Canvas Web Environment for Introduction to World Drama
Weekly Discussion Board Posts
In my Introduction to World Drama course, students collect their ideas each weekend by responding to a prompt on our Canvas discussion board. Students can see one another's posts, meaning that most students choose different examples and reflect on what other students have to say before class. We begin Monday classes by talking about the answers that students gave and synthesizing their thoughts into a deeper conversation.
Each weekly discussion board prompt asks students to interact with the text in a different way than the last. As a response to this post, students offered a wide array of textual examples that supported how Goethe's Faust challenges popular binaries in nineteenth century Western European romantic literature. Students were interested in the lingering possibility of Faust's salvation, in the questionable reality of the love potion used to seduce Gretchen, and in the ethics of scientific experimentation.
Communicating About Grades With Canvas Features
Communicating with students about grades is an important part of ensuring that students are given the tools that they need to succeed in my courses. I use the Roll Call function on Canvas to keep track of attendance and regularly update the Canvas Gradebook to make sure that students have access to their assignment outcomes as early as possible. I collect and grade most major assignments in paper, but also use Canvas Speedgrader to grade smaller and more frequent assignments. Since students receive feedback in a variety of venues, I regularly send Canvas messages like the one below to ensure that students keep informed.
Though I grade constantly throughout the semester, I choose several major checkpoints in the course to bring every student's grade fully up date and visible on Canvas. I sent the email above to my Introduction to World Drama course at a midpoint in the semester both to remind students to check their grades and to remind them of course requirements that they may not have fulfilled. I then used Canvas's email function to follow up individually with students whose grades were at risk. I never communicate specific scores to students via Canvas or email, because the Canvas mailbox is not an approved avenue for discussing student grades at Penn State.
Discussion board posts are graded on a scale of one to three, where the two lowest scoring posts are dropped from each student's final grade. For Introduction to World Drama, I provide a rubric to my students on Canvas so they understand how I will be grading their submissions. When I assign discussion board posts in my Composition classroom, I provide an assignment sheet for discussion board posts that provides similar information without a numeric rubric, according to the preferences of the department that manages the course.
I do not grade discussion board posts on whether or not the student's opinion seems correct to me. Rather, I grade students on whether their answers pertain to the prompt, and whether they defend their own argument. Since I teach argumentation in detail in my Composition class but do not have a devoted unit in my Introduction to World Drama class, I use discussion board posts as an opportunity to practice humanistic expository writing and meaningful reflection.
In addition to feedback that I give using Canvas's rubrics function, I also leave a written comment responding to the students' ideas, highlighting strong areas in the argument, and coaching students through areas for improvement. This feedback is not visible on the discussion board post, so student grades and writing goals remain confidential.
Using New Technology in the Classroom
I use polling technology in my classroom to create short activities that help my students synthesize information. Here is an exit poll for my Introduction to World Drama course, which helped my class review some of the important ideas that we discussed this semester.