Canvas is a web-based application which allows instructors to put class materials on the Internet. It provides a variety of tools to facilitate teaching and learning. All credit courses at TWU use Canvas. The basic tools used in a Canvas course includes a syllabus, learning materials (documents, videos, etc.), discussions, calendar, inbox and notifications, announcements, grades, quizzes, and assignments.
When an academic unit or department needs the features available in Canvas for non-credit courses, educational activities, or other communities the use of Google Classroom is recommended. Instructors and students find Google Classrooms easy and useful for sharing materials, communicating, and learning in online and hybrid modalities (Ni, 2020). There is a Google Classroom@TWU Example Training course to review.
A Collaborative Space is a Canvas course designed to mimic a web-based platform that collects information from different sources into a single user interface and presents students with the most relevant information for an academic program. The most common use for collaborative spaces is to push announcements, post degree plans and handbooks, compile information about advising, career opportunities, and other program specific content. A Collaborative Space can be developed in:
- Canvas for a College or School creating a section for each degree program in a single Canvas course, OR
- Google Classroom with each degree program created as individual Google Classrooms. The Classroom owner will add students using their @twu.edu email addresses based on requirements defined by the academic unit and the Classroom owner. Students are removed from the Classroom when they graduate from the program, change majors, and/or based on criteria defined by the academic unit and the Classroom owner.
The remainder of this article will describe the individual use cases the student will need to be able to successfully complete to use Google Meet:
- Create a Class in Google Classroom
- Manage Your Accounts, Settings, Notifications, and Classes
- Create Classwork or Post Materials
- Communicate with Your Class
- Grade and Return Work
Create a Class in Google Classroom
Create a Class
The cardinal principle for organizing course materials is to keep all materials for each course separate from each other so they are easy to locate (Darby, 2019). Each class that you create will appear as a class card in Google Classroom.
Step-by-Step How To
You can create a class to assign work and post announcements to students:
- Sign into your TWU Google Account
- Click on the App Launcher
- Click Classroom
- Follow the steps to Create a class
Note: If you do not have the option to Create Class, submit a Technology Service Desk email.
Manage Your Accounts, Settings, Notifications, and Classes
Accounts, Settings, Notifications, and Classes
To manage the classes you create in Google Classroom become familiar with classes and accounts. Information about settings, notifications, calendars, archiving classes, and copying classes is found in this section.
Step-by-Step How To
To manage your accounts, settings, notifications, and classes:
- Sign into your TWU Google Account
- Click on the App Launcher
- Click Classroom
- Manage accounts
- Manage settings and notifications
- Manage classes
Create Classwork or Post Materials
Add Content to the Classwork Page
You can post resource materials, such as a syllabus, policies and procedures, topic-related articles and videos, or assignments to the Classwork page. Materials added into the class can be organized by topic, reordered, and scheduled to post later.
Step-by-Step How To
Procedures to create course materials and assignments include:
- Sign into your TWU Google Account
- Click on the App Launcher
- Click Classroom
- Follow the steps to Set up your grading system
- Follow the steps to Add materials to the Classwork page
- Follow the steps to Create an assignment
- Follow the steps to Create a quiz assignment
- Follow the steps to Create a question
- Follow the steps to Create a rubric for an assignment
Communicate with Your Class
Communicate with Students
Once you have the class created and have started to create course materials and assignments, the next step is to invite students, post announcements, send emails, and enable online meetings.
Step-by-Step How To
Procedures to communicate with students include:
- Sign into your TWU Google Account
- Click on the App Launcher
- Click Classroom
- Invite people to your class
- Post announcements or send emails
- Use Google Meet with Classroom
Grade and Return Work
Provide Feedback to Students
You can give your students personalized feedback on any type of file in the Classroom grading tool. You can leave comments on student work and maintain a comment bank to store comments that you use most often.
Step-by-Step How To
Procedures to grade and return work include:
- Sign into your TWU Google Account
- Click on the App Launcher
- Click Classroom
- Follow the steps to Give feedback on assignments
- Follow the steps to Grade and return an assignment
- Follow the steps to Grade and return question answers
- Follow the steps to Grade with a rubric
- Follow the steps to Create and grade quizzes with Google Forms
References
- Darby, F. (2019, April 17). How to be a better online teacher: Advice guide. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/advice-online-teaching
- Ni, L. B. (2020). Blended Learning through Google Classroom. International Journal of Educational and Pedagogical Sciences, 14(4), 220-226.
Support Options
- Reference the Get started with Classroom for Teachers for step-by-step instructions to help you build your class.
- Contact an Instructional Design Partner to create learning activities for students, training to use Google Classroom features, or talk about effective ways to design your courses.
- To request technical support, submit a Technology Service Desk email to start a ticket.