Final Tips About the Student and Observer Accounts

Quite a few Learning Coaches prefer to log in to the student's Canvas account and do not use the Observer account very often. This is especially true for Learning Coaches of our youngest students. However, your Observer account provides a very important communications channel to the school. Please do not rely upon messages in your child's Canvas Inbox.

• Teachers, counselors, and administrators occasionally send messages to the Learning Coach only. Unless you set up your notifications to receive Canvas notifications in your personal email account, you will miss those Learning Coach-only communications if you are only reading messages in the student's account.

• Canvas notifications -- mirror images of your Canvas Inbox messages in your personal email account -- can land in your Spam or Junk folder. This can cause you to miss deadlines or critical communications from the school about your child's performance unless you check the actual Canvas Inbox.

• If you set up your Canvas notifications for weekly or no delivery to your personal email account, you will not be informed in a timely manner. Your Canvas Inbox receives the messages instantly.

So, use your Observer account. Check your Canvas Inbox several times per week for messages if you plan to rely upon Canvas notifications in your personal email account the majority of the time. Just delete the messages that you read in your personal email account previously. (Deleting messages in your personal email's Inbox has no effect on the Canvas Inbox.)

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Keep the following in mind:

1. It is very important that our students read Canvas messages from their teachers. If you choose to read messages in the student's Canvas Inbox, please mark the message unread after reading it to ensure your child knows a teacher sent a message.

• This note is especially important for students in grades 3-12. Hold your child accountable for reading teachers' communications.

• It is also important for our lower elementary students to know their teachers are sending them messages. Learning Coaches of students in lower elementary grades (K-2) are asked to assist the student in reading the teacher's message.

2. If you did not create the Canvas Observer account, return to the page to Create the Learning Coach (Observer) Account before proceeding. By this point in your training, teachers have attempted to send Canvas messages to their new Learning Coaches.

The Canvas Homepage (or Homeroom) provides visible indicators of missing assignments. There are a few things to remember about the indicators:

1. Canvas flags assignments as "Missing" if they have not been submitted by the due date. The Missing indicator only applies to assignments that have a grade associated with them (i.e., an assessment, a writing assignment, a project, etc.). Those assignments are graded automatically by Canvas or manually by the teacher, and Canvas can detect when they have not been submitted by the due date.

2. Students have additional activities in Canvas that do not have a score associated with them. They need to be completed as well...before an assessment is taken or an assignment is submitted because that's where learning takes place.

Think about it. In any course, students have to learn first. Then they demonstrate what they learned on an assessment or a graded item such as a report, etc.

Here's an example of how a course is usually organized:

In an American History course, students will read an introductory lesson to learn about a new topic (e.g., the American Revolution). The lesson will probably be several pages long in the textbook. A few review components might be embedded in the lesson to allow the student to check for understanding (e.g., a few questions about what they've learned so far), but the results of those exercises are not entered into the grade book. (Think about a traditional classroom where the teacher presents a lesson and asks questions to see if the students are grasping the concept. Those checks for understanding are informal and are used to identify whether something needs to be re-taught or reviewed by the student. Textbooks contain similar checks for understanding to help students learn.)

After the introductory lesson in the American History text book, there are probably additional lessons that provide more information about the American Revolution before students take the first quiz or submit a project to demonstrate whether they have understood the information. The quiz or project is graded at that point, and the results are entered into the grade book but lots of learning has take place before then. The graded assignment reflects (in part) how well the student comprehended the information.

Our Canvas courses are organized similarly. They contain lessons like the ones described above. Those lessons might include a combination of text, videos, and audios. (We also have Live Sessions, and teachers supplement their courses with additional material as well.) A few checks for understanding might be built into the lessons to help the student identify if the lesson content is being learned. If required, the student can re-read the lesson to "lock in" the information before moving forward. However, just as with the textbook scenario described in the example, those checks for understanding will not result in a grade. Eventually, though, a graded assignment (e.g., an assessment) is completed and the grade appears in the Canvas grade book, but that should happen after learning is supposed to have occurred.

Here's the catch: Instructional lessons like the ones described above do not appear on the Canvas Calendar, and Canvas can only flag graded assignments as Missing (i.e., instructional lessons are not flagged as Missing).

That means you -- the Learning Coach -- need to ensure the student is learning by completing non-graded, instructional lessons before submitting an assignment for a grade. Do that by monitoring the Modules page in the student's Canvas account (not your Observer account) in addition to looking at Missing indicators on the home page. Otherwise learning will not take place; only assessments will be submitted.

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Remember, school is about learning; not just about getting a grade. Ensure the student is learning before submitting a graded assignment by doing the following:

1. Understand how a subject is organized and how the teacher is using the Calendar. Does the teacher have a "bundled assignment" on the Calendar that identifies all the instructional lessons and the graded assignment? (That's not very common. It's usually done only at the lower elementary level.) If not, the Modules page needs to be referenced everyday in the student's account so the student and Learning Coach know what is supposed to be completed before a graded assignment is submitted.

2. Hold your child accountable for completing everything on the Modules page so that you are assured your child is learning before doing.