129 Canvas Quizzing – 09.21.2018

Question banks? Immediate answer feedback? Video questions? Canvas Quizzes offer features that can facilitate both formative and summative learning (not to mention efficient grading). At the September 21, 2018 Active Teaching Lab, participants shared examples and tips to promote meaningful student learning and assessment via quizzing. For more information and how-tos on Canvas Quizzing, visit the session’s activity sheet. 

Takeaways

• Use Surveys and Quizzes to assess students’ reading and understanding of the syllabus. Moving “syllabus day” outside of class takes back class time for course content and also provides feedback on areas where the syllabus might not be as clear as initially thought.
• Provide quizzes to help structure students’ before-class preparation. Students may not realize they have gaps, misunderstandings, or questions until asked to describe or synthesize the material. Pre-class quizzes shed light on their questions so that they may make better use of face-to-face meeting time.
• Consider many low-stakes quizzes rather than fewer high-stakes quizzes to increase participation and promote more frequent review of the material. Assigning point values to tasks drastically improves student completion rates, regardless of how low the stakes.
• Quizzes not only provide feedback to the instructor but also provide feedback to the student. Take advantage of the feedback options available in Canvas Quizzes to provide rich responses and refer students to resources for review.
• Try in-video quizzes to help students identify key takeaways and provide pause for reflection.

Video

The Active Teaching Lab is a Faculty Engagement program with sessions held on Thursdays from 1:00-2:00pm (room 302) and Fridays from 8:30-9:45am (room 120) in the Middleton Building (1305 Linden Dr.) during fall 2018. Check out upcoming Labs or read the recaps from past Labs. We build interdisciplinary conversations that are more emergent than a presenter and more dynamic than a panel — a conversation with colleagues sharing challenges, solutions, and experiments on topics selected by a variety of stakeholders.

Sign up for regular Lab announcements by sending an email to join-activeteaching@lists.wisc.edu.