Campus Technology Insider Podcast February 2022
Listen: 10 Basics that Students Want from the LMS, and How to Help Faculty Implement Them
00:13
Rhea Kelly: Hello and welcome to the Campus Technology Insider podcast! I'm Rhea Kelly, editor in chief of Campus Technology, and your host.
At Ohio State University, students developed a list of 10 ways that instructors can use the learning management system more effectively — calling it "Carmen Common Sense" (Carmen being the name given to the university's Canvas LMS). These basic guidelines aim to make courses more consistent, predictable, easier to navigate, and generally more student-friendly. For this episode of the podcast, I spoke with Sam Craighead, associate director of professional learning in Ohio State's Office of Technology and Digital Innovation, about understanding the student perspective, supporting faculty with research-based practices, and the impact of instructional design on student success.
Before getting into that conversation, I thought I should quickly run through the 10 Carmen Common Sense guidelines, to give a little context. They are:
- Upload the course syllabus to the LMS and provide it as a downloadable file.
- Upload assignments with instructions and clear due dates.
- Enter grades into the LMS when grading is complete.
- Use a consistent mode of communication and mention it in class.
- Organize course materials into modules according to content matter.
- Remove unused tabs or pages from the course navigation.
- Organize the course homepage with instructor contact information.
- Utilize clear and consistent naming conventions for assignments and files.
- Use Open Educational Resources when feasible.
- Leverage the resources and support that are available from the university.
And another brief note: You can hear more from Ohio State at our upcoming Campus Technology Leadership Summit. On Wednesday, February 23rd, we are hosting a series of presentations focused on the many facets of digital transformation in higher ed. The session "Tech Tools for Student Wellness and Holistic Support" will feature Jessica Phillips, interim director of Learning Programs and Digital Flagship at Ohio State. She'll share how the university launched a student wellness app that offers tools and resources in an easily accessible format - and made sure that students were directly involved in the design, development and ongoing improvement of the app. You can register for the summit for free at campustechnology.com/summit.
And now, here's my chat with Sam.
Hi Sam, welcome to the podcast.
Sam Craighead: Hi Rhea, thanks for having me.
Kelly: So I thought, you know, to sort of give us some background, could you talk a little about yourself and your role in the Office of Technology and Digital Innovation?
03:14
Craighead: Sure, yeah. So I lead our professional learning team. And we coordinate learning opportunities and resources designed to help educators at Ohio State to leverage technology to provide high quality learning experiences, to create inclusive online and technology rich learning environments, and to make evidence based decisions about teaching with technology. So it's sort of an intersection of educational development and instructional design and ed tech. And sometimes a little bit of IT in there too, because our department does that. But yeah, that's, I think sums it up.
03:48
Kelly: So I read recently that Ohio State has developed a set of learning management system guidelines called Carmen Common Sense. Can you kind of give me the background on how that came about?
04:03
Craighead: It originated as sort of a collaboration between one instructor, who, her name's Nicole Kraft, she's from our School of Communications at Ohio State, and with members of our undergraduate student government. So you know, undergraduate students, and, you know, they kind of came to us to see like, Hey, can you do something with these? How can we kind of get these out to people? And so we worked together to help bring attention to Carmen Common Sense, initially as part of a fall teaching showcase that we did before COVID. And then we also worked to create a new home for their recommendations by turning it into a teaching topic on our Teaching and Learning Resource Center site.