Using the Canvas Gradebook at Columbia College Chicago

The Gradebook tool in Canvas feature that collects all graded Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions. Faculty may choose more traditional kinds of graded assignments that are added under Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions in Canvas. Faculty can also require non-graded Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions. Both graded and non-graded assignments allow the instructor to collecting student work and provide important feedback to students, especially in remote and hybrid instruction situations.  

Canvas Feedback and Grades features are incredibly flexible. In addition to the usual text documents, students are able to upload images as well as videos. They can submit images of their work, or images of them performing particular tasks. They can submit videos of themselves performing, dancing, speaking, and engaging in a wide range of embodied activity and work. You might require students to perform or discuss their performances in a video; to critique themselves and/or each other.  

Online Gradebook Resources 

There are a number of excellent resources on the internet that explain how an instructor can provide students important and robust feedback regardless of whether the assignment is uploaded as an alphabetic text, a visual image, or a video recording. Here are just a few: 

Faculty Development Sessions

Canvas Grading Strategies: Providing Meaningful and Effective Feedback

It is not a secret that many instructors perceive grading as an arduous and unappreciated aspect of their teaching practice. However, supportive, constructive, and useful feedback is essential to student learning. This is true across the various fields that we teach here at Columbia. In this session, Kelsa, Onur, and Jesse will share their experiences and tips on using Canvas Gradebook to provide meaningful and effective grading in various shapes and forms across disciplines. Participants will be invited to explore their own grading process and brainstorm ideas in small groups. 

Facilitators: Assistant Professor of Instruction Kelsa Robinson, Assistant Professor Onur Ozturk, and Associate Professor Jesse Seay 

Canvas Rubrics in Support of Student and Program Assessment

Rubrics are a great way to easily communicate assignment expectations and grading criteria to students for any type of course (traditional, hybrid or online) and can serve as a highly effective means to provide targeted feedback to students on their work.  This session will walk participants through the process of creating rubrics, utilizing them to give grading feedback to students (including the Speedgrader function in Canvas), and how results can be aggregated to provide faculty with data on student performance in their individual sections and in their academic programs. 

Manager of Instructional Design Jamie Ackley, Senior Instructional Designer Katie Kosinski, Fashion Studies Assistant Professor of Instruction Allison Leahy, Associate Provost for Accreditation and Assessment Neil Pagano 

Uses for Video in Canvas Gradebook for Student Submissions and Instructor Feedback

This session will focus on the use and pedagogical benefits of video assignments. Whether you’re teaching online, hybrid, or face-to-face, Canvas Studio makes is easy to integrate video assignments into your courses, and to gain measurable insights for your gradebook from those video assignments. The session will include a complete walkthrough of the Studio tool, as well as a virtual example of how to evaluate video assignments using native Canvas analytics. 

Facilitators: Associate Professor of Instruction Clayton Smith and Assistant Professor of Instruction Ryan Smith