More than a year since the pandemic forced learning into an remote and virtual environments, and many institutions are evaluating how students are doing. Have they become more comfortable with doing things digitally? But more than that, are they engaging with course material?   

Here are some useful tips from Maikel Alendy, an instructional designer at Florida International University, for lecturers who would like to take their student engagement and Canvas course-building from okay to amazing. 

1. Create Check-in Quizzes
Say the word “quiz” and your students might think ‘ugh’. Lecturers may also feel a bit uninspired, thinking that quizzes don’t get to the meat of the material. But non-academic check-in quizzes are actually great as a touchpoint, ensuring all students are supported in a blended learning environment. In fact, these kinds of quizzes incentivise frequent logins and student engagement.

Check-in quizzes are:

Time-based — Only available for a short while.
Support-focused — Questions are built around student support. For example: Where is the Student Health Center? When is the add/drop deadline? 
Incentivised — One way to incentivise is to offer students who complete all quizzes earn a second attempt on a module assessment.
Optional — Students are not penalised if they choose not to take quizzes.

2. Modernise Course Communication
Want to reach your students in an authentic way? Ditch the email. “Communication needs to be where the students are—on their phones”, Alendy says.

Apps like Pronto (Canvas LTI app), Slack, and Teams offer robust features from tagging and file sharing to emojis and gifs to boost student engagement. They also prepare students for workforce communication. “These apps are being used in the jobs students want,” Alendy says. Also check out Eiffel’s partner Modo Labs, for a non-coding app that integrates with an LMS seamlessly. 

3. Be Authentic with “VideYous”
A critical component of student engagement is you (the person). Not just you, the lecturer. “Your students don’t want to hear about your brilliance. They want to hear from and about you,” Alendy says. 

Weekly “VideYous” (videos about you) help establish a strong rapport with students in a virtual or blended learning environment. The less scripted, the better. 

4. Compress Images for Accessibility
Before Covid-19, we did not give enough attention to the reality that we have students that do not have ready access to wifi  or data, and probably only have access to a smartphone,” Alendy says. 

High-quality images take up space in a course and increase loading time. Alendy uses Compressor.io to shrink images for quicker load time. 

5. Offer a Help Bar
Help resources in a virtual or blended learning environment should be human, accessible, and constant. Don’t bury resources in the syllabus. Give them a prominent place.

“Canvas help is incredible. Their live chat is more helpful than I could ever be. The first link I put on the help bar is Canvas live chat. I put these links on every page in my course because I wanted fewer emails about technical questions.”

6. Design with Mobile in Mind
When course building, think mobile-forward. Your content needs to adapt to all screen sizes—phone, tablet, and browser. 

Alendy uses Cidi Labs Design Tools, an advanced course-building editor that enables teachers to create responsive content. Canvas has a phenomenal mobile app, Alendy says. Teachers should design with the mobile experience in mind.

For more course-building tips and Canvas LTI tools to take student engagement to the next level, watch the full session here below.

Learn more on how to implement the above tips with Canvas LMS by visiting the original article here

Business continuity has been the main driver of the unprecedented measures taken by universities over the Coronavirus crisis. But as the sector seeks to rebound, and to attract international students once more, there is enormous opportunity to rethink elements like content delivery, the purpose of contact hours and how success is measured.

With universities reliant on international student enrolments, there is the understandable expectation of a turbulent period ahead. The United States and the UK specifically are extremely reliant on international students.  The question for experts is when the UK Higher Education sector will recover, and how it can go about rebuilding. 

This report uses the Centre for Economic and Business Research’s (Cebr) modelling to analyse the predicted downturn in International student numbers, and the subsequent recovery of the sector. Interesting insights and lessons to be learnt that could be helpful to learn of potential opportunities for us in South Africa and Africa too.