Any Counselors/Guidance Using Canvas and How?

[mkane]

Hello! We are trying to get begin the process of building our Canvas modules for counseling. Where did you start? Did you link your Twitter feed? Need some guidance! 

[stephanie_pope]

Hey Meredith,

We modeled our counseling program in 4 separate courses in Canvas. Each course is grade level specific to help the students focus on the important information they need at that time. That's were we started.

Stephanie

[mkane]

Thank you Stephanie!

[kristin_bayless]

Meredith,

We're in pilot with three of our schools this year for counseling courses.  Two of the schools are traditional high schools and one of the schools is a group of magnet schools comprising different programs (Home School, Virtual Learning, etc.)

In each of the schools we created courses by grade level, as Stephanie mentioned.  The courses are named College & Career Guidance and are meant to be shared by both the career specialist and the counselors.  We cross-listed the courses for the various magnet schools so now there's one Freshman course for all the magnet programs that don't have or are combined with another building.

I just asked a counselor for some feedback yesterday and received this reply:

Positives

Students are able to follow along with material we are presenting on their ipads.

Ability to survey students through a short quiz.

Students are able to access materials we covered after we work with them. Great for students who were absent.

Negatives

Feels a little like a reproduction to the information available on our website, but maybe that is just how I am choosing to use it.

Does feel like another place to post events in addition to the website, morning announcements, emails to parents/students, posting flyers, newsletter, etc. Hard for me to always remember to use the calendar to post these events.

I think there will be a tendency to move away from the web page towards Canvas as time goes on.  They are talking about placing forecasting materials in Canvas this year.

As the Canvas Admin, I had visions of gamification in conjunction with Career Cruising that could be built upon starting with the Freshman year, but this was way beyond how the counselors wanted to use it to begin with.  Their need was as more of a communications tool.

Hope this helps!

Update Spring 2017

I thought I'd provide some additional feedback on our pilots as described above.  We've since expanded our College & Career Guidance grade level courses to all schools grades 8-12. 

We've begun to run a forecasting course through the courses.  While there is a single course (content) for all grade level courses this year, which the counselors will import from our Commons, we expect to customize by grade level in the future.  For example, explanations of magnet programs are of more interest to younger students.  We also want to include some paths through the material to personalize by interest.  We're still in the early stages, but this is gaining quite a bit of traction for us. I expect that next year we may expand the courses to include grades 6-12.

[mkane]

This helps! I appreciate you taking the time to answer my post. Thank you so much, Kristin!

[kobrien3]

 @mkane , 

Thank you for posting this question. 

 @stephanie_pope  and  @kristin_bayless , thank you for sharing your insights.

We are creating a pilot program for next year's rising seniors...

Meredith, I am assuming you embedded Twitter...what other content did you share? 

Kristie, I appreciate the pros and cons. We are an iPad school, too.

I agree the first iteration will feel like a website...

When imagining this college counseling course, we are hoping to repurpose Canvas for the following:

• Survey (as you mentioned)
• "Graded" Survey - to track submissions of materials, sign ups, etc. - Will be in students' to-do lists.
• "Grades" (complete/incomplete)  Badges (Badgr)- this may be ambitious this spring trimester, but we may dip our toe in the medium.  @khammond ‌
• Calendar - events: college counseling days, deadlines, visits, etc. that will be seen along with other academic due dates so they can plan accordingly. 
• Discussions - generate online conversations where students can pose questions and share experiences. 
• Curate content with (ungraded) discussions from college admissions offices.
• Assignments for the steps in the college essay writing process.

Any suggestions or updates on your college "courses" greatly appreciated.

 could help with engagement. 

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration!

Cc:  @cclowes ‌

[tross]

We have just started with our Counselors.  At the high schools, they build courses by cohort and use to communicate information, deadlines, timetables etc.  They gather info from the students to help with recommendation letters and also to help the counselors prepare for 4 year plan sessions with the students.  

Below the high school, we create one course for each counselor.  We enroll students based on the counselor assigned in the SIS.  We call them all Counselor's Corner.  Just really an information share.  We have some that have begun to create groups in their courses as a way for the students that are in some of their group sessions to have a place to share between session.  

[kona]

tross‌, we're just getting ready to do the same thing! We're going to do a soft roll-out in the summer and that should help us get the bugs out so we can do the full roll-out this fall! Our advisors are really excited about being able to communicate and share information with students in Canvas and we're excited to be more fully integrating Canvas into our Institution! 🙂