InstructureCon Day 2

Canvas

The conference was officially kicked off with Sheena Iyengar, giving us a version of her TED Talk, The Art of Choosing, giving us some interesting insight into the complexity of choosing while dispelling some myths.
For example, male and female brains, according to her, are not differently wired from birth but instead may move into different directions because of how society deals with men and women.  We are better off making choices when we are not overwhelmed with them:  we are more likely to buy a product when there is a limited number (say, 6 types of jams) rather than a large variety (say, 24 types of jams).
Her key point is that our attitude towards choice also reflects whether we have a growth mindset or not, and she gave some strategies on how to foster a growth mindset.
1.  set goals
2.  write down these goals (what do I want to have accomplished in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years) and repeat the process every 6 months
3.  share these goals with someone you trust
4.  keep a progress journal

Back to the point of too many choices: we make more mistakes, we procrastinate more, and we have a less satisfactory life experience (my potentially trivial example is that I limit myself to "only" Netflix for watching movies and shows).
Research showed that engineers considered those supervisors dictators who gave no choice, but incompetent those who gave too many choices - so a couple of options is all you need to give.
Finally, when you want feedback that is meaningful, get with your dormant relationships, not just the folks you are already working with -- get out of your echo chamber.
Choice is Invention.

My next session was, alas, another session focusing on left joint tables, but the takeaway for me was that we should pull the report from Canvas as to which courses have not been published and identify those faculty as they are most likely the ones who have not used Canvas -- and that way we can offer a more targeted training for these folks who may not be comfortable getting into technology.

The following keynote unveiled the Canvas Roadmap -- there are a lot of new changes coming, so I think I will do a separate blog post on this.

I learned that I need to get more involved in the Canvas Community as there are such folks out there as James and Kona Jones who develop hacks on a regular basis to make our lives easier.  Their code word is Canvancement -- they have developed quite a few of these, like importing a rubric, reducing the number of clicks when you are in SpeedGrader (Quizwiz), roster sorter, and other nuggets of innovation.  I think we will be testing some of these in the Biggio Center and spread the word.

Canvas of the Future discussed an new LTI, Nudge, that nudges students who have not completed an assignment -- the first test showed that very few students opted out and that the assignment completion rate improved rather dramatically. The concept of Nudge comes out of behavioral economics, in particular the book Nudge:  Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness.

Finally I discovered another tool that may be useful in particular for Math and Chemistry courses -- wiris.  Wiris gets added to the editing tools in Canvas, allowing faculty and students to select formula and chemical elements to work through a problem.  In addition to the elements, the tool also has a handwriting tool that translates my writing of the formula into chunks that are added to Canvas.