In courses in health care innovation, you will encounter 3 main types of graded activities: discussions, assignments, and quizzes. Each has a different purpose and mode of submission. This document will help you:
- Understand the distinction between these types of activities.
- View assignment and discussion rubrics so that you can understand grading criteria.
- Make discussion posts and replies and submit quizzes and assignments.
Discussions
Discussions are the most common graded activity in health care innovation courses. You will use them for your weekly discussion activities. But because discussion forums are social, you will also use them to submit most work that is intended to be viewable by your classmates. Although you can type directly into the Canvas rich content editor when making discussion posts, we recommend composing them in a word processor and then pasting them into your browser.
To post in a discussion forum:
- Read the prompt carefully and review any help resources linked in the text.
- Compose your post in a word processor, and create any visuals or presentations required by the directions.
- Click the “reply” button beneath the prompt.
- Paste your answer into the Canvas rich content editor and embed any supporting multimedia material.
- Click the “Post Reply” button to submit your work.
If you are replying to a classmate, click the “reply” button located beneath their discussion post.
To view a rubric for any graded discussion forum, click the kabob—or 3 dots—menu at the upper right of the initial prompt. Then click “show rubric” in the menu that appears.
Learn more about discussion forums in the Canvas Student Guide.
Assignments
Although all graded activities in health care innovation courses could be characterized as assignments, in Canvas, assignments ask you to submit your work directly to the course team, without the social dimension of a discussion forum. Assignments are often used to collect submissions for weekly practice assignments and for final projects in courses. Most assignments require completing your work in a separate application like a word processor or presentation app, then uploading and submitting the file.
To submit an assignment:
- Read the directions carefully and review any help resources linked in the text.
- Create your post in a word processor or other appropriate external app and save the file on your computer.
- Begin your submission by clicking the “start assignment” button at the upper left of the assignment page.
- Upload your file by following the directions on screen.
- Click the “submit assignment” button to complete your submission.
If the assignment requires uploading multiple files, you can use the “+ add another file” link in the submission interface to add more than one attachment.
Unless otherwise noted in a course, we strongly recommend uploading documents to Canvas from your local machine rather than submitting directly from cloud services like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, or SharePoint.
Rubrics for all assignments are shown directly beneath the assignment instructions. Please review the rubric before you begin your work.
Learn more about assignments in the Canvas Student Guide.
Quizzes
Some courses in health care innovation use quizzes to assess your knowledge and help cement your understanding of material from the weekly lectures, interviews, and readings. Most quizzes consist of 10 or fewer questions. Quizzes may contain:
- Single-answer multiple choice questions.
- Multiple-answer “choose all that apply” questions.
- True-false questions.
- Short answers that ask you to write no more than a paragraph.
All questions are automatically graded by Canvas except for short answers. Short answers are graded by hand, by course assistants. All quizzes in health care innovation courses allow multiple attempts and are open book and open note. Please read the directions carefully for specifics.
Learn more about quizzes in the Canvas student guide.