SNEAK PEEK! Quizzes.Next: Canvas takes Assessment to the Next Level

Most faculty who teach in the Canvas learning management system (LMS) are familiar with the "Quizzes" tools and features for creating a variety of surveys, quizzes, tests, and exams. What faculty may not have yet heard is that Canvas is on the brink of taking assessment to the next level with the release of Quizzes.Next tools, currently in beta testing and expected to be widely released this summer, after a few years of beta testing and user feedback.

Explore the links below but know that this tool will not immediately replace the current quiz features, and that it can be used (or not, as you wish) in any course, even in combination with the traditional quiz features within the same course once it has been released. Quizzes.Next is simply a new set of additional tools that support a wider variety of assessment strategies. Faculty will have plenty of time to explore the tools and decide which (if any) are right for you and your course, curriculum, and assessment style. After a long period of running both old and new tools in conjunction with one another, the old set of tools will eventually be phased out. But this process will allow for plenty of time for testing, feedback, improvements, and integration into courses assessments.

You can begin exploring Quizzes.Next with these links:

• Quizzes.Next Guide (Instructors, Students)
• Quizzes.Next User Group (Canvas hosted)
• Quizzes.Next FAQ

And here's a sneak preview from the Canvas folks when Quizzes.Next was introduced at the Instructure conference in 2016:

The Brave New World of Online Learning: Amy Collier at TEDxStanford

Still not sure if online learning represents more hype or hope? Amy Collier has a fresh perspective about open online learning and its role in education.

"... (T)he words 'open' and 'online learning' are probably some of the most abused words in education right now. By 'open' I mean that at its very core it should be accessible to as many people as possible. But that’s just the beginning. Because I think 'accessible' can be pushed to reimaginable, editable, changeable, so that ideas can continue to grow. By 'online' I mean that web technologies can connect people to information and to each other. And by 'learning' I mean that it needs to significantly impact the way people think, what they do, what they say."

[Transcript]

The Era of Online Learning: A TEDx Talk by Niema Moshiri

"In this talk, Niema Moshiri talks about his experience as a student in a massive classroom, and how this to his goal of rethinking education.  As classroom sizes continue to increase, he illustrates the benefits of adaptive online education as a replacement for the traditional classroom."

Designing for Accessibility: A TEDx Talk by UDL Advocate Elise Roy

TEDx speaker Elise Roy makes the case for designing environments and tools with disabilities in mind from the start. This ensures that such areas and tools are accessible and usable for everyone. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) helps designers think inclusively from the very start.

"I've been a design thinker for nearly all my life. ... My constant need to adapt has made me a great aviator and problem solver. And I've often had to do this within limitations and constraints. ... Design thinkers often seek out extreme situations because that often informs some of their best designs. ... You are a designer. Everyone is. ... Let people like me help you. Let people with disabilities help you look sideways, and in the process solve some of the greatest problems. "

Source

KQED News / WCET-WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies

Additional Reading

Improving Accessibility Often Falls to Faculty. Here's What They Can Do.

“Eskridge and Kwong ... underline the importance of faculty teaming up to create more accessible learning materials.  ... 'I can't stress enough that it’s the importance of community when we are trying to solve a problem.'”

Quiz Security in Canvas: Maximizing Security to Minimize Cheating

This Canvas guide to maximizing quiz security to minimize cheating aggregates all the tools and advice into one handy reference point for setting up quiz-style assessments in the Learning Management System (LMS). Properly formatted, quizzes are an effective means of both summative and formative assessment, depending on how they are designed.

For help designing assessments or knowing which tools are most appropriate for your classes, contact instructional designers in Online Learning by dropping a line to OnlineLearning@uah.edu today!

Teaching with Wikipedia

From Teaching with Wikipedia: A High Impact Open Educational Practice:

"Supporting higher education instructors who teach with Wikipedia is Wiki Education‘s specialty. We offer free resources for instructors to do this, which take the form of instructional design consultation, assignment management software, tutorials about how to contribute to Wikipedia, and print resources about editing in particular disciplines. These tools all come together in our Dashboard, a free and open-source web application that we consistently improve. In fact, we’ve built a volunteer development community around that continual improvement, and we engage a number of newcomers in this tech development."

“I call my senators, I vote, I donate to the ACLU, and now, I edit Wikipedia."

Future of Online Learning

In the Future of College Looks Like the Future of Retail, Jeffrey Selingo purports, "There are undeniable advantages, as traditional colleges have long known, to learning in a shared physical space. Recognizing this, some online programs are gradually incorporating elements of the old-school, brick-and-mortar model—just as online retailers such as Bonobos and Warby Parker use relatively small physical outlets to spark sales on their websites and increase customer loyalty. Perhaps the future of higher education sits somewhere between the physical and the digital."

Similar to e-commerce firms, online-degree programs are beginning to incorporate elements of an older-school, brick-and-mortar model.

Special thanks to Dr. David Johnson for this contribution to our blog!

OER Stewardship

Proponents of the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement are passionate and committed to the precepts of open access and free distribution of educational assets for the benefit of the masses. But how is such an egalitarian community ensured its sustainability, especially in an educational landscape crawling with private industry profiteers who are incorporating OER into their own pay-to-play offerings?

This brief overview of the CARE movement and considerations for committing to its success are a worthy read for anyone teaching online or considering doing so in the near future.

For more information on OER, how to find and/or produce it, and how UAH instructional designers can help you carve out your place in the OER community, please contact OnlineLearning@uah.edu.

The values expressed by the CARE Framework support a hopeful vision for the future of OER and education, positively impacting not only issues of access and affordability, but also the seemingly intractable issues of equity and inclusion. Thus the CARE Framework is meant to be applied by all individuals, organizations, and institutions who share a stake in the field’s long-term success and sustainability. This includes individuals who create or adapt OER for their own teaching and learning purposes; nonprofit OER publishers and libraries; commercial OER publishers; as well as educational technology vendors looking to incorporate OER into their products or services. CAREFramework.org

Formative Assessment? ONLINE?!

Yes, it IS possible to use formative assessment tools and strategies to guide the teaching and learning process in asynchronous, online course environments. Formative assessment focuses on FEEDBACK and requires tools that provide full-loop feedback in real-time to make sure that responses are timely and relevant.

Want to learn more about how formative assessment can fit in with your on-ground or online class? Contact Online.Learning@uah.edu for a personal consultation and course review.

NEW interactive course development tool!

Our new interactive course development checklist helps you track your own progress!

Our toolbox is full of robust tech tools to help get the job done for course developers and instructors. Ask for our NEW interactive course development tool, designed to allow you to track your own progress through the course development process in a convenient online document you can access from any device.

The first tab automates a customizable course development schedule with all the resources you need to stay on track at your fingertips. The second tab allows incremental progression tracking through the course quality rubric to help simplify and expedite the development process.

Copyright Law

It’s your responsibility to understand how copyright law and fair use regulations affect what material you can share with students and how. This program will help you understand what is and isn’t permitted in online teaching and will give you guidelines to help you find your own way when you encounter those areas that need a judgment call.

View this short 20-minute video to learn more about how copyright law pertains to online teaching and learning.

Trouble accessing the video? Sign-up for Magna Mentors.