Group Curation Activity

Tools used: Canvas groups & pages
Activity length: Full semester project

Design a group project that utilizes features of Canvas and emphasizes knowledge-seeking and synthesis of course content. When you use Groups in Canvas, students are given a separate shell, adjacent to your main course, where they can have editing control over the various Canvas tools (e.g., discussion boards, pages, files, etc.). Digital curation projects give students a lot of control over the topic and content of their projects and it encourages essential 21st-century skills like collaboration, negotiation, information, media and technology literacy, and productivity. Provide opportunities for sharing between groups throughout the cycle of the project to foster broader knowledge circulation, creativity, and flexibility.

Preparation

First, prepare project criteria. What course learning outcome(s) will this project achieve? Generally, a project like this should ask students to locate, synthesize, and present information in a unique way. Students should be given some agency over a specific topic and encouraged to include a variety of types of materials (e.g., text, image, audio/video). Consider the full cycle of the project and plan for groups to share their progress at specific times to receive feedback from their peers.

Examples of project criteria:

Annotated bibliography of academic sources (e.g., journal articles, books)
Trustworthy news sources (i.e., publicly-facing, content relevant cases)
Expert interviews
Multimedia requirements (e.g., at least four images, two videos, one podcast, three readings)

Facilitation

First, identify student groups. You can organize groups randomly or based on shared interests (personal or professional). If you want to create random groups, you can use Canvas random group assignment, otherwise, you can create groups manually.

Tip: When creating Canvas groups begin group set labels with the call number for your course (e.g., Psych302-Group projects). This makes it easier for students to distinguish multiple active groups in Canvas.

Once these groups are created, students will have full access to the tools within their Canvas group area. It is recommended that you provide some resources to them about how to create pages and make them aware of all the formatting tools and other digital integrations available to them (e.g, Kaltura, YouTube, etc). Have students design a multimedia Canvas Page within their groups.

Tip: There are many resources available at Software Training for Students

Optional: Create an opportunity for groups to share their progress with each other:

Copy and paste the HTML code from each group’s page into the content box of a discussion forum for students to view and offer feedback.
Create a separate discussion forum for each group’s project.

To submit final projects, create a Canvas Assignment as a group submission. In the assignment settings accept URLs. Only one student needs to submit the assignment on behalf of the group