danaleeling

In my ethnobotany class I have assignments such as in-class presentations that are not submitted in Canvas. For these assignments I manually enter the student's score. For these items there is a difference between a non-entry, a null entry, and an excused absence in the values shown in the MyShark import, a difference that is not directly visible in the grade book in Canvas.  First a couple of Canvas definitions. In Canvas the Current Score is what is displayed in the Canvas grade book as the student's current overall grade. In the grade book where there is a hyphen for an assignment grade, that assignment is not counted against the student for purposes of calculating the Current Score. The Current score is calculating the total points earned to date by the student divided by the total possible to date for those same assignments. Assignments which do not have a score entered do not count against the student. This is as it should be, the grade book is showing the current standi...

I was recently informed third hand that some faculty are seeing assignment due dates from the prior term in the current term Course Summary section of the Syllabus after copying material into the new term.  In the above screenshot of a summer 2023 course five assignments can be seen that have due dates in the spring 2023 term.  As this information came to me indirectly I do not know the process being used to make a course copy.  The process I use to set up for a new term is to go into the Settings for a course in the current term using a desktop or laptop computer. In a menu on the right is the above option.  Here I set the Content Type to Copy a Canvas Course, use Search for a course to select the course I want to copy, choose All content, and then set the Options to Adjust events and due dates. Here I choose to Shift dates. For a copy from spring to summer term this will not result in the correct dates, but the editing the dates is usually easier than removing all ...

In Google Forms a multiple choice grid such as the above generates a spreadsheet that has the word responses. The following looks at converting these word values to numbers allowing for statistical analysis.  On the Responses tab of the Google Forms designer is an option to View in Google Sheets. This will generate a linked spreadsheet. The first tab will be Form Responses 1. Do not edit this sheet. This is the sheet on which results arrive, with results being appended below the last row of the spreadsheet. Altering or working directly in this sheet is not recommended. Instead, add a new tab. In the above the tab is labelled d for data. The label is arbitrary but shorter and simpler will be easier to work with later on. Spaces can be particularly problematic in later formulas requiring extra quotation marks. The function being used is the IFS formula, essentially a variation of a CASE statement in other languages. IFS replaces nested IF functions. The function in A2 is pulling the ...

Student evaluations of instructor, course, and course materials provide guidance for the institutions on areas of relative strengths and areas where there may be room for improvement. Bearing in mind that old data is not usefully actionable data, the intent of this report is to convey broad themes in the evaluations to decision makers as rapidly as possible.  This report presumes familiarity with the student evaluations form in use at the institution. This report is based on 976 student evaluations. The overall average response on a five point scale was 4.35 with a standard deviation of 0.98. As noted in the past, students tend to respond with agree or strongly agree. Teasing information out of means that are similar requires the realization that an excess of agrees relative to other ratings in the section represent a downgrade for that item. The following report looks to highlight what are small but potentially real differences.  Instructor evaluations Click to enlarge As was...

The ethnobotany field final examination experienced issues at a scale not previously seen. There had always been an occasional shared answer, a rare accidental vocalization of the name of a plant. There had been a couple instances of outright copying from another paper - but only a couple times in fourteen years. By and large the honor system functioned for the final examination.  The loss of knowledge, however, is so extreme and precipitous, that what was once an easy final examination is now exceedingly challenging for a generation of students unaccustomed to studying intensely for anything.  Starting in the fall of 2022 the residential course went paperless. The course had been increasingly paperless, including being completely paperless during the pandemic. The residential version had still used some handouts but was essentially paperless. This spring the final examination was also paperless. The final examination covered 18 plants in pairs of questions such as the pair ab...