better participation from students. For example, instead of "explain this idea from the assigned reading," try "here's a real-life situation; explain how ideas from the assigned reading might be relevant."
• I have found that a good way to create back-and-forth in discussions is to require an original post earlier in the module, to set the board so that students cannot read it until making an original post, and then to require students to comment on the post immediately above their own and one other before the board closes.
• I grade board posts on "substantial and effortful engagement with course content and peers" that occurs "throughout the week" rather than "correctness of board posting and comments." In speed-grader, you can check contributions for substance, and you can track whether students waited until the last hours to make their contributions.
• If you are pressed for time, rather than provide feedback to each individual post, send an Announcement on Friday in which you make general observations about the original posts. Students tend to wait to do comments until the weekends, and the Announcement helps to direct their comments in ways collaborative in-class discussions would work. Also, for the first few boards, you might drop in a handful of comments on student posts, as a model for the sort of commenting you find to be substantial and engaging.
• After the board closes, I also try to send an Announcement commenting on what students did well. This gives training for how to improve the quality of future boards, and I find it encourages students to make quality posts rather than "dial it in."

So much for course content. Next, you'll want to think about how to assess student performance. There are measures available that discourage students from "cheating" on exams, such as LockDown Browser. I have been disinclined to use these. There is a tradeoff between online assessment and controlling assessment environments. I prefer to accept the loss of control by designing online-appropriate assessments. This typically involves open-note, open-book exams with prompts that do not lend themselves to cut-and-paste style responses.

I find that a good and low-effort way to track whether students are "getting" the material, apart from exams, is to do ungraded quizzes. You might make a quiz that is due by the end of the module, and allow the students unlimited "takes." If you don't have time to create feedback on each answer, in the quiz, you might encourage students to email you—or create a dedicated quiz discussion board—about questions they don't understand. To encourage students to do these quizzes, I include some questions from the ungraded quizzes on graded assignments.

I close with a suggestion for simulating free-form conversation with and among students without video or discussion boards. The Chat function in Canvas lends itself to synchronous discussion. You can send an Announcement specifying times when you'll be "in" the chat. If your browser has the Chat open and you have sound turned on, you'll receive a "ding" when someone posts—which means you can do other things. Posts to the Chat are persisting, meaning that people can read them even if no one is "in" the Chat. You might encourage students to share confusions in Chat, and respond to them at your leisure. (This also cuts down on responding to individual emails, and makes your responses accessible to everyone in the course.)

In case it is helpful, here is some specific content from my online course for Technology and Human Values. Note that the sample "overview" page comes from a dedicated online course with videos, prepared well in advance, that are roughly 15 minutes in length. For switching quickly to online asynchronous teaching, you might replace these with one overview video for the week and a series of brief (1-2 page) lecture notes, tips for reading, etc.

 

Sample Discussion Board Prompt

In 1998, Wendell Berry published a controversial essay in Harper’s Magazine. Titled “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.” Berry offered four reasons for resisting the then-recent surge in purchases of home computing equipment. The first is that computers unjustifiably damage nature: their operation requires electricity, that electricity comes from strip-mined coal, and strip-mining coal does damage to the environment that is not outweighed by the ability to avoid the minor inconveniences of working without computers. The second is that owning a computer will do nothing to bring him nearer to achieving goals that matter to him—goals such as peace, economic justice, ecological health, political honesty, family and community stability, good work. The third is that the cost of owning a computer is not worth it—not just monetary cost, but costs of losing reasons to interact with others to the extent he does without a computer. The fourth is that, were he to purchase a computer, he would use it for writing; but computers do nothing to help produce work that is demonstrably better than work produced without a computer—and so there is no point to purchasing one.

But, while Berry resisted computing technology—and continued to do so for the rest of his life, never succumbing to the temptation to purchase one—he did not abhor all technological innovation. He offered nine standards for what is now known as “appropriate” technological innovation: the new product should cost less than what it replaces; it should be at least as small as what it replaces; it should do work that is demonstrably better than what it replaces; it should use less energy than what it replaces; if possible, it should use some form of renewable energy; it should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence (with the appropriate tools, of course); it should be available for purchase and repair close to home; it should come from a privately owned store that is capable of servicing it; it should not replace or disrupt anything healthy that already exists. These standards provide a fifth, more sophisticated argument against buying a computer: computing innovations often fail several of these standards and thereby qualify as “inappropriate.”

What do you think of Berry’s standards for appropriate technology? If you endorse them, discuss the extent to which you follow them in your own decisions about technology purchases, and reasons you have for departing from them. If you reject (some or all of) them, explain why, and propose one or two alternative standards for “appropriate” technological innovation.

Your initial post is due Thursday; the feedback posts are due the following Monday. 

(The due date in Canvas is set for Thursday, but the assignment remains open until the following Monday to allow for feedback posts.)

Grading Rubric

Receive 1 point (all or nothing) for a thoughtful initial post. Receive up to two additional points for feedback that is critical and constructive—that engages, throughout the week, with the substance of the posts to which you respond in ways that amplify or challenge the explanation given in the post, and in ways that incorporate insights from the course materials.

 

Sample "Overview" Page for a Module

This is the fifth content-driven module for the course, focusing on evaluating whether technological innovation is progressive all-things-considered.  Graded assignments for this module include a discussion board and a quiz. The remainder of this page provides you with information on learning objectives and a recommended schedule. 

Objectives

After completing this module, you should be able to:

1. Reconstruct an argument for technological progress, based upon material benefits
2. Reconstruct an argument for technological progress, based upon material control
3. Reconstruct an argument for technological progress, based upon an analogy with evolutionary development
4. Evaluate the key premises of these arguments

Recommended Schedule⁺

Tuesday	Download the slides and the script for this module View the video and slides for Lecture 9.1 Make your initial contribution to Board 8
Wednesday	View the video and slides for Lecture 9.2
Thursday	View the video and slides for Lecture 9.3 Provide comments on Board 8
Friday	Attempt Quiz 7
Weekend	Continue comments on Board 8
Monday	Complete Quiz 7

⁺The recommended schedule aims for even distribution of work. If you prefer a schedule that better approximates traditional coursework, move the Wednesday recommendations to Tuesday, the Friday recommendations to Thursday, and treat the quiz as a take-home assignment due on Monday.

Sample Exam Prompts (Short Essay)

1. What does it mean to say that a design modification for a technology is restrictionary? Why are restrictionary designs significant, from a moral or political perspective? (Or: why are they not?) Give an example (not from class) that supports your answer.
2. What does it mean to say that a technology design is discriminatory? Why are discriminatory designs worrisome? (Or: why are they not?) Give an example (not from class) that supports your answer.
3. What is a strategy for avoiding discriminatory design for technology? What are the strategy's strengths? What are its weaknesses? 
4. What is a strategy that technology companies sometimes use to obfuscate the harms of their technological innovations? Give an example (not from class) that shows the strategy in action.