Canvas: Faculty Peer Review Tool

Canvas is Oregon State University's Learning Management System.

Faculty peer reviews are generally a recommended or required part of a faculty member's Promotion and Tenure dossier. For faculty who teach exclusively online, it can be challenging to provide the faculty peer reviewer enough access to Canvas to perform the review without giving access to add/edit/delete content or to view/add/edit/delete grades.

The Faculty Peer Review tool in Canvas provides instructions and a new anonymized discussion tool to help faculty provide a faculty peer reviewer limited/select access to a Canvas course/content without giving access to add/edit/delete content or to view/add/edit/delete grades in the Canvas course. The two primary actions are adding the faculty peer reviewer as an Observer to the Canvas site and using the Faculty Peer Review tool to generate anonymized Canvas discussion(s) to be shared with the faculty peer reviewer.

Add Faculty Peer Reviewer as Observer

1. Log in to Canvas
2. Navigate to the course to which you want to add your faculty peer reviewer as an Observer
3. Enable the OSU Instructor Tools navigation item if it is not already enabled.
4. Click OSU Instructor Tools in the course navigation menu
5. Click Add TA... on the OSU Instructor Tools page. 
6. Click Add New Person
7. Enter the ONID Username in the field for the person you want to add, or use the dropdown menus to search for the individual a different way, and click Start Search
8. Click the Observer role next to the name of the person you are adding.
9. Select all section(s) in the Canvas course
10. Click Add Person and wait for the screen to refresh
11. Click Main Page to go back to the Add TA... main screen

Generate Anonymized* Canvas Discussion

1. Log in to Canvas
2. Navigate to the course with the discussion you would like to share with your faculty peer reviewer.
3. Enable the OSU Instructor Tools navigation item if it is not already enabled.
4. Click OSU Instructor Tools in the course navigation menu.
5. Click Faculty Peer Review on the OSU Instructor Tools page.
6. Click "See list of published course discussions" to generate the list of Canvas discussions in the course. If your course has group discussions, the group discussions will be displayed in a second list following the first list of non-group discussions
7. Click the name of the discussion you would like to anonymize*
8. Review the anonymized* discussion for any issues**
9. Click "Download PDF of Anonymized Discussion" to create and download a PDF of the anonymized* discussion that you can share with your faculty peer reviewer. Alternatively, you can use your browser to save or print the webpage

*Names typed by users as part of a discussion prompt, post, or reply will not be removed. Care should be taken to ensure FERPA compliance when sharing anonymized discussion content. Questions about FERPA? Contact the Office of the Registrar.

**Images, videos and other embedded content will not display correctly or be available through the Faculty Peer Review tool or the anonymized PDF.

Still have questions?

If you questions about this topic or related topics, please use one of the following methods to contact the Canvas team at Oregon State:

• Add a comment/question to this article using the tools below the article
• Send an email to Canvas@oregonstate.edu