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

• SethBattis@stmarksschool.org

• @battisexperiencing significant tweet-fade