Instructors can create course sites that are both usable and accessible to the widest range of students possible by organizing their course site with a landing page, modules, and a limited menu, plus following other core skills of accessible design.
Resources
Good Practices
There are multiple ways in Canvas to notify your student of course expectations, due dates, discussions, or disruptions that impact them. But are students getting the message?
ChallengeWorking in small groups on activities and assignments can be beneficial even for "routine" tasks, as students have the opportunity to learn from and help one another.
Online assessments may be used to support instructional goals, even if your primary course format isn’t fully online.
DesignPLUS has updated its tool bar in Canvas with a new user interface and design application.
As a rule, do not share downloaded materials with others via peer-to-peer software like BitTorrent or other torrent applications.
Instructors often use classroom discussions to promote sharing and ideas about a subject matter. Sometimes, discussions can become rote and tedious, or engage only one or a few students and the instructor.
Are you inspired to use a new technology tool to improve student engagement and learning?There are important factors to consider when planning to adopt a new technology tool in your course.
As faculty and instructors adapt to online and blended learning, it's important that students are prepared to be successful online learners.
The start of each semester brings anticipation and excitement.
Downloading or sharing software, entertainment, or images may violate United States copyright law. Many torrent applications default to continue sharing your downloads with other users.
How-Tos
Attendance in Canvas
As a student, you can make an announcement within a group.
In Canvas you can add contact methods to receive notifications.
As a student, you can view your grades based on What-If scores so that you know how g
If your instructor allows file attachments, you can attach a file to a discussion reply
Your instructor or TA may provide office hour appointments that you can sign up for within your Canvas course site using Zoom Appointment Scheduler in Canvas.
Honorlock works as an extension in a Chrome browser. Several types of Chrome extensions can interfere with Honorlock, such as Grammerly, uBlock Origin, etc.
You can start discussions with a group in Canvas.
You can start a collaboration in Canvas based on a Google file.
As a student, you can create your own Student Groups for study groups, discuss an assignment, etc.
Students: If an instructor has required you to use Respondus LockDown Browser for added security when taking a quiz, you must download and install Respondus LockDown Browser before you can start the t
If your instructor allows, you can edit and delete your own discussion posts.
You can embed an image file directly into discussion replies using the image icon.
You can filter the conversations in your Inbox for easier organization, especially if you are enrolled
By default, the Calendar displays your personal calendar and course calendars for each class in which you are enrolled.
You can find your peers' feedback for peer reviewed assignments in several place
Some instructors will allow you to retake a quiz.
You can see the current groups where you are enrolled using the Global Navigation Menu.
View the assignment submission details to know that you have turned in the assignment.
Your instructors may want to create groups within a course but still allow you to form your own group.
Canvas can upload specific image, video, and audio files as user content.
When a change is made to your course grades, the Grades link in Course Navigation adds a indicator representing the number of changes in a course since your last visit.
If you are able to join a group in your course, you can
As a student group leader, you can help manage a group in a course.
Canvas includes a set of default notification settings you can receive for your courses.
Students: You may be asked to use an iClicker remote for a course.
Canvas makes it easy to reply to messages from other users in your Inbox.
You can resume a quiz you previously started.
Note:
In the Inbox, you can send a message to one user or multiple users in a course.
In the Inbox, you can send a message to one user or multiple users in a group.
All dates and times throughout your Canvas courses are displayed according a course's respective time zone.
Canvas includes a set of default notification settings you can receive for your courses.
If your institution has enabled the Scheduler tool, you can sign up for any appointments
You can create collaborations within your groups using Google Drive.
Your instructor may require you to submit a peer review of another student's assignment.
Kaltura is a media management system that can be used to upload media files as well as to create webcam recordings. Videos in Kaltura can be viewed from phones, tablets, and computers.
A group assignment is a way for instructors to allow students to work together on an assignment and submit it as a group.
This article is an overview for students to help you find and complete course work in Canvas. It covers the following topics:
Please use Respondus LockDown Browser Student Support resource section when having issues with the Respondus L
Turnitin is an originality-checking and plagiarism prevention service that checks your writing for citation mistakes or inappropriate copying.
For best performance, Canvas should be used on the current or first previous major release of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Safari.
You can share files with members of your group.
This article lists all of the resources for student about using the Canvas Student App on an Android device.
This page lists all resources for working on the Canvas Student app on an iOS device.
The Dashboard is the first thing you will see when you log into Canvas.
The Inbox is split into two panels and displays messages chronologically.
Canvas has an integrated tool for math and science formulas based on LaTeX, the industry standard for academic publication.
People shows all the users enrolled in the course.
If you have been added to a group, you can view the group calendar.
You can view any groups where your instructor has added you as a member, as well as any availab
You can view all replies in a discussion by scrolling or searching content.
Instructors give various kinds of feedback on assignments, quizzes and graded discussions in Canvas. Students can access this information through Grades in the course navigation menu for each course.
You can view all your course assignments on the Assignments page.
The Grades page in a course displays all current grades for all course assignments.
While grading your quiz, your instructor may leave comments for the whole quiz.
Quiz results are easy to read in Canvas.
Your instructor may attach a rubric to a quiz.
VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slideshow that holds images, documents, and videos. You can:
This information was gathered during a Canvas Investigation meeting attended by academic technologists held in March 2019.
Canvas Guides is the online documentation site for students, instructors, instructional designers, parents, and learning management system (LMS) admi
This article pertains to course sites that have copied content from other course sites that use Turnitin for some assignments. The copied content needs to fixed when the error below presents itself.
There is a Canvas feature that allows you to check your content for accessibility.
Course Works is the University of Minnesota's comprehensive course materials program offered to all undergraduate degree-seeking students.
You can add a grading scheme to customize assignment grading.
Modules are used to organize course content by weeks, units, or whatever organizational structure works for your course
You can associate a date with a Canvas page so that it shows up in a student's To Do list, Syllabus, and Calendar, just as Assignments do.
You can add a personal reminder to your own Calendar for an upcoming event.
When you set a module prerequisite, the module is locked until a student completes the required items.
If you want to create the same event multiple times for a course, you can create a recur
If you cannot find a rubric you want to use in your Canvas course, you can create a new rubric.
You can add a rubric to a graded Canvas discussion to help students understand expectations for
You can add a rubric to a Canvas assignment to help students understand expectations for the assignmen
You can create appointment groups in the Scheduler.
When you create an assignment, you can choose to add an external app (LTI tool) as a submission t
A Canvas event is a non-graded Canvas activity.
There are many places where you can find Apps to use in your courses.
You can upload an image to display behind the course card in the Canvas Dashboard
You can upload an image to display behind the course card in the Canvas Dashboard.
Several features in Canvas support the Rich Content Editor, including Announcements, Assignments, Discussions, Pages, Quizzes, and Syllabus.
In Canvas you can add contact methods to receive notifications.
You can add new or existing content items in Canvas to a module.
In this article, users in Canvas courses will access instructions on different methods of adding, uploading, and embedding media (video and audio recordings) using Kaltura in the Canvas Rich Content Editor.
When you create a Canvas assignment, you'll add details for the assignment such as the descripti
You can add or edit the amount of points on a given assignment.
When you add requirements to a module, students must complete all requirements within one module before
If you are looking for a way to add an important link to the Canvas course menu, the Redirect Tool is the app to use.
You can update your Canvas profile to include your personal pronouns. Once you do, they will appear next to your name in a variety of locations throughout Canvas.
Audience: Canvas course teachers, designers, and teaching assistants (TAs)
As part of Kaltura in Canvas, the Media Gallery is a tool to publish, view, and search media (video and audi
You can add a rubric to an assignment that uses standard submission types.
Note: The External Tool (Turnitin) can no longer use rubrics from Canvas.
Many Canvas courses have content or activities that are hosted on another website. For example, an online training module or an integration with Google.
You can choose to allow students to post replies to individual announcements; 
If you allow students to reply to announcements, you can also allow students to
For undergraduate courses, you may wish to use the University of Minnesota Letter Grade Scheme. Some colleges have their own grading schemes that are available in their courses.
The Late Submission policy allows you to automatically deduct points on all late subm
The Missing Submission policy lets you automatically apply a grade for all missing
The Apply Score to Ungraded feature option allows you to apply scores to all
Once you have filtered student enrollments or sections in your Gradebook, you can arrange the Gradebook
You can create a graded discussion for a Canvas course group by using the Group Discuss
When creating or editing a graded Canvas discussion, you can assign a graded discussion to
When creating or editing a graded Canvas discussion, you can assign a graded discussi
When creating or editing a quiz, you can assign a quiz to a specific course section. Availabi
When creating or editing a quiz, you can assign a quiz to a specific student. Availabilit
You can assign a student group leader to help manage a group within your course.
You can create a group assignment by using the Group Assignment checkbox.
When creating or editing an assignment, you can assign an assignment to a specific Canvas course
When creating or editing a Canvas assignment, you can assign an assignment to individual st
When you create a peer review assignment with automatic peer reviews, Canvas will ass
Once you create groups in a group set, you can randomly automatically assign students to those gr
In a group set, you can automatically create groups for users to participate in.
The Question Bank Bookmark feature gives you a way of keeping track of frequently accessed Ques
If you have a lot of files to add to your course, you can bulk upload them.
This document is a simplified glossary for many important terms used in Canvas.
Student membership in groups can be changed during a semester, but it can affect your gradebook in unexpected ways.
You can change your Course Home Page to reflect one of five layout options: the Recent Activity Dashboar
To request a change in your course name or a course section name, open a ticket with Technology Help.
Sometimes you want to rename a page name.
The information the student sees after completing a Canvas quiz/exam is determined by the settings that start with Let Students See Their Quiz Responses.
There is a button on the top of the Canvas page that allows you to hide or show the course navigation menu. This button can sometimes be selected by accident making it hard to know how to undo the change.
As an instructor, you can create a discussion for your Canvas course.
This document is for instructors who want to use Turnitin (TII) for the similarity report, and to use Canvas' SpeedGrader for grading an assignment.
As an instructor, you can add a course file to a page.
Folders can be used to organize files in your course, group, or personal files.
You can use the Google Assignments (LTI 1.3) integration to start a collaborat
A group discussion assignment in Canvas creates an identical discussion topic in each group cat
Using the Rich Content Editor, you can create hyperlinks to external resources
Kaltura is a media management system that can be used to upload video files as well as to create webcam recordings.
As an instructor, you can create a new page to add to your course.
When creating a Canvas assignment, you can require students to complete a peer review of another stud
Question Banks are a place to house questions that can be added to quizzes across courses or accounts.
You can create a quiz by finding questions from question banks.
Quiz Settings include the option to choose one quiz question at a time for all types of quizzes and surveys.
You can create a quiz using a Question Group linked to a Question Bank.
You can create a quiz using a question group. Question groups allow you to place multiple questions within a group for students to answer.
You can add your own questions to your quizzes in Canvas.
You can create assignments on the Canvas Assignments page.
You can create assignment shells from the Canvas Calendar.
Google Assignments (LTI 1.3) is the way to create an assignment based on a resource in Google Drive.
Using Assignment Groups allows you to organize the assignments in your course.
When using the Rich Content Editor, you can insert links to previously created course
Using the Rich Content Editor, you can create hyperlinks to external resources
The course syllabus communicates more than just due dates and contact information. You can set a tone of respect and inclusivity in your classroom by providing a
Columns in the Canvas Gradebook are only created by adding an assignment in Canvas.
Self sign-up groups allow users to choose the group they want to be in as part of a group s
A paper from The Internal Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning on Creating Effective Collaborative Learning in an Online Environmen
You can manage course and section enrollments in a single course site using the Canvas cross-list (merge) function.
When to Cross-list
Cross-listing is helpful when:
You can use the Gradebook to curve grades for an assignment.
In this video you will learn how to customize your course home page (3:23)
There are a few different ways you can organize your course content in Canvas. This article covers the benefits and limitations to organizing your course by Pages and by Modules.
You can set new announcements to post at a certain date and time.
You can delay posting a discussion topic until a specific date by changing a s
If you are the course instructor or the creator of a collaboration, you can delete the collaborat
You can delete a section by editing your course Settings in Canvas.
You can delete Question Banks that you no longer use.
Instructors using the Zoom tool inside Canvas to schedule virtual meetings for their classes and using cloud recording to save the meetings should consider deleting the recordings at the conclusion of the class.&
You can disable comments for announcements and have that setting applied to every a
Using an early-term student survey is an effective way to make timely changes to your course.
You can download a single file from any file storage area in Canvas.
If you want to download all student submissions for an assignment, you can down
You can duplicate a discussion in your Canvas course.
You can duplicate a page in your course.
You can duplicate an assignment in your Canvas course.
You can duplicate an assignment in your course.
You can easily edit a discussion you've already created.
Once you have created a group set, you can edit it at any time.
You can edit a module in the module settings menu.
As an instructor, after you have created a page for your course, you can edit the page at any time.
After the first time you take roll call, Canvas automatically creates an assignment for Roll Cal
If you forgot to add something to your announcement, you can easily edit and add more information.<
You can change the date of an Event or Assignment by clicking on the Event or Assignment
Profiles allows you to update your name, preferred contact methods, and any personal links for your account.
If you need to edit a question in Canvas, you have to edit both the question as it is in a quiz and in its Question Bank. If the question is used in multiple quizzes, you must fix it in each quiz.
Editing the Syllabus allows you to add text and link files, images, and other course content in your S
Canvas lets you embed video content within a page.
You can embed uploaded image files from your course, user, and group files
Honorlock is an online exam proctoring tool that integrates with Canvas quizzes.
Respondus LockDown Browser is a custom browser that ensures a student's desktop can only access a Canvas Quiz.
The Roll Call Attendance tool is an external app (LTI) that instructors can use in Canvas to keep track of student course attendance electronically. This tool can be used for online or face-to-face courses.
You may see the following error while trying to access Kaltura via your Canvas course site:
Library Course Materials (LCMs) are dynamically created for all courses at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and Rochester campuses.
As an instructor or course designer, you will sometimes want to view and test a course site from the student's perspective. You may want to know:
Many instructors wish to share content and activities from their class sites with colleagues.
Applies to: Canvas
Most likely you will use the SpeedGrader to enter grades.
In SpeedGrader, you can enter grades for student submissions.
Canvas uses a 'running total' method of scores for a current Total score. Only activities with scores are included in the Total score.
When creating a Canvas assignment, you can choose to not count assignments toward th
As needed, you can use the Gradebook to excuse a student from an assignment, discussio
You can export scores from the Gradebook and download them to your computer as a CSV file.
If you need to export content from Classic Quizzes, you can export quiz content as a QTI ZIP file.
You can filter your Calendar by courses.
FeedbackFruits offers a suite of academic technology tools that support a variety of active learning activities.
There are a few ways to find the Canvas course sites that you have access to. This article covers these areas:
Instructors can award students with a digital badge using either an older Badgr/Canvas integration or a newer Canvas Badges interface. There will be a banner across the center area of the page that will
Turnitin (TII) provides originality checking and plagiarism prevention services, ensuring original work from students and safeguarding the value of writing, including options to check student writing for citation mist
Canvas allows you to access SpeedGrader from an assignment, quiz, or grade
You can access an assignment in SpeedGrader directly from the Gradebook.
The Cengage Learning tool allows instructors to efficiently incorporate activities from Cengage alongside their own content in Canvas and to select whether the grade for a graded item will automatically flow into the Can
You can grant access to an individual student, several students, or the entire class to
If you have set a time limit on your quiz, you can grant access for extra time.
Group assignments offer the ability to grade groups of students, which typically saves time over grading individual students; this can be a real benefit to you and TAs alike.
Before you can evaluate group work, you will need to
Students always have the option to resubmit their assignments.
The Hide Grades feature only affects previously entered grades and submission comments
In some cases, instructors may wish to hold student grades until all assignments have
A standard feature in Canvas permits students to view a Grade Distribution Graph (GDG) for individual assignments in the course Grades area. This distribution graph shows the mean score, high score, and low score.
The Zoom for Canvas Integration allows you to start and join Zoom meetings from within Canvas. This article is for UMN faculty and staff who would like to use Zoom together with Canvas.
Student Rating of Teaching is an option in Canvas courses that allows students to access current online evaluations for their courses.
You can easily share Question Bank questions among several Canvas courses.
You can import courses, modules, assignments, quizzes, discussions, pages, or files from Commons into your Canvas course. Imported resources will retain their original published or unpublished status.
You can import content into the your course sites from various places:
You can use a CSV file to upload changes to the Gradebook.
You can import scores to your Canvas gradebook from paper exams provided by the University Survey & Assessment Services (USAS)
You can upload SCORM ZIP files as assignments, discussions, or quizzes in your Canvas course.
In the Rich Content Editor (RCE), you can use the table editor to insert, format, edit, and delete a table.
You can use the Rich Content Editor to insert course files from the Content Selector.
You can embed images in the Rich Content Editor. Image files can be uploaded
You can insert links into the Rich Content Editor using the Content Selector.
The Respondus 4.0 Campus-wide application is used to publish quizzes in your Canvas course.
The Qualtrics LTI allows you to integrate Qualtrics surveys into the Canvas learning experience. With the Qualtrics LTI, you can:
You can use a Notes column in the Gradebook to keep track of extra information in your course,
If you want to leave simple feedback for your students, you can leave a text comment directl
You can use and customize the sample letter text below to inform your students you will be using Canvas.
You can add files and images to your quiz questions by linking to your course content.
You can set modules to be locked until a given date.
Users can edit permissions for files, including setting the state of the file (publi
You can make a quiz available to all your students before or after the due date b
Once you publish a quiz and make it available to your students, you can make changes to th
You can create an announcement to share important information with all users within your course.
Watch Making Canvas Design Decisions (7:20) for an overview of different course design options.
The Rich Content Editor allows you to add alt text tags to embedded images. Y
Audience: Faculty and Staff
As an instructor, you can control which links appear in Course Navigation.
As an instructor, you can create, edit, and delete rubrics in your Canvas course.
This is the student guide for managing Canvas Turnitin assignments as a student Canvas LTI 1.3 Student.
Use the vendor information linked to access the instructor guide from Turnitin: how to manage assignments.
The following information was gathered by University Academic Technologists in October 2019 and only applies to the current quiz tool in Canvas. New Quizzes is currently being developed by Canva
When you create a peer review assignment in Canvas with manual peer reviews, you can choos
As an instructor, you can manually add students to a group in both published and unpublished cours
Sections in Canvas help subdivide students within a course and offer section-specific options such as
In a group set, you can choose to manually create groups.
This article explains how to enroll a PeopleSoft Proxy into a Canvas course as a teacher. A PeopleSoft Proxy is someone that you have authorized to submit final grades on your behalf.
When a student views a timed quiz and time expire, Canvas auto-submits the quiz. However, if a student navigates away from the quiz page, the quiz submission remains outstanding.
You can use the Gradebook to send messages to your students. This article describes how
If you have created a self sign-up group within your course, you can message stu
This article will review the features of Quiz moderation in Canvas Quizzes for both Classic Quizzes and for New Quizzes.
You can move students within groups.
You can move and organize the files in your course by dragging and dropping files or usin
You can move multiple questions from one question bank to another.
You can move or reorder modules after you've created them.
You can move or reorder Canvas assignment groups after you've created them.
You can move or reorder assignment groups after you've created them.
You can easily move or copy individual questions from one question bank to anothe
Watch Putting it all Together: Canvas Shortcuts (2:31) for a video guide on how to navigate Canvas course sites.
Instructors are not able to manually enroll or directly add students into Canvas course sites connected to PeopleSoft.
You can view all your course announcements in the Announcements Index Page.
Assignments in Canvas can be used to challenge students' understanding and help assess competency by using a variety of
In this video you will learn the basics of group creation and group management (4:52).
As an instructor, SpeedGrader allows you to view and grade student assignment submissions in one place using a simple po
The Inbox is a messaging tool used to communicate with a course, a group, an individual student, or a group of students.
The Chat tool can be used for real-time conversation with course users.
iClicker is an audience polling tool that lets instructors ask students questions during class and display their responses almost immediately.
Before you can successfully submit your course grades to Faculty Center/PeopleSoft, there are some preliminary steps to prepare the final grades.
This article covers:
By default, students are enabled to create their own groups.
When self sign-up is enabled for a group, instructors are unable to prevent students from switching groups. However, as an instructor, you can turn off the self sign-up at any time.
Even when you are part of a group conversation, you can privately respond to anoth
You can publish your course from the Dashboard, the Course Home Page sidebar, the Course Settings sidebar, or the C
A moderated assignment supports up to two provisional grades and one moderator grade.
As an instructor, you can publish or unpublish a module in a course.
Applies to: Canvas.
Most items created in your Canvas course (files, assignments, pages, modules, etc.) must be published before they are visible to students.
If you accidentally published a quiz that needs to be corrected, you can use quiz regrade
You may be able to remove section enrollments within your course Settings in Canvas.
This article covers why it is important to frequently review and remove content from a Canvas course site and how to delete the various types of content found in a course site.
You can remove students from appointments in the Scheduler if necessary.
You can move quiz questions or groups after you've created them.
You can easily reply to any discussion, threaded or focused.
If you have a question or comment about an announcement, you can reply directly to that announc
Use this article when creating a new course site in Canvas.
Course site types:
During a course site import, all group Assignments and Discussions will be assigned to a single group set called Project Groups.
Applies to: Canvas
When you import a Canvas course into another Canvas course shell, announcement posting dates do not update even if you shifted the course dates during the import process.
Once a reviewer grades a moderated assignment, the grade appears in the Moderate pa
Everyone enrolled in a Canvas course site must be assigned a role. Each role has an associated set of permissions that give the user appropriate levels of access to Canvas functions in that site.
These tips and trick were gathered at a Canvas Investigation meeting of academic technologists in April 2019 and compiled by Annika Moe.
You can run reports to review attendance data for your students.
View this video tutorial to see what students can view with their grades (3:33) in Canvas.
In the Gradebook, you can select a default automatic or manual grade posting policy
In the Gradebook, you can select an automatic or manual grade posting policy for a
In the Inbox, you can send a message to one user or all users in a group.
You can use the Gradebook to send messages to your students.
This article shows how to get finalized grades from a Canvas course site to Faculty Center/PeopleSoft.
You can set the format for a course in Course Settings.
This lesson will help you use different calendar event dates for each section you
If you want to change the Course Home Page to a custom page, you must first set the page as the Front Page
As an instructor, you can manage the details in a Canvas course.
To use FeedbackFruits in Canvas, instructors can link to the tool either as a graded assignment or as an ungraded module item.
When creating an assignment, you can choose to set up an assignment with moderated gr
You can give students extra credit in Canvas using several options.
Once you have added assignments to your Canvas assignment group, you can create rules for the entire
There is a whole host of course level settings you can choose. Check with your college to see if the template you used already has recommended course settings built into it.
You can change your Display Name in your Canvas account settings so your preferred name appears in discussions, messages, and comments.
This information relates to the current Canvas Classic Quiz tool, not New Quizzes, which is currently available but not yet standard Canvas functionality.
Each individual assignment column includes options to sort by grade and assignment
The Student Name column displays the students in your course.
For easier grading, you can sort the student list by student name [alphabetically], the date the
You can create collaborations within your groups using Google Docs.
These University policies govern student records in relation to Canvas use:
You can import your Canvas calendar to Google Calendar.
You can subscribe to the Calendar Feed using Outlook 2013 on your desktop.
Enjoy this brief overview of Canvas from Instructure.
There are a few options for displaying your Course Syllabus for students; this chart provides the options and the positive and negative implications of each option.
The most common issue people experience when using Google Drive in Canvas is an authorization error or authentication failure.
This article covers some common issues with managing what grades students can or cannot see in the gradebook:
You can easily remove bookmarked Question Banks.
There are a couple of ways to restore content in Canvas that you have accidentally deleted:
When you make a group within a Canvas course, Canvas automatically generates a group workspace. Only course instructors and group members can access the space.
You can view quiz statistics for quizzes that have been published and have at least on
This article shows some things to consider and some things to know before choosing to use Canvas Pa
When you create a quiz in Canvas, you have a variety of options to choose from within a quiz.
The quiz tool in Canvas is used to create and administer online quizzes and surveys.
When instructors make a new quiz by clicking the +Quiz button on the Quizzes page, a window will appear prompting instructors to select either Classic Quizzes or New Quizzes.
Courses and sections work together in Canvas.
The Course is where students:
You can view all your course assignments on the Assignments Index page.
Watch Integrated Tools in Canvas (1:33) to learn how certain tools are work together in Canvas.
The Course Home Page is associated with the Home link in Course Navigation and is the first page seen for each course. Each Course Home Page can have one of five different layouts depending on your preference.
Quizzes in Canvas are assignments that can be used to challenge student understanding and assess comprehension of course ma
You can use surveys to receive feedback from your students or give them some extra points by responding to a survey. Graded surveys appear in the Syllabus, Gradebook, Calendar, and To Do Lists.
Each semester, empty academic course sites are automatically generated for all active PeopleSoft sections for every course.
You can add a file to your course by uploading a file.
You can upload PDFs to a page in Canvas.
You can upload and embed images in the Rich Content Editor.
When you download all student submissions from the Gradebook, you can re-uplo
The My Media page in Canvas shows your personal library of all media that you own or manage in Kaltura at the University of Minnesota.
You can import ZIP files to Canvas through Files or Course Settings.
A Kaltura Video Quiz can be used in a Canvas assignment so that students' scores are passed back to the Canvas Gradebook.
If you have added a rubric to an assignment, you can view the rubric in SpeedGrader.
When creating a course site from scratch, using a template can be a good way to get a course site up and running quickly and efficiently.
Canvas is built on open web standards, so most features are supported on mobile devices.
Instead of using generic group names with numbers or letters, use a naming convention with your course's unique course code, an abbreviation or some other easily distinguished group name.
You can import courses, modules, assignments, quizzes, discussions, pages, or files to Commons.
The Settings navigation link is where you can easily update and see the different users and sections, and y
The Final Grade Override option allows instructors to enter a final grade for students that is different from the grade Canvas automatically calculates in the Gradebook.
A peer review assignment enables students to provide feedback on another student's assignment
You can view all your quizzes in your Canvas course on the Quizzes Index page.
SpeedGrader makes it easy to evaluate individual student assignments and group assignments quickly.
When submitting grades to PeopleSoft through Faculty Center, grades of 'F' or 'N' must include a last date of participation. Please see
The Rich Content Editor includes an accessibility tool that detects common accessibility errors within the editor.
You can view all your course announcements in the Announcements Index Page.
You can view all your course assignments on the Canvas Assignments Index page.
The Calendar is a great way to view everything you have to do for all your courses in one place.
Instructors and TAs can schedule virtual or in-person office hours using the Canvas Calendar.
Communicate about your office hours in several locations:
This article explains how to set up the Canvas Plagiarism Framework (CPF) with Turnitin. CPF is for instructors who would like to receive a Turnitin similarity report on their student submissions while conti
The Collaborations Index Page allows you to create collaborations for users in your course.
The Rich Content Editor (RCE) allows you to format text and embed media when creating many different pieces of a course site.
The Course Home Page is the first page students see when they open the course.
The Course Navigation Menu is a series of links on the left side of your course that
The first few times you create a new course in Canvas, it's a challenge to remember all of the steps required.
The Dashboard is the first thing you will see when you log into Canvas. The Dashboard helps you see what is happening in all your current courses.
The Global Navigation Menu is located on the left side of every page in Canvas.
The Gradebook helps instructors easily view and enter grades for students.
The Gradebook includes several icons and colors that may display in the assignment columns, assignment groups, and Total column.
There are different icons and colors in the new Gradebook.
Once you have published a quiz, the quiz sidebar shows the Moderate Quiz link, which allows you to
Modules control the entire flow of your course and its content.
You can use the Notes column in the Gradebook to keep track of extra information in your course
Outcomes are used to track mastery in a course. From the outcomes page, you can create and manage outcomes, create outcome groups, import outcomes, and manage rubrics.
You can view all your pages in your course on the Pages Index Page.
You can view all your pages in your course on the Pages Index Page.
After the Attendance tool has been enabled for your course, you can configure the atte
The Syllabus in Canvas makes it easy to communicate to your students exactly what will be required
The sidebar contains the To Do list and other sections that help you know what assi
The sidebar contains the To Do list and other sections that help you know what
The Turnitin e-rater feature allows you to enable a spelling and grammar checker to be included in the Turnitin report.
The Universal Design Online [content] Inspection Tool (UDOIT) helps faculty discover and repair accessibility issues in their online Canvas courses.
This article covers:
This article covers why and when to use three different types of video to engage students in an online course site. Media is everywhere in our society today and can be a powerful tool for teaching and learning.
Kaltura is a media management system that can be used to upload video files as well as to create webcam recordings. Videos in Kaltura can be viewed on phones, tablets, and computers.
Zoom Appointment Scheduler in Canvas allows instructors to create bookable appointment slots in Canvas. This feature may be helpful with scheduling common course events (e.g., office hours, exams).
You can view a course the same way that your students view your course through Studen
You can view quiz logs to view the status of your student quizzes.
The Gradebook Individual View allows instructors to assess one student and one assi
As an instructor, you can view the Grades page for a student in your course.
Canvas has two types of groups: student groups and groupsets. Student groups can be created by either an instructor or a student and are self-organized by students.
Student analytics show you how well a particular student is doing in your course.
As part of Kaltura in Canvas, the Media Gallery is a tool to publish, view, and search media (video and audi
You can view all replies in an announcement by scrolling or searching content. Annou
As an instructor, you can view what is happening in groups by viewing each user group.
Course analytics will show you activity, assignment submissions, grades, and students.
Course files include any content uploaded to your course.
Differentiated Assignments is a Canvas feature that lets you create different due
You can view section enrollments within your course Settings in Canvas.
The Card View Dashboard displays course cards for all your favorite courses. C
Group files include uploaded assignment submissions, files for projects, and other group-related items.
As an instructor, you may be part of institutional groups created by your Canvas admins.
User files include profile pictures, uploaded assignment submissions, and other files uploaded to
If you've previously created an appointment group in the Scheduler, you can view
You can view results after one or more students have taken the practice quiz.
As an instructor, you can view what is happening in groups by viewing eac
You can view student quiz results within each quiz in your course by viewing the quiz results page or
You can see graded or ungraded survey results after one or more users have taken the survey.
The Calendar iCal feed is located in the sidebar of your Calendar.
When you can edit course pages, you can view the page history and see the date, time, and auth
When you can edit course pages, you can view the page history and see the date, time, and auth
You can view the history of all Gradebook changes in your course using the Gradebook H
This resource contains a table of contents of all articles for the Canvas Instructor Guide.
Canvas helps you access your groups in the Course Navigation menu.
As an instructor, you should assume your students will be accessing their course sites using the Canvas Student Mobile App.
A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slideshow that holds images, documents, and videos. It allows people to navigate between slides and leave audio, video, or text comments on each slide.
You can weight final grades based on assignment groups.
Canvas leverages collaborative technology to allow multiple users to work together on the same document at the same
Canvas provides an integrated system for class discussions, allowing both instructors and students to start and contribu
LTI provides a framework through which an LMS (Canvas) can send some verifiable information about a user to
Files can house course files, assignments, syllabi, readings, or other documents, as well as profile pictures and user-specifi
A grading scheme is a set of criteria that measures varying levels of achievement in a course.
Groups are a small version of a course and used as a collaborative tool where students can work together on group projects a
Modules allow instructors to organize content to help control the flow of the course.
Pages store content and educational resources that are part of a course or group but don't necessarily belong in an assignment
Profile and User Settings let you control your personal information in Canvas.
Canvas courses have three essential states: unpublished, published, and concluded.
Canvas Commons is a learning object repository that enables educators to find, import, and share resources.
Commons is a learning object repository that enables educators to find, import, and share resources.
The Calendar in Canvas is a global feature, meaning users can see all courses assignments and events in one place.
One of the challenges facing both students and instructors is keeping track of all of the assignments planned throughout the term.
An article from Canvas that explains Assignments and Activities in Canvas.
The Rich Content Editor provides a condensed, more intuitive toolbar that is grouped by common icons and intera
Scheduler is a Calendar tool that creates appointment groups within a course or group.
The Canvas Student App allows students to access their courses and groups using a mobile device.
The Canvas Gradebook has Grade Posting Policy settings at both the course and assignment level as a way to control when students see graded work:
This article reviews how to set up RATE in Canvas and gives some troubleshooting guidance.
Learn how to set up a course shell with the Multi-Tool, a part of the Design Tools package integrated within Canvas, with this DesignPLUS user guide.
Watch View and adjust due-dates (2:44) for every graded assignment, quiz, and discussion for your entire Canvas course site by using the due-date
Top Hat is a comprehensive teaching platform that helps encourage an interactive lecture experience.
When a Canvas course has a large number of enrolled learners, performance can be negatively impacted.
Courses with online content that are delivered via the Training Hub should store that content in Canvas. These instructions will help you set up a Canvas course site for use with the Training Hub.
This article contains information about:
If you have configured a Training Hub course section to have a Canvas delivery method and it is set to Canvas Reports Completion, you will need to configure the Canvas course so that the completions are reported back
Elevator has been approved for integration with Canvas. However, before the following procedure can be implemented, Elevator must first be enabled for your subaccount.
IT Community Group
Academic Technology Support Services (ATSS) is a team of academic technolo
Accessibility Ambassadors is a group of University staff who are passionate about making U of M digital resources more accessible online.
The Digital Accessibility Community of Practice is charged with improving Digital Accessibility system-wide.
Resources
Content chunking, for instructional design, is the strategy of breaking up content into shorter, bite-size pieces that are more manageable and easier to remember.
In a recent study, researchers identified the design factors that were most valued by participants in terms of promoting an engaging online learning experience.
This guide consists of introductory comments, worksheets, and action questions in each of the three major phases of Integrated Course Design.
Canvas support may be available in your unit. The contacts listed below can connect you with support available in your unit.
The Learning Analytics DiaLOG group met with University of Minnesota advisors and student success professionals in the Fall
Instructors’ Advice to their PeersA sample of University of Minnesota instructors, including tenured, tenure-track, fixed-term, and P&A staff, shared their experiences and insights about teaching and
The challenge addressed in this article is how to achieve a win-win balance between quality and workload for students and instructors participating in asynchronous online discussions.
Instructors and students alike can benefit from the power and flexibility offered by push notifications.
We recommend the following steps for those who are just getting started with Canvas at the University of Minnesota.
How to Access Courses in CanvasCanvas can be accessed through the MyU portal under Key Links or on the Academics tab, or by going directly to
If you have permission to publish your course, these directions show you how to publish your course in the Course Home Page sidebar.
Leaving an Assignment unpublished allows it to remain in a draft state. Unpublished assignments are invisible to students and excluded from grade calculations.
A paper from ScienceDirect on Using online collaboration applications for group assignments. You may be prompted to log into the UofM Library system to gain access to this research paper.
Chunking is a concept embedded in the world of instructional and information design.
The University of Minnesota Library's webpage on copyright issues, including the fair use evaluation tool.
Libraries staff experts consult throughout the University and provide training on topics related to copyright and intellectual property in research, teaching, publishing, and other creative contexts.
This online book shares the stories of those who are using the principles of Integrated Course Design; you will learn "how different people are applying these ideas in multiple contexts and what happens when they do."
The purpose of this page is to promote the design and administration of online exams that inhibit cheating and prevent the unauthorized distribution of exam materials by use of effective practices in the following are
This study explores the affordances and limitations of an online virtual classroom.
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced the pivot to Emergency Remote Teaching, instr
Building Momentum from Remote TeachingMarch 11, 2022 will mark two years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic.
Learning Tools, also known as learning apps, external tools, third-party apps, or LTI apps, can be added on to Canvas to extend the core functionality and features of the system.
This article, from Carnegie Mellon's Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation, describes the differences between formative and summative assessments.
Group discussion in online statistics courses
Honorlock is a remote proctoring solution to enhance academic integrity for high-stak
Chunking is a concept that originates from the field of cognitive psychology.
The key is to design tasks that are truly collaborative, meaning the students will benefit more from doing the activity as a group than doing it alone.
HyFlex courses have a combination of in-person and online students who are able to interact but are physically separated.
To be effective, online curricula illustrating communication behaviors need face-to-face interaction, individual role play with feedback and discussion.
This resource opens to a slide presentation give at an Educause Conference. The presenter is from Virginia Tech.
The University protects the rights of students with respect to their education records.
This resource, derived from a student focus group conducted by ATSS in May 2023, summarizes the importance of consistent and systematic use of Canvas due dates on student access and success.
Find resources for educators who enable in Canvas the online homework, tutorial, and assessment learning materials designed to accompany textbooks published by Pearson Education.
The use of discussion forums as a vehicle for learning is based on the pedagogical tenets of collaborative learning theory, which call for collaboration between participants, experimentation, and open inquiry.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Designated Agent Notification Procedures
Notification of alleged copyright infringement should be directed to:
This source provides samples of branching scenarios for different professions.
This comprehensive checklist is organized to support your upcoming semester preparation. Work through these topics to confirm your Canvas course site is ready and shared with students.
Strategies for effective group work in the Online Class.
We discuss a teaching approach that we believe promotes deep learning and diminishes the powerful voice of the teacher, thereby allowing students and the teacher to reason actively and inquire together in the cl
A resource for students who are assigned group work for their courses.
The article discusses the use of asynchronous and synchronous online discussion in education.
This study focuses on learner experiences in a real-time communication mediated by the Breeze web-based collaboration system. It also combined conference mediums.
Learn how to set up a branching scenario properly, no matter what tool you decide to develop it in.
Provides information on US Copyright Laws.
Summary of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998.
Group and section-based permissions give instructors the ability to manage access to meetings and subsequent recordings for certain groups and sections within Canvas courses.
Since 2015, OIT Academic Technology staff, including members of the
In this paper two collaborative activities are explored, namely a simple Case Study (moderate level of structuredness) and the Case Study joint with the Jigsaw (higher level of structuredness).
Interpretation of learning data is most valid when it is used in conjunction with other contextual knowledge, including a deep understanding of your course content, teaching style, and your relationships with st
When should you go to the trouble of designing a branching scenario? See some examples.
Self-Help Guides
This self-help guide walks you through the process of planning, creating, and using methods of assessment and evaluation in Canvas.
This self-help guide helps you use tools available within Canvas to communicate with your students.
This self-help guide takes you through the basic process of building a Canvas course site from the ground up, starting with creating and linking content, building assessments, and choosing final course settings.
This self-help guide is a starting point for faculty and staff who need to develop a course in Canvas.
This self-help guide is for instructors and students alike. It guides instructors on how to set up and facilitate Groups in their Canvas courses. It also informs students on how to collaborate within Groups.