Building Our Virtual Classroom It’s Time to Build!

Building a Virtual Classroom

We needed to introduce the modularized structure of the St. Mark’s virtual classroom before closing the loop of the backward design process we started in Module 1. Now that you’ve decided on the module template you’ll use to structure your Canvas course, it’s time to work on sequencing lessons and learning activities across the at least 2 weeks in your first unit. Each week should “chunk out” the learning, assignments, experiences, and check-ins that will prepare students to demonstrate their learning on the assessments you have planned and, ultimately, to meet the unit & course-level learning goals.

The Course-Building Process

1. Draft the Content in a Google Doc

To facilitate the course creation process and to ensure you have a backup of all the content you create, we recommend that all faculty draft the content for their courses in a Google Doc, which also makes it easier to collaborate with course partners.

We’ve created Google Doc templates for you to copy and use to draft your content. However, please know you may opt to create your own “course development” doc (just keep in mind that we strongly recommend that you draft course content in Google Docs since MS Word code can mess with Canvas design). Using one of these might make the build process easier since they align with the module structure you chose for your course in 2.1:

Option 1: Course Development Google Doc Template for Courses Using DESCRIPTIVE Modules/Weekly Plan

Option 2: Course Development Google Doc Template for Courses Using NUMBERED Modules/Weekly Plan

Draft the content for 2 weeks of your course in your “course development” Google Doc. The templates above will help you layout an intuitive structure. As develop content, try to remember these five foundational principles of course design:

Keep your design as clear and simple as possible
Make sure navigation is logical and intuitive for the student
Keep dense text to a minimum (break up long sections with bullet points, headers, numbers, etc.)
Make use of repeated icons or instructionally relevant images or graphics that help indicate the purpose or topic of the content to students
Include concise instructions for assignments, activities, experiences, and assessments (see the image from GOA for an example).

2. Check Your Weekly Plans Against the Hybrid Learning Checklist

As you draft your course content, use our Hybrid Learning Checklist, which has brief check-points to help you apply the principles and practices of student-center online/hybrid course design and development addressed in this course.

3. Add Content to Canvas

Once you have 2 weeks of content drafted in your course development Google doc, open the "Parent copy" of your 20-21 SY Canvas course in your Canvas dashboard (in the blue menu on the left) to begin building.

By the end of this module, the goal is for you to have:

- 2 weeks of your first unit created in Canvas
- The start of a course homepage, using the template provided.

The section below has Canvas help resources and instructions to support you through the build process.

Quick Tip: We all have awesome content that we’ve developed either during or prior to Remote Learning 1.0. You should absolutely use this content and other resources you already have in your hybrid course(s). Directions for importing content from other Canvas courses can be found in the Canvas Instructions & Help Resources section of this course.

Canvas Instructions & Help Resources

Here are two videos Jeniene created to help you get started:
1. Tour of Canvas Templates
2. How to Easily Edit Templates
PLEASE NOTE: The module template provided in the "parent" courses you'll be working in follows the Numbered weekly cadence format. If you elected to use the Descriptive cadence, simply delete the numbers and edit the titles to align with your weekly plan design.
Instructions for using our Canvas templates are also embedded in an unpublished module in your 20-21 courses
Here's a Google Folder with a variety of images and themes Sandy Levandowski created for us to use to personalize the headers/images on our course homepages. To use one, simply download the header you like and follow these instructions for adding images to a Replacing Your Homepage banner
For additional guidance on setting up your Canvas course, please see the Canvas Instructions & Help Resources Module in this course.

Here are two ways to get “live” help with adding your content to Canvas:

Attend one of the drop-in Zoom sessions: see the Module 2 Overview page or the faculty Google calendar for details & links
Submit a help desk ticket: send an email to helpdesk@stmarksschool.org with your help request, including some dates/times that work for you, and we will get that scheduled as soon as possible.

Action Step

Before moving on to 2.3, copy the course development Google Doc template you’ll use (or create your own) and start drafting your course content. Remember, you and your course partners will copy/paste the content you create in this course development doc into your Canvas course to streamline the build process. In addition to sharing the doc with any course partners, you may also want to add it to your department’s team drive for safekeeping.