In the following section, you will find a number of resources that offer specific strategies for designing and developing cooperative, productive, and meaningful online learning communities in which you and your students can engage with one another as well as the content of your course. These resources include general strategies that might be implemented across any number of LMSs, or they might include techniques specific to one LMS. By comparing the ways in which you might use Canvas to strategies that other educators have used with alternate LMSs, you can expand your understanding of the possibilities of online learning and find unique ways to enhance your Canvas courses.
How to Design and Teach a Hybrid Course: Achieving Student-Centered Learning through Blended Classroom, Online and Experiential Activities
Author: Jay Caulfield
ISBN: 978-1579224233
Publisher: Stylus Publishing
Description: Exploring the educational philosophy and theories behind hybrid courses as well as the actual design and implementation of such courses, this book explores the ways in which combining live and online components in a course can impact student achievement and understanding. Hybrid courses allow instructors and students to take advantage of the best aspects of traditional and online learning environments, and this book offers you techniques to ensure a meaningful educational experience for all involved.
Connections to Canvas: Hybrid courses have been a topic of discussion throughout this book, and many of the chapters have addressed ways in which you can utilize Canvas within a hybrid teaching situation. You can directly implement the concepts covered in How to Design and Teach a Hybrid Course: Achieving Student-Centered Learning through Blended Classroom, Online and Experiential Activities into your Canvas course in order to foster collaboration, student-guided learning, and ownership of material through both contemporary and traditional best practices.
Discussion-Based Online Teaching To Enhance Student Learning: Theory, Practice and Assessment
Author: Tisha Bender
ISBN 13: 978-1579227470
Publisher: Stylus Publishing
Description: Discussion-based activities are a powerful means of engaging online learners and creating opportunities for interacting with content in meaningful ways. This book looks into the distinction between "digital natives", the generation of students and teachers who have grown up surrounded by technology, and "digital immigrants", the generation of teachers and students during whose lifetime current technologies have developed. Included in this resource are a myriad of ways in which teachers might be able to design online course activities to more effectively encourage cooperation through discussion-based collaboration.
Connections to Canvas: Canvas offers you numerous outlets for collaboration and cooperation through discussion-based activities such as the Discussions, Collaborations, Conversations, and Conferences features. Applying the philosophical considerations and instructional strategies within this resource to your Canvas course can increase the quality and sophistication of discussion-based elements in your course.
The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education
Author: Karl M. Kapp
ISBN: 978-1118096345
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Description: This book offers an exciting look into the process of Gamification, or reframing learning through the lens of a game. As a means of increasing engagement with content, designing learning experiences as games offers the potential to help students apply and retain the knowledge they gain as they work through information embedded in various game concepts.
Connections to Canvas: The layout options and customizable features of Canvas make it an excellent platform for gamified learning. Within sequential modules that only unlock once students complete certain activities, you can build custom content pages full of embedded content and incorporate them into outside resources that could function as levels or worlds of a game. As we have focused so much on the importance of sequence, structure, and scaffolding in choosing your course design, considering a gamified version of your course could offer your students unique and lasting interactions with the content of your course.
Blackboard Essentials for Teachers
Author: William Rice
ISBN: 978-1849692922
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Description: Taking a look at the specifics of the Blackboard LMS, this book offers an in-depth insight into how to use the Blackboard system to design and teach courses. Exploring the full features offered through Blackboard, this book walks you through the steps of building and teaching a course.
Connections to Canvas: Blackboard is another very popular LMS that many schools around the world use to host course content. Exploring the options available through other LMSs and seeing the types of content and activities demonstrated in Blackboard Essentials for Teachers, you can further your understanding of how you might adapt and improve your course design within Canvas. With the wide array of tools and features available through Canvas, exploring options available through other LMSs can offer you new ideas for your own courses.
Further Reading: If you would like more insight into what the behind-the-scenes management of an LMS looks like for an institution, consider checking out Blackboard Learn Administration, which explores the administrative side of managing the Blackboard LMS:
Author: Terry Patterson
ISBN: 978-1849693066
Publisher: Packt Publishing