This week's webinar focused on some great new features in Canvas! Jason Neenos from UTO, shared a number of features that make life easier for both faculty and students. He started with a discussion about best practices for taking attendance, and showed the Attendance Button in Canvas. We also talked about how Canvas did a great job of integrating Google Docs , Spreadsheets and Slides into the coursepage. When faculty embed these types of documents, they can easily update them, so they are always current. This is especially helpful with a syllabus. After a short discussion on accepting late work, we learned about how Canvas easily allows instructors to add different due dates for individuals and sections. He also demonstrated how easy it is to have a late policy integrated into any assignment. For example, after the instructor is done grading, Canvas can automatically deduct points for missed deadlines. He wrapped up with the "What IF?" feature that allows st...

This week's TeachT@lk Webinar focused on a challenge that many of our faculty are focused on this summer. Change ! As ASU begins to convert BlackBoard courses to Canvas, there are many opportunities to improve all our courses in ways to benefit both faculty and students. Most materials CAN be moved into Canvas, but the question is SHOULD you move all your materials? Peter van Leusen , from EdPlus, talked about strategies to determine whether materials in your Blackboard course were valuable and important enough to import to Canvas. He suggested spending time looking at course evaluations, talking with TAs and your instructional designers to determine if content should be kept, modified or "dumped" before moving to Canvas. Jason Neenos , from UTO, then went over tips regarding file structure in BlackBoard and how it would import into Canvas. Showing that each folder became a "module". He shared a quick "Cheat Sheet" to help faculty remember how ...

This week's TeachT@lk webinar focused on a common issue at ASU, our large classes. Often faculty have 100+ students, and are overwhelmed at the end of the semester with grading. Our objective with this webinar was to share some different ideas about assessment that might make it a bit easier. I was joined by Lynda Mae from Psychology and Jason Neenos from the University Technology Office. We started with some tips to use online exams, even for face-to-face classes, that build on Bloom's taxonomy, and some sample questions. We also shared ideas about protecting integrity by randomizing questions, limiting times, browser lockdown and passwords. One interesting tip for multiple choice exams is that research shows that 30 seconds per item prevents cheating and does not tend to lower  performance. Of course, instructors may need to modify that number depending on the type of question. We also discussed an often controversial topic of group exams. We focused on a few differe...

This week's TeachT@lk Webinar focused on our summer theme of "Feedback" . This time we talked about the different ways to deliver feedback. We started by discussing the ideal situation to give both effective and convenient feedback to students. Then we looked at each of these modes of delivery and discussed the benefits and challenges.    We gave some best practices for using video, and combining it with text. Jason Neenos from UTO demonstrated three technologies that could be used for sharing feedback in both recorded and live sessions. All are free for ASU Faculty: SnagIt Video Demo - goo Adobe Connect Info Page Google Hangouts Tutorial Video As always, there was lots of lively sharing of ideas and discussions, and we ended with a great case study showing how video made a difference to one writing student. Join us again on September 19 for "Get Active!" where we'll share some innovations from the International Forum on Active Learning Class...