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Dec. 4: Griffmas Tree Lighting and Activities

by | Dec 2, 2025 | Staff

Canisius’ annual holiday tradition, the Griffmas tree lighting will take place on Thursday, Dec. 4. Festivities will get underway at 4:45 p.m. with President Stoute leading the tree lighting ceremony outside of Dugan Hall beginning around 5:00 p.m.

Student Activities will offer a full slate of student-centered activities, including Christmas classics performed by the CrescenDONTs, hot cocoa from RHA, a matching Griffmas lounge set giveaway, a Griffmas dinner followed by a screening of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. These festivities give students a chance to gather and celebrate the season on campus during the final week of classes.

F25-S26 Winter Weather Alternatives for Teaching

by | Dec 2, 2025 | Staff

Canisius University & Center for Online Learning and Innovation Logo

As we head into the winter weather that WNY is known for—and the unpredictability it often brings—it may be helpful to revisit some alternative approaches to traditional pedagogy:

If needed, faculty can meet with students outside of the classroom with Microsoft Teams. Here are some of the tutorials we recommend watching for review:

Check out our Microsoft Office Support: Teams Tutorials Wiki page for additional tutorials.

For a more asynchronous resource, try recording a video with Panopto, our Canisius-branded video content management system similar to YouTube. However, unlike YouTube, videos on Panopto are only shared with your class and contain no ads. Additionally, to improve engagement with the video, faculty can add in-video quizzes to any Panopto video. Here are some tutorials:

Optionally, faculty can also assign Video Discussions:

Additional tutorials are available on the Panopto Wiki Page.

Try Hypothes.is for a more interactive discussion. Hypothes.is is a social annotation tool that allows yourself and students to comment in the margins of the reading.

Other tutorials and resources can be found on the Hypothes.is Wiki Page or check out Hypothes.is’s own resources, which shows the various ways other instructors have used Hypothes.is in their classrooms.

For other information and/or more in-depth help, make an appointment with COLI staff or check the Academic Preparedness for Professors Guide.

D2L: Add Rubrics to Written Response Questions

by | Dec 2, 2025 | Staff

In a D2L Quiz, if we use the Written Response question type, we can add a rubric for easier and faster grading of those questions.

Here are the steps:

  1. In the quiz editor, click on Create New> New Question>Written Response.
  2. Add the writing prompt. Then, click on Add Rubric.
  3. Select either Create New to create a new rubric or click on Add Existing to use a rubric we created previously. In either case, follow the on-screen prompts
    • Tip: If we want to hide the rubric from students so they cannot see it during the exam, make sure to select the appropriate option under the Options section in the Rubric Editor. We recommend the “Rubric is hidden from students until feedback is published” OR selecting “Rubric is hidden from students” and selecting the checkbox underneath, “Include rubric feedback in overall feedback”.
  4. When we have selected the Rubric, it will appear under the question options and under the question preview (if we chose not to hide the rubric from students).
  5. Finish making any other adjustments to the question and click on Save.

For more information, check out the D2L: Add a Rubric to Written Responses in Quizzes Wiki page. For other D2L tutorials, see the D2L Self-Paced Tutorials for Faculty and Staff Wiki page.

Submitted by Tyler Kron-Piatek, Instructional Designer, COLI