Tips for Canvas Site Facilitators and Badge Guides

This is a “how to” page for St. Thomas employees or student leaders who manage or facilitate the learning or activity in a Canvas orientation, onboarding, learning, or badging site. If you are an instructor in a staff development course or serve as a Badge Guide or Learning Facilitator in a Canvas course, this article is for you! Before serving as a Badge Guide or facilitating a digital orientation or community site, please consider these suggested activities.

Earn a St. Thomas Canvas Credentials Badge

If you are facilitating a Badge Site, please complete a St. Thomas digital badge yourself so that you have a direct experience completing and earning a St. Thomas Canvas Credentials badge.

• Even if you have earned badges with other organizations or companies, we recommend that those who actively support learning via a badging course also earn their own St. Thomas Canvas Credentials badge. This experience will help you to better guide your learners towards success and also help you try out ways to share your digital credential and then support your learners to also share their digital badge credentials. 
• See our Current Badges page in our Badging OneStThomas website for ideas. If you are not sure where to start, we suggest the Digital Accessibility Basics badge (as a way to develop your digital accessibility knowledge and skills) or the Digital Site Facilitator badge (if you are new to supporting learning in Canvas).   

Complete the Digital Accessibility Basics Badge

Enroll in the Digital Accessibility Basics badge and learn ways to include accessible practices and technologies into your badge courses. Anyone developing digital content or supporting learning in Canvas sites will find ways to expand their accessibility practices upon completing this badge! The DA Basics badge is also is a way to experience a short self-paced badge experience (takes about one hour to complete).  

Complete the Digital Site Facilitator and Badge Reviewer Badges 

Specifically, to prepare to facilitate learning in a badge site, consider completing the Canvas Digital Site Facilitator badge, followed by the Badge Reviewer badge in our Digital Learning Success series. These badges are designed for any staff or student leader who has never facilitated or taught a St. Thomas Canvas or St. Thomas badge course. 

Note: If you are already an experienced instructor using Canvas, you may simply want to skim through these two badge modules and spend time on anything unfamiliar to you.  

• The Digital Site Facilitator badge assists you in getting comfortable using basic Canvas features in an instructor or TA role (instead of a student role). Learn how to create a Canvas profile page, use the Canvas discussion and grading tools, send announcements (including the “delay post” procedure), review facilitator ethics and data privacy, and review information on digital/online etiquette.
• The Badge Reviewer badge is an intermediate-level badge to further develop your digital leadership skills, identify constructive positive ways to respond to specific scenarios that may come up as a Badge Guide/Badge Reviewer, and practice ways to provide helpful feedback on learning assignments. 
• These self-paced asynchronous modules (i.e., complete the work anytime, 24/7) will take you 1-4 hours each, depending on the way you learn. One of the assignments invites you to create an announcement to post in your Canvas/Badge site.

Review Your Course/Badge Site Before "Going Live"

Review your entire course/badge site before opening it up to your learners. With enough notice, an ITS Badging Core Team member can assist with a course site review. However, it is also important that you the Badge Guide/Site Facilitator reviews the entire course to ensure readiness for launching.

When logged into a Canvas course in a Teacher or TA role, select the “Student View” button to test out most of the course in a student view. As you go through the course site in that final review, please make note of any potential confusion or items not working.

• If you are already working with an ITS/STELAR team member and are in the final stages before launching the course, please coordinate these potential final edits in this final stage editing.
• Please plan ahead and locate a few early badge-earners or trusted colleagues who could test the site for you as learners, before launching to a bigger group.
• If after completing the Digital Accessibility Basics badge, you'd still like to meet to consult about how to make your course site the most accessible, set up a consultation with a member of our Digital Accessibility Service Team. Select "Request Service", then select "other" and type that you'd like to meet with someone to review accessibility practices for your course site development.