We offered multiple mini-PD sessions: Lunch and after school, at both sites, and in each case, teachers could also join as a Google Hangout. In total we served 21 teachers, which I think is pretty good. Many felt comfortable enough to try Respondus purely based on the how-to guide Julie had already created, and didn't feel they needed to come. Others expressed a desire to have a screencast video on how to do it.
This is the model of professional development that I'm advocated for, and I think we're moving towards: Differentiated, focused, and personalized in both modality and time.
In our sessions, many teachers weren't necessarily using Canvas Quizzes that much, and were asking really good questions like:
When should I use Canvas Quizzes?
When is better than a paper quiz?
Personally, I think Canvas quizzes should be used frequently, but have absolutely no impact on a student's grade, and give them opportunity to take it as often as they want. I wrote an entire post on these thoughts in my Performance, Feedback, Revision blog post last December, which I was actually quite surprised to find that Teacher 2 Teacher stumbled upon in the last month or two, and began sharing out on Twitter. I've received a lot great feedback from it.
8 ways educator @MrOrreBiology strives to create #assessments that put Ss' understanding first: https://t.co/XXsxnZWN0f #HSchat #edchat pic.twitter.com/zGj6kYSB1J— Teacher2Teacher (@teacher2teacher) March 28, 2019
Anyway, the conversations got me thinking how I should support teachers more on all things Canvas Quizzes. I went ahead and created the Respondus Screencast, but then created 3 more on how to create a quiz, how to add questions, and how to analyze the results. I whipped them all up into a simple infographic. Now we have a handy dandy how-to guide on creating Canvas quizzes, along with a link to my blog post.
Here's the email I sent to our staff today, along with the infographic below:
