Workshops & Offerings

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Cancellation Policy:
Starting August 1, 2025, sessions with fewer than 10 registrations within 24 hours before the session start time may be cancelled.
Upon registering for sessions, please adhere to your commitment to attend (unless an extenuating circumstance arises) the session(s) out of respect for the learning, the presenters, and the designers who planned for the registered attendance within the session. 

Please click a date and time to register for sessions

All Things Canvas:

Growing with Canvas Faculty Training and Orientation
A professional development course designed to help educators and other users effectively utilize the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS). It’s a self-paced training that provides tools and strategies for creating engaging and effective learning experiences.

Vendor-led Vault
A collection of Canvas and instructional technology vendor-led training demonstrations. The previously recorded webinars and supplemental resources throughout this site are self-paced and should be completed after completing the Growing with Canvas course.

Canvas Q&A with Instructional Development:
Mark your calendars and register below! We’re hosting several Q&A sessions over the summer via Zoom. This is your chance to ask questions, explore new features, and possibly exchange discipline-specific tricks you’ve discovered in our new LMS. Sessions are informal and will not be recorded. Please feel free to attend any or all sessions that fit best with your schedule. Whether you have Canvas features and/or new instructional tech questions or enjoy great conversation, we’d love to see you there!

Unlocking Canvas: Content and Organization
Designing an effective Canvas course site requires thoughtful organization and structure for your content. In Unlocking Canvas: Content & Organization, we’ll guide you through the Rich Content Editor (RCE) and Module tools to help you build engaging, accessible course materials. Learn how to embed media, create accessible content, and manage course flow.  This is the second workshop in the Unlocking Canvas training sequence for faculty.

Unlocking Canvas: Speedgrader
Speed up your grading and improve feedback with Canvas’s SpeedGrader. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to use SpeedGrader to streamline the grading process, leave meaningful feedback, annotate student submissions, and efficiently manage grading workflows across various assignment types. Whether you’re teaching large classes, supporting a course as a TA, or simply looking to save time while grading, this session will help you unlock SpeedGrader’s full potential. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

  1. Navigate SpeedGrader and access student submissions efficiently.
  2. Annotate, comment, and leave media feedback using SpeedGrader tools.
  3. Use rubrics to support fast and consistent grading.
  4. Filter by section or assignment for focused grading sessions.
  5. Apply late and missing assignment policies within the SpeedGrader workflow.

Unlocking Canvas: Assignments, Grading, and Rubrics
Learn how to streamline your assessment workflow in Canvas with this practical, hands-on workshop, Unlocking Canvas: Assignments, Grading, & Rubrics. We’ll cover how to create and organize assignments, enter grades efficiently using SpeedGrader, and leverage rubrics for transparent evaluation and feedback. Ideal for instructors seeking to streamline grading and enhance communication with students about their progress. This is the third workshop in the Unlocking Canvas training sequence for faculty.

Unlocking Canvas: Gradebook
Managing grades in Canvas can be both powerful and nuanced. Unlocking Canvas: Gradebook demystifies the Canvas Gradebook by guiding you through key setup choices, grading configurations, and settings, as well as troubleshooting common issues. You’ll explore how Canvas differs from Blackboard GradeCenter, how to apply weighted or points-based grading, and how to verify the accuracy of your Gradebook calculations. We’ll also dive into policies, grading schemes, and strategies to ensure grades are calculated and displayed accurately.

Unlocking Canvas: Analytics
Discover how to access Canvas course data and analytics to make informed teaching decisions. In this workshop, you’ll explore Canvas’s Course Analytics tool, student-specific data, quiz performance insights, and course-wide statistics. Learn how to monitor engagement, track student progress, evaluate quiz effectiveness, and understand overall course trends. This session is ideal for instructors and staff who want to utilize data to enhance student success and improve their teaching practices. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

  1. Navigate Course Analytics to monitor student participation and performance.
  2. Access Student Analytics tools, including Context Cards, grade summaries, and individual student reports.
  3. Interpret Quiz Analytics through summary data, question breakdowns, and item analysis.
  4. View and interpret Course Statistics to evaluate content and assignment usage.

Instructional Technology Training Options:

Akindi
Akindi, a web-based system that automates the grading of paper-based, multiple-choice exams, serves as a replacement for traditional Scantron machines. It integrates with Canvas, allowing instructors to create, distribute, and grade assessments in one place. Akindi also offers features for analyzing student performance and test reliability.  Training sessions are designed to provide instructors with the basics of Akindi and will cover a step-by-step guide on how to get up and running with Akindi Paper assessments, perfect for new Akindi users or those looking for a refresher!

Harmonize Discussions
We’re excited to share that instructors at UMass Dartmouth can use Harmonize, a discussion & collaboration tool that integrates with Canvas, to improve student engagement in your online discussions while saving you time in grading and managing your class!

Free recorded training for advanced topics!
Upcoming events hosted by Harmonize.
Visit our Harmonize webpage to learn more.

Kahoot! Game-based Learning
Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform that allows you to create, share, and play learning games or trivia quizzes in minutes. Unleash the fun in face-to-face classrooms and online courses! Kahoot! functions as an interactive technology to engage students in the learning environment through Games, Interactive synchronous and asynchronous lessons, Polls, Quizzes, and Interactive lectures. Join us for a training and demonstration offered by a Kahoot! education specialist.

Kaltura – Creating Online Lectures
A lecture capture and personal recording solution is built into Blackboard and Canvas. Kaltura can record content on your computer screen, audio narration, and webcam video. After recording, your video is automatically processed and stored in your personal Kaltura media space. This workshop will guide participants through the process of initiating Kaltura, recording, and embedding videos into a Blackboard or Canvas site.

Lucid – NEW!
Instructors can enable the Lucid integration in Canvas to add it to the course navigation or use it to create assignments, allowing students to access tools for creating diagrams, flowcharts, mind maps, and collaborative virtual whiteboards directly within their learning environment. Lucid helps users visualize complex ideas, organize information, and work together on projects! Lucid is a platform that includes two main products: Lucidchart, for creating intelligent diagrams, flowcharts, and mind maps, and Lucidspark, a virtual whiteboard for brainstorming, ideation, and real-time collaboration.

Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is a program in the Office 365 suite typically used to store, sort, and manipulate data. Although Excel is not a database, it is often used in data analytics and finance careers to assess large amounts of information and create visualizations.

  • TBD

Qualtrics – Getting Started
UMass Dartmouth has selected Qualtrics as our Internet survey tool. All Faculty and Staff have access to create and publish their surveys. Students may also use Qualtrics under the direction of a Faculty or Staff member. This workshop covers the authoring and administration of surveys, as well as data collection. Question types are covered in detail. No previous survey experience is necessary.

  • TBD

Qualtrics – Branching
An intermediate Qualtrics workshop that explores various methods for skipping or repeating questions in a survey. Topics covered include skip logic, display logic, blocks, block branching, and loop and merge. Previous survey experience equivalent to the Getting Started with Qualtrics workshop is required.

  • TBD

TurnItIn Plagiarism Detection
TurnItIn is a web-based service that checks for plagiarism and originality in student writing. It compares submitted work to a large database of student work, articles, books, and websites. Turnitin generates an Originality Report for both faculty and students, highlighting and categorizing any matching text to detect plagiarism and inaccurate citation references, while striving to maintain academic integrity.

VoiceThread
A web-based application that allows users to create and share presentations, documents, and other media, and then engage in collaborative discussions using voice, video, or text comments. It’s used in education, business, and other settings to facilitate communication, feedback, and collaboration.

YuJa Panorama for Accessibility
We’re excited to announce that YuJa will host a series of webinars designed specifically for faculty and staff. These sessions are a great opportunity to refresh your knowledge of our tools and ask any questions directly to our experts. Did you know that YuJa Panorama allows instructors and students to locate, assess, and resolve accessibility issues, as well as access content directly within Canvas? Users can view a file-by-file accessibility gauge, see the severity of problems with color-coded icons, replace files, select from over 110 languages, and extract math equations from documents without leaving Canvas.

Online and Blended Teaching Training Options:

Online Teaching and Learning Strategies
A rigorous four-week, fully online, asynchronous course introduces faculty to the current research and best practices for online teaching and learning. Using their discipline-specific course materials for activities, faculty will work independently and collaboratively with peers from across campus and instructional designers to design and build one unit of online instruction on a Canvas site. This unit will meet the Quality Online Course Review Rubric criteria and be a model that faculty can reference and replicate as they continue to develop their upcoming fully online course(s). *Pre-requisite: Growing with Canvas

Visit Teaching Online for more information.

Blended Teaching: Designing Meaningful Content Connections
An engaging two-week, fully online course introduces faculty to current research and best practices for blended teaching and learning. Using their discipline-specific course materials for activities, faculty will work independently and collaboratively with peers from across campus, as well as with Instructional Designers, to design and build one unit of blended instruction that can be incorporated into their course(s) to enhance student engagement and foster meaningful content connections. This instructional unit will meet the Quality Blended Course Review Rubric criteria and serve as a model that faculty can reference and replicate as they continue to develop their upcoming blended course(s) on a Blackboard site.