Account Settings: Profile and Notifications

This video shows how to set up your Canvas account settings, including your profile, profile picture, and notifications.

Watch the video here: (length = 3:21)

Resources:

Setting up your Account Profile

Adding a Profile Picture

Changing Notification Preferences

Transcript

In this video, I'll describe how to set up your Canvas account, which has your profile and notifications. This video is relevant to all users: both students and teachers.

To get to the profile, click Account on the left menu, then choose Profile. Your profile is visible everyone in your classes and it comprises a photo, a short bio, and links to web pages. You can add as little or as much as you want, but we would recommend that you at least post a picture of yourself.

To change your bio or the links, click the "Edit Profile" button. The name field is just for your name, don't add any titles. In general, you should probably avoid changing this.

Use the Biography section to say whatever you want to about yourself. There's no formatting available, just straight text. In the next section, you can add links to your external web pages or social media accounts.

Smash that "Save Profile" button to finish.

To update your picture, click the pencil icon in the circle to the left of your name. Click "choose a picture" and then find one somewhere on your computer and double-click it. You'll see a preview. Adjust the corners and the center so that your face fills up most of the circle. Then click Save.

This picture will mostly show up on Canvas much smaller, for example in your discussion posts, so it's important to have your face take up most of the image. We don't want to see your family, your friends, or your pets. Just you, and right side up. You can also take a picture with your webcam if you don't have one.

Next, take a look at Notifications.

This is a big chart telling Canvas when and how to contact you. Each column represents a way for Canvas to contact you. At a minimum, you will have one column with your email address. If you've installed any Canvas apps, you'll also have the "Push Notification" column, which means that Canvas will show a notification on your phone if the app is open.

Each row in this chart is an event that happens on Canvas. You can mouse-over each item to see a fuller description.

For each line, you can choose one of the four options. For example, when an announcement is made, I can can choose to get an email right away, or just once at the end of the day, or just once at the end of the week, or never. Now, even if I choose never, I can still log in to Canvas and see the Announcement, it just means that I won't be getting an email notifying me about it.

Generally, the default settings here are fine. But if you find yourself wanting more notifications or fewer notifications, this is where you can adjust that.

If you go to your account settings this is where you could add other contact methods or email addresses, which would add more columns in that notification chart.

We also recommend connecting your Canvas account to your Google Drive to make using Collaborations easier. To do this, click the Google Drive button and follow the directions. If you have more than one Google account, make sure that you're logged in to the right account before making that connection. If you're not sure which account you're in, log out of Canvas, open a new browser window, go to your Google email account in the right account, which is usually your school account, then in that same window log in to Canvas and connect the Drive.

Just to briefly mention the other two links in your profile: The files section is a place where you can keep files not related to any class. And the Portfolio section is sort of a clunky implementation of a Portfolio system, and I'm not aware of anyone who actually uses this. Generally people use something like Google Drive for both of these instead.

So that's a quick tour of the Canvas Account features. You can look up the official documentation if you want to see more details.