Workshops & Offerings

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Cancellation Policy:
Starting August 1, 2025, at least 10 participants are required for sessions to run; otherwise, sessions may be canceled.
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

Unlocking Canvas: A Virtual Bootcamp to Start the Semester on the Right Foot
This full-day virtual bootcamp is designed for faculty who are new to Canvas or want a basic refresher before the semester begins. The training focuses on practical skills to help you set up a clear, functional course site that’s ready for students. This boot camp will help you build a reliable course structure to ensure your course is organized and ready for Day One. Topics include:

  • Navigating Canvas and using communication tools effectively.
  • Organizing content using modules and the Rich Content Editor.
  • Restructuring content migrated from Blackboard within the Canvas template.
  • Creating accessible materials that meet essential requirements.
  • Setting up assignments and rubrics for efficient grading.
  • Configuring the Gradebook to ensure accuracy.

Join us for this engaging day of learning. Please feel free to register for any or all of the sessions you’d like to attend.

Session 1. Unlocking Canvas: Overview
Are you new to Canvas or looking for a refresher? Unlocking Canvas: Overview is designed to help you confidently navigate the Canvas learning management system. This session will give you an overview of the essential features of Canvas, from navigation to organizing content to managing communication. This workshop provides a foundation to begin building and managing engaging Canvas course sites. This is the first workshop in the Unlocking Canvas training sequence for faculty.

Session 2. 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.

Session 3. 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 looking to simplify grading and improve communication with students about their progress. This is the third workshop in the Unlocking Canvas training sequence for faculty.

Session 4. Unlocking Canvas: Gradebook
Managing grades in Canvas can be both powerful and nuanced. Unlocking Canvas: Gradebook demystifies the Canvas Gradebook by walking you through key setup choices, grading configurations, and settings, and 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: Clean up Migrated Content
In this session, faculty will learn how to efficiently prepare migrated Blackboard content for reuse in Canvas. Participants will apply the UMassD Canvas template to streamline course design and ensure consistency, implement key cleanup steps to improve clarity and usability, and identify common migration issues with practical solutions for a smooth transition. This session requires that participants have some basic familiarity with Canvas, such as full completion of the Growing with Canvas faculty training, as we will not have time to delve into the intricate ‘clicks’ of each feature presented and discussed.

Instructional Technology Training Options:

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!

Growing with Canvas
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.

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.

More Sessions are available at Kaltura Training Services

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.

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.

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.

Unlocking Canvas: Mastering Weighted Grading
Unlock the potential of Canvas Gradebook! Join us for a crash-course training session designed to empower faculty with the skills needed to set up and manage weighted grading in Canvas effectively. This session will provide a comprehensive overview of the Canvas Gradebook and Assignments, ensuring you can accurately reflect student performance in Canvas. Don’t miss this opportunity to enhance the accuracy of your GradeBook! Register now to secure your spot and take your Canvas skills to the next level. Highlights include:
  1. Introduction to Canvas GradeBook/Assignments: 
    Differentiate between Blackboard’s Grade Center and Canvas’s Gradebook.
  2. Step-by-Step Guide to Weighted Grading:
    Use Assignment Groups to organize assignments and assign weighting.
    Test Canvas’s grade calculations using Test Student.
  3. Additional Considerations and Tips:
    Create additional GradeBook columns for non-submission assignments.
    Align Canvas’s letter grade scale with the one in your syllabus.

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 the successful completion of the Growing with Canvas course.

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 YuJa Panorama allows instructors and students to locate, assess, and fix accessibility issues and access content directly within Canvas? Users can see a file-by-file accessibility gauge, view the severity of the problems with color-coded icons, replace files, select from 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, and 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 meaningful content connections. This instruction unit will meet the Quality Blended Course Review Rubric criteria and be a model that faculty can reference and replicate as they continue to develop their upcoming blended course(s) on a Blackboard site.