Canvas Building Blocks

Canvas has four main building blocks: Pages, Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions. By combining these pages, you can create a wide variety of experiences for your students.

All of these types have the same editor box, allowing teachers and students to add text, images, audio, video, and links.

Pages function much like any web page on the internet: they can have text information, images, videos, links, and other content. Pages can serve a variety of purposes

• Basic Course Information or Instructions. Pages are a great place to put information about the class, classroom management policies, help instructions, or any other kind of basic information about the class. You may want to create pages with key learning objectives for the course or for specific units.
• Key Concepts or Explanation of Skills. Think of your Pages like Wikipedia pages just for your course. You can introduce concepts or skills, provide multiple explanations if needed, and offer links to outside sources that support the learning of the idea. Then, throughout the course you can link back to these pages for easy reference for students.
• Digital mini-lessons. Provide a lecture, presentation, or any other information as a digital mini-lesson to be used in parallel, as supplement, or in place of a face-to-face mini-lesson. Digital mini-lessons can serve as the foundation for self-paced units of instruction or courses.
• Organizational Pages for Your Course. You can use pages at the beginning of a course or unit of instruction to organize all of the material students can find inside Canvas. You may consider having a page for each unit that links to key concept pages, lists critical terms, and major assessments. These pages can make navigating the course easier for you and your students.
• Foundational or Extension information. There may be critical information that your students need to understand that is not directly covered in your course. (Example: understanding critical math skills for a Chemistry course) You can create pages that address important foundational information as review or first time learning for students who need it. Additionally, you can build extension information to push your high flyers who may want to extend their learning.

Assignments allow you to offer activities in Canvas or track activities outside of Canvas. Assignments allow you to provide information about an activity, a due date, a grade, and the option for students to submit something inside Canvas. Here a few examples of how Assignments can be used:

• Students read a text or view a video and write a response inside Canvas. The teacher can then view all of the responses for the assignment in SpeedGrader.
• Students complete a physical performance in the classroom. The teacher then adds grades for the performance inside the Canvas gradebook. Details about the assignment, including a rubric, could be added to the Assignment information so that students and parents are clear on the expectations for the assignment.
• Students type a paper in Google Docs or Word. Students submit the paper in an assignment for the teacher to read in SpeedGrader.

Consider these opportunities for using Assignments:

• Simple written responses to check for understanding after a mini-lesson.
• Photo or video of a physical student product. If a student completed a graphic organizer with colored pencils in class, the student can take a picture of it and submit it to Canvas for grading. A benefit of this is that you always have access to this product while the student retains it for his or her own learning.
• Audio or Video Reflection. Students have access to the video and audio recording inside the Canvas editor. They can record themselves reflecting on a topic and submit it for the assignment. You can even respond to them in video form.
• Links to Other Online Work. Students may create websites, graphics, or other projects outside of Canvas. Students can submit the links for these inside Canvas for you to check inside SpeedGrader.
• Prerequisites for Moving Forward. With the use of modules, you can choose to only open up a unit of instruction after a student has completed a specific assignment.
• Assignments for Specific Students (Differentiation). Within your Canvas course, you can give assignments to all sections, certain sections, or specific students.

Discussions allow for students and the teacher to have threaded conversation. Discussions can be used in a variety of ways to enhance instruction.

• Hooks. Provide a thought provoking text or question to spark student thinking about a unit or lesson. Students can respond to the topic and then each other's thoughts. Consider revisiting the discussion after the lesson or unit of instruction.
• Higher Level Thinking. Use discussions to push students to consider implications of an idea or possible applications. Ask them to reflect on an idea that will encourage further consideration of an idea and better retention.
• Extension. Ask students how this idea may apply to other ideas or areas of study. You might encourage them to post questions they still have about a subject that may not be addressed in your course.
• Develop Discussion and Debate Skills. Class discussion boards provide an opportunity for students to participate in online discussion in a controlled, coached environment. You can also use boards to scaffold for face to face discussions and debates.
• Planning. If students are working on projects or collaborating, discussions can be a space to organize and discuss thoughts, allowing you to stay aware of group of productivity.
• Back Channel Discussion. For discussion methods like Fish Bowl, you can allow students not actively participating in the physical conversation to post questions or comments to a digital back channel discussion. You may also choose to use back channel discussion for meta-thinking about the discussion in the room. Students can reflect on how the discussion is going, pointing out actions that positively or negatively impacted the discussion.

As you construct your course or unit, consider how you might most effectively use all four blocks (Pages, Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions) to increase student thinking and learning while building natural opportunities for assessment, reflection, and expansion of the learning.

You may consider building out units in Modules, allowing you to create an outline of the activities you need to build. A typical outline might look something like this:

1. Introduction information, including learning objectives, to a unit or lesson. (Page)
2. Hook discussion introducing a topic (Discussion)
3. Information about the first concept or skill. (Page)
4. Quick assessment to determine if basic concepts were understood (Quiz)
5. Some guided practice using the new information or skill (Assignment)
6. Information about the second concept or skill (Page)
7. Quick assessment to determine if basic concepts were understood (Quiz)
8. Some guided practice using the new information or skill (Assignment)
9. A discussion that pushes students to think deeper about the new concepts. (Discussion)
10. A summative assessment of the information and skills in the unit of instruction. (Quiz)