Assigning Activities

This topic contains about 40 mins worth of reading and videos

What is this topic about?

This module will guide you through the following topics:

Learn about the use of Canvas Assignments and their types
How to build Canvas Quizzes (New and Classic)
Exploring the Discussions feature - Best feature to promote class engagement!
Assignment Groups and weightage and how to use it to automate the calculation of the final mark in your course
How to inform learners about the expectations of quality around a task using Rubrics and Outcomes

Useful tip: How to keep your Modules cleaner and your course learner focused

Since the Rich Content Editor (RCE) that you use in Pages is also available in all of the above-mentioned features, you may not need to build unique pages followed by an activity, as your Assignment/Quiz/ Discussion can contain all the resources required in the activity's instructions area using the RCE and thereby reduce the length of modules or number of pages in your course.

For e.g., a course designer may choose to have all the learning content of their course by using only the Assignments where students submit their work on the same webpage after learning through the material provided in the Assignment information above the submission. This is just an example but individual use cases may need different course designs.

Let's get the ball rolling!

Below is the tabbed compilation of key information in the form of dot points and videos for each of the items listed above which will empower you to kick start your content creation journey on Canvas.

1. Assignments

Assignments in Canvas can be used to challenge students' understanding and help assess competency by using a variety of options. Assignments can be assigned to everyone in the course or differentiated by section or user.

302 - Assignments Overview (Links to an external site from Instructure Canvas Community (Links to an external site.) on Vimeo (Links to an external site.).

Some things to know about Assignments include:

Graded Assignments add columns to the Canvas Markbook
All about the Settings: Edit the assignment settings to meet your needs
- You can use the "On Paper" or "No Submission" to enter grades for classroom work
- You can have students submit work online
- Students can submit work to external tools such as Turnitin
Populates Calendar/sends Notifications:If you enter a due dates to assignments, this due date will automatically show up in the Syllabus, Calendar and on the "To-Do" list on the Home Page

You can also do the following when creating Assignments:

Restrict file types in online submissions
Easily accept multimedia assignments
Add a rubricfor clear student expectations and easy grading
GoogleDrive/OneDrive assignments are easily submitted if enabled by your institution
Easily duplicateAssignments from the selector in Module view
Engage studentsin expectations with Peer Review

2. Quizzes

Quizzes in Canvas are assignments that can be used to challenge student understanding and assess comprehension of course material. Quizzes can also be used to conduct and moderate exams and assessments, both graded and ungraded.

Classic Quizzes

Canvas has four different types of Classic quizzes:

A graded quiz is the most common quiz and rewards students points based on their quiz responses
A practice quiz is a learning tool to see how well users understand course material without providing a grade
A graded survey rewards students with points for completing a survey but grading is not based on right or wrong answers
An ungraded survey obtains opinions or other information without providing a grade

304 - Quizzes Overview (Links to an external site.) from Instructure Canvas Community (Links to an external site.)on Vimeo (Links to an external site.).

After watching the videos, you can read the following help guides to explain each question type in detail.

New Quizzes

New Quizzes is an assessment engine that integrates with Canvas as an LTI tool. Teachers can use New Quizzes to create assessments using a variety of questions types. Students can take New Quizzes assessments within their Canvas courses.

323 - New Quizzes Overview (Links to an external site.) from Instructure Canvas Community (Links to an external site.) on Vimeo (Links to an external site.).

New Quizzes has a number of new question types, along with additional security features and reporting tools. Check out this Canvas Guide:

How do I create an assessment using New Quizzes

The following question types are available in New Quizzes:

You can choose to use either of the Quiz types in your course or school sub-account but it is advisable to use just one kind for your course/all your courses to maintain consistency of the student experience.

3. Discussions

Discussions allow instructors to create dynamic asynchronous discussions for their students in Canvas.

516 - Discussions OverviewLinks to an external site. from Instructure Canvas CommunityLinks to an external site. on VimeoLinks to an external site..

Discussions are a very flexible tool.

Graded or ungraded: Choose to use discussions for ungraded conversations - such as a Q & A - or for graded discussions
Customisable: Require students to submit their work before they see peer work, choose to allow students to edit/delete their posts

Some additional ideas for using Discussions are:

Don't have to be text-based.Discussion replies are created in the Rich Content Editor, so your prompt and student responses do not have to be limited to only written work. Students can submit podcasts, files, images, audio/video submissions, and more!
Easy to duplicate Discussions from the selector icon in Modules
Don't miss a thing by subscribing to individual discussions and be notified if a new post is made
Add a rubric for clear student expectations and easy grading

4. Rubrics and Outcomes

A Rubric is an assessment tool for communicating expectations of quality and are a way to set up custom or outcome-based assessment criteria for scoring.

Rows are used to define the various criteria being used to assess an assignment and Columns are used to define levels of performance for each criterion.

321 - Rubrics Overview (Links to an external site.) from Instructure Canvas Community (Links to an external site.)on Vimeo (Links to an external site.).

Some other rubrics considerations:

Variety of assessments: Create and use rubrics for assignments, graded discussions and quizzes.
Flexibility with scoring: Rubric criteria can include a set point value or a range
Streamline your grading:Select criterion boxes to automatically assign points
Find Rubric:See your full bank of available Rubrics across courses
Share an assessment with a Rubric:This will also share the attached Rubric
Account-level Rubrics:Create these for account level access

Outcomes are used to track mastery in a course. From the outcomes page, you can create and manage outcomes, create outcome groups, import outcomes, and manage rubrics.

320 - Outcomes Overview from Instructure Canvas Community (Links to an external site.)on Vimeo (Links to an external site.).

Outcomes can be included in assignment rubrics as an easy way to assess mastery of learning objectives. When you create a learning outcome, you should also define a criterion that can be used when building assignment rubrics. Define as many rubric columns as you need, and specify a point threshold that will be used to define mastery of this outcome.

While setting up Mastery and Calculation Method of an Outcome, you can set one of four calculation methods: Decaying Average, n Number of Times, Most Recent Score, and Highest Score.

Note: If you cannot edit calculation methods for your outcome, your institution has enabled course-wide outcome calculation methods.

You can try out all that you learn here in your Sandbox

Okay, now I'm curious.

If you'd like to deep dive into any of the above-mentioned topics, please refer to the below links relating to each of the topics.