Best Mode to Proceed for Creating Online Material

[srosebrock]

Okay Hive Mind, I got one for you!

I have an instructor who would like to take a beloved course material (currently out of print due to age of workbook) and turn it into an online material via Canvas. He likes the way the book organized his content (a vocational study focus) as well as how the material is reviewed for license exams (there's different styles of questions, graphs, pictures, etc that all direct relate to how the students need to execute their skill exams). He is currently using paper copies of the assignments in addition to his fully stocked Canvas class that he's built over the last 3 years.

Where should we focus efforts to take his lessons and this material to create a Canvas friendly online resource? Digital notebooks (in the spirit of an editable PDF copy perhaps?), Canvas quizzes (to expedite grading, but still give question variation), or something else? He likes the idea of auto-grading where appropriate so students can get instantaneous feedback, but wants the students to also use this "workbook" to review and study for their license exams later in the year. My gut reaction is to build chunks of quizzes to assist in quickly organizing the information similar to the workbook, but is this the best for long term access and review? What are we missing in considerations that will pay off later?

On this same spirit of conversation, we have an entire department of career based instructors who have amazing materials that they have created and we are interested in building a one stop shop online course to compile their resources. If I can figure this out for 1 course/instructor, I'd love to know if anyone has done this for a whole team of teachers and what landmines to avoid, tips or tricks to consider, etc. 

Thanks in advance!

[ColtonSwapp]

Hello @srosebrock 

Thanks for posting this in the global canvas Community! 

For the material that the instructor is using, does it only exist in a on paper format? meaning is it from a physical book? Or is it digital content? 

• Canvas quizzes might be the best way to go if they like the idea of things being autograded as student submit. Keep in mind that there are question types that require manual grading, such as Essay, and File upload questions. They can also add comments to each answer on questions that provide instantaneous feedback for the students. 
• One cool part about Canvas quizzes is that they allow for images(graphs/pictures) to be embedded directly to the question. If the material they are using in a physical book, you might need to scan the images and upload them to the course files. HERE is a list of the different file types that can be previewed in Canvas. 
• If the content is On Paper, they could scan the content and embed them on pages in the course. Some instructors will use the modules page for this and share any files and pages to that area of the course for the students. 
• As far as compiling resources, Canvas Commons comes to mind. Canvas Commons is a great way for instructors to share course content with any and all instructors at your institution. It also allows them to back up course content for future use. You could compile the teachers content and place them into a Commons resource. The instructors would then be able to copy the content into their courses when they get access to them. This will ensure long term access to the content. 

Hopefully this helps! 

-Colton