This week we mostly focused on designing effective activities/assignments. I am hoping to use this space to share and reflect on my biggest takeaways on this front.

I learned to look at activities through a lens that separates them into two categories this week: Formative activities (an example would be short quizzes) are usually administered right after the related course material is presented to reinforce the learning process, which is why they are usually shorter and have a small impact on the final grade. Summative activities are mostly assigned to gauge the competence of the student in the course (final exams) and build on the knowledge presented in the course (projects).

This week we got some practice in designing both types of activities in Canvas. I have learned how to use the quizzes, assignments, and rubrics features through experimenting for my own assignment and I feel ready to share my experience with these tools with the faculty. I hope my role will allow them to select the most efficient tool for their own applications while also clearly conveying expectations to the students.

We have also looked into grading in Canvas through SpeedGrader. It allows for very detailed feedback and I am sure the faculty will like the two features that really make it special (in my opinion) once I introduce SpeedGrader to them. First, SpeedGrader allows video feedback, which may help the faculty more efficiently convey their detailed thoughts about assignments. Second is the possibility of a response from the students to the feedback given by the grader. This makes the student an active participant instead of taking on a more passive role. I would have appreciated the use of such features if I were a student since it allows for a more personal experience and emulates the positive aspects of face-to-face classes in terms of the grading process.

A big part of forming course related knowledge comes from designing activities that engage the students and force them to think and reflect on what they learned. I think the three ideas that really stuck with me to achieve this goal were to choose the leading questions carefully, to be present in online activities (like a teacher would in a face-to-face class) and to base feedback on clear learning outcomes that would be achieved by doing this activity.

Choosing leading questions carefully would be achieved through choosing an open-ended question in a specific way that would elicit a guided reflection on the material by connecting this new idea to previous knowledge. A teacher can still be active and present in online activities by responding to discussion boards and being available in real-time sessions. Finally, providing personal and constructive feedback helps learners achieve learning goals that they may be struggling to achieve by themselves.

These ideas are unlikely to be radical and new for the faculty that I will be assisting, since they have likely been teaching a course for years. What I can help with though, is the implementation of these ideas in an online setting (as of this week, we know that we will be teaching our classes in a hybrid format in the Fall semester). I feel ready to discuss the differences between the Canvas discussions and quizzes compared to their Blackboard counterparts and how they allow for more options and more collaboration (only for the discussions). Even the assignments feature in Canvas could allow more peer to peer interactions in activities through external tools such as Office 365 and Google Drive, which I think may lead to many creative assignments in online or hybrid classes. I have never taught a full course and as a student I never really had to take any major courses online, so I had taken these for granted, but we will need to work on these together with the faculty to adapt these principles to our new medium.