Introduction
Courseworks (Canvas) is Columbia University's learning management system. Your CourseWorks site can serve as your virtual classroom, a home base to communicate and build community with students, engage students, and also a tool you can use to assess and give feedback to students.
Note: You will often hear CourseWorks and Canvas used interchangeably. Canvas is technically the brand name of the learning management system. CourseWorks is Columbia University's name for its specific setup of Canvas.
Logging In
Setting Up Your UNI
Your University Network ID (UNI) is a unique identifier assigned to all university employees and students. Your UNI is attached to your Columbia email address, as well as all other systems you will use at CBS. You will need your UNI to login to Canvas and to participate in most training activities. Further, use of your UNI for internal communication is mandatory. Please visit the link above to learn more about mail forwarding and to request your UNI (if you do not currently have one). You can also reach out to your department for more information.
Logging Into CourseWorks (Canvas)
You can log into CourseWorks by using your Columbia UNI and password at courseworks.columbia.edu. Once you're logged in, you'll be taken to your dashboard, where you can see all your courses. You can also access your courses through the My Courses or Courses buttons on the left-hand navigation.
Communication and Community Building
As an instructor, you want to think about what are the things you want to communicate with your students and the tools you can use to communicate with students. You may also want to consider how the learning environment you are building in Courseworks (Canvas) facilitates and encourages instructors and students to communicate and collaborate with one another.
Home/Syllabus
By default, the CBS Homepage links to the Syllabus tool in Canvas. The syllabus is a detailed outline of expectations and subjects covered within a course. It is a valuable resource for both you, and the students. Ideally, a syllabus is a formal document that acts as a contract between the students and the instructor and a reference guide for all components related to the course.
You can use the syllabus template as a starting point in developing your syllabus before putting it on your course site.
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Announcements
The Announcements tool allows you to send class-wide updates, ideal for reminders or changes in plans. Students will receive notifications when announcements are sent out; how they receive these notifications will depend on their individual notification settings. Announcements will also show up on the Announcements page, which is hidden when there are no announcements.
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Mailtool
Mailtool allows instructors and TAs to send emails through CourseWorks to individual students or the entire class. Mailtool was developed by CUIT, and is not a native tool to Canvas. Using the Mailtool to send emails to your class is preferable to the native email tool in Canvas (Inbox) because whether students receive the email is not determined by their individual notification settings. There is also a record of emails sent by all instructors and TAs in the course.
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Discussions
The discussion tool allows students to engage with each other in an asynchronous manner. Students can reply directly to the prompt, or to other students. Discussions can be graded or ungraded.
Tip: While most people type text into discussions, students also have the option of uploading video or audio. This is something you may want to encourage, as it may be easier or more natural for some students to contribute using those formats.
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Groups
The Groups tool in Canvas can help foster student collaboration. By organizing students into groups, they can engage in focused discussions and collectively submit assignments. Group creation and management can be conveniently handled through the People page. Whether assigning groups manually, employing CourseWorks' automatic sorting feature, or enabling students to choose their own groups, the flexibility caters to various instructional needs.
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Assessment and Feedback
Great courses should have a mix of diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments.
Diagnostic: Diagnostic assignments are for you to "diagnose" benchmarks of skill, readiness, and understanding.
Formative: Low-stakes assignments carry little-to-no grade. They are meant as checkpoints to resonance and application of the material. Additionally, completing formative assessments yields meaningful and specific feedback from the instructor prior to completing a higher-stakes assessment.
Summative: Evaluation of student learning at the completion of a major instructional unit (usually at the midterm or conclusion). Usually, the work is compared against previous work (on the subject) for reinforcement or mastery.
You can use some of the tools below to create these types of assessments in CourseWorks. These tools can also help to give more effective, engaging and timely feedback.
Assignments
Canvas Assignments is a great centralized location in which to collect student work. Students can submit work in a variety of formats and assignments can be graded or ungraded. Instead of receiving digitally completed homework in the form of individual emails from each student for each assignment, instructors can create a Canvas Assignment to collect the work of all students. You can also utilize Rubrics, the Speedgrader and annotation tools to grade assignments and give feedback. You can also setup group assignments and peer review.
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Quizzes
The quizzes tool in CourseWorks serves well for formative or summative assessments. Some available question types include multiple-choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, or others where there's a single correct answer. CourseWorks can automatically grade quizzes structured with these question types. However, you can also utilize the quizzes feature to design exams with essay-style, short-answer questions, or file uploads. Quizzes can also be used as formative assessments as you can give feedback to students
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Speedgrader
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Rubrics
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Gradebook
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Content and Organization
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Course Navigation
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Files
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Pages
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Modules
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Getting to Know Your Students
It is important to get to know the students you are teaching in your course. By understanding your students, you can tailor teaching methods to their unique needs, fostering a supportive learning environment where they feel valued and motivated to engage with the material, ultimately promoting academic success and well-being.
SeatGen
SeatGEN is a tool that can be used to build and print seating charts and print class rosters, student profiles, flash cards and tent cards for all students enrolled in a particular course. Note: Students must opt-in to have their photo and background information shared on SeatGEN. During Orientation students are strongly encouraged to opt-in and are given instructions on how to do so within their CampusGroups profile.
SeatGEN is one option for tracking attendance and participation. Faculty, TAs, and divisional staff may access the "New seatGEN" tab within the Canvas course navigation menu. Students do not have access to SeatGEN.
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Photo Roster
The Photo Roster tool is a Columbia created tool for Canvas and only individuals with the roles of Teacher or Enhanced TA will be able to see this tool.
From the Photo Roster, you can view and print all enrolled students’ photos, view student’s advisor information and email, and view the class roster as a series of flash cards. You can also export the student roster in a .csv file.
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You@Columbia
You@Columbia is a tool built by Columbia University that allows students to record their name pronunciations and pronouns.
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Additional Tools & Integrations
There are additional tools integrated into Courseworks available for Columbia Business School faculty to use.
YellowDig
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Harvard Business Publishing (HBP app)
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Echo360
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Proctorio
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Turnitin
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