Meet Your Go-To Guides for Canvas Personalization
Personalizing Canvas courses can sometimes feel like an enormous challenge. In this session, you will explore two succinct resource guides that break down the elements of personalization within Canvas through both technical and pedagogical lenses. These guides will easily become a go-to tool for teachers, coaches, designers, specialists, and admin!
Welcome to the meet your go to guides for Canvas personalization. Somebody had a really great question. They said, are you gonna sell me anything today? I'm gonna sell you on these guides, but they're free. So, just for anybody else wondering that, this is a free session. Before I even introduce myself and my team, we're gonna do a little greeting. Don't worry.
It's nothing too crazy. Trying to get my little clicker to work. This was some, greeting that I used a lot on the last team that I worked on. And I believe if I'm not mistaken that they actually learned about this greeting at the instructure Khan conference, maybe. Might be wrong.
No. Oh, I'm getting a note. No. Somebody from my old teams here, and she's saying no. No.
But it felt like the perfect greeting for the theme, which is, moments. And so I want you on your phone to find a picture that brings you joy and share it with one to two people. If you don't comfortable sharing any pictures from your own personal camera camera roll, you can Google something. But, yeah, I just wanna take a few minutes just to kind of meet the people around you, share something that makes you smile. I bet it will make the person next to you smile too.
Gonna give you a few minutes. I heard a lot of laughter. I heard a lot of AWz. I even See, people are still connecting over this one. You know it's a good greeting when people don't want it to end.
I even made a connection with someone over, my moment of joy too So I just really wanted to take the time to ground us in that before, we set off on our journey of these two go to guides. I also just wanted to get a read in the room of who is k through twelve here. Wonderful. That's what I I predicted. And who is upper ed or what is it? College ed.
Higher ed. Thank you. Can you tell which sphere I live in. I, you know what? I am so glad to see so many, not upper, but higher ed folks here today, because they only gave us the opport I hope everyone's okay. They only give us the opportunity to put one tag on it, but these are so applicable, and we know that a lot of college professors are not personalizing.
Things for students, and this will hopefully make your jobs easier when you're working with your college professors. So thank you. That gives me a good idea of who's in the room. Now It's not just me. I'm gonna be the one talking, most of today, but I'm actually part of the team.
I am from We are housed in Austin, Texas. We are woohoo. We got another Austin person. And we are an education service Center. There are twenty ESCs across Texas.
We do a lot of different things at each one of these places. Everything from bus driver training, to nutrition, guidelines, information, to what we mainly do, which is support educators across the districts that are within our regions. So a lot of adult professional learning of k twelve teachers, but it is teaching adults, which is why really we have a lot in common with our higher ed. Colleagues here today. And we are the learner experience crew.
I am not going to read our theory of change to you. But I do wanna point out that the word technology does not live in it. And everybody in this room knows that oftentimes we are pegged as the tech people the, unofficial IT people, even though that is nowhere on our listed jobs, and way outside of our pay grade sometimes. But, yeah, we know that really what we're about is the human connections. So I wanna have my team stand up and they're gonna briefly introduce themselves and tell you a little bit what about what they do that's outside of Canvas, who has ever heard this? Oh, I thought y'all were the Canvas folks, or maybe you're even referred to as the Canvas folks.
Yeah. We'll just walk in the lobby. You're the Canvas folks. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
And, yes, and I'm Adrian Tizzby. I'm prime I'm the online data specialist and analyst on our team. So I analyze data, and I also help manage our SIS for region thirteen. Hi, y'all. I'm not listed because I am the newest member of the LX team.
But my name is Rachel Dorsey, and I'm an instructional designer at region thirteen. And My thing, yes, is Canvas. I do a lot of course designs, working with internal and external clients. But feedback takers and feedback giver as well with my clients is how I would identify. Hi, my name is Aaron Graves.
I'm also an instructional designer at region thirteen. So a lot of my work, it is working with subject matter experts to create trainings, for people that are in our region. But we also work with the, Texas education agency creating courses for a special education that works, so that teachers can take those courses, for, continuing education credits. Other things that I do, I'm really passionate about accessibility. So I've been really working, with people are created.
We aren't the only people at our institution that create courses. So I've really been pushing accessibility, not only in canvas, but in everything that we create. We also have some cool things that we do like coffee chat that I help advertise for. I make fun little GIFs or GIFs. However, you wanna say it.
So yeah. GIF. But there are, I like several little things on this that we all kinda have pieces of. I'm Scott. Loud.
I'm the project coordinator for the team, and so, I've helped facilitate all these hopefully. And, that also makes me the primary LMS admin or Canvas admin, for our organization. Scott's our boss. He hates that when I say it. But it's true.
And he's an amazing leader. I feel very lucky to work for and with him. And Rachel mentioned she's brand new. It's because I used to be an instructional designer, before that. Eye for five years was a blended and personalized learning coach.
Yep. That that's my old boss who was also a joy to work for. In Austin ISD, and then a classroom teacher for almost ten years. And now I am the new blended and personalized learning program manager. So I'm sure you can see the circle that I fit, most closely into, which would be the enthusiast of blended and personalized learning.
So we're here to learn about canvas, but we know that we wear a lot of other hats. And I just wanted to acknowledge that because I know everybody here has heard the, I thought you were the canvas folks, but you're doing so much more. So We are here today to talk about these two guides. And I will talk a little bit more about these, but they are inspired from guides that came out of the Highlander Institute. And if you're not familiar with the Highlander Institute, their stuff is really good.
And it's all free and you can access their resources for free, and you can even turn them into what, to something more hyper specific for you, for your cause, which is what I did when it came to Canvas. So I'm just gonna go ahead and Let's take a look. Oh my god. I hope I did also open these up in another tab just hoping that I wouldn't have to use them, but good. Everything's working.
So this one right here is the Alex canvas personalization progression guide. I am many things in this world, but like being succinct with my words is not one of them. So we're I'm open to workshopping that title. I realize it's long. And one of the things that I noticed when I was coaching teachers at the k twelve level, and now that I'm kind of work when I was an instructional designer working with educators of adults is that it was hard to visualize something so abstract, like a personalized course.
Like it was hard to make it concrete. Because, yeah, we talk a lot about blended learning. And, like, well, what does blended learning mean? Well, I like to describe blended learning. Like, blended learning is the vehicle, personalization is the destination. So when I think about moving course designers, and this one is built, you can see it's built to name what the designer would do within the course.
When I feel when I'm thinking about how I can move designers further along the progression. Like, there's no there's nothing wrong with the resource course. That's where we're starting. But how might we get them to nudge them towards an instructive course or a differentiated course? You can't make the leap from designing a resource course to designing a personalized course. And so The first view of this progression guide is through the lens of, more of like the pedagogical pieces of a canvas course, you might notice.
And then when you click on each type of course, and I'm just gonna click on the very first one, because I don't wanna spoil anything because they build on each other. Isn't this is through the technical canvas lens? What are you doing from a technical perspective in canvas to make those pedagogical things happen. And so just for an example, let's click on a differentiated or take a look at a differentiated course, right? So we're looking at the designer is using the canvas features. It's not talking about how they're using them or what Canvas features, but offering choice, right? Maybe the choice is in pace, maybe the choices in submission type, or media artifacts that they're exploring, maybe the designer is using those features to provide some basic feedback, right? The learners are getting feedback. And once again with the choice, because of course we're under the differentiated when we're thinking about that pathway towards personalization, that they're giving choice and they're engaging with content, the based on their unique learning style.
And so when you click on that, then it's gonna pop you to what that looks like and maybe some canvas tools you might be using. Okay. Well, multiple submission types in assignments, and the learner facing rich content editor and discussions are utilized to offer choice and product submission. So trying to be a little bit more specific about, okay, cool. Those are the things that are happening in the course, but how am I doing those from a technical lens? And these don't change as you move further along the progression guide.
Like those three stayed the same. It just builds on it. So over time, your designers or whoever you're working with, or yourself, because this is a great tool for somebody personally use? I love to you, like, am I doing this? Is my course personalized? Is it possible for my course to be personalized? Sometimes it's not. Sometimes I need to I don't wanna say settle for a differentiated course, but sometimes that is the best choice for however much time I have to plan it or the scenario or the length of the training, things like that. And then when you get to the end, if you're doing all of these things, then you're gonna have a personalized course.
And this could be harder to do if a course is fully online. And I realized that. I think there are ways to do it. And there are some suggestions built in, I mean, really using that speed grader feature. I tell people all the time, the speed grader feature is my favorite thing in canvas because you can provide links out to exemplars.
Like, you can you can create an entire list of you don't have to rewrite it every time. You can create an entire list of blurbs that you're sending back to people with exemplars or you can use the video tool. Especially with our littlest learners. Who wouldn't wanna get some, like, a video with feedback from your teacher, their face, giving you a round of applause and a few kind words. So that is what I mean when I say the first page is through a pedagogical lens.
And as you click into these, it's gonna tell you how to do that or what tools within Canvas might get you to that point. This is not an exhaustive list either. This is just a way to help people progress either their own courses or to support others in progressing their courses more along that personalization continuum. At the bottom, I have linked yay. I have linked the document that inspired me from the Highlander Highlander Institute.
They know that I'm doing this today, and they know that I did this. They've seen it. They like it. They're cool with it. So, And this is really good too, but you'll notice or what I noticed is that when I was working with teachers and we were really trying to work within their canvas course, like their face to face instruction was really strong.
But they were wanting to build a little bit more in canvas that this didn't offer as many, like, it was too abstract for them to then think about the tool of canvas because I think canvas is a pretty abstract tool for for anyone who is a beginner to an intermediate user. It it feels kind of clunky in the beginning. So how do you explain that? Oh, let's see. Was this? No. This is where I am.
Okay. So the other guide that is it's not better. It's just different. And and honestly, I think it is delightfully chaotic. It does not move sequentially.
So if that's how your brain works, then maybe you'll like this one better. I prefer using both of them. But I I mean, I really just there's no wrong way to use these. If you determine that you just like one of these guides and you really wanna just focus on that one than you can. But you might be working with educators who, you know, one of these might speak to them a little bit more.
So this one Let's open it up here. This one is based off of four qualities or pillars that would lead up to personalization. When all four of these qualities are present, then you have personalized learning. And then for each of the quality, I didn't say look force because I know that that can be a very triggering word for some educators. But I said, what could this quality look like? And so these are things that you might be able you could use it as a checklist of, like, do I have these things in my course as I'm going through, and then maybe even determine, okay, well, I am doing really well at learner driven and accessible and user friendly, but it looks like the quality of differentiated a mastery based might be where I I should focus on.
You'll see that there are four indicators that we kind of determined as the bare minimum of what should be expected in a canvas course. And very similar to that resource co resource course, like, it's the bare minimum. A lot of them have to do with accessible, you know, subtitles, alt text, learning objectives, I think those are important. And then learners can see themselves in the course images, materials, and media. That means do you have you considered your demographic and can everyone see themselves in it? So and that is something that I see a lot, especially in student facing courses, is that there has been a lot clip art or images or videos pulled where it's primarily, white people.
So just considering if it's learner driven, kids have to be able to see themselves in it. So I also wanted to show you the inspiration for this because it is really good. It's just not specific to canvas, and they call theirs the priority practices. And it's the same concept of, here are the four domains that they have, and then that's what these domains look like. In the classroom.
So a great tool as well, even if you only take the Highlander Institute guides, away from today's session, that would be exciting. Although I do hope you like the other Canvas specific guides too. So using the guides, I mean, there are endless amounts of ways that you can use them, but I've come up with a few that you might consider coaching conversations to their non evaluative. They're friendly. It's a it's a low stakes conversation.
Where do you see your course right here? What are some things that you're already excelling in, and that could lead towards the goal setting piece of it. Like, are there any goals you wanna set for yourself for maybe the next course or your next module or the next semester. It could also be for analyzing your own course. Like I said, I like to use these and ensure that I personally am meeting the needs of my learners And sometimes I think I am, and I'm like, oh, I really I missed this really big quality right here, or I thought that this would have been a personalized course, but really it's just a mastery based course. So it's helpful for me And then feedback loops, asking for feedback, taking that feedback, and then being like, well, how am I gonna fulfill this feedback if this is what my participants are telling me, okay, well, let's go back to one of these guides and let's think about, what I could be doing, where those gap align with, and then set make some changes based off of those.
And really these guides as I said earlier, when I asked who was in the room, they're great for our littlest learners, to our college learners, to are adult learners, which is mainly what I work with these days. So I wanted to give you some time to explore the guides, and I know we don't have a ton of time together, But I wanted to give you about five minutes, to choose so this is the progression one, the one that looked like the stair steps. And then the quality indicator guides was the one that I said was more chaotic. But in a good way, where you can pop around and you don't necessarily have to go in order. And you don't have to use these questions, but if you want to anchor in these questions as you explore these guides, then you can.
What do you notice? What do you wonder? And how might you use this guide? And then we are gonna have some time to share out some of the things we noticed and wondered and came across. So is everyone was everyone able to at least choose one of the guides. Got a bitly and QR codes. Okay. I also have some paper copies.
That I flew all the way from Texas with. So raise your hand if you want a paper copy. One of my colleagues will come out. You might need to tell them which one you want. Aaron has the progressive guides, and then here is the quality indicators guide.
And I'm gonna give you just four minutes, and then we're gonna come back together. So would any person or group be willing to share out anything that they talked about. And we we have a a mic that Scott can walk around. Anybody wanna share? Scott? We're gonna make Scott work for it. Yeah.
I'm generally a pretty loud person, but I think we should always use phones for people that might have different issues. Two claps for that. So I was sharing with my partner here that, I'm, I'm, formerly an education technology Tosa, so those canvas folks but now I work in Ed Services in college and career readiness and some of what we're trying to do to, to sort of disrupt predictably inequitable outcomes for our our learners is move folks towards personalized learning towards, like, using more project based learning, using more, grading for equity strategies, things like that. So as I'm going through the guide, having had that ed tech lens, and having been those canvas folks and having those coaching conversations with teachers and now trying to systemically change the way that we approach instruction I can really imagine using this guide by partnering with my my ed tech people at my district, and and utilizing like some of the same language in the professional development that I'm offering and then in like the individualized coaching that they're doing so that when teachers are working with the EdTech Toses, trying to, think about course design. Maybe the conversation doesn't start with, how do I get to a personalized learning course? Maybe it's just how do I create a more engaging Canvas course period and they can use that progression to kind of walk them, you know, unknowingly into the pedagogical shifts that we're trying to create throughout the district.
So I love the guides. I think they're lovely. Thank you for sharing. I love the the the blind walking them, like, to Like, they don't know it. But we're we're here now.
We did a, like, they didn't know. We blindfolded them. And we got him to personalize course. Any other sharer outers? On the quality indicators guide, I love the steps at the top. We've we're fairly new district to implementing Canvas.
So it really offers, teachers kind of a way to look at their courses. And then to kinda challenge them, look at one or two things that you could continue to add to your course instead of totally being overwhelmed and being like, oh my gosh, I this is too much for me. I think as an instructional technology or an instructional coach, I can go in and just challenge them. So maybe add one or two each semester as they're building their courses. And I'm glad you brought those steps up because they were on my notes, and then I forgot to mention them.
But yes, at the top of the quality indicators guide, there are some steps if you just want to hand it to people. That's another way to access, and engage with that document too. So thank you for bringing those up. Because I think that's a neat feature of it. Here we have someone else.
Sorry to make you up. No. You're good. Yeah. Thanks.
So one thing we do at our university is we have created a sample course that exhibits all of the qualities that we want to see in, the personalized courses that we are pushing all of our faculty to we have a standard template that they they start with that they're all expected to use as the basis of the organization. And then we make it clear what's possible to do in the sample course by exemplifying the different kinds of activities and assignments and so on that would live up to the standards we're trying to, get all the faculty to live up to. And all of the the faculty are are subscribe to that sample course so they they you see it. Wonderful. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you so much for exploring those guides. I also wanted to add, when you go to the little little links, but not very little, but the personalized links or the QR codes. If you download that on your device, those pdfs are fully accessible and have been sent to an accessibility firm. So I also wanted to point that out. Because that is something that we are really working on at region thirteen.
So those are those are good to go. Did I create any questions? Yes. Differentiated course, the when you bring in a lot of universal design principles, like multiple submission types. I don't understand what Making sure the learner facing rich content editor is utilized to offer product choice or choice in product submission? Like when you have a text box response, the learner facer rich content editor instead of them just like typing in it, really working with your students to utilize like how they can hyperlink, how they can embed a picture, how they can How do a video, something like that. Even though submission types, you can set it to where they can record a video, but just so that they can really make their submission a little fancier, maybe a little more personal for them, especially in discussions too.
That's pretty cool in discussions when you can show them how to use the HTML to put a GIF in there or something like that. Okay. I gotcha. Yeah. Yeah.
They only give me there are only so many characters I can use in the in there, but that's a great question. Did I create any other questions? Awesome. Well, we had a greeting and I said that we love a greeting but I love a closing just as much. So this is a quote from Renee Brown. She actually usually and if you're not familiar with Renee Brown, the state of Texas really likes her.
She went to UT, and she lives in Houston now, and she has one of the most viewed TED Talks on shame. Is it shame or vulnerability? Vulnerability, but she also has a lot of research on shame. She's really a lovely person. And she uses the two words to start meetings with. But in our team, the Lx crew, learner experience crew, we use two words to clothes, and sometimes it's an inside joke, sometimes it's something we learn, sometimes it's a takeaway.
So I thought we could just real quickly You can use your phone to do a QR code and just plug in two words. Like I said, it could be a takeaway, two separate words. They could be connected to each other. They could be not connected. We over utilize hyphens quite frequently to to meet the two word limit and, and yeah.
It's just a fun way to to end the meeting and as you plug in your two words, there we go. Oh, I'm here to talk. Oh, I like the word hungry. It could be that you need a snack or it could be that you were hungry for this information. So I like that it could go either way because I like information and snacks.
Great. Awesome. Yes. We've got a hyphen user. Yes.
Amazing. Well, we really appreciate you coming today and sticking around and participate. I know. I haven't been to a session yet where they're like, do a turn and talk yet. So I wasn't quite sure how it was gonna go over, but I appreciate y'all for for being vulnerable and for sharing some of your ideas and wonderings and questions. So thanks so much, and I hope the rest of y'all's conference is a delight.
It's nothing too crazy. Trying to get my little clicker to work. This was some, greeting that I used a lot on the last team that I worked on. And I believe if I'm not mistaken that they actually learned about this greeting at the instructure Khan conference, maybe. Might be wrong.
No. Oh, I'm getting a note. No. Somebody from my old teams here, and she's saying no. No.
But it felt like the perfect greeting for the theme, which is, moments. And so I want you on your phone to find a picture that brings you joy and share it with one to two people. If you don't comfortable sharing any pictures from your own personal camera camera roll, you can Google something. But, yeah, I just wanna take a few minutes just to kind of meet the people around you, share something that makes you smile. I bet it will make the person next to you smile too.
Gonna give you a few minutes. I heard a lot of laughter. I heard a lot of AWz. I even See, people are still connecting over this one. You know it's a good greeting when people don't want it to end.
I even made a connection with someone over, my moment of joy too So I just really wanted to take the time to ground us in that before, we set off on our journey of these two go to guides. I also just wanted to get a read in the room of who is k through twelve here. Wonderful. That's what I I predicted. And who is upper ed or what is it? College ed.
Higher ed. Thank you. Can you tell which sphere I live in. I, you know what? I am so glad to see so many, not upper, but higher ed folks here today, because they only gave us the opport I hope everyone's okay. They only give us the opportunity to put one tag on it, but these are so applicable, and we know that a lot of college professors are not personalizing.
Things for students, and this will hopefully make your jobs easier when you're working with your college professors. So thank you. That gives me a good idea of who's in the room. Now It's not just me. I'm gonna be the one talking, most of today, but I'm actually part of the team.
I am from We are housed in Austin, Texas. We are woohoo. We got another Austin person. And we are an education service Center. There are twenty ESCs across Texas.
We do a lot of different things at each one of these places. Everything from bus driver training, to nutrition, guidelines, information, to what we mainly do, which is support educators across the districts that are within our regions. So a lot of adult professional learning of k twelve teachers, but it is teaching adults, which is why really we have a lot in common with our higher ed. Colleagues here today. And we are the learner experience crew.
I am not going to read our theory of change to you. But I do wanna point out that the word technology does not live in it. And everybody in this room knows that oftentimes we are pegged as the tech people the, unofficial IT people, even though that is nowhere on our listed jobs, and way outside of our pay grade sometimes. But, yeah, we know that really what we're about is the human connections. So I wanna have my team stand up and they're gonna briefly introduce themselves and tell you a little bit what about what they do that's outside of Canvas, who has ever heard this? Oh, I thought y'all were the Canvas folks, or maybe you're even referred to as the Canvas folks.
Yeah. We'll just walk in the lobby. You're the Canvas folks. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
And, yes, and I'm Adrian Tizzby. I'm prime I'm the online data specialist and analyst on our team. So I analyze data, and I also help manage our SIS for region thirteen. Hi, y'all. I'm not listed because I am the newest member of the LX team.
But my name is Rachel Dorsey, and I'm an instructional designer at region thirteen. And My thing, yes, is Canvas. I do a lot of course designs, working with internal and external clients. But feedback takers and feedback giver as well with my clients is how I would identify. Hi, my name is Aaron Graves.
I'm also an instructional designer at region thirteen. So a lot of my work, it is working with subject matter experts to create trainings, for people that are in our region. But we also work with the, Texas education agency creating courses for a special education that works, so that teachers can take those courses, for, continuing education credits. Other things that I do, I'm really passionate about accessibility. So I've been really working, with people are created.
We aren't the only people at our institution that create courses. So I've really been pushing accessibility, not only in canvas, but in everything that we create. We also have some cool things that we do like coffee chat that I help advertise for. I make fun little GIFs or GIFs. However, you wanna say it.
So yeah. GIF. But there are, I like several little things on this that we all kinda have pieces of. I'm Scott. Loud.
I'm the project coordinator for the team, and so, I've helped facilitate all these hopefully. And, that also makes me the primary LMS admin or Canvas admin, for our organization. Scott's our boss. He hates that when I say it. But it's true.
And he's an amazing leader. I feel very lucky to work for and with him. And Rachel mentioned she's brand new. It's because I used to be an instructional designer, before that. Eye for five years was a blended and personalized learning coach.
Yep. That that's my old boss who was also a joy to work for. In Austin ISD, and then a classroom teacher for almost ten years. And now I am the new blended and personalized learning program manager. So I'm sure you can see the circle that I fit, most closely into, which would be the enthusiast of blended and personalized learning.
So we're here to learn about canvas, but we know that we wear a lot of other hats. And I just wanted to acknowledge that because I know everybody here has heard the, I thought you were the canvas folks, but you're doing so much more. So We are here today to talk about these two guides. And I will talk a little bit more about these, but they are inspired from guides that came out of the Highlander Institute. And if you're not familiar with the Highlander Institute, their stuff is really good.
And it's all free and you can access their resources for free, and you can even turn them into what, to something more hyper specific for you, for your cause, which is what I did when it came to Canvas. So I'm just gonna go ahead and Let's take a look. Oh my god. I hope I did also open these up in another tab just hoping that I wouldn't have to use them, but good. Everything's working.
So this one right here is the Alex canvas personalization progression guide. I am many things in this world, but like being succinct with my words is not one of them. So we're I'm open to workshopping that title. I realize it's long. And one of the things that I noticed when I was coaching teachers at the k twelve level, and now that I'm kind of work when I was an instructional designer working with educators of adults is that it was hard to visualize something so abstract, like a personalized course.
Like it was hard to make it concrete. Because, yeah, we talk a lot about blended learning. And, like, well, what does blended learning mean? Well, I like to describe blended learning. Like, blended learning is the vehicle, personalization is the destination. So when I think about moving course designers, and this one is built, you can see it's built to name what the designer would do within the course.
When I feel when I'm thinking about how I can move designers further along the progression. Like, there's no there's nothing wrong with the resource course. That's where we're starting. But how might we get them to nudge them towards an instructive course or a differentiated course? You can't make the leap from designing a resource course to designing a personalized course. And so The first view of this progression guide is through the lens of, more of like the pedagogical pieces of a canvas course, you might notice.
And then when you click on each type of course, and I'm just gonna click on the very first one, because I don't wanna spoil anything because they build on each other. Isn't this is through the technical canvas lens? What are you doing from a technical perspective in canvas to make those pedagogical things happen. And so just for an example, let's click on a differentiated or take a look at a differentiated course, right? So we're looking at the designer is using the canvas features. It's not talking about how they're using them or what Canvas features, but offering choice, right? Maybe the choice is in pace, maybe the choices in submission type, or media artifacts that they're exploring, maybe the designer is using those features to provide some basic feedback, right? The learners are getting feedback. And once again with the choice, because of course we're under the differentiated when we're thinking about that pathway towards personalization, that they're giving choice and they're engaging with content, the based on their unique learning style.
And so when you click on that, then it's gonna pop you to what that looks like and maybe some canvas tools you might be using. Okay. Well, multiple submission types in assignments, and the learner facing rich content editor and discussions are utilized to offer choice and product submission. So trying to be a little bit more specific about, okay, cool. Those are the things that are happening in the course, but how am I doing those from a technical lens? And these don't change as you move further along the progression guide.
Like those three stayed the same. It just builds on it. So over time, your designers or whoever you're working with, or yourself, because this is a great tool for somebody personally use? I love to you, like, am I doing this? Is my course personalized? Is it possible for my course to be personalized? Sometimes it's not. Sometimes I need to I don't wanna say settle for a differentiated course, but sometimes that is the best choice for however much time I have to plan it or the scenario or the length of the training, things like that. And then when you get to the end, if you're doing all of these things, then you're gonna have a personalized course.
And this could be harder to do if a course is fully online. And I realized that. I think there are ways to do it. And there are some suggestions built in, I mean, really using that speed grader feature. I tell people all the time, the speed grader feature is my favorite thing in canvas because you can provide links out to exemplars.
Like, you can you can create an entire list of you don't have to rewrite it every time. You can create an entire list of blurbs that you're sending back to people with exemplars or you can use the video tool. Especially with our littlest learners. Who wouldn't wanna get some, like, a video with feedback from your teacher, their face, giving you a round of applause and a few kind words. So that is what I mean when I say the first page is through a pedagogical lens.
And as you click into these, it's gonna tell you how to do that or what tools within Canvas might get you to that point. This is not an exhaustive list either. This is just a way to help people progress either their own courses or to support others in progressing their courses more along that personalization continuum. At the bottom, I have linked yay. I have linked the document that inspired me from the Highlander Highlander Institute.
They know that I'm doing this today, and they know that I did this. They've seen it. They like it. They're cool with it. So, And this is really good too, but you'll notice or what I noticed is that when I was working with teachers and we were really trying to work within their canvas course, like their face to face instruction was really strong.
But they were wanting to build a little bit more in canvas that this didn't offer as many, like, it was too abstract for them to then think about the tool of canvas because I think canvas is a pretty abstract tool for for anyone who is a beginner to an intermediate user. It it feels kind of clunky in the beginning. So how do you explain that? Oh, let's see. Was this? No. This is where I am.
Okay. So the other guide that is it's not better. It's just different. And and honestly, I think it is delightfully chaotic. It does not move sequentially.
So if that's how your brain works, then maybe you'll like this one better. I prefer using both of them. But I I mean, I really just there's no wrong way to use these. If you determine that you just like one of these guides and you really wanna just focus on that one than you can. But you might be working with educators who, you know, one of these might speak to them a little bit more.
So this one Let's open it up here. This one is based off of four qualities or pillars that would lead up to personalization. When all four of these qualities are present, then you have personalized learning. And then for each of the quality, I didn't say look force because I know that that can be a very triggering word for some educators. But I said, what could this quality look like? And so these are things that you might be able you could use it as a checklist of, like, do I have these things in my course as I'm going through, and then maybe even determine, okay, well, I am doing really well at learner driven and accessible and user friendly, but it looks like the quality of differentiated a mastery based might be where I I should focus on.
You'll see that there are four indicators that we kind of determined as the bare minimum of what should be expected in a canvas course. And very similar to that resource co resource course, like, it's the bare minimum. A lot of them have to do with accessible, you know, subtitles, alt text, learning objectives, I think those are important. And then learners can see themselves in the course images, materials, and media. That means do you have you considered your demographic and can everyone see themselves in it? So and that is something that I see a lot, especially in student facing courses, is that there has been a lot clip art or images or videos pulled where it's primarily, white people.
So just considering if it's learner driven, kids have to be able to see themselves in it. So I also wanted to show you the inspiration for this because it is really good. It's just not specific to canvas, and they call theirs the priority practices. And it's the same concept of, here are the four domains that they have, and then that's what these domains look like. In the classroom.
So a great tool as well, even if you only take the Highlander Institute guides, away from today's session, that would be exciting. Although I do hope you like the other Canvas specific guides too. So using the guides, I mean, there are endless amounts of ways that you can use them, but I've come up with a few that you might consider coaching conversations to their non evaluative. They're friendly. It's a it's a low stakes conversation.
Where do you see your course right here? What are some things that you're already excelling in, and that could lead towards the goal setting piece of it. Like, are there any goals you wanna set for yourself for maybe the next course or your next module or the next semester. It could also be for analyzing your own course. Like I said, I like to use these and ensure that I personally am meeting the needs of my learners And sometimes I think I am, and I'm like, oh, I really I missed this really big quality right here, or I thought that this would have been a personalized course, but really it's just a mastery based course. So it's helpful for me And then feedback loops, asking for feedback, taking that feedback, and then being like, well, how am I gonna fulfill this feedback if this is what my participants are telling me, okay, well, let's go back to one of these guides and let's think about, what I could be doing, where those gap align with, and then set make some changes based off of those.
And really these guides as I said earlier, when I asked who was in the room, they're great for our littlest learners, to our college learners, to are adult learners, which is mainly what I work with these days. So I wanted to give you some time to explore the guides, and I know we don't have a ton of time together, But I wanted to give you about five minutes, to choose so this is the progression one, the one that looked like the stair steps. And then the quality indicator guides was the one that I said was more chaotic. But in a good way, where you can pop around and you don't necessarily have to go in order. And you don't have to use these questions, but if you want to anchor in these questions as you explore these guides, then you can.
What do you notice? What do you wonder? And how might you use this guide? And then we are gonna have some time to share out some of the things we noticed and wondered and came across. So is everyone was everyone able to at least choose one of the guides. Got a bitly and QR codes. Okay. I also have some paper copies.
That I flew all the way from Texas with. So raise your hand if you want a paper copy. One of my colleagues will come out. You might need to tell them which one you want. Aaron has the progressive guides, and then here is the quality indicators guide.
And I'm gonna give you just four minutes, and then we're gonna come back together. So would any person or group be willing to share out anything that they talked about. And we we have a a mic that Scott can walk around. Anybody wanna share? Scott? We're gonna make Scott work for it. Yeah.
I'm generally a pretty loud person, but I think we should always use phones for people that might have different issues. Two claps for that. So I was sharing with my partner here that, I'm, I'm, formerly an education technology Tosa, so those canvas folks but now I work in Ed Services in college and career readiness and some of what we're trying to do to, to sort of disrupt predictably inequitable outcomes for our our learners is move folks towards personalized learning towards, like, using more project based learning, using more, grading for equity strategies, things like that. So as I'm going through the guide, having had that ed tech lens, and having been those canvas folks and having those coaching conversations with teachers and now trying to systemically change the way that we approach instruction I can really imagine using this guide by partnering with my my ed tech people at my district, and and utilizing like some of the same language in the professional development that I'm offering and then in like the individualized coaching that they're doing so that when teachers are working with the EdTech Toses, trying to, think about course design. Maybe the conversation doesn't start with, how do I get to a personalized learning course? Maybe it's just how do I create a more engaging Canvas course period and they can use that progression to kind of walk them, you know, unknowingly into the pedagogical shifts that we're trying to create throughout the district.
So I love the guides. I think they're lovely. Thank you for sharing. I love the the the blind walking them, like, to Like, they don't know it. But we're we're here now.
We did a, like, they didn't know. We blindfolded them. And we got him to personalize course. Any other sharer outers? On the quality indicators guide, I love the steps at the top. We've we're fairly new district to implementing Canvas.
So it really offers, teachers kind of a way to look at their courses. And then to kinda challenge them, look at one or two things that you could continue to add to your course instead of totally being overwhelmed and being like, oh my gosh, I this is too much for me. I think as an instructional technology or an instructional coach, I can go in and just challenge them. So maybe add one or two each semester as they're building their courses. And I'm glad you brought those steps up because they were on my notes, and then I forgot to mention them.
But yes, at the top of the quality indicators guide, there are some steps if you just want to hand it to people. That's another way to access, and engage with that document too. So thank you for bringing those up. Because I think that's a neat feature of it. Here we have someone else.
Sorry to make you up. No. You're good. Yeah. Thanks.
So one thing we do at our university is we have created a sample course that exhibits all of the qualities that we want to see in, the personalized courses that we are pushing all of our faculty to we have a standard template that they they start with that they're all expected to use as the basis of the organization. And then we make it clear what's possible to do in the sample course by exemplifying the different kinds of activities and assignments and so on that would live up to the standards we're trying to, get all the faculty to live up to. And all of the the faculty are are subscribe to that sample course so they they you see it. Wonderful. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you so much for exploring those guides. I also wanted to add, when you go to the little little links, but not very little, but the personalized links or the QR codes. If you download that on your device, those pdfs are fully accessible and have been sent to an accessibility firm. So I also wanted to point that out. Because that is something that we are really working on at region thirteen.
So those are those are good to go. Did I create any questions? Yes. Differentiated course, the when you bring in a lot of universal design principles, like multiple submission types. I don't understand what Making sure the learner facing rich content editor is utilized to offer product choice or choice in product submission? Like when you have a text box response, the learner facer rich content editor instead of them just like typing in it, really working with your students to utilize like how they can hyperlink, how they can embed a picture, how they can How do a video, something like that. Even though submission types, you can set it to where they can record a video, but just so that they can really make their submission a little fancier, maybe a little more personal for them, especially in discussions too.
That's pretty cool in discussions when you can show them how to use the HTML to put a GIF in there or something like that. Okay. I gotcha. Yeah. Yeah.
They only give me there are only so many characters I can use in the in there, but that's a great question. Did I create any other questions? Awesome. Well, we had a greeting and I said that we love a greeting but I love a closing just as much. So this is a quote from Renee Brown. She actually usually and if you're not familiar with Renee Brown, the state of Texas really likes her.
She went to UT, and she lives in Houston now, and she has one of the most viewed TED Talks on shame. Is it shame or vulnerability? Vulnerability, but she also has a lot of research on shame. She's really a lovely person. And she uses the two words to start meetings with. But in our team, the Lx crew, learner experience crew, we use two words to clothes, and sometimes it's an inside joke, sometimes it's something we learn, sometimes it's a takeaway.
So I thought we could just real quickly You can use your phone to do a QR code and just plug in two words. Like I said, it could be a takeaway, two separate words. They could be connected to each other. They could be not connected. We over utilize hyphens quite frequently to to meet the two word limit and, and yeah.
It's just a fun way to to end the meeting and as you plug in your two words, there we go. Oh, I'm here to talk. Oh, I like the word hungry. It could be that you need a snack or it could be that you were hungry for this information. So I like that it could go either way because I like information and snacks.
Great. Awesome. Yes. We've got a hyphen user. Yes.
Amazing. Well, we really appreciate you coming today and sticking around and participate. I know. I haven't been to a session yet where they're like, do a turn and talk yet. So I wasn't quite sure how it was gonna go over, but I appreciate y'all for for being vulnerable and for sharing some of your ideas and wonderings and questions. So thanks so much, and I hope the rest of y'all's conference is a delight.
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