This week’s activities focused on the mechanics of creating and grading assignments. During the readings there has been a considerable amount of overlap with last week’s focus on student communication. Most good feedback techniques are also good communication techniques. For example, it is important to make clear to students your standards of returning assignments. Doing so can clear much anxiety on students’ ends if they are not to immediately receive feedback on an important assignment. Another example of overlap is reaching out to particular students that perform poorly on the course’s first big assignment. A professor offering help and words of encouragement can make the difference between student success and failure in an online course.

Once the theoretical work on grading assignments was completed, we moved on to the canvas side of the week. We have been paired with students to both have them take our class/grade their assignments, and to take their class and receive feedback on our work. As I mentioned last week, I am loving Canvas. It has been incredibly intuitive with regards to setting up and grading assignments. However, given the limitations of our practice course (our partners would not actually be completing the readings we would typically assign to students) I felt a little constrained in making my assignments. While I had originally planned to incorporate technologies such as a video reflection, I found that an optional survey and graded quiz worked best. I am sure that once we start working with faculty that we will get much more practice in creating the varied assignment types allowed by Canvas.