Greetings! Get ready to explore Canvas and become a TA superstar.
(You must be a TA in GOLD to do everything described here.)
As a TA, you can:
- Manage your course
- Track student performance
- Communicate with your section
- Navigate the Gradebook
Grade your section's assignments and quizzes
Manage Your Course
You can add new users to your course using their Login IDs -the information before "@ucsb.edu"- e.g., if the student's email is ulopez@ucsb.edu, their Login ID would be "ulopez."
Canvas organizes sections per TA. To keep them organized, use Pages. Create a new page for each week, labeling it with the week's number and topic.
You can also add links to course content, other Canvas Pages, files, or external URLs, and remember to add the page to your students' To-Do lists.
Helpful Analytics
Keep track of your students with course statistics. A student's course access report shows you what content they've been eyeing, when, and participation frequency.
If you want more detailed stats, use New Analytics.
Communicate with your Section
Engage your students with Canvas tools. You can send an Announcement to your section. Choose your section in the"Post to" dropdown menu. Your students will get the memo, and so will the course instructor and others in the Teacher role.
To send a message directly to your section, visit the Gradebook and filter for your section. Send messages to students who fit specific criteria, like missing assignments or scoring above or below specific points.
A discussion section group is also a great place to post section-specific content. Think announcements, discussion section forums, material, and Collaborations.
Manage the Gradebook
Using Gradebook filters for specific sections, modules, and assignment groups will help you keep track of students in your section. Sorting by grade or assignment status helps you spot late or missing submissions.
Jot down any important notes about your students in the Notes column – it's your TA notebook. You and other TAs can see these notes, but students can’t.
Pro tip: Default grades are your friends. Use after grading all submitted assignments to assign a default grade (typically a “0”) to students who did not turn in the assignment.
Leaving a “-” in a student’s grade might alter the student’s final grade. Filter the Gradebook to your section and then apply the default grade.
Remember to play safe by not checking the "Overwrite already-entered grades" button (unless you aim to wipe out existing grades.)
Grading Tips
For open-ended quiz questions, use the one-question-at-a-time setting to spotlight questions that need your attention. When you're hunting for assignments in the Speedgrader, filter by section.
If you have a grading issue, refer to the Grading history that lists all Gradebook changes in the course.
Tired of typing out the same comments over and over again? Build a library of comments in the SpeedGrader’s Comment Library for reuse.