Results of Spring 2024 Canvas surveys

This past spring semester we surveyed both faculty and students to get feedback on their use of Canvas. The good news is that both students and faculty are overall satisfied with Canvas. Of the 77 students who responded to the survey, 44% were satisfied, 23% were somewhat satisfied and 19% were very satisfied with their overall experience with Canvas. Of the 26 faculty who responded, 50% were satisfied, 19% were somewhat satisfied, and 15% were very satisfied.

Students also had some suggestions for how their experience with Canvas could be improved:

• Consistency in where content is located. One common comment was that students found it difficult and frustrating to find their course content when it could be located in the Canvas Assignments tool, Gradescope, Canvas Modules tool and/or the Canvas Files tool. In addition to making it clear in your Syllabus which tools you will be using, it’s also good to disable tools that you are not using. If you are using Modules to organize course content, disable the direct access to tools such as Files or Assignments to ensure students use only the Modules to access content. Disabling these tools does not prevent students from accessing the content if it is linked through Modules or your Home page. Tools can be disabled by going to Settings/Navigation.
• Overall Grades. The overall grades feature is defaulted to “off,” but faculty can turn the feature back on by going to their course Settings and disabling the checkbox called ‘Hide totals in student grades summary.’ Note: Using this feature does not mean final grades will automatically be synced with the portal. Faculty will still need to submit final grades on the portal at the end of the semester. 
• Mobile App. Students reported challenges using the Canvas mobile app, particularly for viewing assignment feedback. Be aware of these limitations and you may want to encourage students to use the desktop version for important tasks.
• Links. Ensure all links in your Canvas courses are functional and lead to the intended content.
• Canvas Help. Don’t hesitate to use the 24/7 Canvas support for any questions.

Feedback from faculty included some recommendations that we will act upon:

• Gradescope Integration: The Canvas Gradescope integration  is different from Sakai in some significant, and unwelcome ways. We will reach out to Instructure/Gradescope about the following issues:
  • Redundancy in managing assignments: Instructors need to enter assignment details in both Canvas and Gradescope, leading to extra work and potential errors.
  • Due date syncing issues: Due dates don’t automatically transfer between Canvas and Gradescope, requiring manual updates in both platforms.
  • Late submission marking: Canvas doesn’t automatically mark late submissions from Gradescope, requiring instructors to check them individually.
• Faculty Professional Development: Faculty had some suggestions for how CIS could improve the professional development that we offer. We’ll start developing some new workshops on the following topics:
  • Workshops focused on creating engaging and well-structured courses on Canvas.
  • Showcasing best practices for content organization (e.g., using modules consistently).
  • Showcasing best practices for using gradebook and providing feedback 
  • Showcasing best practices for integrating Gradescope with Canvas
• Canvas Documentation
  • We’ll provide better documentation and tutorials on using Gradescope effectively with Canvas and using external plugins.
• Canvas Exploration: Consider exploring Canvas usage at other universities to identify potentially useful features. Attend relevant conferences if possible.
  • James Sadler, our Senior Instructional Technologist recently attended the annual Instructurecon conference in Las Vegas.
  • James is also registered for the Canvas Certified Technical Administrator course.