Building Content from Scratch in Canvas

• Visit our Organizing Your Canvas Course and Canvas Transition FAQ's pages for information on organizing a Canvas course effectively. 

You have three options to add your syllabus:

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. (Recommended) Use the Canvas Syllabus tool

            2. Create a module titled “Syllabus”

            3. Upload your syllabus as a file

• Determine if merging sections is needed. To prevent loss of student data, this should be done before adding course content in Canvas.

Check the Course Details tab

1. Add a course card image (if desired). The Canvas course card dimension should be 262 x 147 pixels.

2. Scroll to the bottom of the “Course Details” tab.

3. Open “more options”.

4. Here you can set the number of announcements shown on the home page and change settings if you use discussions in your course.

Check the Navigation tab

1. In the “Navigation” tab you can show, hide, and reorder the left-side navigation links that appear in your course.

2. We suggest starting with Syllabus, Announcements, Modules, People, Grades, and Discussions (if applicable). (Optional ) You can apply a Canvas template the new live shell or set a Course Homepage.

Set or change your course home page

1. To set a custom home page, you must first create and publish a new page.

2. Then, you can set it as the home page in your course.

It is recommended you use Modules to organize your course content. Using Modules enables you to organize your course which can make it easier for your students to navigate to specific resources and activities throughout the semester. Optional: The NSM course template included weekly module buttons for greater flexibility among all modalities. 

Modules can also make it easier for you to manage and update the content in your course over time. All modules can be viewed by clicking the Modules tab on the course navigation menu.

Modules offer you logical and user-friendly options to determine how you want your students to progress through your course:

• Lock a module until a specific date and time to ensure that students access course content at the appropriate time.

• Prerequisites applied to entire modules ensure students complete each module in a specific order (e.g., students must complete Module 1 before they can access Module 2, etc.).

• Requirements within a module ensure students complete each module item in a specific order (e.g., students must view a lecture video before they can access a quiz assessing their understanding of that lecture video).

The Gradebook in Canvas is an efficient and powerful tool for entering grades, tracking student performance, and communicating grades to students. You can customize your Gradebook to your preferences by arranging and sorting columns, filtering by student names and assignments, and sorting by assignment type.

In Canvas, you can also create assignment groups to organize assessments and view grades in different groups. You can create groups for different types of activities, different modules of your course, or any other criteria that may be appropriate for your course setup and grading scheme. Your groups can then be weighted with different percentages to determine students’ final grades.

Tip: Use assignment groups to categorize assignments in a way that makes sense for your course. The benefit of this could be for organizing assignments, weighting final grades, and much more.  Using weighted groups allows you to weigh an assignment group for a specified percentage of the final grade.

Before creating and managing assessments in Canvas, course instructors should first approach the complex topic of assessment with a plan that aligns with their instructional objectives and content. After you have decided what type of assessment you need to create, build them in Canvas using the resources provided below.

Add Graded Assessments: 

In Canvas, there are multiple ways to assess student learning:

• Assignments: For file-based or text-based submissions (e.g., Word documents, PDFs, PowerPoints, typing in content directly).

• Discussions: For asynchronous interaction to keep discussion of ideas and course concepts going beyond the classroom.

• Quizzes: For quizzes, tests, exams, and homework assignments in a quiz-like format.

• Tip: Incorporate Rubrics and use the Speedgrader to grade assignments, discussions, and quizzes.

Further Resources:

• 1. 1. 1. How to use Speedgrader?

        2. How to add a rubric?

Communication is key to maintaining a strong connection to your students and ensuring your active presence in your online course. Canvas has many options available for communication. Instructors can personalize their messages by posting audio and video messages in Discussions, Speedgrader, Inbox messages, and Announcements. Here is a list of the communication tools you can take advantage of in Canvas and a brief description of the uses for each:

• Announcements: Use Announcements to serve as the main communication source for students to receive updates for your course due dates, deadlines, and other just-in-time information.

• Inbox: Use the Canvas inbox feature to send an email to students individually or in groups.

• Gradebook messages: The Canvas Gradebook has a feature called "message students who" which allows you to message groups of students based on their status in relation to a specific assignment. This feature allows you to send simultaneous messages to all of the students who fall into certain grade-related categories for a specific assignment.

• Calendar: The Canvas Calendar tool provides students with a to-do list in a calendar format, including Zoom class meetings, assignment due dates, appointments, and more. Note: Be sure to add due dates to learning activities to ensure students can view them via the calendar.

• Speedgrader: The SpeedGrader tool can be used to add feedback inline with student submissions, or through comments on a Rubric.

Tip: It is recommended conducting all of your communication with students through Canvas to create efficiencies for you and a central hub where students know they can navigate to to communicate about course activities.

Review Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions

•  Verify activities to be used in the course are published.

•  Verify dates. Due dates are added to the calendar and the syllabus and serve as reminders to students. “Available from” and “Until” dates will unlock and lock the activity.

•  Verify instructions are accurate and well formatted.

•  Verify the submission type (assignments only).

•  Verify number of attempts is correct (quizzes only).

•  Verify assignment groups are set up correctly. See: How to use Assignment Index Page.

•  Verify assignments are weighted correctly, if using a weighted grading system. See: How to Weight Assignment Groups.

•  Verify discussions are ordered logically on Discussions list page.

•  Verify Quiz “Options” are correct. See: Canvas Quiz Options.

Review Course Details

•  Verify total points possible in the gradebook is correct. To verify Download the Gradebook or within Canvas Student View navigate to Grades.

•  Review Syllabus for accuracy.

•  Verify all links. See: How to Validate Links.

•  Customize course navigation links. Keep only the links that are necessary. For example, in most cases the following should be hidden: Files, Pages, Outcomes, Conferences, and Collaborations. If using Modules you can hide even more links to simplify navigation for students. See: How to Reorder and Hide Course Navigation Links.

•  Verify Modules are logically ordered and published, if using them.

•  Verify Module “Lock until” dates are correct, if using them. See: How to Lock a Module.

•  Verify Module requirements and prerequisites are set correctly, if using them. See: How to add Requirements to a Module and How to set Prerequisites for a Module.

•  Verify the course home page is setup correctly. See: Home Page Layout Options and How to Change the Course Home Page.

•  Use “Preview” option in each quiz to check for errors.

•  Use “Student View” to review the entire course. This is a good time to verify that all of your content is available in an accessible format. See: How do I view a course as a test student.

Final Preparations

• Publish your course when you are ready for students to have access to it. This typically is on the morning of or before the official course start date. See: How do I publish a course? NOTE: Some faculty like to publish their courses well in advance of the start date, but only publish a handful of elements of the course (such as the syllabus). This allows enrolled students to “preview” the class.

• Especially for online and hybrid classes, send an email to your students telling them how to access your course in Canvas.

Cautions

• Canvas email (Inbox/Conversation) messages will not be sent out if the course is unpublished. Send Email from your Faculty Center instead prior to publishing the course.

• Pay attention to the time stamp on anything you have placed a date on. 12:00 means the very first minute of the selected day. For end dates, it is often best to choose 11:59 PM to ensure you are setting it up on the correct date.