Collaborative Learning Part Two

Related Items

• Collaborations intro page
• Collaborative Learning Part One
• Collaborative Learning Part Three
• Peer Review

This is the second part on strategies to engage students in collaborative learning within Canvas. In Part One we were introduced to six recommendations from the faculty case study Care, Communication, Support: Core for Designing Meaningful Online Collaborative Learning Links to an external site. . We suggested the following based on two of the recommendations:

1. To increase instructor presence in predominantly asynchronous learning and to deliver a human component to your online classroom.  

Canvas process: Record short videos in module intro or wrap-up pages

2. Consider the use of some form of synchronous learning in online courses.

Canvas process: use web conferences as a form of synchronous learning

Go to Collaborative Learning Part One for details.

Assign students to peer review assignments

R1: If one teaches courses around message or instructional design, consider an authentic or real-world design project that combines peer critique. 

Read the Teaching with Canvas Peer Review page for a full explanation with visuals on how the process works, tips on how to prepare your students, and related resources.

The Peer Review option in a Canvas Assignment or graded Discussion provides opportunities for students to comment on each others assignment submissions using annotation and commenting tools that are similar to those used by instructors in SpeedGrader and DocViewer. 

Peer reviewer students can only see their comments, which are available to the submitter (the student who submitted the assignment) and the Teacher.

Peer Review works best when each student reviews one or two papers or designated students (e.g. Academic Fellow) review a collection of submissions (e.g. an Academic Fellow). Otherwise the process can be confusing and cumbersome to instructor and students. 

R4: If you want to utilize a new tool or collaborative learning activity, remember the pedagogical work needed for successful integration. The tools integrated to accomplish collaborative learning activities require planning and pedagogical work more important than the tool itself.

Although you can share Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides with students in your Google Drive, it requires your adding the @elmira.edu Links to an external site. addresses for each of your students. The Canvas Collaborations page allows instructors to create Google Drive collaborations directly in their courses. Collaborations provides the option to create a Google Drive Document, Spreadsheet, or Presentation that students can collectively create and edit as a group or class. 

Refer to Google Drive Collaborations for steps on how to create a new collaboration in your course.  If this is your first time to add the Google Drive integration to Canvas, then you will need to authenticate with your Elmira Gmail email address.