SEED projects 2019 – A new Canvas for teaching and learning

Enabling Canvas with real-time audience interaction

Dr Johnny Chan (Faculty of Business and Economics)

This project developed and validated a feasible solution on Canvas that can enable real-time audience interaction in lectures and workshops in my department, Information Systems and Operations Management. The concept of a real-time audience interaction plug-in or application in Canvas was straight-forward: it is a question management system for real-time events. It allowed participants to log a question or a comment via their devices. Each event has its own event code, and it is given to the participants at the beginning.

Through this project, the social and psychological barriers of the students (or any audience) to participate in an event by asking questions have been lowered. We engaged with teachers and students to develop, validate and refine the idea further so that it could benefit most people. We have achieved this by adapting an existing application into a proof-of-concept solution that runs on Canvas. We have used that to conduct experiments and initiate conversations to gain a better understanding of the tool and the perception of it.