Using Canvas
Canvas is the learning management system (LMS) used by UC Santa Cruz. Canvas is a centralized location for you to access course materials, submit assignments, and review grades for each of your courses.
If this is your first time using Canvas, take a moment to familiarize yourself. You’ll spend most of your time in a specific course. Most courses will contain links to the syllabus and other course material, in addition to Assignments, Discussions and Quizzes. You'll also see Grades and other links relevant to the course, such as Zoom and Announcements.
For Canvas help, click the Help button from Canvas menu to search guides, chat with support, or call the support line (844) 215-6973 (both chat and call are available 24/7). You can also email canvas.help@ucsc.edu to create a ticket with ITS.
Important Canvas Features
There are a lot of functions in Canvas - this section highlights some of the most important features to setup at the beginning of the class. First, an important note about Canvas: Like most websites, Canvas tracks your activity, including which pages you've visited, when, and for how long. All submissions (assignments, quizzes, discussion forums) are timestamped, which means that your instructor can see exactly when you turn your work in.
Notifications
You can customize how and when you would like to receive notifications from the course. Please take a moment to adjust your notification preferences using the Account icon in the top-left (the icon with your profile picture or a blank space where your profile picture will go). Make sure that you are receiving notifications regularly. Don't turn them off!
Timezone
In Canvas, you can set your own time zone; this means that Canvas dates are localized to display to you in your local time zone. For instance, if an assignment is due at 8:00pm PST, and you are taking this course in New York, you will see that your assignment is due at 11:00pm EST. All UC Santa Cruz courses are set in PST. Visit this guide on how to change your timezone in Canvas
Gradebook
When you look at your grades, you will notice a little checkbox marked "Calculate based only on graded assignments." When this box is checked, the grade you see will be calculated only on the basis of assignments that have been graded. Uncheck this box and the grade you see will be calculated on the basis of all assignments—even those that aren't yet due. Naturally, at the beginning of the term, unchecking this box will make it appear as if you are doing poorly in the course, because there's a lot that you haven't done. Visit the Canvas guides for more information on Gradebook or viewing submission feedback.
Canvas Student App
The Canvas Student mobile app allows you to access your courses and groups using a mobile device or tablet. You can submit assignments, participate in discussions, view grades and course materials. The app also provides access to course calendars, To Do items, notifications, and Conversations messages.
There’s a lot you can do with the Canvas Student mobile app, but you still need access to a computer to complete some assignments.
If you don’t have access to a computer, email deanofstudents@ucsc.edu for information about the Slug Support laptop loaner program. There are also laptop checkouts available in the McHenry Library.
Visit the Canvas Mobile guide for additional help with the Canvas app.
Accessibility Tools in Canvas
Canvas has two accessibility tools available: Microsoft Immersive Reader and SensusAccess.
Microsoft Immersive Reader is a full screen reading experience to increase readability of a page and allows anyone to customize how they read text. Some features include: customize the font size, background color, letter spacing, line focus, highlight parts of speech, read aloud without a screen reader, translation, and picture dictionary.
SensusAccess converts Canvas documents into a range of alternative formats including Braille, mp3, Daisy, and e-books for the visually and reading impaired. This service can also be used to convert inaccessible formats such as image PDFs to accessible formats.
To learn more about these tools and how you may benefit from using them, visit this Accessibility Tools in Canvas page.
Canvas Student Tour Videos
Canvas has produced a Student Tour video series to help you learn how to get the most from this online environment, from reading content to posting discussions and submitting assignments. The tutorial videos can be viewed in any order.
Total viewing time for all videos is ~ 35 minutes and the videos will open in a new window.