- Hey everyone, in this
video, I am going to show you how you can grade discussions in Canvas. So, if you've been following my videos, I have a large series
of Canvas LMS tutorials for online teachers. If you haven't checked that playlist out, I will link it in the cards down below. And if this is our first time meeting, hi, I'm Ashlee Espinosa, I have an MFA in musical theater, and I am an online teacher, an actor and a musical theater coach. So I hope this video helps you, it's part of my Canvas tutorials playlist. If you want more tutorials, check it out in the playlist below. Otherwise, let's get started
and talk about discussions, how you can grade them
and some tips and tricks along the way that I've got for you. All right, let's dive in. So the first thing you want to do is go to the Discussions
tab on the left-hand side, or however you navigate best
to the discussion sections. And then, you can see
this is an old class, again, a couple years ago or
so, just to use as an example. Now, you can see that
I've got my discussions, I've got one pinned, because I like to do a discussion board for the students or a student lounge that I
manage, but they usually use, and then you can see this one actually wasn't used quite a lot, but some students find it
helpful depending on the class and the subject matter and the topic and the age of the students. So if we go into these discussions, I do have them all set
up, but let's go into one. Say, you go through it, this route, Go to the top right-hand corner
and click on the hamburger. And you wanna go down to speed grader, this is one way to go to discussions, but you can also navigate that by going to the grades
on the left hand side, and you'll notice that I do have my students information
covered up for their privacy, but you can also go to the discussions tab in the grade book here, say these are the ones
that have been submitted, click on the hamburger on
the far right hand corner of that column, and then
you can go to speed grader. Either way really works, it's just whatever's the easiest
and the quickest for you. Now, when you open the
discussion in speed grader here, this is how you grade the
students' discussion posts. It's really, really easy, and I'm gonna show you
a couple of other tips. The first thing is you're going to see on the top right hand corner,
all of the students' names. Now, again, my students' names are covered up for their privacy, but you can click the
arrow right over here on the right side, it will drop down and list their names in alphabetical order by last name, which I find really helpful. If there's a green check
Mark on the left side of their name, that means
that you have graded it. And then if you haven't, I think it says, it's something different. There's no check mark, or
it's an a circle or whatnot. And of course all these are graded cause they are a previous class. So you can navigate through
the students that way, if you'd like to not go in order, you can click on their name and it will open up their discussions. But it does start from the
beginning of the alphabet and goes through your roster that way. Now the top right hand
corner is going to give you the arrow to go to the next student, so you can just click it, and it will shuffle through
them in that same order. So let's take a look, for example, here's one student's name, again, the bulk of this
information and their name are covered for their privacy, but what I like to do is
on the left hand side, you can use this bar to make
one side bigger or smaller. You'll see some students might
have a larger discussion, some of them might be shorter. So you can navigate
this to work for the way that it feels better to your eyes. I like to make the left
hand side a lot bigger, because I can read their discussions. Now notice that this
student has two discussions to posts on the discussion
for this one post. And the reason why is
because I required them to post an initial
comment or initial thread, and then they also had to comment on at least one other student's post. So you're going to see,
everything that this one student, the page that you're on for their grading, every single thread, let me see if I just scroll through here, I'll show you a couple of examples. Notice, this student, this
was their initial post, the first one, after they
post, their initial post, it then unlocks all of the threads. So I have it set up in my discussion where they have to post
their initial comment, and then they can see everybody
else posts in that thread to then make their required comments. So this one, that was
hit their first post, and then you can see this
student actually commented on a few other student's threads. So you're seeing everything
that they did in one place, which is fabulous. Now what I like to do with on
the left hand side over here, I like to create a rubric. When I want to use the rubric, I just slide out that tool bar again, make it a little bit bigger. And then I have two rubrics here. So this assignment, this one discussion is worth 10 points total,
you'll see down here, I had this rubric set up. And then I have clarity
of discussion post, and then that means did the
student support their answer with the correct information
as provided in the lectures? And then I have grammar and punctuation. Hey, so did the student
answer the discussion, complete sentences free
of grammatical errors? You can set this up however you'd want to, but I really suggest some type of rubric. And all you do is set that rubric up when you're creating the discussion post. And I have a video about that, I'll link it down the cards
for you below how to do that, to start off with. But what this does is
when you go to grade, now, I can type here in the comments, I can type something to them regarding this part of the rubric. I can put the points in here,
one or two or three or zero, and then I can tell them
why when I'm grading, why they got a zero. You know, they didn't meet
the minimum requirements of sentences or words or whatever you'd like
to include in there. And then after you put these
in here, say it's five, and then say it's five, and you say maybe great job
or full points or whatnot, you can then click save and
it will automatically total this point in your grade book for them. So you don't have to do anything else, one place, staying in
one place is fabulous. Something else you can
do is actually save, if you wanna type in here
there, you know, "Great job. I enjoyed reading this post,"
or whatever you'd like, You can click save this
comment for reusing it, and it kind of keeps a
little template of comments that you can pop in there
and then just update or add their name in it. It's a great way to give
the students more feedback in the discussion post versus just points, rubric is totally up to you. And then you click save, and that will save it
to the student's grade. Now, also while you're grading it here, whether you have a rubric set up or not, you put the points in
this little box here. Now it can be percentage or
points depending on again, how you set this up in the initial discussion post breakdown. In this box on here, you can put comments. I highly suggest using the comments, especially for online learning,
type something in here that says their name, and
then gives them feedback as to what you really liked about it, what they could have done
that maybe it was better, reminders to write in full sentences or reminders to include your opinion and support your opinion with citations or however you would like to set it up. You have a few other options
on here as well, though. If you're tired of typing, which sometimes I do get
really tired of comments, it takes me longer to type it out. Not only can you type in comments, but now you can do speech recognition by clicking on this
button on the right side under the text box that
looks like a megaphone. Click it, and you can speak,
and it will type it for you. For example, click the red button when you're ready to record. Hi, Sally, I think this discussion post was really exceptional. I'm exceptionally proud of you, and I can't wait to see what
your next discussion is. And then it will pop that up in the box on the right, saving you time, and you may just need
to edit a few things, but it's really helpful as well. Okay, so you can do that. You can also upload a video by clicking this link in the middle, click that button and you can
record something for them. So let's say for example, I have a couple other
cameras hooked up to this, but let's say for example, you want to record with your mic, and you wanna record
a voice memo for them. Click on the left side that says Mic, select which microphone
you would like to use, and then you can start recording, click Start Recording. It's gonna count down. And then you just record
what you would like to, and when you're done recording
that memo, click Finish. It's going to pop that in
here and you can play it back. And then you just record
what you would like to, and when you're done recording
that memo, click Finish. And then all you have to do, is you can give it a title down here, and then click save, and it will pop it into the comment section for them. Now, same thing, go back to that icon, and you can also click upload media, so you can upload a file
you've already recorded, or you can upload a video file that you've already recorded as well. Now, let's say you wanna,
just in the moment, record from your webcam, go back to the record media section, click the right hand
button that says webcam, pick the webcam you'd like to record from. And then literally you can
record a video for your students. I actually use this all the
time because it's really helpful and it's quick and fast, and they get to visually see me as well. So that's another great option to give them feedback
about their discussion. You just click again, start recording. it will count you down,
after it counts you down, then you record your video. Hi, good job, so proud of you. Click Finish, test it out. Down, then you record your video. Hi, good job, so proud
of you, click, down. And then you put a title in there, and then you click Save. And it is then going to pop that up into, again, your comments box. So you have those options as well. After you're done with
all of those comments, anything you're gonna upload, then all you have to do is
click Submit at the bottom, and it will submit all of that
information to the student. Then you can either
click, go to the next one by clicking the top arrow
on the right hand corner, or you can click on the names and choose it from the slide down menu. And then after you're done
grading all of those discussions, you can go straight back
into the grade book, and then all of your grades
will be there for you. If this video is helpful
for you, please click the, like the thumbs up button below. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel if you want to see new
videos about teaching online or Canvas tutorials, I've got new ones coming out
every single week for you. Happy teaching everyone, and thanks for watching this video, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye. (laughs)
