A collection of colorful frames displayed

UWGB Canvas Gallery: A Virtual Exhibition of Teaching

About the Exhibition

Have you developed standout strategies in your Canvas course that could inspire or benefit your colleagues? The “UWGB Canvas Gallery: A Virtual Exhibition of Teaching,” hosted by the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL), is the perfect platform to share your innovative teaching and design approaches with fellow instructors. To participate in this showcase, we invite you to submit some of the materials you’ve developed in Canvas. They should be materials you already have, making the workload minimal, and they can be from a Canvas site for any course modality: in-person, online, virtual classroom, and more! Accepted work will be displayed in a virtual Canvas course gallery where others on campus can engage and view your work. This virtual gallery-style exhibition is more than just showcasing your work; it is about building a community where educators across UW-Green Bay can learn from one another by sharing the creative strategies that often only students see.

Call for Submissions

We are looking for submissions that highlight a range of teaching and design strategies that use Canvas effectively. You can submit a single Canvas item, such as an assignment, page, quiz, or discussion, or share an entire module that demonstrates effective teaching practices and supports student success. Examples of what you might share include:

  • A welcoming course introduction Canvas module that sets students up for success
  • Creative Canvas discussion boards that foster deep, meaningful dialogue
  • Innovative assessments that challenge traditional formats, such as project-based learning or peer feedback in Canvas
  • Thoughtfully designed group activities that encourage collaboration and active participation and use Canvas Groups to set up effective teamwork and communication
  • Gamified elements that motivate and reward student achievement such as using mastery paths or badging in Canvas
  • Visual and interactive elements that simplify complex concepts and enhance learning shared in Canvas
  • Effective use of module pre-requisites to scaffold learning
  • Well-written instructions for more complicated tasks in Canvas, such as the use of PlayPosit

In your submission, consider how your materials might:

  • Demonstrate inclusive teaching and digital accessibility
  • Foster student engagement and success
  • Support students in achieving course learning outcomes
  • Promote transparency or reduce invisible curriculum
  • Facilitate students’ ability to succeed in an online learning environment
  • Incorporate evidence-based teaching strategies, such as scaffolded assignments or use of the TiLT framework

The deadline to apply is extended until Monday, November 18, 2024.

How to Apply

To apply, complete the submission form by November 4, 2024. You’ll be asked to provide details about your Canvas course materials, along with a program-ready abstract explaining how your submission demonstrates effective or innovative teaching strategies. Make sure to highlight the benefits your Canvas use and design offers to both your students and your teaching practice.

With your consent, CATL will access the Canvas material you highlight. A CATL committee will review all submissions based on your survey responses, abstract, and any accompanying Canvas materials. Once submissions are reviewed, CATL will follow up with you. Accepted submissions will be featured in a Canvas course which will be available to UWGB instructors to view in January.

We look forward to seeing your contributions and showcasing the excellent work of our UW-Green Bay instructors!

New “Atomic Search” Tool Arrives in Canvas

Course Search Image

In January 2023, UW System added a new Atomic Search tool to Canvas. This tool allows both instructors and students to more easily locate content within Canvas courses by searching for keywords. In a Digital Learning Environment student usability study conducted by UW System, students expressed having difficulties locating course content, especially when the layout of the Canvas course was not clear and consistent. Adding a search tool to Canvas was identified as a potential solution. 

Instructors do not have to take any action to enable the Atomic Search tool in their courses. The search tool appears both in the left global navigation bar as a “Search” icon and in course navigation menus as a “Search” link. Starting a search from the global navigation bar will search within all of a user’s enrollments; starting a search from the “Search” link of a course navigation menu will search only within that course. The search tool respects all of the access restrictions an instructor can apply to course content items, so search results shown to a student will only include content that the student could find through normal navigation of the course. 

The most important consideration for instructors is that the addition of a search tool in Canvas heightens the importance of making sure that outdated course content is unpublished or deleted. While preparing a Canvas course, removing an outdated Page from a course module but then forgetting to delete it entirely from the course is an easy mistake to make. With the arrival of a search tool in Canvas, students are now more likely to encounter an old page that you have removed from a module but never deleted or unpublished. Especially in those courses in which you’ve been reusing and iterating upon the same base of Canvas content over several terms, we recommend reviewing your course “index” pages—Announcements, Assignments, Discussions, and Pages—and deleting obsolete content and abandoned drafts. 

Course delete page

While cleaning up your course, remember that removing a page from a module does not also delete that page from the course. Likewise, deleting a module does not delete its contents. Items that module contained will still be found among the Pages, Assignments, and Discussions index pages of the course. Fully deleting a content item from your course can only be done while viewing that item or while viewing the index page for that item’s type—for example, the list of pages you can view by clicking the Pages link in the course navigation menu. Anytime you plan on removing an unneeded content item from a course module it is a good practice to first unpublish that item so that even if you forget to follow up and delete it, students cannot find it. 

After reviewing your course and deleting old content, we recommend running your course’s Link Validator to scan your course for any links which point at now-deleted content. Remove or update any broken links found by the validator tool. 

Please also keep in mind that new content and content changes will not immediately appear in search results. After a change is made to course content, the search tool needs to “re-index” the course before it can deliver updated search results. For an active course, this re-indexing process happens automatically at least once every 10 hours. 

Additional Resources