Most Unconventional Use of Canvas

[FSUKevinKennedy]

Hello everyone, and happy summer!

I was recently talking with some colleagues about some non-standard uses of Canvas at their universities, from departmental testing to first-year readiness programs. I'm curious: what's the most unconventional way you (or someone you know) has used Canvas in higher education? 

[John__Lane]

Probably not all that unconventional but we're opening up a Canvas 'course' for our HR group to be publicly visible.   Their modules will cover all the onboarding necessary for new employees without any need for login credentials.  (not sure why a web page wouldn't work but here we are. )  This will be up, shortly.  

We have peer mentor services where we enroll FTIC and transfer students (separate courses) where these different cohort of students can login to get resources and arrange for tutoring, advising, and basic needs help, etc.

We have continued ed classes and a police academy using Canvas but because their semester cycles are vastly different we are using a different enrollment tool that also takes care of billing and is completely run by their respective departments.

In a previous LMS faculty were using courses as a method for Rank and Tenure processing.   They had templates of different folders that candidates uploaded their previous scholarly work.   That said, we moved that over to TEAMS but the word on the street is they are going to move this to a proper enterprise software application, shortly.

Hope this is helpful.

[FSUKevinKennedy]

Oooo I think the use of Canvas as an HR tool is really smart!

[J-Smith]

Would you be willing to share the name of the enrollment tool you are using for continuing ed/police academy?  We're currently seeking a solution for that very issue.  Thanks!

[John__Lane]

HI @J-Smith   We use Xenegrade.  https://xenegrade.com/

I have their contact info if you want to send a private email to me at lanej@uhd.edu

Best regards,

~JL

[cms_hickss]

We have a couple, but probably the best example is, we have two similar courses that have no content in them, the only tool enabled is Announcements and the homepage is set to a single page with a brief explanation. The courses are used as alerts to remind student of something important (say, fall registration or drop for non-payment). The students are enrolled (though CSV, so they can't decline) and then as they take action are removed from the course by daily CSV files. The course is then "reset" between uses.

The course announcements (not daily) are used to alert students that they need to take an action. It also means that a course card shows up on the student's dashboard which works as a secondary reminder.

[FSUKevinKennedy]

Neat, it's like impact announcements, but inline with the other course announcements!

[cms_hickss]

Yes. And ensure it works for mobile app users since impact does not work with mobile yet.

[laurencolby09]

We just finished launching a four module Learner Toolkit course, which walks students through the technology they'll need to succeed during their university journey. We included students in overview videos for each module which were recorded in a Tik-Tok style fashion. The four modules cover how to get tech help, institution-specific resources, a deep dive into Canvas features, and finally a Microsoft module (as our school is a Microsoft school). It's a course anyone can choose to enroll in and we've included the enroll link in our blueprint that gets loaded automatically into all our Canvas courses. I'm excited to see how it goes, as we've been hearing that there have been varying degrees of student preparedness in terms of tech use, so hopefully this is a resource some students find valuable!

Another example is a course that my team created in partnership with a faculty member. It was before I joined the team so I wasn't part of the planning, but it examines queer history and is a part of a series of belonging events. The course includes riddles, puzzles, and clues that teams have to solve one week at a time. It's really creative, and I loved walking my way through it!

[FSUKevinKennedy]

I really like that technology preparedness usage! We've been discussing different responses to that same dilemma, and have discussed something like this.

[CynthiaEdwards1]

We have a number of unique ways that we use Canvas at UNTHSC. We do have a student self-enroll course that covers Canvas basics as well as the other technologies that they will be using here. An icon is available in the global navigation for students to enroll in the course. There is also a course entitled Be Well that covers personal well being. An program or course can import into their course whatever modules they would like from Be Well. I have created a course specifically for the Division of Academic Innovation that is a technology reference course. It contains all the tips and tricks for all the technologies that we support. It is especially helpful to those who may not use a technology that often. Very unique is the course for the Center for Academic Performance. This is an academic support course with modules on time management, study, tutoring, writing, etc.. Literally every student on campus (approx. 2500) is in this course. They are divided into groups by program and graduation year. This course used to have 20+ courses; one for each program and graduation year. Two years ago I redesigned and consolidated it into the one course with groups format. There are a few other examples, but those are the top ones.

[JesseSierke]

What's unusual about what my English Department at the University of Alabama in Birmingham is doing is that I am an undergraduate student who is using Canvas tools to redesign an instructor resource site that uses a Canvas course shell.  My IT department granted me access as a developer, and I have been able to put in some nice functionality.

[JessieMcDowell]

Similar to others, we're using courses as info hubs for students, various campus offices and my office - the teaching & learning dept. 

Somewhat unique is our method of using a course and assigning all professors from a school/dept to that course and calling it their "Hub", (i.e. Counseling Hub, Math Hub, etc). The chair of that dept. decides the specifics on how it'll be leveraged, but the main idea is to provide a space where all professors in the same subject can share resources, ideas, ask questions, network and share assignments/content pages with others. This has become very helpful for new adjuncts. The chair could have a module in the course stating that the module assignments are alternatives to existing assignments to allow new adjuncts some choice within reason. You could have multiple professors teaching the same course pool resources, case studies, articles and more.

My office also made an accessibility training course for faculty members to complete, along with mini assignments.

[JesseSierke]

I like the term "Hub" for these sites.  I think Canvas should look into adding support for these types of Canvas sites which serve as hubs for learning administration, knowledge, and support, creating a new feature of the platform.

[clamberty]

Each of our departments have their own shell. All full-time instructors (small school only 1-5 per department) are dual enrolled as Teacher (so they can modify content as needed) and Student. All Adjunct instructors are enrolled as Students. We use this space to house some common information (handbooks, assessment training videos, etc.). There is also department specific information (suggested schedules for Composition I, common/model assignments for our general education artifact collection, department meeting minutes, etc.).

Each term all instructors are to submit their assessment reflections into an assignment created with a due date. All general education instructors have an assignment where they upload the student artifacts. 

There was an original goal to facilitate communication but that has not really happened. 

[GingerGlass]

We used it for our internal SACSCOC accreditation committee to keep documentation of meetings, submit their rough drafts, and communicate. We also have a course set up as a repository for submitted reports, substantive changes, etc. so that various departments have access to them.  

[Marjolein24]

We have an accreditation coming up and are also looking into this option @GingerGlass thanks for sharing! Would you recommend using Canvas this way?

[dspiel]

I have created a number of setups for different programs. Just a short list:

• Beginning of each quarter load all students into a Student Body shell that is used for a means to reach out to all students enrolled. Place this in a Sub Category so that students can't message or see other students.
• Student Clubs
• Created a Blueprint configuration that is used for Faculty Portfolios that are used during the promotion process
• Students enroll into what is called a School Of and each School Of has students enrolled that are part of that program. Such as Business, Nursing, Computer Science... This way they can send out targeted announcements and have a means of communicating with students who are part of their program.

a few more, but don't want to bore you to much.