IDEA Courseware Archives

Fall 2022 Faculty Webinars

The Courseware Team has been hosting a series of Zoom webinars for faculty in Fall of 2022. We're looking forward to bringing you more in 2023! Previous Webinars How to Have a Well-Designed Canvas Site Description: Improve the accessibility, navigation, and overall effectiveness of your course site with simple techniques…Read More

FeedbackFruits Tool Suite

As FeedbackFruits’ suite of both asynchronous and synchronous tools are used across undergraduate, MBA, Executive Education, and MBA Program for Executives (WEMBA) levels at Wharton, this blog post serves to point you in the right direction when selecting a tool for many different assignment types. The decision tree shown below…Read More

Collaborate in Color: How to Enhance Your Course Conversations using Ed Discussion

As we continue a hybrid approach to teaching and learning where much of the collaboration is remote, the search for educational technology tools that best meet this need while fostering course engagement for faculty and students alike is ongoing. One tool that serves to organize discussion threads, Q&As, and additional…Read More

Seven Steps for Making Your Canvas Course More Accessible

Diversity and inclusion are central to Penn’s mission, and as such, the University pledges to ensure its online course materials are accessible to the widest array of students. Creating an accessible Canvas site is easy to do when you apply principles of good design. The following steps can help make…Read More

Courseware Team Presents: Lunchtime Webinars

Beginning in November 2020 and continuing through spring 2021, the Courseware team held a series of webinars open to all Wharton instructors and teaching team members. Check out below to watch the full webinar videos. New Quizzes for Final Exams Learn how to build exams with New Quizzes. We cover…Read More

Using Modules to Organize Course Content

Fence with a line of index cards held up by clothespins

By Becky Moulder Modules are a great way to elevate your course design in Canvas and to organize content more effectively for students, particularly when a course is taught fully online. Think of Modules as building a table of contents for your course materials: You can group course materials and…Read More

FAQ: Copyrighted Course Materials

By Matt Borlik Wharton Computing’s IDEA Courseware Team has implemented a new policy regarding the digital distribution of copyright-protected reading materials on Canvas. All copyrighted reading materials must be distributed through either Lippincott Library’s Course Reserve system, a Study.Net-issued course pack, or–in rare instances–a publisher-specific resource. Copyrighted materials may not…Read More

Increase Student Engagement With FeedbackFruits

By Dylan Fenton With the shifting focus to an online teaching environment, you may be concerned about your courses lacking the kind of student-to-student interaction that make in-person classes so magical. That cross-pollination of ideas between students can still happen during virtual class meetings, but are there ways to create…Read More

A Guide to Publishing in Canvas

By Neil McGarry Canvas has many features, but some functions cut across all of them. One of those features is publishing. Publishing in Canvas allows you to make content available to students. Unpublishing in Canvas makes content not visible to students. Sites themselves must be published before students can access…Read More

When Course Materials Appear on Websites – and What Faculty Can Do About It

By Rob Ditto Unfortunately, faculty might find that their course materials appear on “study resources” websites like Course Hero or ULoop. This is despite the fact that websites like these have no relationship to Wharton or the University. And our content partners, such as Study.Net and Lippincott Library, don’t share…Read More