From the outset you will need to communicate to your students what successful learning looks like for your course. This doesn’t have to be prescriptive. Think of it as a map. There may be many roads to get to the destination you have chosen but giving students an exemplar - a rubric or some other form of clearly articulated expectations - will be critical for them to make sense of their learning. Fortunately, it is fairly easy to include your expectations in Canvas via the Canvas Rubric Tool:
CANVAS RUBRIC TOOL If you decide to use a rubric, Canvas has a tool that allows you to attach a rubric to graded activities. Using Canvas’ rubric tool in conjunction with its audio commenting feature will simplify your life and allow you to quickly and effectively give structured feedback to your students.
Now you may be thinking, “That’s all great but in order to use that rubric tool I’ll need to create a rubric that is appropriate for my subject matter, which is a lot of work up front.” That’s true, an effective rubric can take a lot of time to craft but you don’t have to start from scratch:
RUBRICS AS A STARTING POINT We will be handing out packets of the AAC&U’s rubrics during this week’s workshop. If you don’t have a rubric for your course yet you may want to peruse this collection of rubrics to see if there is descriptive language you could use as a starting point. All the rubrics were created by groups of faculty from institutions across the country and they cover everything from inquiry and analysis to intercultural knowledge to quantitative literacy and creative thinking.