Semester 2 has arrived, and if you haven’t already developed your Canvas course, we have a few useful tips to help you get started:

1) Course Copy

If you haven’t imported content into a Canvas course before, take a look at our course copy guide. It has all the information you need to import content. Assignments should be created in your new course and not imported from previous courses.

2) Copy Panopto Videos

There are several ways to roll forward your Panopto content depending on how you added it to your Canvas course. Check out our ‘Good Practice Series (Staff) -Rolling forward Panopto videos‘ post for more information on how to roll forward your videos.

3) Publish your Course

Once you’re happy with your course structure and content, don’t forget to publish your course otherwise students will not be able to access content. See this guide on How to publish a Course.

4) Create Assignments

Some staff find it easier to create the assignments at the start of term and others find it easier to create the assignment once teaching has started. Whenever you prefer to create your assignment, we have a few guides to help you get started on our Canvas Assessment Help Pages including:

• Create Canvas Assignments
• Turnitin Assignments
• Advanced Online Marking Practices

We’ve also released a few blog posts:

• Online Assignment Submission (Students)
• Additional assessment support information added to all Canvas Assignments
• Good Practice Series: Get Ready for Rubrics (Staff)
• 5 Tips to Improve and Deliver Online Canvas Feedback (Staff)

5) Key Module Information

The ‘Key Information’ area was recently introduced to your Canvas course. The new ‘Key Information’ area aims to provide a consistent experience for students. Find out more in our Key Information blog post.

6) Accessibility Checker

New regulations have just come into force which mean that from next year all websites and online content will need to meet certain accessibility standards. Why not start getting familiar with these standards by using Canvas’s own accessibility checker? It just takes a couple of minutes and outlines any issues on your page. The tool is available in the Rich Content Editor on every page. For more information on how to use this tool, please see the following guide:

How do I use the Accessibility Checker in the Rich Content Editor as an instructor?

7) My Canvas Admin

Use My Canvas Admin to manage your current enrolments. Take the opportunity to remove yourself from courses and clear your dashboard of old courses. New courses are automatically favourited, but if you would like to add additional courses to your dashboard, please see the following guides:

• My Canvas Admin – Adding and Removing Courses
• Canvas Dashboard: Favourite your Courses

8) Open Canvas Courses and Information Sites

It’s now even easier to access information about Libraries, IT Services and many other University departments right within Canvas. The Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) team want to make it easier for you to access content on other LJMU sites, that’s why we’ve created open information sites and open courses within Canvas

You may find it beneficial to link to these sites from within your course, allowing students greater access to support and information.

‘Welcome to Canvas’ induction site for Students

‘Welcome to Canvas’ is a new Canvas induction course for students. It’s an interactive introduction for students in levels 3 and 4 who are new to the institution. It introduces Canvas to students and allows them to become familiar with some of the core tools. It will also direct students to the mobile app and take them through how to configure their Canvas account.

Online Canvas Training Site for Staff

The ‘Canvas Online Training‘ site for staff is a self-paced course designed for all staff. Designed to take you through some of the Canvas basics, there are three modules detailing Account configuration, Working with Content and Assessment. All sections contain a short quiz at the end  to indicate progress and any areas that might require additional reading. All staff are automatically enrolled on to this course, so take a look in your course list or Dashboard to access the site.

9) Internet Explorer now Unsupported

A few months ago Internet Explorer (IE11) became unsupported by Canvas. IE11 is now deprecated and will be replaced by the Microsoft Edge browser in the long term. Canvas can be accessed using most modern browsers, please see this post by Canvas for more information about supported browsers: Which browsers does Canvas support?

We recommend that you use Chrome to access Canvas, simply click on the Canvas icon on your desktop to launch Canvas in Chrome. Alternatively, click on the Chrome icon and open up Canvas either by typing the URL in or accessing it via the LJMU homepage.

If you’re working on a computer that only has IE11 available, for example if you’re working on a computer based in the NHS, you can login via off Campus. Once you’ve opened off campus, you should be able to click on the Canvas icon on your desktop which will launch Chrome inside IE11. You may want to advise any students needing to access Canvas based in the NHS or other sites where software is predominantly locked down to IE11.

Digital Learning Champions

The Digital Learning Champions network met for the first time on the 27th of Jan 2020. the aims of this group are to:

• help shape changes and develop TEL projects through networking and discussion. ​
• discuss ideas and gather feedback about these changes. ​
• put forward key issues or propose new projects. ​
• help the whole university understand how technology is changing and shaping the student learning experience

Jim Turner introduced the aims of the group and key current TEL projects. Heather Thrift (Director of Library Services) discussed the emerging institutional focus on the digital capabilities of staff and students. The group then explored this further and made a number of points and proposals.

The group discussed issues relating to student skills, induction, timetabling, and continued support throughout the year. the idea of designing in these skills into the programme structure and their natural link with employability were also explored. Staff digital capabilities were also discussed, emergent themes include the importance to develop consistency of approach for the most basic aspects of the technology and to build from there to more complex uses.

Assessment support

We have been working with Student Advice and Well-being to consider how to help students submitting assessments. Some students find it difficult to understand an assignment brief, they can struggle with uploading the document and find feedback confusing.

To help elevate some of this stress and confusion we have added some text and a few links to all the assignments created in Canvas. Canvas has a consistent method for creating assignments and they always appear in the same place. When students open any canvas assignment the following text will appear.

Need Help? Just ask

Here is our help guide to submitting online. If you’re having issues that are affecting your studies and/or your wellbeing, please contact the Student Engagement Team for confidential advice and support. We also offer workshops on a wide variety of topics including Managing Anxiety.

Academic Misconduct
By submitting any work for marking at LJMU, you are confirming that you are aware of the LJMU policy regarding cheating and all forms of academic misconduct. The submitted work is your own/the group’s work and all the sources consulted have been appropriately acknowledged. You are aware that, in a case of doubt, an investigation may be held.

It is your responsibility to check that you have submitted the correct files. Marks may be unmoderated – Marks are finalised at the Board of Examiners.

This text will not appear for a staff user as it is added automatically when the student opens the assignment. This way we can control what it says in the future, and it doesn’t get in the way of what you want to say.

If you are a staff member and want to see this text using the student view button on the home page of your course and navigate to the assignments area.

Technology can often be used to save time and improve processes. Delivering online feedback in Canvas is just one way you can save time and provide consistent and engaging feedback. In this post you’ll find lots of useful tips on how to deliver feedback and marks for Canvas assignments:

1) Grade Post Policies

There’s a new process to hide assignment grades from students until all marking is complete. This ensures students all receive feedback at the same time. Make sure you familiarise yourself with the new process, or if you have any additional questions, get in touch with via LJMU HelpMe.

2)Speedgrader Annotations

Familiarise yourself with the annotation tools in speedgrader. They are easy to use and a great way of quickly providing contextualised feedback to students. Just click on a specific section of the document and start typing. It’s that simple. There are lots of tools available from highlighting text, to free drawing on the document. Have a look at the various annotation tools by clicking on the above link.

3)Speech Recognition

Use the Chrome speech recognition tool to provide quick personalised feedback to students.  Typing out feedback allows you to jot down your thoughts in a much quicker way than writing out feedback. Speech recognition is the obvious next step, we’re already talking to Alexa, so why not Canvas? It requires you to use the Chrome browser and a microphone, but that’s it. Simply click the button and you’re away – review student work by talking into the microphone and let Chrome do the hard work by converting this into text. The process is really quick – faster than typing this out yourself. Sound too good to be true – well there is a small catch, don’t try this if you’ve got a strong accent – Chrome can be creative.

4)Rubrics

Use Rubrics to deliver consistent feedback to students in an efficient manner. A rubric is a tabulated grid of pre-set criterion. A rubric needs to be created in advance of marking and added to your assignment. They can be shared across modules for consistency, but it also ensures that students receive the same individual feedback across several levels of competency. But there’s also room for personalised feedback, just use the free-form comments version to provide feedback across several sets of criteria. See our Good Practice Guide: Get Ready for Rubrics

5)Multiple Markers

If you’re running a large module with 200+ students, there will probably be more than one marker on the course.  Learn how to group students for marking via the Grades section in Canvas.

Below you will find additional guides to help you during the assessment period:

• Assignment Anonymity – Canvas facilitates the anonymous submission and online marking of work. See this Canvas guide for more information: How do I add an assignment that includes anonymous grading?
• Sending Downloaded Work to Print for Marking – Learn how to download and send submissions to the print room: Printing Canvas Coursework
• Using Turnitin – Full guidance on how to use Turnitin and Canvas is available here: Staff – Turnitin and plagiarism
• Student Comments on Feedback – Canvas Assignments facilitates student engagement with your feedback by allowing them request further clarification. If they do this, an email will be sent to your LJMU outlook address. Please see the following guide: Student Comments on Feedback

Need additional help?

Canvas are available to help 24/7, and can help either by phone (+4-800-069-8618) or chat.

Your students are expected to conduct themselves appropriately and in accordance with the LJMU academic misconduct policies. Academic misconduct covers all deliberate attempt(s) to gain an unfair advantage in assessments, including cheating, plagiarism and unauthorised collusion. This resource can help you support students to understand these rules and regulations. 

“Academic Misconduct – You be the judge” is a short canvas quiz written by Henry Forsyth and Andy Symons both experienced academics at LJMU. The course covers: 

1. Identifying the three different types of cheating that come under the umbrella of academic misconduct; 
2. Describing the different forms of cheating in assessment and examinations; 
3. Describing the University’s procedure for what happens if you are accused of academic misconduct; 
4. Providing tips to reduce the risks of cheating occurring.

This course should take your students no longer than 20 minutes to complete and is made up of 12 questions. Students get feedback and the results are then visible to academics in the grades area of your course. 

You can add this quiz to your canvas course:

• Log in to Canvas
• Go to the ‘Commons’ area in the left hand main menu.
• Search for ‘Academic Misconduct’
• Click on the link for the returned result
• Click on the import/download button to add it to your course/s

Useful Links

Academic Misconduct Policy
Turnitin Policy

Audio Headsets and Webcam Project

This blog post reports on a short project to support academic staff to produce videos at their desks and communicate via online webinars. A number of LJMU staff were provided with webcams and headsets. The aim was to see if access to recording technology increases the use of specific tools such as Panopto, web conferencing and Adobe Connect.

Access to this equipment (headsets and webcams) appears to make a positive impact on the number of videos created by these staff; those who received the equipment made more recordings in Panopto compared with the staff who did not receive them over the same period. This could be because this set of users tended to use Panopto more frequenty, but, when considered alongside the comments made by staff, it appears that access to this equipment makes an important contribution to their teaching practice and work processes.

Encouraging Adoption

There are a few Video tools available to help staff create Video content. Panopto is the institutional recording system that allows staff to create recordings in the classroom and at their desk. Adobe Connect allows staff to run webinar teaching sessions and virtually connect with students. Web conferencing allows staff to connect with research colleagues or students for one-to-one or many-to-many discussions online. Video and communication technologies require staff to have access to either headsets or webcams and the TEL want to help support and encourage the adoption of these technologies. A small amount of funding was allocated to help support this process. This purchased:

• 35 X Logitech H390 USB Headset with Microphone
• 35 X Logitech C920 HD Webcam

In September 2018 the LJMU TEL team contacted 49 Adobe Connect users and 223 of the highest Panopto users to ask them if they wanted this equipment. 72 staff replied stating their preference for a webcam or a headset, and which systems they intended to use them with.

Evaluation

Staff were emailed at the end of the year to see if they had used the hardware, and why. In addition to this, the statistics for Panopto were explored to see if those who had received one had made additional recordings. 

There was a 31% increase in the number of Panopto videos created overall, in this group, between the year they received the equipment and the previous year. This is higher than those staff who did not receive the equipment for the same period, where there was a 25% increase in the number of videos created.  

The staff were asked if they found the technology useful. All the comments were positive.

“The headset is great, its sound quality is excellent.”

“The webcam is fantastic.”

“It has made a big difference to me (and students). It is time-saving – I don’t have to repeatedly demonstrate IT procedures to students”

Staff were asked how they had used the headset or webcam. The majority of staff are using it to make recordings on Panopto at their desk. These were mostly ad hoc recordings which were aimed at helping students with specific aspects of their course. 

“I have used it frequently to create “how-to-do” videos”

“demonstration of some basic lab techniques”

Many staff are are using it together with webinar technology to support students, or talk to research colleagues. One is using it to support a partnership programme. 

“I use it almost daily for various meetings, either Skype, Adobe Connect, Zoom. Meetings with students and external colleagues.”

A small number of staff had only used the webcam or headset once or twice, and were planning to use it more in the future. This could indicate an issue with workload or the need for further support during the allocation process. 

“I’m planning to make some short videos for my L6 module over the summer, so would like to hang on to it if that’s ok.”

Funding has been allocated to allow more staff access to this type of equipment.

One staff member who received this equipment has since discussed how this changed his practice when developing video content. Here is a recording of this presentation (note this is only available to LJMU staff)

Over the next few weeks, you’ll be able to access marks and feedback provided by your tutor in Canvas. There are many types of assessment tools and ways to provide feedback; so its important you know where to find it. You’ll also be able to access some of your feedback on the Canvas Student App, but not all of your feedback is available here, so make sure you check with your tutor if you can’t find what you’re looking for.

Notify Me Right Away!

Check out our blog post about Canvas Notifications to ensure you get the most out of Canvas and keep up to date with your course. If you’ve enabled Grading notifications to ‘Notify me right away‘, you’ll instantly receive email updates when marks and feedback are released. If you’ve enabled these notifications on your mobile device, alerts will appear on your home screen. In either case, you can click or swipe to access your feedback.

Image below displays Email Notification

Finding Feedback Online

The best place to find your feedback online is via the ‘Grades‘ section of your course. The TEL team have developed several guides to help you get started with assessment. But to give you a brief overview, the Grades page looks like this:

Click on the title of the assignment to view more detailed information about your assginment including comments, annotations and grades.

Finding Feedback On your Mobile Device

Feedback can also be accessed on your mobile device. Just download the Canvas student app, open your course and click on the Grades section. Find the relevant assignment and open it up to start viewing feedback.

Where to get help

If you can’t find feedback, get in touch with your tutor. They will be able to tell you how feedback was provided and how to access it. Canvas also have a 24/7 helpline to answer any questions you might have about Canvas. Click on the help icon once you’ve logged in to either chat online, or view contact information and call a Canvas expert.

The Small Print

Feedback in Canvas is unmoderated which means that marks and feedback still need to be approved at an examination board. Your final mark will appear in the Student Information System (SIS). When accessing your feedback on a mobile device, not all types of feedback are supported. The Canvas Student app on iOS does currently not support accessing attached feedback files, these need to be viewed via the web.

OBS recording studio is open source software for video recording and live streaming. It is a very popular tool for video bloggers and youtubers. It allows you to create very sophisticated video content with cut scenes and overlays.

What is good about OBS?

At LJMU we encourage staff and students to use the Panopto video recording system. However, this is quite limited in the way it presents the recordings you want to make. For instance, it can be difficult to do a close up on a particular area of the screen you want to record. Some specialist subject areas use programme such as, Adobe Premier, and this is complex and comprehensive video editing tool. OBS sits between these two allowing staff and students to create recordings without spending hours learning how to use the tool.

Where do I get OBS from?

You can download OBS from OBS Studio for your home use. you can also install it on any LJMU PC using the LJMU app player on the desktop.

How do I use it?

LJMU do not have any specific support for this tool at the moment, but there are plenty of forums and videos explaining how it works. I would suggest watching these videos by Leslie Samuel to get you started.

How do I distribute the videos I create?

LJMU staff can use the Panopto system to upload their recordings for distribution. Students who are submitting videos for assessment can also use Panopto to upload their recordings. Please use this guide to help you upload. If you are using the tool to make your own videos please make sure you follow best practice and follow the LJMU social media guidance for students.

Miracast Pilot

This page is about the small scale pilot of Microsoft miracast dongles with academic staff.

This system allows any staff to using their mobile phone, tablet or laptop and ‘screen cast’ these to the projector. This will improve the possibility of greater mobility for the staff member. In addition to this, the video signal is sent to the computer so that Panopto can capture it as an additional video device. This will allow staff to present while moving around the room, and record that presentation in Panopto.

Please note: There are currently installed in all rooms in Henry Cotton and Tithebarn street.

This was demoed at the e-learning forum by Jack Mullet from Engineering. He demonstrated how he is using a Microsoft Surface and a Miracast Dongle to display and interact within his presentation and software while moving around the room. Jack demonstrated the issues around connecting a MS surface computer to the projector. Jack prefers the MS miracast dongle for this. Once connected he is fully mobile and can draw on slides. He uses MS OneNote to create a bank of calculations that he can create whilst presenting, edit if required and share with his students.

We wanted to see if other staff could engage with this technology in a similar way. 21 miracasts were purchased and given to academics that had a Microsoft surface.

Guidance in using the Miracast

Android Devices

Miracast technology is built into Android operating system versions 4.2 and higher. Some Android 4.2 and 4.3 devices do not support Miracast.  If your Android device supports Miracast, the Screen Mirroring option will be available in the Settings app or in the pull-down/notification menu. Some Samsung devices running Android versions 4.x do not have this option and must use the AllShareCast app available on the Google Play Store.

It’s officially that time of year and for some modules you will be asked to submit your coursework electronically via Canvas. It’s important that you stay positive and allow sufficient time to prepare and submit your online assignment before the deadline. The Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) team have put together a few guides to help you during the assessment period:

• Student Guide – Assignment e-Submission Guide

You can login at any time and check the version you have submitted is correct. If you have any questions about the assessment process, or encounter any issues, get in touch with your tutor or Library Services.

24/7 Support

If you have a problem submitting online, Canvas are available 24/7 by phone or chat to help you submit your coursework online.

• Chat with Canvas Support
• Call canvas support on +4-808-189-4061

Assessment Support

LJMU and John Moores Students’ Union (JMSU) are offering a range of support during April and May to help you stay positive and focused during the upcoming assessment period. Read Support available at Exam assessment time.