Canvas - How to Use Canvas Outcomes to Assess Student Learning

What are Canvas Outcomes?

Canvas Outcomes allows instructors to align specific course assessments or objectives with institutional learning outcomes, using rubrics (that can be also be used for grading simultaneously). As instructors grade using these outcomes, analytics are then collected and compiled at the course, department, and institutional level to be reviewed as needed.

Instructure suggests using this data to “support teaching improvement, identify at-risk students, and support the accreditation process.” Use Outcomes to:

• Focus students’ attention on the most important skills and activities in your course
• Align course activities with institutional, program, or department outcomes
• Align Quizzes and Assignments to different kinds of mastery
• Track student progress on a learning outcome or overall in the Learning Mastery Gradebook

The Outcomes tool is available in all Canvas courses. If you’re creating a new course from scratch, and haven’t used Outcomes before, you won’t have any outcomes listed in the tool. If you imported content from a previous course, you may have included that course’s learning outcomes.

How Should I use Canvas Outcomes in My Course?

There are two approaches to using Canvas Outcomes, both described in more detail below. If you’re already using rubrics in your course to assess activities, you can create a single rubric for assessing learning outcomes at the end of the course, which won’t impact the rest of your course design. If you haven’t used rubrics before, you can build new rubrics from preconfigured institutional learning outcomes, including the UW-Superior Graduate Learning Goals, UW-Superior Student AI Competencies, outcomes specific to your department or program, or outcomes you add to your course yourself.

This guide includes more information about these approaches in the assessment section below, but first you need to add outcomes to your course.

How do I add outcomes using Canvas Outcomes?

To start using Canvas Outcomes, you’ll need to either find and add account outcomes (setup by Canvas administrators on your behalf) or create new ones specific to your course.

Consider browsing available account outcomes and selecting the ones that work well for your course before creating new ones. Account level outcomes become more useful as more instructors utilize them—providing comprehensive system-level analytics and broader assessment data—so please find and add these outcomes as often as possible.

How do I find account outcomes and add them to my course?

1. In your course Navigation menu, click Outcomes.
2. Click the Find button.
3. In the “Find Outcomes” panel, click Account Standards.
4. Next, you can choose from a few options:
   • Click UW-Superior Instructional Top Level to list available organizational learning outcomes. These include the Graduate Learning Goals and Student AI Competencies.
   • Click the name of your academic department for outcomes specific to your department, discipline, or program. (Your department may not have any account outcomes available.)
5. Click through the nested folders to select an outcome.
6. Click Import at the bottom-right of the “Find Outcomes” panel.
7. Canvas will confirm if you want to “Import outcome [Outcome Name] to group [Course Name]?” Click OK to finish the import.

Any outcomes you find and import will be listed in the leftmost column in your course Outcomes tool.

How do I create new outcomes?

If preconfigured account outcomes aren’t sufficient, you can create your own. Outcomes you create in a course will not automatically be available in your other courses, but you can include them when importing content from another course.

How do I Assess Learning Outcomes?

When grading Outcomes rubrics, keep in mind that learning outcome assessment is different than grading specific activities in a course context. Focus on student mastery of specific learning outcomes, not other factors in the course, and avoid choosing any given mastery level as a default. Consider how other instructors are assessing these learning outcomes and try to assess in the same way, to ensure consistency.

UW-Superior’s formal assessment process assesses student learning at the capstone level, so student performance in earlier courses should typically be less proficient than the performance of students completing their studies in a program. (UW-Superior Student Learning Goals define mastery as Level Three. Level Four is for outstanding students.)

Canvas Outcomes data does not impact UW-Superior course evaluations.

Option One: Assess Learning Outcomes at the End of the Course

Many departments and instructors already use rubrics to grade student work. They can begin using Canvas Outcomes while continuing to grade with those existing rubrics.

To do this, we recommend instructors create a new assignment near the end of the semester that doesn’t impact students’ final grade in the course. Link it to outcomes relevant to the course as a whole, so the instructor can then use SpeedGrader to fill out that rubric for each student. Don’t add this new outcomes assessment assignment to your module; this will help reduce student confusion, as students won’t need to interact with it.

Create Assignment

First, configure the new assignment:

1. Create a new Canvas assignment.
2. On the assignment "Details" page, configure the following:
   1. Name the assignment. Choose a name that stands out from your other course activities.
   2. Add a small description that explains the assignment is for gathering assessment data and will not impact students’ grade in the course.
   3. Check the “Do not count this assignment towards the final grade” checkbox.
   4. Choose the “No Submission” Submission Type.
3. Save the assignment.

Add Rubric

Next, add a rubric to the assignment that includes the outcomes you’d like to assess:

1. On the assignment page, click the +Rubric button.
2. In the rubric editor, click Find Outcome.
3. Select an outcome you’d like to assess.
4. Confirm the "Use this criterion for scoring" checkbox is checked. If it's not, check it.
5. Click +Import.
6. Repeat this find and import process to add as many outcomes as you need.
7. Click +Create Rubric to save your work.

Click Publish to publish the assignment. (While students will not need to interact with this assignment, it will need to be published so that you can utilize SpeedGrader to assess students on the outcomes you added to your rubric.)

Assess Students Using SpeedGrader

Now that you’ve created this assignment and added a rubric for assessing outcomes, you can fill out the rubric using SpeedGrader.

1. Open the assignment.
2. Click SpeedGrader to open the grading interface.
   • This button will be located in a different place depending on the size of your browser window, including on the right side of a wide window or on the bottom of a narrow window.
   • You can also click the triple-vertical-dots menu button (⋮) and then click SpeedGrader in the popup menu.
3. Click the View Rubric button.
4. Note the student name at the top-right of the page, on the yellow bar that runs across the top of the screen. Fillout the rubric categories for that student by clicking the correct rating for each outcome.
5. Click Submit Assessment.
6. Note the “Total Points” listed at the bottom-right of the rubric. Enter that same number of points in the “Grade out of 0” box at the top of the grading panel, under “Assessment”.
7. Click the right arrow (→) at the top of the page to advance to the next student.
8. Repeat these steps to assess each student.

View Outcome Results

After grading the activity for each student, you can view the totals in the main “Traditional Gradebook” tab of the Grades tool. This also allows you to use the specialized Learning Mastery Gradebook, which you can share with your students if you’d like.

Option Two: Assess Outcomes in Your Course Assignments

Instead of waiting until the end of the course to assess Canvas Outcomes, you can also add outcomes to your assignment rubrics throughout the course, to be assessed alongside existing rubric criteria.

Create a new rubric or edit an existing one. Instead of clicking the +Criterion button to add a new row, click Find Outcome. You can mix outcomes in with standard criteria.

Need Help?

Please email the UW-Superior Canvas Team to schedule a consultation. We can discuss how to best use Canvas Outcomes in your course or help you add existing learning outcomes to the tool.