Faculty Guide to Leslie J. Savage Library: Content Delivery

Welcome to the Leslie Savage Canvas Guide! 

This page contains basic information, including getting started articles and the comprehensive Growing with Canvas tutorial. 

• Getting Started is just that - quick tips and resources for those new to Canvas. This section also includes Canvas Organization such as Modules, Pages, Files, the Calendar, Groups, and customizing the Homepage. 
• Grading contains information on Assignments, Discussions, the Gradebook, Speedgrader, and Quizzes. 
• Engagement and Communication includes information on Announcements, Notifications, Collaborations, Conferences, Course Importing, and Canvas Commons.

If you require additional Canvas support, please reach out to Kurt Stalnaker via its-support@western.edu or submit an IT work order. 

Getting Started with Canvas

Organizing your Canvas Page

The Home Page is the first page your students see when they enter your course. You have several options for a home page: 

• Front Page: Create your own page that includes a welcome message, links, images, or other information;

• Course Activity Stream: Use the course activity stream as a home page to show recent activities (announcements, discussions, assignments, etc.);

• Modules: You can choose to show all course modules to students as the home page; this can act like a table of contents for the course; 

• Syllabus: Similar to a Front Page, but can also list course assignments by default at the bottom of the page; a popular method is to add a banner, provide key information and policies, and include a downloadable copy of the syllabus;

• Announcements: show recent announcements are part of the Course Home Page.

Modules

What are modules and why should you use them?

• Modules are used to organize course content by weeks, units, or a different organizational structure.
• Create a module, give it a name, and add items.
• Create prerequisite activities that students must complete before moving on in the course and Track student progress through a sequence of learning activities.

Calendar

What are the features of the calendar? 

• The calendar is a global feature, which means that users can see all course assignments and events in a single place and helps to remind students of graded assignments with specific due dates.

• You can quickly add assignments to a blank course, and choose to fill in the details later.

• Set a Scheduler appointment group aside for students to meet with you (students can sign up for times in their own calendars) as a virtual office hour sign-up.

• For a full list of how-to guides, see the Calendar section of the Canvas Basics Guide.

Pages

Why should you use pages? 

• Pages allow instructors to create course content directly on the web. Pages can include video, audio, links to other pages, assignments, discussions, and more (view the link to see use cases)
• Use the Pages Index page to view all the pages in your course
• View the history of a page (and the author, date, and time of any changes made to a page); page editors can roll back page content to a previous version 
• Upload a PDF to a page, embed a video in a page, or add other types of content to a page 

Files

• Files can hold course files as well as personal files. 
• Files can hold assignments, syllabi, readings, other documents, user-specific files, and more.
• Instructors can lock files so they can only be viewed by direct link or unlock after a certain date.
• Files can be placed in Modules, Assignments, or pages.

Groups

What are groups and what can you do with them? 

• You can create group sets automatically or manually in a course, or create self-sign ups in a group set
• Add students to a group set automatically or manually
• Assign a student leader to a group to help manage the group; Allow students to form their own groups in the course (groups made by students cannot be used to assign group projects).
• See the Canvas Instructor Guide for a list of how-to articles on groups.

Assignments

An "Assignment" is a catch-all term for coursework that is not a quiz or exam (which falls under Quizzes) or a discussion. A Canvas Assignment could be an essay or research paper, a drill exercise, or a public speaking exercise (to name a few). 

What can you do with Assignments? 

• Grade work that is submitted online and on paper.

• Create online submissions that can be graded quickly in SpeedGrader. For a list of SpeedGrader how-tos, see the Canvas Instructor Guide.  

• Create a rubric (see here for special instructions on enabling free-form comments in a rubric) add it to an assignment or a quiz, and align a course outcome with a rubric.

• Make a peer-review assignment, set up peer reviews, and view peer review comments. 

• Make weighted grade categories in Canvas, or base a final course grade on assignment categories.

Quizzes

• You can choose between four types of quizzes (graded, practice, graded survey, and ungraded survey); quizzes are the name for all exams, tests, and so on 

• Create question banks in order to create institutional or departmental repositories (the English department can create a question bank that can be used to create the same evaluation for different students in multiple different courses) 

• Make a quiz where students only see one question at a time 

• Make a quiz with a variety of different settings (including allowing students to see incorrect questions, assign multiple attempts, allow students to view correct answers at a certain date, set a time limit, and many more)

•  Use the Moderate quiz page to view the progress of student submissions, the number of quiz attempts, grant students extra attempts, extra time, and unlock quiz attempts 

• See here for a list of quiz how-to guides 

Discussions

What can you do with Discussions? 

• Create, edit, or delete discussions in a course.

• Create a "threaded" or "focused" discussion within your course, depending on the type of conversation you would like to encourage.

• Make a graded discussion or group discussion as an assignment (when a discussion is marked as a graded assignment, the SpeedGrader separates student comments and combines them into a single view for grading). 

• Subscribe to a discussion to be updated on any new comments (by default, you are subscribed to any you create as an instructor, but TAs or students who create discussions will not give you automatic subscriptions). 

• Assign Peer Review to a discussion.

• Incorporate/embed videos into discussions as a prompt.

Announcements

• Add an announcement to a course to share important information with all users of a course.
• View all course announcements in the Index Page (and create or modify announcement settings). 
• View and sort announcement replies (or disable announcement replies); you can allow students to "like" replies in an announcement even if students cannot reply. 

Notifications

• Notifications are applied to all courses in Canvas; you cannot change notifications for individual courses.
• You can choose how and when you want to be notified about events (right away, daily summary, weekly summary, or never); Push notifications may be enabled on the Canvas App.

Collaborations

• Canvas Collaborations allows users to work on documents at the same time, are saved in real time, and can be assigned to groups.
• You can create collaborations through Google Docs or OneDrive (Office 365, which is supported by Western IT).

Colorado statute HB21-1110 has new requirements that we work toward achieving digital accessibility throughout our workplace. The rules apply to both public external-facing and internal-facing information and communication technology (ICT) that is procured, developed, maintained, or used by state and local government entities. For more information, see Digital Accessibility @ Western. 

Using accessible content helps everyone. Cheyenne Terry, Director of the Center for Disability Services and Accommodations, is a fantastic resource if you have questions.