7:30am – 9:00am Registration and Coffee

9:00am – 9:15am Welcome and Introduction
Speaker: Amber Vaill, Instructional Designer, Becker College

9:15am – 10:00am Big Questions, Big Data
Speakers:
Jing Qi, Learning Management System Specialist, Dartmouth College
Pat Coogan, Assistant Project Manager, Dartmouth College

In Fall 2013, Dartmouth launched its transition from Blackboard Learn to Canvas as the college learning management system (LMS). The transition process has generated a set of important questions: 1) How do we know that Canvas is working for faculty and students? 2) How can quantitative user-generated data be leveraged to address the efficacy of the LMS? And, 3) How can we put these findings into dialogue with other available institutional data (such as aggregate grades and retention)? In this session, the group will explore approaches to using Canvas data to enhance our understanding of how students are learning in web-enhanced environments. Participants will share in small group discussions about their institution’s use of and interest in user-generated data in Canvas. The presentation will also investigate how LMS data can indicate a relationship between student engagement and learning design, as well as the novel ways that Dartmouth has approached learning analytics in the context of its new LMS.

10:00am – 10:45am Reimagining a Canvas Classroom
Speaker: Peter Testori, Director, Center for Online & Digital Learning, Bay Path University

Working with Canvas for over three years, faculty at Bay Path are now beginning to reimagine what their online course content and classrooms could look like. One such course has been redesigned to incorporate web-based tools and content developed by instructional designers to "bring the course to life". In addition to a "before & after" demonstration, this session will allow attendees to discuss the challenges of bringing online course content to the next level and to share their own experiences with plugging in content to a Canvas course.

10:45am – 11:00am Break

11:00am – 11:45am A Socially-Constructed Academic Resource Collection
Speakers:
David Demers, Chief Operating Officer, The American Women’s College at Bay Path University
Gieng Du, Director of Product Development, The American Women’s College at Bay Path University

The Academic Resource Collection (ARC) is a Canvas-integrated .net educational tool designed to encourage community participation to construct a library of useful web-based instructional resources. The ARC allows all Canvas users to post links to web resources that align with Bay Path courses and individual assignments and categorize those resources based on subject area, media type and skill level. The ARC provides a streamlined interface allowing users to easily browse the database for available resources by subject and ‘save’ particularly useful resources as ‘favorites’. An integrated ‘rating’ system also helps users to identify those resources which the community has found to be most useful (ala Amazon.com user ratings). This application integrates with the Canvas LMS via LTI, allowing Canvas users to authenticate directly into the application. We will also present a custom javascript tool which allows for the presentation of the ARC interface in a larger content window within the Canvas environment.

11:45am – 12:45pm Lunch

12:45pm – 1:15pm Get Your MOOC on … on Canvas Network
Speakers:
Jesse Schreier, Instructional Designer, School of Professional Studies, Brown University
Carrie Saarinen, Senior Instructional Designer, Instructure, Inc - Canvas Network

In this interactive session, participants will explore and evaluate large open enrollment online courses by examining Exploring Engineering, an open online course designed by Brown University’s School of Professional studies and offered by Canvas Network. Presenters will share data on course completion rates and student engagement strategies, leading to discussion of topics such as motivation for offering a MOOC and course design and continuous improvement. With consideration for this and other Canvas Network courses, participants are encouraged to think outside-the box when thinking about MOOCs. With all we know about instructional design and online learning, the possibilities are nearly endless.

1:15pm – 1:45pm Customizing Canvas using Javascript and CSS
Speakers:
Larry Bouthillier, Director of Online Learning, New England Institute of Technology
Adrienne, Phelps-Coco, Instructional Designer, New England Institute of Technology
Tom Thibodeau, Assistant Provost, New England Institute of Technology

Canvas allows the addition of customer-managed Javascript and CSS to accounts or subaccounts. This feature can be used to adapt the Canvas environment to local needs, such as modifying branding, hiding irrelevant or confusing features, creating new functionality, or improving the user experience. This topic involves policy decisions and process (how do you decide what to change and what not to) and some of the technical detail of the code to make it happen.

1:45pm – 2:00pm Break

2:00pm – 2:20pm Small Group Brainstorming Discussion
Facilitator: Amber Vaill, Instructional Designer, Becker College

2:20pm – 3:00pm Instructure Roadmap and Q&A Session
Speaker: Cosme Salazar, Product Manager, Instructure

Representatives from Instructure will present news and information from their engineering and development team and answer questions from workshop attendees.

3:00pm – 3:15pm Wrap up

3:15pm End