Upload a Picture to Canvas Discussion Board

April 13, 2022 Posting Komentar

Introduction

Many instructors are familiar with the challenges of facilitating effective in-class discussion. When discussion moves to an online arena such as a Sheet word board, many of the same challenges can crop up, along with new ones unique to the digital medium. For example, an instructor may not be certain when and how he or she should intervene in order to guide the discussion in a productive direction. Students, meanwhile, may be unsure every bit to how to express themselves in an online forum; particularly if an online discussion is a component of the grade course, the risk exists that students may brand brief, perfunctory comments simply to "be counted", which in turn tin can cause the discussion to stall.

Information technology need not exist this way, however. With idea and training, online discussions tin exist just as active, vibrant, and thoughtful as the best in-class discussions. In this commodity you will find some helpful tips for crafting Canvas online discussions that will go on students engaged and help them make noun, meaningful contributions to the ongoing flow of debate.

Craft Constructive Word Prompts

A good word prompt is vital for sparking meaningful discussion. By providing a well-crafted prompt, you can excite students' capacity for creative thinking and aid them come across the topic at hand in new and exciting means.

Conversely, a prompt that is too limiting tin cause discussion to be quickly squelched. In this category fall prompts that take only one right answer, forth with prompts whose sole purpose is to make students prove that they completed the assigned reading. If checking for reading completion/comprehension is your goal, a discussion thread may not be the best style to go; instead consider some other method, such as a Canvas Quiz, or take students turn in an annotated copy of their readings.

Ways to make discussion prompts more constructive include:

Activeness verbs: Heighten your prompt with action words such as "Discover…" "Describe…" or "Compare…" These clear-cut tasks encourage your students to appoint actively with the material and help to keep the give-and-take focused past discouraging digressions.
"What-if" prompts: Ask your students to explore a hypothetical situation: for example, "What if the Cracking Depression had not occurred?" or "What if the Earth'southward gravity were twice as great equally it is now?" Such prompts are an excellent way to promote lateral thinking.
Persona/part-play prompts: Take your students step into the shoes of a historical character and debate from his/her perspective. Thinking themselves into the life of another person will pose unique and heady intellectual challenges for your students.
Multimedia prompts: An especially engaging technique is to include multimedia — still pictures, audio, or video — in the prompt for your discussion. Canvas not merely makes it easy to add multimedia to a prompt, but also allows students to include multimedia in their replies, all via the Rich Content Editor toolbar. So, for example, you might upload a picture related to the topic at hand, so ask your students to upload pictures of their own and explicate how they connect to or shed light on the topic. You can as well record yourself using either Canvas' native recording tool or Panopto Video and embed the recording in a word prompt or annotate, making it possible for you and your students to accept a video or audio word thread.

Use Discussion Groups and Roles

In a big class, holding a meaningful online discussion tin can be an unwieldy practice. Equally the number of comments grows and grows, both yous and your students may find yourselves suffering from fatigue as you effort to keep up.

To gainsay this issue, consider breaking your class up into groups with a carve up discussion thread for each group. Canvas makes this easy: simply create a grouping set , either manually or automatically divide your students into pocket-size groups (perhaps 4 or five members apiece), and then check the "This is a Group Give-and-take" checkbox when setting up your give-and-take to assign it to the groups you take created. Within these small groups discussion can be more focused, and you lot will accept an easier time reviewing the comments and keeping track of the catamenia of discussion.

Group Discussion options

Another effective practise, which can be used either jointly with group discussions or by itself, is to assign roles. For example, ane educatee will be the initial commenter; a 2d student volition respond to this first comment; a third student will summarize the direction of the debate in his/her comment; and so on. Having an assigned office helps students to move by their initial uncertainty about "what should I say?" and tin can help set the word on a productive path. If you use roles, rotate them periodically so that every pupil has a run a risk to fill all of the roles.

This is similar to the "fishbowl" educational activity strategy that can be employed in face-to-face discussions. In this method, a small grouping arranged in a circle holds a word while the rest of the group observes, with participants on the inside and outside of the "fishbowl" periodically switching. The fishbowl can be an effective means of focusing discussion, while giving student observers on the outside of the grouping a chance to gain a deeper understanding of what does and does not constitute a good discussion.

Elicit Substantive Comments

Every bit noted above, in an online forum it tin be particularly difficult to elicit substantive comments from your students. Students may sometimes say lilliputian more than "I agree with X" in an endeavor to participate in the discussion without expending too much endeavor.

Equally a first line of defense confronting this issue, you can check the "Users must post before seeing replies" checkbox when setting up a Sheet discussion. This ensures that replies will be subconscious for users who have not nonetheless posted, so that they cannot simply echo other students' opinions in their replies.

Options with Users must post first selected

There are, nevertheless, other, deeper methods to nudge your students in the direction of noun feedback. Some of these are discussed below.

Model expert comments: Before online discussion begins in earnest, provide your students with an case of what a expert (that is, substantive) annotate looks similar. They can draw upon this case in their own comments going forward.
Use a rubric: Rubrics are an fantabulous mode to brand clear to your students exactly what your expectations are for their contributions and how you will be assessing whether a comment is expert or poor. When you create a graded discussion in Canvas, you can attach either a new or an existing rubric to it. Within the rubric, you tin can specify multiple criteria, such every bit relevance to the topic at mitt, originality of thought, etc., and assign bespeak values to each if you wish. See further: How practise I add a rubric to a graded give-and-take?
Introduce the 3CQ model: One possible model y'all tin can provide to your students for noun word feedback is the 3CQ model developed by Jenn Stewart-Mitchell. Nether this model, each response should include a compliment to the previous person, a comment most the previous response, a connection to something external to the discussion (such as the responder'southward own experience), and a question that will prompt further discussion.
Intervene strategically: As the moderator of an online give-and-take, you should strive to strike a healthy residue between non-intervention — that is to say, leaving the discussion wholly to its own devices — and excessive intervention — constantly interrupting students' give-and-take. Consider using periodic, judiciously worded comments, either to steer the give-and-take gently dorsum on course when it shows signs of going astray, or to elicit deeper responses when you notice that your students take tapped a potentially rich vein of thought.

Conclusion: Connect to the Classroom

However you choose to ready and moderate your online discussion, it is vital that you find ways to tie the discussion back to activities in the classroom. For example, you lot might pick a comment or two from the previous dark's discussion that you plant especially salient and use it as a jumping-off point for your lecture. Alternatively, if you apply small-group discussions, you might ask i student from each group to report out on the course of their discussion and so solicit feedback from the larger class. If students feel that what they say on the online discussion lath truly matters, they will have much more incentive to contribute their best, most carefully considered thoughts, and the word will be more productive for all.