CarmenCanvas

Adding Extra Credit in Canvas

Several instructors have reached out to learn about how to add extra credit points in Canvas classrooms.  If you are a learn-at-your-own-pace type, most of the information of this post comes from this article on the Canvas Instructor Guide.

The method for adding extra points to a class depends on whether your Gradebook uses Assignment Groups or not.  Assignment groups allow you to put your assignments/quizzes/tests, etc. in groups and then give a certain amount of weight to each group. You can read more about them at the link provided.

Adding Extra Credit on an Assignment/Quiz

To add extra credit to an assignment, you can manually “bump” grades up in the grade book.  For example, in my sandbox I have decided to curve the grades on my Ocean Life Quiz by adding 2 points for each student who took the quiz:

To do this, I can simply click into each student’s grade cell and re-enter a score that is 2 points higher:

Note: Once you have manually input a new grade, this grade will stay, so be sure this is what you want to do. If you want to add an entire extra credit assignment, see the section below: “Adding Extra Credit to an Entire Course”.

Quizzes offer another feature called “fudge points” in SpeedGrader.  To add fudge points, go to the bottom of the quiz result in SpeedGrader and enter positive or negative points to adjust the grade. This adjusts an individual’s grade.

Adding Extra Credit to an Entire Course

If your course uses weighted grades, then you can add an assignment category that’s worth the extra percentage you want (for example, 1%). Make sure that when you add the non-extra-credit assignment group weights, they add up to 100%.  Inside your extra credit group, you can put an actual graded assignment (worth 10 points, for example). The final grade for the course will be out of 101%. If someone doesn’t do the extra credit assignment, their grade won’t be harmed since their grade is still out of 100%.

If your course is using points-based grades, then you can create a grade item worth 0 points. After figuring out how many bonus points to give (such as 10 points), you can then give students this as the grade for this grade item (for example, 10/0). Again, if someone doesn’t do this assignment, it won’t hurt their overall grade.

If you have specific questions about extra credit that were not answered in this post, feel free to contact us and let us know how we can help you!

Old Carmen is Going Away May 14, 2017

Old Carmen (D2L) will not be accessible as of May 14 (one week after the grade posting deadline). This truly is the last call to move any content, including course content, student records, or anything else you may need from old Carmen as soon as possible. During the summer of 2017, ODEE staff will have limited read-only access to D2L. After that, the Ohio State instance of D2L will be dismantled.

If you’re teaching in old Carmen this spring 2017 semester, you may want to mark your calendar with a reminder to export your grades and student submissions used for grading at the end of the term. 

If you haven’t already, submit a request to have your old Carmen course moved into Canvas now at http://go.osu.edu/movemycourse.  Keep in mind that exporting your course content from old Carmen (D2L) does not include student course submissions.  If you need to archive grades or student course work submissions, you will want to export them separately.  See this ODEE article for more information regarding records retention. The main thing to keep in mind is that student submissions used to determine their course grade need to be kept only for two terms after the term in which they were submitted.

Need to export grades from an old Carmen (D2L) course?  Use these steps.

Need to export Dropbox submissions? Use these steps.

Need to export Discussion Board postings?  Use these steps.

View Example Courses in Carmen Canvas

Did you know that Canvas has sample courses for you to view and download as templates?

ODEE has developed two courses you can peruse and download as templates if you wish.  One course is for resource-heavy supplements to face-to-face courses, and the other is a fully online course. Take a look here.

The Canvas community (operated by Instructure) also has sample course templates that you can look through and download if you are interested. Find those here.

It’s great to see what others are doing.  Comment below or email us at CON-InformationTechnology@osu.edu if you have questions or want to share your experience with course templates.

Having Fun with Canvas Discussion Boards

Whether you have already taught in Canvas for a semester or are transitioning now, one thing to keep in mind is that Canvas has a more robust “text entry” feature than we saw in D2L.  Text entry is often used to post replies on discussion boards, and can also be used as a way to submit assignments and write announcements in Canvas.  By learning the various options you have in Canvas, you can take your class discussions to a new level with videos, animations, and voice as well as text.

To demonstrate several features we find in Carmen Canvas, I hosted a discussion in my sandbox and encouraged my “students” to be as creative as possible with their input.  You can find this discussion here: Flaute.13 Sandbox Movie Discussion. Note: You will need to be logged into Canvas with your OSU credentials to view this page.

You will see on this discussion board that in addition to just typing answers, students were encouraged to submit multi-media responses to the prompt. Below we can see some of the options available to you in your discussions and other text-entry:

text_entry_1

The labeled buttons above will help you brighten up your text entry. Below is a short summary of each.

Insert link: Allows you to link to a website (e.g. a youtube video or news article). The link will appear and others will click it to re-direct to the website.

Insert picture: This allows you to add a photo to the page from your computer.

Add media: This allows you to insert a video or sound file on your computer, or to record your voice or webcam video in real time to post.

Attach a file: This allows you to attach any file to your post that other readers will then download to view.

You can also copy and paste items from online directly into your text entry box. For example, that’s how Joni was able to insert the GIF found in the entry shown here:

2017-01-04-1

 

With this knowledge, we encourage you to try adding some oomph to your discussion posts, announcements, and assignment submissions!

 

Some further resources can be found here:

Canvas Guides: Replying to a Discussion

Canvas Guides: Adding media to a submission

Canvas Guides: Adding images to a submission

 

 

 

 

Time to Submit Final Grades

If you’re using old Carmen (D2L) this autumn semester, you can use this step-by-step guide to submit your final grades. 

If you’re using new Carmen (Canvas) this semester, you’ll submit grades by clicking on the little red gear icon to the right of your course title on the Canvas landing page.  First, make sure you are using the right grading scheme for final grades. When you’ve done that, you can follow these steps (click on the Details tab) to submit final grades.

Questions or problems with grade submission?  Contact us at CON-InformationTechnology@osu.edu. 

 

Canvas: Get Started for Spring 2017

Autumn Semester 2016 is coming to an end, and you are likely looking ahead to Spring 17.  As you prepare for the spring semester, you will need to do two things for each of your courses in Canvas.  Below, you will find resources to walk you through the steps for each process.

  1. Create your course (see ODEE’s instructional post here)
  2. Import content (see our previous post about importing content here, or the Canvas guide here)

If you are developing an entirely new course in Canvas, you may not be importing content, but creating everything from scratch.  For help with any questions you have, we recommend you start at guides.instructure.com or page through some of our posts on creating  course content in Canvas (here is our overview of Canvas information)

As always, if you have specific questions feel free to contact CON IT services at CON-InformationTechnology@osu.edu. Best of luck creating your SP 17 courses!

 

 

Canvas Grading Resources

See the recorded “Flash Tuesday” workshop here: Canvas Grading Workshop

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Our Canvas workshop series continues with Lara Flaute today, November 1, from 12:00-12:30 p.m. with a “Flash Tuesday” webinar in CarmenConnect.  Lara will show you how to grade assignments in Carmen (Canvas) with SpeedGrader, change grades in the grade book, and calculate final grades for your classes. Join us from your computer for a quick half-hour noontime session at http://go.osu.edu/jonitornwall

This workshop references the following resources from Canvas Instructure Guides as well as the Ohio State Office of Distance Education and eLearning (ODEE):

Canvas Gradebook Overview (video)

Transferring Final Grades

How do I Enter and Edit Grades in the Gradebook?

What is Speedgrader?

Grading Schemes in Canvas

Here is how you can choose what grade scheme you want to use before sending your final grades to the Faculty Center.

1. Go into your course and click on Settings.

Click on Settings

2. Under the Course Details tab, scroll down until you see Grading Scheme.

3. Check the box next to “Enable course grading scheme” (if it’s not already checked) and then click on “view grading scheme”.

Enable course grading scheme

4. The grading scheme that you’ll see is a default in Canvas that does *not* follow the OSU scheme. So, click on “Select Another Scheme” to choose something else.

Select Another Scheme

5. On the left side is a list of schemes. Choose the OSU Standard Scheme if you don’t plan on rounding up grades. There is also an S/U scheme if you want to use that. If you want to round up your grades, click on OSU with rounding. Regardless of which scheme you choose, make sure to click on “Use this grading standard”.

Use this grading standard

6. If you have chosen the scheme you want to use, click on Done.

Click on Done

7. IMPORTANT! Make sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on “Update Course Details”.

Update Course Details

Links in Canvas: How to Bypass “Insecure” Warnings in Firefox

When scrolling through your Canvas course you may have noticed that some links (to Panopto recordings, OSU websites, or outside websites) will show a preview on the page, and some will instead show a warning of “insecure content” and no preview.  The warning appears in red text in the screen shot below.  Generally, these links are safe to follow, but always exercise your best judgment when you receive a warning such as this.

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The Instructure Guide to Canvas has a page explaining this phenomenon and several others issues that may arise depending on the browser you are using to access Canvas.  That guide is here: Which Browsers does Canvas Support?

For those who use Firefox, here are a few quick tips so you or your students can still access this content.

When the insecure content warning comes up, you can view the link in a new tab by simply left-clicking on the link (circled in green here). This is the easiest solution.  If you want to view the link within the Canvas page, click on the padlock icon in the address box (circled in blue).

A dialogue box will open up. Click the arrow circled below:

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Next, click “disable protection for now”.  This should allow the video (or webpage) to load in the box below the link.

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If you are accessing Canvas through another browser, such as Google Chrome, see the link above that will help you troubleshoot issues.

As always, feel free to contact us if you have specific questions!

Carmen vs. Canvas

This year, OSU has gone through a major change with the evolution of Carmen to Canvas. As with any redesign, it is important to find out how people are responding to the changes to see what improvements, if any, need to be made. I interviewed two first-year students and two second-year students to see what they like, and dislike, about Canvas.

The second-year students generally like the old Carmen system compared to the new Canvas system. The common theme seems to be the old system was easier to navigate. Multiple people told me Canvas has too many tabs compared to Carmen, which had one main tab called the Content tab. They also said it was less challenging to view grades, look at upcoming events for classes, and turn in assignments last year in Carmen. However, they did like that Canvas separates each course so that they are independent of each other. Students can now pick a class and view the assignments for that one class individually, contrary to Carmen that combined all of the assignments from every class into one area. One friend even marveled at the usefulness of the announcements/discussions/assignments/files icons located on the front cover of every course.

My first-year friends tended to have more positive things to say about Canvas. They said the system is pretty easy to use and they haven’t had many problems learning how to navigate it. The parts they like best about Canvas are the announcements tab and the calendar. They said the announcements section is an easy way for them to find updates and important e-mails about their classes.  When I asked them what their favorite part about Canvas is, they said the calendar tab. The calendar tab shows when assignments are due throughout the week, which allows them to manage their time more efficiently. This opinion contrasts with the second-year students who said they dislike the calendar tab because it is more confusing than the upcoming events tab in Carmen. The only complaint the first-year students have about Canvas is that their teachers sometimes struggle with the system, resulting in assignments, or even whole courses, not being posted.

Since the first year students have never fully been exposed to Carmen before, it seems they have not had a hard time adjusting to the new system. Being a first-year student myself, I would pick Canvas over Carmen because that is what I am most familiar with and I can’t personally compare the pros and cons of each system. Since the second-year students have had to make the adjustment to a new system, it is understandable why they would prefer Carmen because it is what they are most comfortable with.

Both the first-years and the second-years agree that the new Canvas system is better with regard to technology. They really like the convenience of the Canvas mobile app, which the old Carmen system did not have. With continual practice, I believe everyone will adapt to the new Canvas system and see it as a positive step forward in learning technology at OSU.