It’s win-win; like mixing together the two great tastes of peanut butter and chocolate! If you have questions about using the streaming video service at S&T, you can check out our support page at http://edtech.mst.edu/support/kaltura/ or contact EdTech at edtech@mst.edu
]]>If you have questions or need assistance, call us at (573) 341-4131 or contact us at edtech@mst.edu
]]>If Saturday is the nadir of Canvas participation, then Wednesday is the zenith! A quick look at this up-and-down pattern of student usage suggests that Monday or Wednesday may be the optimum day for instructors to post things on Canvas, and that Saturday due dates are likely to be missed by all but the most diligent students.
The most common times for students to be active in Canvas are between the hours of 8AM to 10PM. There are a few hundred night owls up past Midnight, but the number of users drops drastically after 2AM.
TECHNOLOGY – Desktop and Laptop computers remain the primary way that students interact with Canvas, as 90% of all sessions in the first three weeks were made on these more “traditional” types of computing devices. Only 10% of sessions were on a mobile device. Of that 10%, only 1.3% were on a tablet computer such as an iPad. That number is interesting–are tablets a passing fad? Have phones surpassed the tablet as a more compact and useful device in general? Perhaps it’s just that tablets are great for passive media consumption, but not as good for content creation like students are tasked with inside of Canvas.
As for browsers, Chrome is still crushing the nearest competition with a monolithic 74% of all sessions. Safari is at 10%, followed by Edge at 7%, Firefox at 5%, and Internet Explorer at a dismal 2% of all sessions.
COURSES – Chem 1310 is still in the lead as “Most popular Canvas course” (counted by pageviews), with Freshman Engineering close behind. By sheer enrollment numbers alone, it’s going to be hard to beat these two courses. Mech Eng 1720 rounds out the top three, with Eng Man 1210 and Calc 2 completing the top five.
A surprise addition has recently joined the ranks of “Most popular”, that of Comp Sci 1972, a course on Matlab programming. With only 175 student enrollments, Comp Sci 1972 is punching way above its weight to make it into the top ten most visited pages in Canvas!
If you’re interested in more Canvas analytics, keep following us on EdTechConnect!
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The new TurningPoint 8.2.2 can now be synced with our instance of Canvas. We think this is a positive change that will benefit everyone, but first there is a minor inconvenience to deal with. If you’re using clickers, you MUST re-authorize TurningPoint to access data from Canvas (this is how the new course rosters are populated)!
It’s not hard and will make things easier in the long run. The new TurningPoint Sync tool will automatically update course rosters overnight, meaning you can set your course up and then not worry about it.
Here is how it works:
That’s it! The next time you sign into TurningPoint, you should see your new course rosters! They will automatically update overnight.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Since you probably have session data from previous sessions, you will want to move them in the Manage tab so that they are associated with the most current list (from TurningPoint Sync).
You will also see your previous course rosters as well as the new course rosters. The new course rosters are marked with a little cloud icon, indicating that they exist on the web (i.e. in the cloud). The old list will be marked with two little people icons. Simply click and drag the sessions from the old roster to the new roster and everything will be properly synced.
Note: You must use TurningPoint version 8.2.2 or above. This version can be downloaded from the Turning Point website or updated from within the older installed version.
If you need assistance, please contact EdTech and we’ll be glad to help!
]]>Overall, S&T students initiated 63,451 Canvas sessions and racked up 488,422 pageviews over the first week of the Fall 2017 semester. If we average these numbers across the entire site for each day, each student session consisted of about 7 pageviews.
Location – 99.9% of student connections to Canvas originated from within the United States. 94% of those student connections were from within the state of Missouri. Students connected to Missouri S&T’s Canvas from every state in the Union except for Montana, Vermont, and Delaware.
There were a small handful of students connecting from outside of the United States. Students from China, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Mexico, France, Belgium, Greece, Japan, and the United Kingdom also connected to S&T’s Canvas, but all of the sessions originating from outside of the US were numbered in the single digits.
Courses – The most “popular” Canvas course (as measured by student pageviews) is easily Chemistry 1310, the general Chemistry 1 course, with around 23000 pageviews in the first week. With over 750 enrolled users, it’s not a total surprise that it’s a very busy course!
The second most popular course by student pageviews is the FE 1100 Freshman Engineering course with 7745 pageviews in the first week. After that, it’s Math 1215, Calculus 2 with 3148 pageviews.
Rounding out the rest of the top five is Mech Eng 1720 (Intro to Engineering Design) and Eng Man 1210 (Econ Analysis of Engr Projects) with right around 3000 pageviews each.
Technology – In the first week of class, 90.7% of student access to Canvas was on a traditional desktop or laptop computer. 7.9% of student access was via a mobile cellular device, while only 1.4% of student access to Canvas was done on a tablet computer such as an iPad.
Windows is the most popular OS with 77% of sessions being made from a Windows machine. Macintosh machines accounted for 12.8% of sessions. Linux machines represented 0.48% of sessions, and one person even logged into Canvas using their Xbox One!
Chrome is the most popular Browser with 72% of sessions compared to Safari’s 11%. Surprisingly, Edge is more popular than Firefox, with 8% of sessions compared to 5.5%, respectively. Internet Explorer got 1.8% of sessions. The least popular browser, the stock Android Browser, was only used in 0.01% of Canvas sessions.
Mobile device usage was interesting. Literally hundreds of different types of Android-based cellular devices were used to access Canvas, but the Apple iPhone seems to be the most popular single cellular mobile device used, representing 45% of all mobile sessions.
Interested in Canvas stats like these? Follow us for more weekly Canvas analytic updates!
]]>Canvas has published a mobile app meant for instructors called “Canvas Teacher”. Now you can keep track of several different aspects of your course from your mobile device. The Canvas Teacher app is available for both Android and iOS.
Announcements, Assignments, Discussions, Quizzes
The Canvas Teacher app lets you make announcements, browse and grade assignments, moderate discussions, and evaluate quizzes from within the app. The Canvas Teacher app is not meant to be a full replacement for your primary working computer, but rather to compliment your setup and to allow you the flexibility to communicate with students and to check submissions or give feedback when you’re on the go.
Give it a try..
In general, instructors are not heavy mobile users of Canvas. Our usage analytics indicate that less than 5% of instructors regularly interact with Canvas on a mobile device. Why is that? One likely reason is that the previous Canvas app was very student-centric, and instructors couldn’t do much but look at the course. That has changed—with the Canvas Teacher App you can now do many of the tasks you could normally do at your office computer on your smartphone.
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