ST. MARK'S SCHOOLCreating Student-Centered Courses in Canvas

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Our Canvas Courses

This course contains resources to support faculty as they recreate, build, and/or edit courses over the next school year.

CLICK HERE to access the document that outlines the Canvas Expectations for the current school year.

What Makes a Good Course?

Canvas can support high-quality teaching and learning by making learning goals clear, communicating expectations, sharing timely feedback to students, providing different modalities to engage in learning, leveraging choice and options for our variable learners, and more.

This Canvas course is meant as a resource to support you as you consider ways you can leverage Canvas to design a "good course."

A good course:

Clearly articulates learning goals & criteria for success
Is culturally informed and takes equity & learner variability into account
Is interactive and social, cultivating and sustaining a vibrant learning community
Is engaging & challenging, inviting students to participate & make personal connections and supportive of their cognitive & affective growth
Involves lots of practice, engaging students in the “doing” & “thinking” of learning
Has a caring teacher who is visible, active, empathetic, approachable, and responsive
Promotes student agency, providing choice and opportunities for relevant & meaningful learning.

Download this PDF, created by Sandy Levandowski, if you'd like an infographic version of this list.

Adapted from Veletsianos, 2020

Defining "Student-Centered"

Here's how Stanford University succinctly describes a "student-centered" approach to teaching:

"Student-centered mindsets view the learner as primary and unique agents of learning, engagement, and connection, as opposed to teacher-centered mindsets which tend to view learners as passive and uniform vessels" (Stanford Teaching Commons).

A recent RAND Corporation study defines student-centered learning this way:

"Students' deep engagement in learning opportunities that are designed to address their goals and interests while at the same time providing appropriate supports and challenge according to their learning needs" (Ensuring That the Measuring and Improving Student-Centered Learning Toolkit Is Easy to Use and Produces Accurate, Meaningful Results).

Want to review a few approaches to making courses student-centered? Here are 3 resources to consider: