Have you ever found yourself leaving the same comment over and over again when grading? SpeedGrader now has a function for that, called Comment Library. With a few clicks you can add a comment to the library and save it, and then pull that comment from the library for subsequent students. You can also enable Carmen to show comment suggestions while typing for an even faster option.
Comment Library is available for assignments, discussions, and quizzes, and can be found just above the comment box:
Qualtrics is a survey tool provided by the university, and you have undoubtedly filled out a Qualtrics survey at some point. You can use this service to:
Anything you might use a form for, or any data that you might want organized in a spreadsheet
For users within The College of Medicine, there are a few checks to complete to ensure that what you plan to do falls within the security standards of the university and the medical center. Here are the steps to complete before you begin the survey:
Establish a default account through http://osu.qualtrics.com. You must set this up with your lastname.# account, not your Medical Center username.
Complete the Institutional Data Policy training on BuckeyeLearn and save a PDF copy of your certificate to upload to the request form.
If you do not have the certificate, please follow these instructions:
Go to Buckeye Learn –> My Transcript
Change the default setting of Active to Completed
Search for Institutional Data Policy–>click the down arrow to the right of View Certificate–>select View Certificate
This will generate the single certificate that indicates all three sections of the eLearning were completed.
Here are a few tips for making grading just a little bit easier inside CarmenCanvas. Note, these tips are most helpful when you’ve already completed assignment and gradebook setup, preferably at the start of a course.
Mark a student as excused
There are two ways to mark an assignment as excused.
If the assignment is graded Complete/Incomplete, select Excused from the drop down.
If instead the assignment is graded for points, type EX in the points box and Canvas will automatically mark the assignment as excused.
Per Canvas, “Excused assignments are not calculated as part of a student’s total grade. When an assignment is excused, the assignment page and the student grade page will show the student that he or she has been excused from the assignment. Students cannot submit excused assignments.”
If you have put assignments or quizzes in groups, you can create a rule to drop the lowest grade within that group.
Set default grade
Did you leave your students’ assignments on the seatback of the seat in front of you on the airplane, and you need to give everyone full credit for the assignment? (Yes, I did that, and yes, it was years ago) You can set the default grade for all ungraded submissions for an assignment.
If you’ve ever started sharing your screen in Zoom and then lost track of the controls for Zoom, there is a setting to fix that. It’s called Always show meeting control toolbar and here’s how you find it. You can also skip down this page for a video demo.
Navigate to CarmenZoom in your browser and login with your name.#. By default, you’ll be on the Meetings tab:
Move to the Settings tab
There are many settings here, I’d suggest you search (Ctrl + F or Cmd + F) for the words Always show meeting control toolbar, or you can scroll down until you find the setting. When the setting is turned on, the toggle bar will appear red with the white dot on the right side.
Now when you share screen in Zoom, the control toolbar will appear at the top center of your screen so you can always find it. Note, only you will be able to see the toolbar, unless you also turn on the setting to show Zoom controls during meetings. But that’s a different topic!
An advanced feature within Zoom is the ability to show your PowerPoint slides as your virtual background. This feature allows you to advance your slides while keeping your video feed on top.
To show your PowerPoint slides as your background, click the green Share Screen button. By default, the Basic options appear:
Switch to the Advanced tab, and select PowerPoint as Virtual Background and then click Share:
Browse to find the file you want, and click Open:
It’ll take a moment to prepare your slides. When the slides are ready, you’ll see arrows (< >) in the bottom center of the screen for advancing the slides:
The peer review function in CarmenCanvas is one way to create interaction among students, and with advance planning in the setup, may serve to lessen the grading burden a bit for instructors. While the instructor or TA would still have to assign grades for each assignment, you can assign a rubric to the peer review and let students have the “first pass” at grading each other’s submissions. Note that this works best for online only submissions. Canvas provides peer review tips, and the videos and links below should help you get started as well.
If the assignment in question is a writing assignment, I would also suggest consulting the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing. They have great resources as part of their Writing Across the Curriculum program. I’ve found their resources to be amazingly helpful both in creating the instructions for an assignment, and in creating the rubrics.
A new course template for instructors in HRS has been published to CanvasCommons. Built on the ODEE Distance Course Core Template, the HRS Carmen Course Template includes everything ODEE created and adds images, links, and resources specific to HRS. Here are the steps to import the course template from CanvasCommons. Note, these steps can be used to import anything you find in CanvasCommons.
On the right side of the course navigation, click Import from Commons.
2. The page will redirect to CanvasCommons, a repository of templates created by others using Canvas. Here you can search for just about anything, and filter by grade level, institution, or resource.
3. Type HRS Carmen Course Template in the search bar to find the HRS template. Click on the course.
4. On the right side of the next page, click the blue button to Import/Download
5. Check the box next to the course you want to import the template into, and click Import into Course:
6. Look for the green bar at the top- give it a few minutes, and then head back to your course to see the result.
