Blog Archives

Tips to avoid death by Announcement

Do you use Canvas Announcements to let your students know about events your school is running? Are students not responding to important announcements, only for you to find that they have disabled that notification channel? A Student Communications Survey by

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Posted in Apps and tools

Adding a ‘chat’ backchannel to in-person classes

During the pandemic most lectures have been online – either as recordings or as live Zoom sessions. Academics noticed that the ‘chat’ facility in the latter encouraged more questions and discussion than they had experienced during in-person lectures on campus.

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Posted in Apps and tools, Blended learning, Polling tools

Managing online activities with Canvas Sections and Groups

Tutors want to divide up students for a range of purposes, from the administrative to the creative. Canvas has two tools for this which work in distinct ways providing lots of opportunities, but sometimes causing some confusion. This post will

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Posted in Canvas

Communicating with students in Canvas

Canvas includes several tools for communication between teachers and students within a module. In this post I will give an overview of Announcements, Discussions, Chat and Conversations, looking at when each would be a good choice. Announcements The icon for

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Posted in Canvas

Facilitating discussion and collaborative note-making in lectures through a backchannel

What is a backchannel? The ‘backchannel’ is a term coined by Victor Yngve, Professor of Linguistics (1970) to acknowledge subtle and informal responses from a person actively listening to someone else speaking. This term has since been adapted to fit

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Posted in Technology Enhanced Learning

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We are the Educational Enhancement team at the University of Sussex. We publish posts each fortnight about the use of technology to support teaching and learning. Read more about us.

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