Center for Teaching and Learning Blog

Regrade Option for a quiz question

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Have you ever written and published a quiz only to find out later that you had an incorrect answer marked on a multiple choice question or your students have pointed out that the True/False question should have been True not False!

Now that all (or most of) the students have taken the quiz how do you go back and update the quiz question to reflect the correct answer??

Canvas offers a Regrade Option for Multiple Choice, True/False and Multiple Answer type questions. The Regrade Option will become available when you change the question to reflect the correct answer. Canvas will present you with a Regrade Option box that offers four regrade options based on your situation.

Canvas Regrade Option
  1. Award points for both corrected and previously correct answers – This option should be used for Multiple Choice questions where you determine that the question was written with more than one answer that would be accepted as correct. Please note: this option is not available for a Multiple Answer type question.
  2. Only award points for the correct answer -use this option when you have marked an incorrect answer as the correct answer and would like points to reflect the correct answer.
  3. Give everyone full credit for this question – In some instances, the answer options on a question may have written in such a way that it created confusion or misinterpretation for the student and you prefer to give everyone credit towards the question.
  4. Update question without regrading – This option will allow you to update your question to the correct answer but will not change the points earned by students who have already taken the quiz.

Regrade Option not available for the following quiz question changes

If you are making any of the changes listed below, it is recommended that you moderate the quiz and allow students who have taken the quiz an additional attempt in order to see the updated version of the quiz.

  • The Regrade Option is not available when you are adding or removing a question from a quiz.
  • Adding or deleting answers from a question will disable the Regrade option from being available.
  • Changing the points value of a question does not enable the Regrade Option.

One last note….the Regrade Option does not apply to questions linked to question banks!

Reach out to us!

If you would like to learn more about Canvas quizzes or other features available within the Canvas learning management system, feel free to email us at elearning@mtu.edu

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Canvas Quizzes, Extended Time, and the Moderate tool

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Moderate Quiz link in published Canvas Quiz

If you use Canvas quizzes frequently you’ve likely had the need to provide extra time for students with formal accommodations. This need has escalated during the current remote instruction environment as Canvas quiz usage has increased. While there is more than one way to accomplish this, using the Canvas quiz moderate feature is the best way to easily provide extra time for specific students.

Moderate this Quiz

Once you publish your Canvas classic quiz a “Moderate this Quiz” feature appears in the quiz sidebar to the right. The moderate quiz page supports several important functions:

  • View progress of student submissions
  • View number of quiz attempts taken (where appropriate)
  • Provide extra quiz attempts
  • Provide extra time (for timed quizzes)
  • Manually unlock quizzes for a specific student

To provide extra time for a student find their name from the list of all enrolled students then click on the edit icon (pencil icon) at the far right. A student extensions window will appear with options to provide extra time. The amount of time you enter there will add on to the standard time allowed for all students. Don’t forget to click Save to apply the extension changes.

Student extensions window in Canvas quiz moderate feature.
Student Extensions window in Quiz Moderate tool

If you have more than one student that needs extra time you can select multiple students (click boxes next to their names) first and then add extra time to all students as a group.

Moderate Quiz selection screen
Select multiple student and apply extensions

If you’re in a situation where you need provide additional time while a student is taking the quiz you can do that too. The moderate page shows the running time for all active students in a quiz. You can click on the clock icon for a student and add extra time to their current attempt. Review the resource guides linked below for additional details on this process.

Make sure you also assign due dates and availability dates to your quizzes. The due date is critical to remind students when the quiz must be completed. Availability dates are the open and close doors when a quiz is available. These dates can provide your students with some flexibility for when they take the exam.

There is a lot of power under the moderate page hood. If you are a regular user of Canvas quizzes you should take some time to familiarize yourself with the available features so you can react quickly when you run into an unexpected situation.

Resources

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Support resources for EdTech tools

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EdTech tools: Canvas, Panopto, Zoom, iClicker, Respondus, Turnitin, Gradescope

Pandemic-induced remote instruction has required us to spend more time online supporting our students. Many people are using EdTech tools now more than ever before in their teaching careers. At Michigan Tech the “Big Three” EdTech tools are Canvas, Panopto-Huskycast, and Zoom. Using these tool effectively is critical for a successful teaching and learning experience for you and your students. Have you also found yourself “pushing” these tools to the next level? To do more with the tools you need to learn more about their capabilities. The elearning team helps instructors with that every day. But we don’t do it alone. We rely of the extensive support and training resources available from our vendors. To help you find “how-to” information more quickly we have gathered the links to the training resources for some of the most common EdTech tools you are likely using often.

EdTech Tool Support Resources
Canvas Instructor Guides
Instructor Video Guides
Student Guides
Panopto-Huskycast Guides
Video tutorials
Zoom Help Center
User Guide FAQ
Top 20 Resources
Respondus (online testing tools) Training resources
Webinars
turnitin/gradescope turnitin Feedback Studio
gradescope getting started guides
gradescope remote assessment resources
iClicker Cloud Instructor guides
Quickstart guide for remote instruction
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Editing a Video

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We have all been busy lately making recordings -whether its pre-recording a lecture from your office or recording a live Zoom class session. Afterwards, we upload these recordings into the appropriate Panopto-Huskycast course folder for students to view.

Have you ever gone back and reviewed the video only to realize that the first couple minutes of the recording consisted of you still getting prepared to start your lecture or maybe the last couple minutes consisted of addressing some students’ personal questions….wouldn’t it be nice if you could quickly trim those unnecessary beginning or endings off of your recordings? Panopto-Huskycast provides a video editor within your video library which will allow you to quickly trim a section of content from your video.

Panopto Editor

Edit mode in Panopto

Login to Huskycast.mtu.edu with your Canvas credentials and find a video in your video library that you would like to edit. Hover your mouse over the video, you will notice some additional options appear including ‘Edit’. Click on ‘edit’ and the video will then open into the Panopto Editor. At the bottom of the editor, you will see a separate row for each stream captured in the video. A stream can be defined as a separate section in the editor for each video, audio or presentation content you recorded.

Panopto Editor video streams

Cut Tool

You will notice a scissors in the upper left corner just above the video streams. This is known as the cut tool and is used to trim content from the video. Let’s say you wanted to trim off the first two minutes and 14secs of your video. You would play the video and pause it after two minutes and 14 seconds. You will notice a red vertical line in the stream designating this point in the video. Next, click on the scissors. You will notice a dark gray line at the beginning and ending of the video stream. Click and drag the dark gray line at the beginning of the stream until it meets up with the red vertical line.

Select ‘Apply’ in the upper right corner of the screen when you have your edits defined. This will apply the changes. As a side note, the Panopto Editor is non-destructive…you can always add those cuts back in if you ever need to or happen to cut out the wrong content!

Additional Resources

How to edit a video

How to trim a video in the editor (including steps on trimming an individual stream)

If you would like additional support with managing your Panopto-Huskycast recordings, contact us at elearning@mtu.edu.

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Using Math in your Canvas Course Content

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Do you use math content in your Canvas course pages, assignments, quizzes, etc.? Do you struggle with how to insert math expressions properly? Do you insert images of math expressions (inherently inaccessible)?

Using math in your Canvas instructional materials can be challenging. Making sure that content is digitally accessible to all learners is more important now that ever with the dramatic shift to remote instruction during the pandemic. Let’s review some options and best practices for creating accessible math expressions in your Canvas instructional content.

Insert Options in Canvas

The Canvas Rich Content Editor (RCE), available throughout Canvas (content pages, discussions, assignments and quizzes) offers some powerful tools for inserting math.

Equation Editor

Canvas equation Editor
Canvas equation editor (basic view)

The Canvas equation editor allows you to build math expressions from scratch using the available toolbars in the basic view. This option is similar to equation editors you may have used in Word, for example. When you click on the advanced view option you can enter LaTeX code. LaTeX is a markup language commonly used for typesetting technical content (like math expressions) in documents. If you are fluent with LaTeX, the advanced equation editor can be an efficient method of placing math in your course content.

MathJax

Recently, Canvas announced a plan for extended support and enhanced digital accessibility of LaTex-based math expressions. Once implemented by Canvas, properly formatted LaTeX will be able to be added directly in any text field in Canvas, including in page and assignment titles and calendar entries. By including the required formatting that specifies inline or block formatting of the math, Canvas will work with the browser to display the math properly using a JavaScript display technology called MathJax. You won’t need to worry about the MathJax magic though, you just need to enter accurate LaTeX code and format it for the desired display type and it should just work. The great advantage here is that math expressions entered this way are accessible to people using an assistive technology called a screen reader. This feature was originally released on February 20, but there have been a few glitches and Canvas has pulled it back for now. Hopefully it will be available again soon.

https://www.screencast.com/t/Y38iLV4b
Inserting math expressions with LaTeX in Canvas rich content editor

EquatIO

Another powerful tool for creating digital math is EquatIO, available from the apps menu in the Canvas RCE. When not in Canvas you can also download EquatIO for Mac or Windows and run it on your computer, or as an extension in the Chrome browser (register it with your MTU email address to get access to premium features).

EquatIO App in the Canvas RCE toolbar
EquatIO App in the Canvas RCE toolbar

EquatIO offers several inputs methods for inserting math in Canvas, including the type-as-you-go equation editor, LaTeX, and handwritten or spoken math expressions.

EquatIO insert menu in Canvas
EquatIO editor (showing LaTeX input method) in Canvas RCE

The equation editor features prediction to help speed up the input workflow. So when you type “sq” for example, EquatIO offers options like “squared” or “square root”. You can also enter LaTeX math and EquatIO will insert the expression as an image file that includes accurate alternative text to support screen reader users. If you have a touch-based device you can write out math by hand and EquatIO will similarly convert it to an image of the expression. You can also speak math using your microphone and EquatIO will convert to digital math. Both the handwritten and spoken input options can work quite well as long as you can write reasonably well or speak clearly without too much background noise.

EquatIO Works Great for Students Too

Students can also use EquatIO to input math expressions anywhere in Canvas that they have access to the RCE, such as in a discussion post, or a text-based response in a quiz. EquatIO also supports students who may struggle with interpreting math expressions, a disorder called dyscalculia. The standalone EquatIO application (available to all MTU students, staff, faculty) includes an additional tool called the screenshot reader. This powerful feature allows students (or anyone else) to select a math expression on their computer screen. EquatIO then applies optical character recognition (OCR) and provides options to listen to the expression read back to them, or to read a text-based version of the expression to help with comprehension. Next time you need to add math to your Canvas content consider using one of these approaches to make your math digital and more accessible.

Resources

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Learning from each other – Peer Review Assignments

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To strengthen students’ written work, instructors will spend a great deal of time providing detailed feedback in the hopes that students will apply the suggestions to their next written assignment. Unfortunately, many instructors feel that their efforts to provide feedback is being overlooked or not appreciated by the students.

What if an instructor could reduce the burden of providing all the detailed feedback YET increase students engagement in the review process? Maybe even strengthen their writing skills and assessment skills in the process…

Peer Review Assignments

Think about the possibility of having students review each others work and provide each other feedback. If you read through the body of literature, you will find many supporting arguments which state that peer review in the feedback process provides many benefits to students learning.

Benefits of Peer Review

  • Ability to become more aware of alternative perspectives on a topic.
  • Lifelong learning skills in how to effectively assess another person’s work.
  • Building self-assessment of their work by benchmarking themselves against their peers.
  • Critical thinking and diplomacy skills.

Canvas Peer Review Assignments

A Canvas Peer Review Assignment allows students to provide feedback on another student’s assignment submission. Setting up an assignment for peer review is fairly simple within Canvas. One of the options when setting up a new assignment is to designate it as a Peer Review assignment. You can select to manually or automatically assign the peer reviews. There is an option to set up the peer reviews to be anonymous or you can include a rubric for the reviewer to complete as the peer review. Peer reviews can not be used with External Tool Assignments.

Peer Review options in Assignments

Students will see a list of peer reviews assigned to them within the assignment. Based on how the assignment submission is designated, the student could annotate the document, add a comment in the comment field or complete the included rubric. A student reviewing another student’s assignment would need to leave at least one comment in order for the review to be considered complete.

Students will see their peers’ reviews in the right sidebar of the Canvas course under Recent Feedback. A student can simply click on the assignment title to access the feedback.

If you would like to learn more about using Peer Review Assignments in Canvas, feel free to contact us at elearning@mtu.edu

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Respondus Live Proctoring; Is this the right tool for your class?

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Lockdown Browser +Instructor Live Proctoring

Pandemic-induced remote instruction practices have brought new challenges for protecting the integrity of student assessments. If you can’t administer your exam in the classroom and can’t use the services of the Michigan Tech Testing Center (students not campus-based) there are other options.

Michigan Tech instructors have had access to Respondus LockDown Browser and Respondus Monitor to support online assessments for some time. Now a third option called Respondus Live Proctoring is available. To review, LockDown Browser is a dedicated browser designed to confine the testing environment to Canvas. A companion tool called Respondus Monitor builds on this by leveraging student webcams and video analytics to help deter cheating in non-proctored environments. Instructor Live Proctoring adds to the Respondus toolbox by working in conjunction with LockDown Browser and Zoom to allow instructors to proctor exams live (via a Zoom meeting) for small classes (Respondus recommends up to 25). Let’s take a closer look at this new option.

To use Respondus Live Proctoring instructors create a Canvas assessment using the Quiz tool and then enable Respondus LockDown Browser and Live Proctoring from the LockDown Browser dashboard available in the Canvas course navigation.

Respondus Lockdown Browser dashboard in Canvas
Respondus LockDown Browser Dashboard
Live Proctoring Settings
Respondus Live Proctoring Setting

To avoid test day complications make sure students have previously installed LockDown Browser on the computer they will be taking the exam on. At test time students join the Zoom meeting for last minute instructions, attendance, and a start code that will allow them to open the exam from LockDown Browser. Canvas Classic Quizzes (used by most MTU instructors currently) require students to first open LockDown Browser, log in to the Canvas course, and then open the quiz. Once the quiz is opened in LockDown Browser, students are confined to the quiz environment, but the Zoom meeting is still active in the background. This allows the instructor to proctor students via their webcams in the Zoom meeting.

Important Considerations

The CTL recently tested the Live Proctoring feature and offers the following observations and guidance.

Test, test, test

It’s important to test this workflow before an actual exam. Creating a simple Canvas test quiz with the Live Proctoring feature enabled will allow for this. Students will have an opportunity to install LockDown Browser and open the test quiz to confirm that their system is working properly. This also gives you a chance to experience what Live Proctoring “looks like” from a Zoom meeting. As noted earlier, Respondus recommends this feature for small class sizes (no more than 25).

Limited communication during quiz

Once the Canvas quiz is underway the instructor maintains full access to the Zoom meeting while students have NO ACCESS to the Zoom meeting. As long as students leave their webcam and microphone on before starting the quiz the instructor will still be able to see and hear them. This also means that other students can hear them as well. As the instructor, you get to decide how to manage any potential distraction that may arise. You could ask students to mute their microphone before they open the quiz in LockDown Browser. Or you could ask students to leave their microphone on, but complete the exam in a quiet space to avoid distractions. You could also mute individual student microphones from your Zoom controls if distractions arise during the quiz.

It is technically possible for instructors to make an announcement in the Zoom meeting during the quiz, but students would not see the instructor. One option might be to inform students in advance that you will ask for questions at a predetermined time so students know there will be an opportunity to ask a question at some point. All students would hear any discussion between any one student and the instructor.

Live Proctoring is different that Monitor

The Live Proctoring feature does not record students during the test and does not provide instructors with any alerts of suspicious activity during exam time. That’s the job of the instructor. Automated recording and alerts is only available in the automated Respondus Monitor proctoring solution.

Resources

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Assignment Feature in iClicker Cloud

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Do you currently use iClicker Cloud to poll students during class?…do you wish you could poll students outside of class….say after a chapter reading to gauge their level of understanding of the content?

With iClicker Cloud’s new asynchronous Assignment feature you can create low-stakes assessments that can be completed outside of class and at a student’s own pace.

Examples of when to use iClicker Cloud Assignment

  • Before class – gauge students’ understanding or preparedness for upcoming lectures, chapter readings or homework understanding.
  • During class – for small group activities.
  • After class – to support homework activities.

Setting up iClicker Cloud Assignments

Within the iClicker Cloud Instructor Website, you can create questions for the iClicker Cloud Assignment.

  1. Create your lecture slides as you normally do. Include a slide for each iClicker question. iClicker Cloud Assignment supports Multiple Choice, Short Answer and Target question types.
  2. Extract your iClicker question slides from the main presentation. A separate file that contains only question slides can be used in an iClicker Cloud Assignment.
  3. Export the question slides file as a PDF.
  4. Go to the iClicker Cloud Instructor Website and create the assignment.
  5. Add the assignment details and upload the PDF that contains the question slides.
  6. Format the Assignment. The assignment has now been added to your “Assignments” page where you are able to manage, edit, view grades and export grades to your LMS.
  7. Based on the release date that you set for the assignment, students will now be able to see the assignment(s).
  8. Scores from completed assignments can be manually uploaded into Canvas.

Student access to Assignments

Be sure to let your students know that you are now using Assignments in iClicker. A student can complete the assignment by finding the instructor’s course in their list of courses and selecting Assignments from the menu. Here is a helpful guide to provide your students on Accessing an Assignment in iClicker Reef.

If you have questions about using iClicker Cloud Assignments, Canvas, Zoom or Huskycast, feel free to contact us at elearning@mtu.edu

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Three Huskycast features you should know about

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Huskycast

Huskycast is Michigan Tech’s branded Panopto video platform. In the years leading up to the pandemic we saw a steady increase in video usage, both in lecture capture recordings and in content uploaded to the system. With the dramatic shift to remote instruction over the last year video usage has exploded (not surprisingly). With more users than ever creating and/or viewing content in Huskycast let’s review three great features that you may not know about.

Panopto-Zoom Integration

Many instructors are using Zoom to provide a synchronous remote environment for their course meetings. The ability to record Zoom sessions is a great way to allow students to review the class sessions again, or to catch up on sessions they may have missed. With the use of a recurring Zoom cloud meeting instructors can automatically have their recordings transferred to a designated Huskycast course folder in Canvas. This can save you lots of time managing content between Zoom and Huskycast and all students enrolled in the associated Canvas course automatically have access to view the recordings. You don’t need to manually share links to the recordings either, since students can just click on the Huskycast course link and select the recording they wish to view. You can learn more about this integration and contact elearning with any questions. Don’t forget to enable the audio-transcript option in your Zoom recording so that a transcript file will transfer to Huskycast along with the Zoom recording.

Video Assignments

Looking to provide your students with an alternative mode for demonstrating competency of your course objectives (multiple means of action and expression)? Why not consider using video? Huskycast allows instructors to create video-based assignments that students can submit directly in Canvas. Students can use the available recording tools in Huskycast to create their video, use other video software, or just record on their phone. When they’re ready they can upload the video either directly in the Canvas video assignment, or into the Huskycast assignment folder in the course. By default student-submitted videos are viewable by only the instructor (and the submitting student), but you have the option to allow other students to view and comment on videos if desired. Some examples of effective video assignments:

  • Student introductions
  • Video-based discussion post
  • Multimedia-based final project presentation
  • Student teach-back session (students explain new concepts they recently learned)

Embedded Quizzes

A low-stakes knowledge check can be a good pedagogical tool for measuring student comprehension during instruction. In Huskycast you can add a quiz and ask one or more questions within your videos. This quiz allows learners to verify comprehension and can give them confidence to learn deeper. When building the quiz you can require correct answers before moving on, or just provide correct answers. You can even create Canvas assignments tied to a Huskycast quiz and have the points earner for correct responses be recorded in the Canvas grade book. Multiple choice, multiple answer, true/false, and fill in the blank questions types are available in Panopto-Huskycast quizzes.

Resources

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Uploading a file in Canvas for an Assessment

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Throughout the semester, the elearning team addresses lots of great questions on various ways that one can leverage Canvas for student assessment. One question we often address is, “What is the best way to have students upload a pdf of their handwritten work they did for a quiz?”

Courtesy of Pexels

Great Question!…in order to answer this, we need to first consider the following:

  • Do you want to be able to annotate the pdfs within Canvas? Do you prefer to download the pdfs, annotate w/ an external tool and re-upload into Canvas?
  • Do you use Respondus Lockdown Browser for your quiz?
  • Is it a timed quiz?

If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, we recommend that you…

Offer an Assignment directly after the Quiz for file submission

Why?….

Due to some limitations with Canvas Quizzes a preview of the pdf in Speedgrader is not available nor does Canvas Quizzes offer the ability to re-upload submissions! Using Respondus LockDown Browser may limit students ability to create a pdf and a timed quiz may not allow sufficient time for a student to scan and upload the file. Frustrating…I know… but the workaround of offering an assignment directly after students complete the quiz will resolve these frustrations! To do this….

Adding a ‘File Upload’ question type to the end of a Canvas Quiz

If you happened to answer No to any or all of the questions stated above, you can simply define the last question on your quiz as a ‘file upload‘ question type. This will allow students to upload their pdf as the final step in completing the exam. As a word of caution though…you will still need to download each submission from Speedgrader in order to review and grade the file.

Remember, in either case, students will need some time to scan their handwritten document, convert it into a pdf and upload it.

If you have an idea for a future blog topic that you would like us to address or just need additional support with Canvas, Zoom or Huskycast, please email elearning@mtu.edu

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