This principle sounds basic and obvious, but many of the challenges instructors face in high-enrollment courses stem from management missteps, not pedagogical approaches. If something causes confusion for students, it can more easily become a problem for the instructor in a large course than in a smaller one. Imagine that 5% of the students in a course decide to message the instructor because they are unclear about instructions. In a 40-student course, this is only two students. In a 400-student course, this is 20 students.
The basic remedy is to preempt student questions and concerns by anticipating possible sources of confusion and correcting them. This might involve re-writing assignment instructions, preparing grading rubrics, re-organizing the Canvas site, labeling things more clearly, etc. It is helpful to approach this systematically, by making sure you have a process in place for one or more people (e.g., teaching assistants, former students, or an instructional designer) to review your course materials and indicate sources of confusion before deploying them in your course.
Another remedy is to control the path of least resistance for students. Do this by making sure that the approach you need them to take when they encounter difficulties is the easiest one for them to take. This might involve being explicit about what your student should do - or who they should contact - when they encounter specific difficulties.
Better yet, provide easy access to desired communication channels. For example, if a particular teaching assistant has primary responsibility for assisting students with a specific assignment, then do not simply hope students will find their way to this person; rather, make sure your assignment instructions include this TA's email address or a link to a page where students can schedule a meeting with them.
Course Design
- Use a specific naming scheme: Name modules with topics or genres. (Week 1: Welcome!; Week 3: Formalist Criticism)
- Create and reuse short one-topic instructor videos to explain difficult concepts, overview upcoming materials, work out problems, etc.
- Allow for frequent and efficient updates of Syllabus and Schedule. For example, separate the syllabus document from the schedule document so you only need to update the schedule every semester.
- When and where to set dates: Avoid “embedding” dates in module names, pages, assignments. Rely on the “due” dates set in assessments, which will then show in the course calendar.
- Use Canvas surveys for formative surveys that can then be reused in other courses.
- Automate publish/release dates.
Naming conventions help with learning analytics
Using consistent naming conventions can also help make learning analytics reports more easily read. For example, Week 1: Formalist Criticism could contain W1 Pre-Lecture Quiz, W1 Homework, and so forth. This will help with alphanumeric sorting in reports and ensure you can differentiate between quiz and assignment items in analytics reports such as those in Canvas New Analytics and UNL's Course Insights. If you are interested in learning more about using learning analytics in your course, contact us at ctt@unl.edu.Assessment & Feedback
- Use the Canvas quiz feature to automatically drop lowest grade.
- Develop Question Banks for self-checks, quizzes, tests. Randomize answer choices to help ensure academic integrity.
- Take advantage of Canvas quizzes automatic grading with multiple choice and True/False types of questions.
- Reuse feedback comments with the Canvas “free-form comments” feature instead of using a rating scale for specific criteria in a rubric. You can also use the free-form comments with the option to use the rubric for grading. How do I use free-form comments instead of ratings in a rubric in SpeedGrader?.
Course Management
- Set up Blueprint courses when you teach courses like labs that use specific common content for several courses and where that content will not be edited in the individual associated courses. Blueprint or master courses have associated child courses where new information is synced out from the master Blueprint course. Blueprint allows the instructor to manage/import content to associated child courses from the content in the master course. Instructors of the master course can manage, deploy, and update content that can be shared to the associated courses. Other instructors and TA(s) are in the child or associated courses. There are many advantages. The associated courses can be updated at once and selected materials can be locked, which makes for efficient course management. Canvas admin (ITS) has to initially set a course as a Blueprint course with corresponding associated courses. Submit a ticket to Canvas admin at Canvas Support Request to get started. For more information, see Using a Blueprint Courses as an Instructor
- Merge/combine multiple sections into one “teaching” section.
- Course formats and terms: Repurpose/reuse content and assessments across F2F and online courses. If you record in-class lectures to reuse in your online classes, use them in your next course offering for a F2F class if an emergency comes up or you are sick or weather is inclement. Repurpose/reuse content and assessments from semester to semester. Specific naming scheme for all course components aids in converting semester-length courses to summer term courses.
Teaching Strategies
- Use technology to take attendance with a daily learning activity such as a short, multiple-choice quiz that is automatically graded. Give the quiz password during the class. The answer to the questions could be given during class or even guide in-class discussions.
- Use Peer review to evaluate scaffolded assignments, especially of earlier drafts. To learn how, see peer review for students and peer review for instructors.
- Create Rubrics which are useful both for instructors to grade and for students to guide their coursework. Rubrics can be reused in multiple courses. See How to Design Effective Rubrics and Canvas 101 video Using Rubrics on how to create rubrics in Canvas.