Lucid Suite for Instructors & TAs

Modified on Fri, Jul 5 at 3:20 PM

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Lucid Suite
How to Access Lucid Suite
Use Case Examples for Lucid
Additional Documentation & Support

Lucid Suite

Lucidspark and Lucidchart of the Lucid Suite for Education are now available to instructors and students at Penn through a Canvas integration. Instructors will be able to create collaborative whiteboards, mind maps, brainstorming activities, product sprints, and more through these tools.

Please Note: there is another product in the Lucid Suite that we do not have access to called Lucidscale. You will not be able to access Lucidscale products with our license. Additionally, templates marked premium are not accessible through Penn's license.

Lucidspark

Lucidspark is a very robust whiteboard space that allows users to collaborate by using sticky notes, freehand drawing tools, tagging, commenting, and voting. Lucidspark contains a limitless canvas that can be divided up by the instructor in whichever way they choose. It can also be organized using one of the many templates offered by Lucidspark.

Lucidchart

Lucidchart is another versatile collaboration space where users can create visual diagrams like mind maps and flowcharts. It has extensive features such as drag-and-drop shapes, layers, cursors, and chat. Collaborators can build charts together in real-time or users can create view or comment-only documents for instruction and assignment submissions. Lucidchart offers options to create new blank documents or apply existing templates in an infinite cloud-based space.

Explore more features of the Lucid for Education Suite by visiting Welcome to Lucidspark and Welcome to Lucidchart.  

How to Access Lucid Suite

We will first cover how to create your account with Lucid Suite via Canvas. After linking your Canvas account with Lucid the first time, you can then create a Lucidspark whiteboard space or a Lucidchart diagram space.

Start in your Canvas site and navigate to a page or an assignment. Click Edit and go to the Rich Content Editor toolbar.
Click the 3 dots in the text editor's menu and then click on the stylized L icon (looks similar to the logo L in the image at the top of the screen). This will prompt the Lucid account creation questions to begin.
Lucid Suite will sync with Canvas and ask your role, and if there are any students below the age of 13 in the course. The first time you access Lucid choose Sign Up (not Log In) and create an account with the email address connected to your Canvas account. Please continue to follow the prompts to give Lucid access to Canvas and get started. If you already have a Lucid account and are not logged in, choose Log In. If you are already logged in, click Connect.
Clicking the stylized L button again will then bring you to the Lucid Suite dashboard where you can create new Lucidspark or Lucidchart board(s) from scratch or use a premade template.
After creating your board(s), add them to pages, assignments, announcements, or your syllabus ( anywhere with a rich content editor) using the stylized L in the rich content editor.

We will now cover how to add boards to a page or an assignment depending on the assignment use case.

After linking your Canvas account with Lucid Suite in the way mentioned above, you can go directly to Lucid's website to create boards more easily. Log in with the same email you use in Canvas, if you do not remember your Canvas password you can select "Forgot password?" below the email/password entry area for a password reset button to be sent to your email listed in Canvas, which will allow you to reset your password and log in to Lucid.

Use Case Examples for Lucid

A Lucidspark/Lucidchart board can be used in four main ways:

As a collaborative assignment; have students work together on one board and collaborate as a class, e.g., a course-wide whiteboard brainstorming session on a topic.
As a collaborative assignment; have students work together in small groups, e.g., small group activities where each group collaborates on different subjects.
As a typical assignment; have each student complete a board individually, e.g., a  KWL table you created in Lucid Suite that you want each student to fill out and submit individually.
To present information that no one will contribute to, e.g., to embed on a page and show an org chart or syllabi.

Collaboratively Working as a Class

Embedding a Lucid Document with the Rich Content Editor onto a page allows students and instructors to collaborate on whiteboards and charts directly in Canvas. For a short screencast tutorial, please see Lucidspark Whiteboard Collaboration Page for Instructors. Step by Step instructions below:

In the Rich Content Editor of a Canvas Page, click the 3 vertical dots to expand the menu and then click the Lucid icon.  
Choose to embed an existing Lucid document from the My Documents button on the right or create a new document by clicking New on the left.  
For new documents, hover over your preference of Lucidchart (for flow charts and diagrams) or Lucidspark (for whiteboards). Choose Blank Document to build from scratch or Create a Template. 
Enter a title for your new document and click Create.  
Determine the level of access that students will need to collaborate on the document, either edit or comment depending on the assignment, and then click Insert. 
Save and Publish your Canvas page and the Lucid document is ready for collaboration.

This is best for simple activities where the instructor can calculate a grade manually as there is no grade passback for this type of assignment. Student contributions to the board will have their name near their entry.

Small Group Collaboration

Instructions for adding a Lucid document to a group assignment:

Create your Lucid account following the "How to Access Lucid" above if you have not yet. This will connect Lucid with your Canvas account as well as allow you to access Lucid through their website independent of Canvas.
Create Canvas Groups and a Canvas Group Assignment.
Create a Lucid document for each group in the website for Lucid and change the permissions so students can edit the document: https://lucid.app/users/login#/login (sign in with your Canvas email in the email field and use your PennKey password as the password - if you have forgotten your password or it is not working, please select Reset Password, and a reset link will be sent to your default Canvas email)
Give one student in each group the URL for their group's Lucid document, that member then shares the URL with the other members (or they can choose to add collaborators to the Lucid document).
One submission is expected from each of the groups. The groups need to decide who will submit their Lucid document to the assignment on behalf of the group. The chosen member of the group will post the document to the assignment using the Lucid logo button in the rich content editor to locate their work in Lucid and then add it to the assignment.

Individually Graded Assignment Submissions - Two Options

Create an assignment using Lucid as an external tool:

To create individually submitted assignments with an instructor-made Lucid template, it is recommended to use the external tool submission type:

Create a Lucid document to be used for an assignment and then open a new assignment in Canvas.
Under Submission Type, select External Tool.
In the search bar under Enter or find an External Tool URL, select Lucid or type “Lucid” and click Find
Check Load This Tool in A New Tab
Click the Lucid option, choose from Lucidspark for whiteboards or Lucidchart for diagrams, and click Next.
Pick Blank Document or My Documents (for a previously created document) and click Next.
Configure External Tool by clicking Lucid again and then Select.
Save & Publish the assignment.

Once opened, students will receive a copy of the Lucid document to work on their assignment, along with an embedded Lucid editor for editing and submitting. This document is automatically renamed for each student that clicks it so students do not need to create a copy of the board or rename it. Submissions can be viewed and graded in SpeedGrader.

Note: When students submit an assignment, a PDF version of the document is exported and displayed in SpeedGrader. Any edits students make after submitting the assignment will not be visible unless they resubmit.

Create an assignment with Online Text Entry:

For assignments that require students to individually submit original (from scratch) Lucid documents, we recommend setting up assignments with online Text Entry:

Create an assignment with the submission type Online and choose Text Entry. This will allow students to embed Lucid documents in the Rich Content Editor.

Informational Board (No Submission/No Collaboration)

Embed an informational board with no contribution from students in two ways:

Create a Lucid document through the Lucid-Canvas integration:

Select View only for the permissions when building the document.

Create a Lucid document from the Lucid web interface:

Navigate to the Lucid document via Lucid's website
Click the Share button in the top right of the Lucid web interface and then select View.
Click File (from the upper left of the header), Embed, then Activate Embed Code.
Copy the HTML embed snippet of code.
Embed the Lucid document onto the page using Canvas Embed instructions.

Additional Documentation & Support

If you have any questions about using Lucid Suite in your course, please reach out to online-learning-help@sas.upenn.edu for additional assistance.