Canvas & educational technology
Making Canvas work for the course
I use Canvas as part of course design and assessment. My experience includes organizing course materials, preparing importable quizzes, working through import problems, and making instructions and grading expectations easier to follow.
Course pages, assignments, and grading
Importable assessments with code and written responses
Course design
Make the next step clear
My Fall 2026 Canvas materials include weekly overviews with class plans, assignment identifiers, deadlines, and submission instructions. Individual assignment pages set out time expectations, permitted help, and the evidence students need to submit. I prepare these as reusable HTML pages so course organization can be maintained alongside the teaching.
Assessment workflow
Build an assessment that survives the import
My Canvas work includes QTI assessment packages for Python, Java, and embedded systems. These combine auto-graded questions with written responses, code tracing, debugging, and reflection. Preparing the package also means checking that code formatting, answer choices, scoring, and question types arrive correctly in Canvas.
A concrete example
From a programming project to an individual check
For an Arrays and ArrayLists project, I prepared a Canvas assessment around edge cases, code tracing, bug fixing, and reflection. The project and the individual check serve different purposes: one gives students room to build, while the other helps me examine how well each student understands the decisions in the work.
Faculty workflow
Design the teacher’s side of the course too
The course packages separate student materials from instructor guides, solutions, and assessment versions. The Python guides include lesson timing, likely misconceptions, pacing alternatives, scoring guidance, and follow-up verification questions. Public rubrics and consistent assignment categories help connect the course plan to Canvas setup and feedback.
In daily use
The details matter when a class is underway
My experience includes preparing QTI assessments, resolving import and code-formatting problems, and organizing grading feedback for SpeedGrader. This work comes from my own teaching. It gives me a practical basis for discussing course design and EdTech with colleagues, including what makes a resource easy to update or an assessment reliable to use.