Course Site Types
Academic (PeopleSoft-associated) course sites with enrollments
- Academic sites are automatically generated prior to the start of each term and will appear on your Canvas Dashboard (https://canvas.umn.edu). Beginning of auto-enrollment for Fall and Spring semesters is later than the auto-creation dates. For more information, see Understand When Academic Course Sites are Available for the Upcoming Semester.
- If you are an instructor and you don't see an academic site on your Canvas Dashboard, reach out to your local Department/PeopleSoft scheduler to ensure that your role and course association are accurate in PeopleSoft.
- Instructors who want a sandbox Canvas site to draft course materials and/or play around with Canvas features before adding them to an academic site can request a Non-academic (non-PeopleSoft). Follow the instructions for Standard sites.
Training Hub course sites with enrollments
- If you are a Training Hub administrator, only use the instructions below to create development sites.
- Development sites: While you are working on building a new course site, good practice is to use a development site. Request a development site using the process for requesting non-academic sites below.
- Production Training Hub Canvas sites: Once your course site is ready for learners, you'll copy the development site into a production site. Create the production site directly through Training Hub. Do not use the process below.
- Get more information about Training Hub.
- Learn how to copy content from a Canvas development site to a production site.
- Learn how to create a Canvas production site through Training Hub.
Non-academic (Non-PeopleSoft) sites
- Standard sites
- Standard sites are for non-academic uses, including development/sandbox, training, collaboration, and for courses/conferences that do not bear formal academic credit.
- Destiny One sites
- Destiny One is used for training and in some cases, especially conferences, the LMS course is a repository of information made available to registrants and provides a collaboration mechanism.
- Request Standard or Destiny One sites using the Course Request tool in Canvas Help.
Requesting a non-academic (Non-PeopleSoft) site
- Log into canvas.umn.edu
- Select Help in the global navigation menu on the left.
- Select Course Request (Non-academic) to launch the course request tool.
- Canvas Course Request may request access to your account. Verify your name and email address and select Authorize.
- Select Standard or Destiny One.
- Enter a Course name and Short name.
- Select an Institution/Primary Account from the menu.
- Your options for College/Secondary Account or College/Program Office will vary depending on your choice of institution. Some College choices (e.g. CSOM) will bring up a Department/tertiary account or Department/Costing Unit option. Be sure to select all required options.
NOTE: As the Canvas course site requester, you are automatically assigned the role of Teacher, even if you are a Designer. This provides you with the best possible permission set while creating the course. As a Designer/Requester, please enroll yourself as a Teacher in this step. You will be able to add your Designer role and remove your Teacher role from the Canvas roster. - You can add additional users to your site now by selecting Add role and entering UMN email addresses. Multiple users can either be entered on a new line or be separated by a space, comma, semi-colon, or colon.
- Select Make Request on the lower right to complete the course site request. A site will immediately be generated.
- You will see Your course was successfully created and can be accessed here: with the URL of your site.
- The site will also appear on your Canvas Dashboard.
Additional Resources
Design Considerations for Canvas Courses Integrated with Destiny One