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Essential Information & Dates
- New to Canvas or UIS? View our Canvas for Instructors page and contact COLRS to schedule a quick tutorial to get started!
- Students added to Canvas on Monday, May 20th
Canvas Syllabus Template
The Canvas Syllabus Template is an HTML version of of the UIS syllabus provided by Academic Affairs. It contains elements of both the on-campus and online/blended syllabus templates. The template was created using Design PLUS, a toolbar for creating advanced HTML pages without knowing how to write code. Learn more about enabling and using the Design PLUS toolbar.
As this semester winds down, it is a great time to think about preparing and updating your course materials! COLRS multimedia specialist, Scott Moomaw, is here to support you in recording and editing lightboard videos for your classes.
This month, we’ve been focused on using plus-one thinking to improve assessments and grading practices. In order to see the fruits of your labor, you’ll likely want to take a peek at your gradebook. But does your gradebook truly reflect the work you and your students are putting into these assessments?
Grading and Gradebooks
Does your gradebook truly reflect the work you and your students are putting into these assessments? The Center for Professional Education of Teachers at Teachers College, Columbia University shares the “F.A.C.T.S. about grading,” an acronym that presents guiding principles for good gradebook practices.
Adding a grading rubric is a simple yet powerful "plus one" strategy that can significantly elevate the quality of assessment and feedback for your courses. Rubrics provide clear guidelines, promote transparency, and streamline the grading process, ultimately empowering students to understand expectations and strive for excellence.
Pedagogies and Learning Theories
The design of a successful online course is very dependent upon the teaching and learning strategies that a faculty member employs.
Writing Learning Objectives
What students should know and be able to do? Faculty should be ready and able to answer the question, "Why do I need to know this?!?" Learning objectives should represent measurable and/or observable behaviors -- think "more verbs and fewer nouns" -- for us to design around how people actively learn. As an instructional designer, you should ask yourself these questions when creating and reviewing objectives and outcomes:
Rubrics serve as guiding tools for instructors in evaluating their students' work or performance, enhancing reliability, validity, and transparency in assessments (Chowdhury, 2018). While not suitable for all scenarios, such as multiple-choice exams, rubrics prove invaluable for performance-based tasks like writing, oral presentations, and projects. Generally, rubrics fall into three categories: analytic, holistic, and checklist.