Collaboration within Canvas

[Start transcript]

TEXT ON SCREEN: Collaboration within Canvas

[Voice over Nicky Callinan]

In this video we will show you how to create collaborative content within your course shell, where students can post, ask questions and interact regarding assessments and general queries. We will also look at scheduled peer collaboration sessions using Collaborate Ultra or Microsoft Teams. 

VISUAL: Screencast of Collaborate Ultra and discussion forums within a Canvas shell.

TEXT ON SCREEN: Setting up a General discussion forum:

All courses should have a general discussion forum where students can ask you, the teacher, and their peers, questions about the course. Be sure to regularly check this forum to answer any questions that students might have. 

VISUAL: Screencast of a discussion forum being set up in Canvas. 

To set-up a general discussion forum:

• Click on discussions on the left-hand side menu.

• Click the red + Discussion button.

• Title the discussion ‘General discussion’. 

• Type into the empty discussion box an explanation to students that this is a place for them to ask questions and have conversations with each other about the course.

• Allow liking to promote student engagement within the discussion forum.

• Allow threaded replies so students and teachers can communicate with each other.

• Click save. 

VISUAL: Screencast of General discussion forum being dragged into Pinned discussions area in Canvas.

Now we need to pin your discussion to the top so students can easily access this discussion forum.

• Click on discussions again in the left-hand menu.

• Find ‘Our general enquires discussion’. 

• Drag it up to the pinned discussions section of the page.

This will now stay at the top for ease of access. If more discussions are added, this one will not get lost.

Discussion forums can be used to reinforce learning content and promote collaboration and discussion within your course. They give students the opportunity to demonstrate their learnings in each topic or week, depending on how your course is laid out. 

TEXT ON SCREEN: Setting up Weekly discussion forums 

VISUAL:  Screencast of a discussion forum being set up within a module in Canvas.

To create a discussion forum:

• Go to your modules page. 

• Select the plus icon next to the name of the module. 

• Select ‘Discussion’ from the drop down.

• Select ‘New topic’.

• Title the discussion with the week name or the topic name that the discussion relates to, like so **show typing in name**.

• Select ‘Add item’. 

• Click on your newly created discussion and hit edit

• Type into the empty discussion box what you want students to discuss. Here we are embedding a video that we want students to watch, reflect on, and then post one of their thoughts or findings from the video.

• Allow liking to promote student engagement within the discussion forum. 

• Allow threaded replies so that students can communicate with the teacher and their peers. 

• If you want your students to be graded on their participation in this discussion forum, tick marked and from the drop down select ‘Complete / Incomplete’, and make it part of the learning activities assignment group.

• Click save and now you have set your discussion. Great work.

• From here you can repeat this process with all the modules you wish to add a weekly or topic-specific discussion forum to.

Announcements are helpful short communications for alerting your students to what is happening and any upcoming goings-on in your course. Announcements can be shown on the home page of your course so that each time your student comes back to your course, they see the most recent announcements. 

TEXT ON SCREEN: How to set up announcements

VISUAL: Screencast of Announcements function being set up within Canvas. 

To display announcements on the course home page, please follow these steps: 

• Firstly, go to the course settings.

• Hit ‘More options’.

• Tick the box that reads ‘Show recent announcements on Course home page’.

• Then click ‘Update course details’. 

VISUAL: Screen cast of home page within a Canvas course showing Announcements at the top of the page.  

TEXT ON SCREEN: How to make an announcement

VISUAL: Screencast of a new announcement being created in Canvas.

Once your announcements settings have been completed, let’s create a new announcement. In this example we are advising students that they only have 1 week left to finish their assessment task and we will be linking them to the resources they will need to complete their assessment. 

• Go to ‘Announcements’ 

• Click the large red + Announcement button

• Title your announcement

• Add your content. Here we are going to advise our students to look at the modules for week 2 and 3 via the linking modules button on the right-hand side like so. 

• Allow replies.

• And allow liking.

• Hit save. 

Well done. By enabling ‘Show announcements on home page’, once we go back to the course home page, we will be able to see your new announcement at the top of the page. 

TEXT ON SCREEN: Setting up Collaborate Ultra on your course

VISUAL: Screencast of Collaborate Ultra application being set up within the menu in Canvas.

Collaborate Ultra is available to all courses in Canvas. If your course does not already have Collaborate Ultra displayed in the left-hand side bar, you can easily add it to your course by following these steps:

• First click down on the settings button in the bottom left hand of the side bar. 

• In the settings menu, click on the navigation tab at the top of the screen.

• Scroll down to the second group of panels 

• Then drag the Collaborate Ultra panel up to sit underneath the home panel.

• Hit save. 

Collaborate Ultra should now be visible in the left-hand navigation menu for students to access. Great work. Now that we have that set up, we will need to set up your class sessions in Collaborate Ultra.

VISUAL: Screencast of Collaborate Ultra sessions organised within Canvas. 

It is best practice to set up scheduled Collaborate Ultra sessions to run at the same time as your online classes. This is recommended so that students can easily identify which topic and week the session relates to. 

TEXT ON SCREEN: Setting up scheduled Collaborate Ultra sessions.  

VISUAL: Screencast of Collaborate Ultra sessions being created and organised within Canvas.

• First navigate to Collaborate Ultra in the left-hand navigation menu.

• Click the ’Create session’ button in the top left.

• This will open the session settings menu for you to create and name your session. 

• Title your session with the topic name of the week that it will be taking place, the day and the date. For example: Graphic design principals: Hierarchy  - Week 3 Wednesday 10am class - 17/06/2020

• Now we need to select the date and time that your class will be taking place. This class will be taking place on the 17th and start at 10am and the end time will be 1pm. You can type into these boxes directly or use the arrows to change the time.

• Next click the session settings panel.

• And tick on ‘Allow recording downloads’ so that the students may download the session recordings to refer to at a later time. 

• Hit save.

You have now set up your first session for your class. Now go ahead and repeat this process for all other Collaborate Ultra sessions that your class will be taking part in. Pay close attention to naming each session in the manner we have just demonstrated here.

Now that we have set up our Collaborate Ultra sessions, we can make an announcement alerting students to where they need to go to take part in the Collaborate Ultra sessions.

TEXT ON SCREEN: Linking Collaborate Ultra and resources within an announcement 

VISUAL: Screencast of an announcement being created to alert students of an upcoming Collaborate Ultra session.

Let’s make a new announcement.

• Type in your content into the content area.

• Copy your Collaborate Ultra link here. 

• You can also add links to resources that will be related to the class.

• You can also allow comments and liking.

• Hit save.

Great work. Now we have created our announcement that will be shown on the home page of our course. Students will be able to easily see it when they land on the course home page and be directed to the Collaborate Ultra session and associated resources. 

TEXT ON SCREEN: Contact us at VEDT@rmit.edu.au

That concludes our video on how to use collaboration tools within Canvas. We hope you’ve found it useful! If you have any questions or wish to give some feedback, you can send us a message at VEDT@rmit.edu.au