1. A student is in my Canvas course but not in the CN Post roster, why?
This is because the student has not clicked the “CourseNetworking(CN Post)” tab on your Canvas course’s left navigation. When they click on the “CourseNetworking(CN Post)” tab, they will:
- Gain access to their CN account (either create a new account or link to their existing CN account). Here you can find more details: https://support.thecn.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002047287
- Automatically be added to your CN course.
They will then appear on your CN Post roaster. So, please ask this student to click the “CourseNetworking(CN Post)” tab on your Canvas course’s left navigation.
2. One of my students enrolled in my class was asked for a pin to get access to my class, but I don’t know where to find the pin (or my screen says that my institutional administrator has disabled the function for me to set up a pin). What should I do?
CN Post users should create their CN account and access their CN courses via Canvas. I believe you have already added the “CourseNetworking(CN Post)” tab on the Canvas left course navigation. If this student goes to your Canvas course and clicks the “CourseNetworking(CN Post)” tab, they will be guided to access his CN account and automatically added to your CN course. They do NOT need the course PIN. So, please tell this student to go to your Canvas course and click the “CourseNetworking(CN Post)” tab from the left Canvas course navigation to join your course. If this student needs any assistance, please let them directly email us at help@thecn.com.
3. I do not see my student’s posts, and she cannot see other course members’ posts. What’s wrong?
It sounds like this student has been posting to the wrong place. We often see students post their course content to their institution’s Network or the entire CN. That’s wrong.
Please remind this student to go to your Canvas course, click the “CourseNetworking(CN Post)” tab from the Canvas left course navigation to access your CN Post feed, then choose visible to This Course as the post visibility setting.
For the posts she has created, she can follow this guide to find them all https://support.thecn.com/hc/en-us/articles/360053581614. We recommend that she copy and paste the post content and re-create them in your course.
4. What are the different CN Post discussion grading approaches, their pros, and cons?
Grading options |
Pros |
Cons |
course Anar Seeds goal
Set up a course Anar Seeds goal and give your students a portion of the course grade if they meet the goal. You can leverage the grade passback feature. This is how to set up the grade passback in Canvas: https://support.thecn.com/hc/en-us/articles/235467027 |
-Anar Seeds offers a great way to motivate and track student online participation -Automatic grading -You save time from grading student discussions and could spend the time commenting on students’ posts. -This approach is efficient when you have a large class. |
-You do not give students specific discussion instructions and verify that they have followed the instructions. |
Course Anar Seeds goal + Canvas Assignments You will still rely on course Anar Seeds for grading, but you will also create a series of Canvas Assignments (0 points, not graded) to give students detailed discussion instructions for each discussion topic/activity. |
-You can leverage both the automatic grading and provide specific instructions to your students, making the CN Post discussion more structured and instructor-led. -This approach is efficient when you have a large class. |
-Since you do not grade students’ posts, you do not verify if they have followed your instructions strictly. |
Manually grade student posts You will create credit-bearing Canvas Assignments to give students detailed discussion instructions. You may ask students to submit their post’s URL, or you use the hashtags or the post number links on CN Roster to filter specific posts, review their quality, and manually enter the grade for each assignment. |
-You will be able to provide detailed instructions and requirements to your students. -The discussion activities are more purposeful and structured. |
-You will spend time grading each single post. -Since CN does not’ have direct integration with Canvas’ SpeedGrader tool, you will have to ask students to submit their post URL, or you use the hashtags and links on the CN roster to find specific posts. -This approach works when you have a relatively small class. |
5. I set up Anar Seeds grade pass back, but my students’ Anar Seeds grades do not appear in the Canvas Grade book. What’s wrong?
-You may not have set up an Anar Seeds goal and other Anar Seeds settings correctly in CN Post. Please follow this guide and double-check: https://support.thecn.com/hc/en-us/articles/235467027
-There may be multiple Canvas assignments connected to the CourseNetworking(CN Post) external tool. You can only have ONE such assignment in each Canvas course.
-Your students clicked the Anar Seeds/CN Post assignment before their CN account was created. You need to ask them to click “CourseNetworking (CN Post)” from your Canvas course navigation, create their CN account, then click the Anar Seeds/CN Post assignment one more time to trigger the grade pass pack. After that, it will take about 10-15 minutes for the grade to appear in the Canvas Grade book.
-If, after checking the above steps, you still don’t see all of your students’ Anar Seeds grades, we will like to set up a quick Zoom call to look into your Canvas course. If only a few students’ grades do not show, please let us know the CN Numbers or names of these students. We will check their accounts and let you know what we have found out.
6. Students’ CN Post grade does not match the Anar Seeds they have earned. What should they do?
First of all, you want to make sure this doesn’t happen to all of your students. If it does, it is most likely that you did not set up the Anar Seeds grade pass back correctly. Please make sure that in your Canvas course, you only have ONE assignment that is connected to the CourseNetworking (CN Post) external tool.
Second, please make sure you are looking at the students’ course Anar Seeds. This number is shown in the last column of the CN course Roster. When you look at a student’s profile or mini-profile card, the bigger Anar Seeds number is not for your course but for all of the seeds the students have accumulated on the entire CN. So, don’t look into the students’ Anar Seeds Total.
If this issue only happens to one or a few students and you are sure you have been looking at the course Anar Seeds number, please let us know who the students are--tell us their CN Numbers, names, or university email addresses. We will check their account and their grade pass back status.
Please also note that if only one or a few students have an incorrect Anar Seeds grade, you could also manually enter the correct grade in the Canvas Grade book at the end of the semester.
7. My students cannot access CN Post. What should they do?
We need more detail. Please let us know the student’s university email address. We will check their CN account. We need to know what they have experienced exactly when they try to access CN Post. If they saw an error message, what is it? A screenshot will be very helpful for us to understand the issue and provide assistance. We also welcome the student to contact us directly. We may set up a quick Zoom call to look at their screen.
8. My students posted but did not earn Anar Seeds. What could be wrong?
First, as the course instructor, you want to make sure that on the Course Anar Seed Settings page, you have set a correct time period for your students to achieve their Anar goal. Please note that students do NOT earn any seeds in your course beyond the specified time period.
If you did not set up an Anar goal or the time frame to accumulate Anar Seeds is correct, not earning Anar Seeds is more likely to be caused by the students. It could be due to one of the following reasons:
- The post or reflection did not meet the minimum word count requirement
- The student has reached the 24-hour or 7-day seed cap
9. What materials can get me and my students started with CN Post?
Please check out the following two tutorials:
10. I want to set up some posting guidelines for my class. Do you have a template that I can use?
This is IUPUI physics professor Andrew Gavrin’s CN posting guide for his students. It clarifies expectations and rules (such as what students should and should not post on CN), which is critical to the success of using a social learning tool. Feel free to base on this guide to create your own.
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