Using the API for Faculty Feedback
Seth BattisSt. Mark’s School
St. Mark’s School
• Intentionally small boarding school
• 350 high school students
• 75 “triple threat” teachers
• 1,500+ devices on wifi
Seth Battis
• Director of Academic Technology
• Math Department Chair
• Sometime History Teacher
• Former Middle School Principal
• Ex-Outdoor Educator
• Lousy Baseball Coach
The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the
other.
James Garfield
Canvas Expectations for Faculty
• Post all assignments to Canvas
• Post all grades on assignments to Canvas
Whirlwind of Preparation Last Spring
• Canvas roll-out as a “shadow” LMS
• Unconference with faculty, students, Instructure on digital workflows
• In-person, flipped and online training sessions for faculty
• Built our own Blackboard-to-Canvas migration tool
• Workshops and drop-ins for students and faculty
• “Tech Tips” knowledge base
• Oh yeah… and we also rolled out Google Apps for Education at the same time.
Student Learning a cycle
Faculty Learning not quite a cycle
• What is our desired outcome?
• Efficient communication of student progress and responsibilities to support learning, teaching and advising.
• What are measurable indicators?
• Assignments (responsibilities)
• Grades (progress)
• How do we adjust in response to measurement?
Faculty Feedback
For every course, every day…
• Total number of assignments due (through today)
• Total number of undated assignments.
• Total number of grade-able (non-zero) assignments (through today).
• Total number of zero-point assignments.
• Total number of grade-able assignments for which student work has been graded.
• The oldest ungraded grade-able assignment.
• Average (per submission) turn-around time between due date and grade posting.
• Average (per assignment due through today) percentage of submissions graded.
• And a miscellany of contextual information.
Turn-around Comparison
whole school
Turn-around Comparison
department
How do we adjust in response to measurement?
• Look for outliers
• Investigate
• Consult
• Make a plan
• Check back
What have we learned from this?
• Canvas is a (sometimes weak) proxy for real life.
• Some teachers do need personal invitations.
• Some teachers are pushing the envelope (in good ways).
• Data provides helpful context for anecdotes.The plural of anecdote is not “data.”
• As a faculty, our students would benefit from a larger conversation around feedback and assessment.
Areas for Further Exploration
• Window between posting and due date
• Gradebook math
• Getting teachers “into” analytics
• Developing distributed leadership
“Calling all heroes…”
• St. Mark’s faculty, IT and administration
• John DeFonzo & Travis Cornes’ instant responses
• Cortny Lyon & Patrick Colclough’s advocacy
• Hilary Scharton’s data geekery and encouragement
• Kevin Reeve: Using Analytics to Keep Students on Track5pm today Chistopher Davis: Use of Canvas Analytics to Improve Student Success
• John Louviere: API for the Rest of Us
• “Build your own awesome”
Useful Links
• github.com/smtech/canvas
• @battisexperiencing significant tweet-fade
