Clemson Votes Tip for Faculty – Canvas Commons

August 15, 2022

*The nonpartisan ClemsonVotes coalition will be providing ideas and resources to faculty and instructors throughout the fall 2022 semester via the Clemson Teaching Listserv

College students (and faculty!) have a lot on their plates these days, but democratic engagement is also important! Young voters are interested in engaging with American democracy, but research shows that a lack of follow-through in the different stages of voter registration, voter education, and voter turn-out is common.

As a faculty member or instructor, what can you do to help?

Clemson Votes students, staff, and faculty have created materials in Canvas Commons that you can import into your Canvas course. The direct link is here.

The materials cover items such as:

• Why should I vote?
• Young voters and trends
• Voter history
• How to register to vote, make a vote plan, and turnout to vote
• Finding addresses for those who live on campus
• Being an informed voter, critical thinking, and media literacy
• Broader forms of civic engagement
• And a few example assignments that connect course content to voter education

You can import any or all of the pages, assignments, and quizzes directly into your own Canvas course and have students complete them as part of your course work or to have as optional items for their information.  You can adapt or edit any of these materials, as they are meant to help the students and help you! Research shows that improving exposure to voter education information across different courses and audiences helps with the culture of democracy!

Have you never used Canvas Commons before? Here are quick tips:

1. Check out the How Do I Use Commons page from the Canvas Community.
2. The Voter & Democratic Engagement for College Students 2022 module is available by direct link above, or you can search for it by name or by any of the tags: Clemson Votes, college student voting, democratic engagement, student voting, voter engagement, voting, or democracy

Why should this matter to faculty? 

The materials in the Canvas Commons course are all connected to the curricular skills of critical thinking and information literacy. These are core academic values, and in fact, the Association of Chief Academic Officers (ACAO) published a statement in 2020 that all faculty across rank and discipline should be empowered to infuse democratic education into our courses.