danaleeling

The spring term 2021 was slated to be a hybrid term with online lectures and in residence laboratory sections. Knowing that I could use the first residential laboratory section as a technology training session, I had planned an Instructure Canvas pilot deployment. Then island events impinged and the first two weeks of the term saw complete closure of the campus, no residential section. The solid rocket boosters were already lit on the pilot project, there was no option but to hang on for a rough launch. A launch that would run into a domain name system misconfiguration and an internet service provider upstream which allegedly blacklisted the asymmetric digital subscriber line route to Singapore. In other words, a rough launch with turbulence. A dedicated and brilliant team on the ground here and at Canvas, however, worked the issues and found solutions. Laboratory one was done as at home exercise by the students, as guided by a video . These reports would trickle in only after the seco...

Summary: The Canvas pilot is one in a series of probes into new technologies to generate user experience data that can be reported back to the relevant decision making bodies. This is a backgrounder to provide context for the current Canvas pilot. In the fall of 2012 a colleague introduced me to Jupiter Grades. I experimented with the package briefly but found that I hit pay walls when I wanted to do something beyond maintain a personal gradebook. I could not generate student logins without purchasing an annual subscription. I was also not all that impressed with the interface which felt almost DOS like at times. Jupiter Grades did convince me that the college ought to explore the use of a learning management system. At one point the college had a Moodle instance installed on the college server. I had tried to set up a Moodle gradebook, but quickly realized that Moodle was essentially an open framework - the instructions should have said, "A lot of assembly required." I was l...

Note that this blog is not covering the use the external tool submission method for Google LTI 1.3 which generates a Google Assignments sandbox inside Instructure Canvas. This article covers submission via the Online: Upload method of submission in Canvas.  This articles covers submitting an assignment done in Google Sheets on a G Suite for Education drive using a copy of a Google Sheets spreadsheet prepared by the instructor. This article is primarily intended  for those students using a laptop or desktop computer, but the second section of the article notes where mobile submissions using the Canvas student app differ. A video version of this information is also available . Navigate to the assignment you want to work on and submit. Click on the blue link to the assignment seen in the image above. [Edit added 2/27/2021: For instructors, in the link above if the word "edit" near the end of the link address is changed to "copy" then the link will automatically start t...