Spring Bike
Language Immersion Through Canvas
Surya Jones, a communication intern for The Wheel, wrote the following piece on using Canvas language settings to improve student learning.
Surya is a senior at UC Davis pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations with minors in Anthropology and French. Outside of her academic studies, Surya’s interests include content marketing, social media marketing and marketing communications. In her free time she participates in and competes for UCD Club Boxing.
Canvas’ polished interface spread out before me as I clicked through my courses for the quarter, but what I saw there was wholly unusual. The familiar Canvas design was the same, and yet something was off. As I was skimming the home page for Advanced French Grammar, a course taught by Professor Julia Simon Ph.D., I realized with a start that the Canvas course page was completely in French.
Instead of being greeted by the normal “Assignments,” “Grades,” and “Files” on the course page, the words “Taches,” “Notes,” and “Fichiers” took their place. Even the “What If” explanation on the right-hand side of the page had changed.
When it comes to mastery, especially for language, exposure and practice are crucial. I have taken at least one French course every quarter since UC Davis switched to Canvas, but this is the first time one of my French professors had changed the language setting in Canvas to expand language learning beyond the classroom.
It’s easy to relegate administrative education technology like Canvas to its stated purpose, but with a little creativity and outside of the box thinking, these tools can be adapted for greater educational purposes. Professor Simon’s simple change to the language settings transformed Canvas from an effective course manager to a powerful learning tool.
I sat down and talked with Dr. Simon about the switch, why she did it, and if she would recommend it to other professors. Her experience using Canvas in French exemplifies just one way professors utilize instructional technology, such as Canvas, to engage students with the subject outside of the typical parameters of instruction.
Dr. Simon explained that the change in settings is done on the “professor side” of Canvas. Joey Van Buskirk, Instructional Technologist and Faculty Support for ATS, explained the terminology via email: “There is a difference between changing a language setting in your own personal Canvas settings vs. changing the language setting in a Canvas course. Changing the language setting in a Canvas course shows up for everyone in the course.”
Dr. Simon stumbled upon the language setting by accident while designing her course. Despite her participation in informal training held to help faculty familiarize themselves with Canvas, she hadn’t originally discovered the option to change the course page. Partly thanks to her do-it-yourself attitude, Dr. Simon figured out how to use the language setting through trial and error. Once she got the hang of the settings, she piloted the newly francophone course page in one of her upper division French classes during Spring Quarter of 2017 and has been using it ever since.
For Dr. Simon, the most salient benefit of having Canvas in French is that it teaches students how to navigate a website in French - a particularly useful skill if they are studying abroad. Learning a language includes more than what is covered in homework assignments, readings, and exams. By changing Canvas to French, Dr. Simon has found a way to expand language learning beyond the classroom. Students grasp more vocabulary than what they would learn in the course of their particular subject matter, be that Advanced Grammar or French Literature. For example, if the students had studied abroad, they would be familiar with the technical vocabulary necessary to succeed in a modern university. Since the switch, Dr. Simon has received no complaints from students about the difficulty of use or understanding what assignments must be completed.
However, despite the obvious benefits of having her students practice French outside the classroom, Dr. Simon found some downsides to changing Canvas to another language. A lot of the grading functions were not as accurate when translated into French due to the lack of accents. A simple sentence like, “ Où est-ce que nous allons voyager ce weekend?” meaning: “Where are we going to travel this weekend?” becomes nonsensical without the accent on the first word. For her, with regard to teaching in a second language in Canvas, she didn’t see “enough dialogue between people who are doing the developing and the people using it.” Nonetheless, Dr. Simon believes the benefits of changing her course page to French outweighs the extra time it takes to grade assignments.
The experiences of students like Jimmy Flores, a classmate of mine in Dr. Simon’s class, validates the extra time Dr. Simon puts in to maintain the course page in French.
Flores began taking French his Sophomore year of college and has continued on through his Senior when he declared French as a second major along with Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior. As a French major, he has previously experienced using Canvas in French while taking a lower division French class but greatly prefers his most recent experience. “I liked that [the professors] did [change Canvas], then it's kind of fixed and I have no option to [use Canvas in French]...The first time I looked at it, I was like ‘Oh what the heck does this mean?’ but then I remembered and I go to the other site where I have it in English and I’m like ‘OK, this means files. This means assignments. This means Gradebook.’ ”
Unlike when he made the change himself, Jimmy was able to make comparisons with his non-French courses to better understand the few words with which he was not familiar. When asked if he preferred to make the switch himself or have his professor do it, Flores responded: “If I could ask them, I probably would ask them to change it” He did find that using Canvas in another language was made easier once he was more familiar with Canvas itself.
For professors wanting to experiment with Canvas to further the learning opportunities for their students outside the classroom, Dr. Simon’s use of the language setting provides an excellent example. It was a slight risk and maybe a little more work, but it definitely paid off. “It for sure helps that they [change Canvas language settings]. I think every professor should do it,” emphasized Jimmy at the end of our interview.
As students and professors alike become more familiar with Canvas and other instructional technologies, they will challenge the commonly understood boundaries of the classroom and the technologies that support them.
For information on setting language preferences in Canvas, faculty are encouraged to visit “How do I change the language preference for a course?”
Surya is a senior at UC Davis pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations with minors in Anthropology and French. Outside of her academic studies, Surya’s interests include content marketing, social media marketing and marketing communications. In her free time she participates in and competes for UCD Club Boxing.
Canvas’ polished interface spread out before me as I clicked through my courses for the quarter, but what I saw there was wholly unusual. The familiar Canvas design was the same, and yet something was off. As I was skimming the home page for Advanced French Grammar, a course taught by Professor Julia Simon Ph.D., I realized with a start that the Canvas course page was completely in French.
Instead of being greeted by the normal “Assignments,” “Grades,” and “Files” on the course page, the words “Taches,” “Notes,” and “Fichiers” took their place. Even the “What If” explanation on the right-hand side of the page had changed.
When it comes to mastery, especially for language, exposure and practice are crucial. I have taken at least one French course every quarter since UC Davis switched to Canvas, but this is the first time one of my French professors had changed the language setting in Canvas to expand language learning beyond the classroom.
It’s easy to relegate administrative education technology like Canvas to its stated purpose, but with a little creativity and outside of the box thinking, these tools can be adapted for greater educational purposes. Professor Simon’s simple change to the language settings transformed Canvas from an effective course manager to a powerful learning tool.
I sat down and talked with Dr. Simon about the switch, why she did it, and if she would recommend it to other professors. Her experience using Canvas in French exemplifies just one way professors utilize instructional technology, such as Canvas, to engage students with the subject outside of the typical parameters of instruction.
Dr. Simon explained that the change in settings is done on the “professor side” of Canvas. Joey Van Buskirk, Instructional Technologist and Faculty Support for ATS, explained the terminology via email: “There is a difference between changing a language setting in your own personal Canvas settings vs. changing the language setting in a Canvas course. Changing the language setting in a Canvas course shows up for everyone in the course.”
Dr. Simon stumbled upon the language setting by accident while designing her course. Despite her participation in informal training held to help faculty familiarize themselves with Canvas, she hadn’t originally discovered the option to change the course page. Partly thanks to her do-it-yourself attitude, Dr. Simon figured out how to use the language setting through trial and error. Once she got the hang of the settings, she piloted the newly francophone course page in one of her upper division French classes during Spring Quarter of 2017 and has been using it ever since.
For Dr. Simon, the most salient benefit of having Canvas in French is that it teaches students how to navigate a website in French - a particularly useful skill if they are studying abroad. Learning a language includes more than what is covered in homework assignments, readings, and exams. By changing Canvas to French, Dr. Simon has found a way to expand language learning beyond the classroom. Students grasp more vocabulary than what they would learn in the course of their particular subject matter, be that Advanced Grammar or French Literature. For example, if the students had studied abroad, they would be familiar with the technical vocabulary necessary to succeed in a modern university. Since the switch, Dr. Simon has received no complaints from students about the difficulty of use or understanding what assignments must be completed.
However, despite the obvious benefits of having her students practice French outside the classroom, Dr. Simon found some downsides to changing Canvas to another language. A lot of the grading functions were not as accurate when translated into French due to the lack of accents. A simple sentence like, “ Où est-ce que nous allons voyager ce weekend?” meaning: “Where are we going to travel this weekend?” becomes nonsensical without the accent on the first word. For her, with regard to teaching in a second language in Canvas, she didn’t see “enough dialogue between people who are doing the developing and the people using it.” Nonetheless, Dr. Simon believes the benefits of changing her course page to French outweighs the extra time it takes to grade assignments.
The experiences of students like Jimmy Flores, a classmate of mine in Dr. Simon’s class, validates the extra time Dr. Simon puts in to maintain the course page in French.
Flores began taking French his Sophomore year of college and has continued on through his Senior when he declared French as a second major along with Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior. As a French major, he has previously experienced using Canvas in French while taking a lower division French class but greatly prefers his most recent experience. “I liked that [the professors] did [change Canvas], then it's kind of fixed and I have no option to [use Canvas in French]...The first time I looked at it, I was like ‘Oh what the heck does this mean?’ but then I remembered and I go to the other site where I have it in English and I’m like ‘OK, this means files. This means assignments. This means Gradebook.’ ”
Unlike when he made the change himself, Jimmy was able to make comparisons with his non-French courses to better understand the few words with which he was not familiar. When asked if he preferred to make the switch himself or have his professor do it, Flores responded: “If I could ask them, I probably would ask them to change it” He did find that using Canvas in another language was made easier once he was more familiar with Canvas itself.
For professors wanting to experiment with Canvas to further the learning opportunities for their students outside the classroom, Dr. Simon’s use of the language setting provides an excellent example. It was a slight risk and maybe a little more work, but it definitely paid off. “It for sure helps that they [change Canvas language settings]. I think every professor should do it,” emphasized Jimmy at the end of our interview.
As students and professors alike become more familiar with Canvas and other instructional technologies, they will challenge the commonly understood boundaries of the classroom and the technologies that support them.
For information on setting language preferences in Canvas, faculty are encouraged to visit “How do I change the language preference for a course?”