7 Cool Things About Carmen (Canvas)

Over the past few weeks, you’ve probably heard the university community talking about the new LMS coming to Carmen. You may have even attended a Carmen (Canvas) roadshow or begun exploring the Canvas community. There’s a lot to love about Carmen (Canvas), including more options for creating assignments and a powerful mobile app for easy access to courses.

But did you know, Carmen (Canvas) has a number of new and exciting features not available in Carmen (D2L)? 

Here are some of our favorites:

Create Peer Review Assignments or Discussions.

Peer review? That’s right. In Carmen (Canvas), it is possible to set up both anonymous and identified peer reviews. As an instructor, you can manually assign students to review another student’s work or automatically assign the peer review. 

Enhance Group collaboration with Group sites.

The Group feature makes it easier than ever to collaborate on projects. Each group has a specific section within the course dedicated to their own collaboration. The Group section is like a "mini-course" within the course. Students can make announcements, share files, record conferences, set up pages and post discussions. 

Instructors will see all group discussions listed in the main course Discussions area. Clicking on a discussion will take you into the group site. From there, you can navigate between group sites. Like in Carmen (D2L), students will only see discussions and sites for groups in which they are a member.

Conference with students directly within the LMS.

The Conferences tool makes it easy to hold real-time discussions with students in your course. It is similar to CarmenConnect, but available directly in the course for easy student access. Students can even use it for group work within their Group sites.

It is ideal for holding office hours, meetings with students, and short-term recordings. 

Note: Recordings are deleted 14 days after the conference ends.

Easily sign students up for Office Hours using the Scheduler.

No. More. DoodlePolls.

A part of the calendar feature, the Scheduler tool allows instructors to create appointment groups – and then students are notified to sign up. Use the Scheduler tool to host office hours, schedule individual student meetings, and more.

Sharing Files is easier than ever. 

While sharing files is not new, the Files area is more visible and easier to access for both students and instructors. This might be particularly useful if you have a lot of files that cannot be converted into Pages, or if you provide students with supplementary material.

We suggest creating a page with links to the files so that you can annotate them as needed. Then, modify the visibility of the Files tool, either to completely hide the tool so students access files via your page, or manage file visibility within the tool. 

Note: By default, students will be able to see all files in the Files tool. 

Faster grading across devices with Speedgrader.

Speedgrader allows you to view and grade all kinds of student assignments using the same interface, leaving feedback as a text or media comment. Use the Speedgrader App for easier grading on-the-go.

For Word documents, PowerPoints and PDFs, you can annotate the submissions from within Speedgrader.

Learn more about Speedgrader and the Speedgrader application.

Allow audio or video submissions and leave feedback with audio or video comments.

There are four submission types instructors can choose from when creating an assignment:

1. Text entry
2. Website URL
3. Media recordings
4. File uploads.

If you choose media recordings students can submit audio or video files, or they can record their media submission directly in Canvas.

Ready to get building? Learn the best way to adapt your Carmen (D2L) content for Carmen (Canvas), from content to assessments to student collaboration.