Lesson: Options for Remediation and Extension

Lesson Pages

 Sizing Up the Barrier 

Students often vary significantly in terms of the knowledge, skill, and experience that they bring to a given class. This significant variance means that instruction may be beneath the capability of some students while being simultaneously too advanced for others. To better conceptualize this barrier, please consider the following scenario.

 

 

Rose and Meyer (2002 Links to an external site.) stress that learning in a digital environment opens up numerous options to scaffold and support students with varying interests, knowledge, reading/writing skills, and speed of learning. How, then, can instructors utilize the Canvas environment to provide such scaffolds and supports to students with significant variability? Rather than trying to figure out what one's students need, the UDL model calls for instructors to provide options and let the students choose what works for them.

There are several ways to accomplish such student empowerment in the Canvas system. One is to provide options for students who need to be remediated or who would like to further explore content being studied. That's the focus of this lesson.

  If you need help using the rich content editor in Canvas, check out this tutorial.

 

Methods

Method One: Hyperlinking

One method for enabling students to explore key topics above-and-beyond what is being explicitly covered in an online lesson is to provide hyperlinks to curated content. If you have ever used wikipedia Links to an external site. or other inter-linking sites, you are already familiar with this approach. Think about it: this approach is designed to serve people who want to - or need to - know more. 

 

 

How to add hyperlinks to your text content on Canvas:

1. Determine key ideas, content, or phrases that variable students may need to or like to explore further for understanding or extension of the learning.
2. Curate quality web-based content (if possible) that fits the purpose (e.g. scaffold or extension or both).
3. Select a word, phrase, image, etc. in the canvas text field.
4. Add a link to it using one of the following methods:
   • If you are developing a content PAGE you have the most content-rich options for linking. Simply use the side bar on the right side of the page (while editing) to select one of the three tabs to hyperlink a link (to another page, an assignment, a quiz, an announcement, discussion, module...), a file, or an image.
   • In any of the rich text editors (almost anywhere you can enter text on Canvas), use the "hyperlink button" to link to an external webpage. You can also use Command + K (Mac) or Ctrl + K (PC) as a keyboard shortcut for this function.

 

Method Two: Non-Required Content Sections

There are at least three ways for instructors to approach non-required content sections: text boxes, optional content pages/modules, and optional discussion boards.

1. Text boxes. Most textbooks these days draw from this strategy. There is the main body of the text, which is probably required reading at some point, and then there are text boxes that are clearly designated as "additional information." These may include Application methods for an applied science course (e.g. Education), Alternative Perspectives in a history text or module, Problems for Practice in a math text, etc. The same kind of strategy can be employed in Canvas pages, too!

Did you notice the "Consider This:" text box up in the hyperlinking section of this page? That's an example of using a text box to set off a slightly tangential point for the reading. That section simply adds more details to a point that had already been made (hyperlinking text is a way to design for variability). As such, a person who chose to skip that bit would not have lost track of the main ideas (assuming he or she understood the point being made). If I am consistent in my use of "Consider This" boxes, end users of this module will come to understand their function as "further information" about the topics at hand and can thus choose when they would benefit from reading the boxes. Similar to hyperlinks, this serves variable learners who would benefit from either scaffolding or extension, and thus also potentially benefits everyone!

There are several ways to make text boxes on Canvas. I will show you two - a simple way and an advanced way. 

How to make a text box on canvas (Simple Way)

1. Click on the "table Links to an external site." icon in a rich-text editor (anywhere you enter text on Canvas).
2. Click "insert table" and select a 1x1 square.
3. Click inside the new-formed text box and enter whatever information, formula, etc. that you'd like.
4. While still selecting the table, click the "table" icon again and select "table properties." Next to "Border" enter '2' or greater to make a border. Done!

 

How to make a text box on canvas via div class container (Advanced Way)

Div class containers are a more accessible way to make call outs. This is how I've made all of the textboxes in this course. 

1. Enter content as normal in the rich text editor (text, media, etc.)
2. Click on the HTML editor Links to an external site. (link to the top-right of the rich text editor when editing a page)
3. Locate the text/content you'd like to put into a text box. Just before this content, add the code: <div class="alert alert-info">. (This one is blue. You can use other similar codes to create boxes of other colors.)
4. Locate where you'd like the textbox to end, after which, you'll add the code </div>
5. Suggested: in rich text editor, select all the text that is now in your container and change the text color to black (this helps keep the contrast high, rather than the darker blue on light blue that will manifest by default)

You won't see any change in the rich text editor, but when you save the page and see it as it will be live, you'll notice the content within the divider class will be in a blue textbox.

 

 

2. Optional course content pages/modules. Think back to the biology class described at the beginning of this module. The use of a pretest was effective in revealing the challenge that the variability of student prior knowledge and skill in the subject area presents. If the professor tries to address (or perhaps avoid addressing) this challenge by "teaching to the middle," this approach will serve to create barriers (lack of supports for the bottom margin; lack of challenge for the upper margin). In this case, using the hyperlinks (mentioned above) may not go far enough in supporting the range of students included in this class. For more extensive ranges, a second way to approach providing choice and autonomy is to develop optional course content. Below I suggest two ways to present optional course content

Prerequisite modules

When developing course modules, instructors may choose to create a prerequisite module for students to complete with key background knowledge required for learning in the course. These modules can include quizzes that would allow students who already know the content to bypass and can include curated resources to support the learning of those students who do not yet have the knowledge they need to be successful in the course. Once the students are able to pass the quiz, they will be enabled to move on into the core content modules. In a synchronous or group-paced course, the prerequisite module can be assigned early in the term to students with an alternative extension module for those who were able to bypass it. In asynchronous or self-paced courses, students can be enabled to progress as soon as they are ready.

Extension modules

On the other hand, some students (and possibly the same students who benefited from the prerequisite modules!) will benefit from extension modules. For the purpose of this course, I am defining an extension module as an optional learning module in which the instructor curates content for further learning about course topics above and beyond what is required. Extension modules, when developed, can be used for multiple purposes and in many ways. For example, an instructor may wish to make extension modules worth extra credit, use extension modules as required work for students taking a course for a graduate credit (but optional for everyone else), or have students choose from among two or more modules based on their own interests or objectives. All of these are excellent strategies for different contexts.

3. Optional discussion boards. Another form of optional course material is the optional discussion board, which you may have noticed in this course already. Optional discussion boards provide a space in which students may interact with each other and the instructor in a way that allows others to observe and profit likewise. For example, it may be useful to provide students with discussion boards that focus on questions related to assignments. When a student asks about some feature of an assignment, there are likely to be other students with the same question. Instead of needing to field several emails, an instructor can reply once to a question about an assignment and others can see the response and interact if they have follow-up questions. Another form of discussion board could be an open-ended board for questions and ideas for peers and professor. This type of discussion board can allow students to raise questions of ideas related to the learning whether in class or out. Peers can choose to engage with one another in this medium and the instructor can chime in and provide encouragement or insight likewise. Feel free to try it out yourself on the boards in this course.

It is worth noting again that in the process of designing for variability, this course has actually been significantly improved for all users. The students toward the middle and higher ends of knowledge may not require either the prerequisite module, but may benefit from browsing over it to refresh their memory of key concepts nonetheless. While the students toward the lower margin and in the middle may not choose to follow all extensions, there may be an extension module or two that catches their eye and helps them become excited about the subject in a way they otherwise would not have.

 

Summary

In this lesson, participants explored an application of the concept that teaching to the middle is ineffective for those who don't resemble the "average," but preparing for variable individuals benefits everyone. This lesson specifically focused on using the features of Canvas to support students who need to—or want to—explore remedial or extension materials into select content in the course of learning. Two major ways of enabling students to choose to remediate or extend learning were presented in the form of

1. Hyperlinking
2. Providing non-required content in the course (through the use of text boxes, non-required pages and modules, options to test out of material, and non-required discussion boards)

These tools can be used independently, but may work best in conjunction whereby a synergistic effect may occur.