Student Centered Learning
Student Centered Learning and Canvas
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Canvas is designed to support student-centered learning, and it gives students more autonomy than often provided in other learning management systems (ex: Angel, Blackboard, Moodle, D2L). Students have the ability to form their own study groups, create collaboration spaces, and build their own ePortfolios. Students can get instant feedback from interactive lessons, engage in real-time communication, and use the "What-If" feature in the gradebook to see what kinds of grades they need to score on every assignment to get the grade they want. Canvas also offers several wiki-style collaboration tools that allow students to contribute to a shared understanding of the content. |
Below is a graphic Canvas provided at their 2015 user conference that highlights how they conceptualize Student Centered Learning and how it fits into the curriculum.
SCL and Online Instruction
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There are many different theories for online instruction, but overall the research literature suggests specific "best practices" that increase student engagement and retention in online courses. |
The student-centered design of Canvas provides an excellent place to seamlessly integrate some of the the following best practices for Online Learning:
- Be present at the course site
- Create a supportive online course community
- Share a set of very clear expectations for your students as to how you will communicate and how much time students should be working on the course each week
- Use a variety of large group, small group, and individual work experiences
- Use both synchronous and asynchronous activities
- Early in the term -- about week 3 -- ask for informational feedback on "How is the course going?" and "Do you have any suggestions?" The Learning Feedback System can be used for this type of feedback, as well as midterm and end of the semester feedback!
- Prepare discussion posts that invite questions, discussions, reflections and responses
- Focus on content resources, applications, links to current events and examples that are easily accessed from learner's computers
- Combine core concept learning with customized and personalized learning
- Plan a good closing and wrap-up activity for the course
For more information on the above practices, see the Ten Best Practices for Teaching Online Links to an external site. by Judith V. Boettcher.
Additional Resource
Student Centered Learning (SCL)
Student Centered Learning (SCL) is a teaching method that can be broadly defined as a shift in the focus of activity (or instruction) from the teacher to the student. All types of courses from traditional to hybrid to online can utilize SCL.
Key characteristics of SCL instruction include:
- Actively engages students with the learning materials
- Encourages students to think, problem-solve, evaluate evidence, analyze arguments, and generate hypotheses
- Asks students to reflect on what they are learning
- Gives students some control over the learning process
- Encourages collaboration
To better understand what student-centered learning is and how you can fully utilize it within your courses, please refer to the following resources.
Resources
Addressing Faculty Questions about Student-Centered Learning Download Addressing Faculty Questions about Student-Centered Learning - Provides an overview of what Student Centered Learning is and answers many general questions faculty have about integrating student-centered learning into their course.
Interactive Techniques Download Interactive Techniques - 228 examples of how to incorporate student-centered learning into your course.
Quick video overview of what Student Centered Learning is.
Student Centered Learning features in Canvas
Below is a list of some of the different features in Canvas that can be used to help create a student-centered learning environment with your course.
| Canvas Tool/Feature | Possible Uses |
| Groups | Instructors can create student groups to help engage students OR students can create their own groups. |
| Collaborations | Collaborations in Canvas is the ability for students to create Google Documents and then share them with other students and/or the Instructor. This allows the real time editing and creating of information whether the students are sitting next to each other or are in different time zones! |
| ePortfolio | Students can create their own ePortfolios to showcase what they've learned in a specific class or over their entire College career! |
| Discussion | Encourage students to discuss various topics/questions with each other and the Instructor asynchronously. |
| Conferences | Instructors can set up "live" conferences with individual students or the entire class! In addition, students can also use the Conference tool to talk/work with other students in a live online environment. |
| Pages | Instructors have the option of allow students to edit Page content. |
| Peer Review | Students can be assigned to peer review other students assignments, which is particularly effective for writing assignments! |
| Chat | Students and the Instructor can participate in an open chat session. |
| What-if Grades | Students can use the "What-if" grades feature in Canvas to see what their course grade might be if they score a certain way on course assignments. |
| Crocodoc | Crocodoc allows Instructors to add comments, highlights, and other useful feedback directly to a student's assignment from within Canvas. |
| Audio/Video | Canvas allows Instructors to create their own audio and video directly from within Canvas. This is especially useful when providing audio feedback on assignments. In addition, Instructors have the option of allowing students to create their own audio and video directly in Canvas for Assignments. |
The above list is not exhaustive and only meant to illustrate some of the different types different ways Canvas supports SCL. How to use these different types of tools/features will be covered later in the Training Course.