Finding your Canvas site

Canvas sites for academic courses exist in Canvas starting about one year prior to the term the course will be offered. Instructors are automatically given access to the course site in Canvas when they are listed as the instructor for the course by their departmental scheduler.

If you are supposed to be teaching a course and do not see the Canvas site for the course, first check whether the course is listed anywhere on your All Courses page in Canvas. If it is not, check whether you are listed as the instructor for that course in the Schedule of Classes and, if needed, contact your departmental scheduler to be added as the instructor for the course.

Once you've located your course(s) in Canvas, consider reviewing the All Courses page and favoriting courses that you want to see on your Canvas dashboard. You can also create course nicknames to make them easier to distinguish from each other.

Instructors teaching a cross-listed or slash-listed course may see several Canvas sites associated with the cross-listed or slash-listed courses including a Canvas 'X' site. If you are teaching multiple sections of a course, you may be able to merge these sections into a single Canvas site. Both 'X' sites and merged courses in Canvas make it easier for you to manage your Canvas content for the course.

Preparing for a future term course

Next you can start populating the Canvas site with content. Most faculty opt to do this by importing content from a past term course. Alternatively, you can use a course template or start from scratch.

Create the course gradebook

Whether you imported content or are starting from scratch, reviewing the Assignments Index page in Canvas and ensuring that the assignments, their points possible, and due dates listed in Canvas align with your course syllabus is a top priority.

There are four general activity types in Canvas that can be used for grading: Canvas assignments, Canvas quizzes, Canvas discussions, and assignments connected to an integration.

Canvas assignments are the most common and versatile. Canvas online submission assignments should be used when you want students to submit a file such as a Word document, PowerPoint file, or a PDF. Canvas online Text Entry submission assignments should be used for media submission assignments. Canvas On Paper or No Submission assignments should be used if you just need a column to record grades e.g., for an in-person quiz, exam, or presentation.

Canvas quizzes are used when instructors want to deliver quizzes online through Canvas that students can take on their own, either at any time or within a specific window of time. Canvas discussions allow students to engage with each other and you around class topics. Assignments connected to Canvas integrations can also be part of the overall course grade.

Additional settings to consider when setting up your Canvas gradebook include enabling weighted grading, dropping the lowest score, enabling a missing or late policy, setting post policies, or applying a course grading scheme.

After making changes, review the Canvas Assignment Index page and Canvas Grades page to ensure they still align with your course syllabus. Reach out if you have any questions about setting up your Canvas gradebook.

Add content to the Canvas site

After aligning the Canvas gradebook with the course syllabus, instructors can add content and design the course to support students in meeting course outcomes and navigating the course site effectively.

You have a lot of flexibility in the types of content that you can add to Canvas including uploading documents, creating Canvas pages, and embedding audio or video into your course site.

For any files you want to use, there are a few best practices you should know. While it is technically possible to upload files directly to a Canvas page or assignment, this is not recommended as it often leads to uploading duplicate copies of the same file. Instead upload files to Canvas Files first. You can then link to the uploaded course files in the desired Canvas course pages. Audio and video files, however, are the exception. Because Canvas File storage is limited, audio and video files should be uploaded to your My Media collection. Instructors can easily share media files in a Canvas site.

Create the course structure

After setting up your course assignments, uploading files, and creating other course content, you can organize content into Canvas modules. Modules allow you to arrange content, files, and assignments in the order you anticipate students will need access to the content. Using a "Start Here" module followed by weekly modules is recommended as it helps create a consistent experience for students as they navigate between their courses in Canvas.

The Start Here module is an excellent place to provide students guidance on where to begin and what to expect the first day of class, information about technical resources (including Canvas Student Guides, Canvas technical support contact information), and browser requirements) and a link to the OSU Academic Success Center.

You should review the Canvas course navigation menu and disable course navigation items that do not need to be visible to students or will not be used in the course. Hiding course navigation items can reduce confusion for your students and keep them focused on the relevant course materials. Generally, it is best to hide any menu items that either will not be used or that can be linked through Modules, for example: Files, Pages, Rubrics, Assignments, Quizzes, and Outcomes. Some navigation items never display to students and should not be disabled. These include OSU Instructor Tools, Ally Course Accessibility Report, and UDOIT Accessibility Check.

Review and update the course Home page and syllabus to ensure that the instructor and term information is up-to-date and any other changes for the term are made. It is a best practice to delete imported announcements and replace them with new announcements so that the announcement correctly displays the instructor as the person creating the announcement and properly triggers the notification emails for the announcement.

Review accessibility in Canvas to learn about Ally and other tools available in your course to improve accessibility of digital content. Validate Course Links to ensure they are functional. Use Canvas Student View to preview your course. Student View can help you quickly verify that students can access all content you want them to and none of the content you don't want them to.

Managing a course during the term

Once you've built your content, you must publish the Canvas site to make the content available and to start communicating with the students. Students will not see the site on their Canvas dashboard or receive any course notifications until the course is published, so consider publishing the site at least a few days before the start of the term to let students know they are correctly enrolled in the course site.

There are several options for communicating with students in Canvas. Bulk communication methods include Canvas Announcements, the Canvas Inbox, Canvas Discussions and through the Canvas Gradebook. Messages to specific individuals are best sent through Submission Comments or the Canvas Inbox.

Entering scores, including zeros for missing submissions, is a crucial part of managing your Canvas site during the term. Ungraded assignments do not factor into the course grade that is visible to students. Missing scores, especially zeros for missing submissions, make it difficult for students to understand how they are doing in your Canvas site. Canvas rubrics and annotated comments allow faculty to provide useful feedback to support student achievement of course learning objectives.

At the end of the term, if you set up your Canvas gradebook properly and also enabled a course grading scheme, you can use the OSU Final Grades tool to review and export final course grades from Canvas into a Banner-ready Excel file. Otherwise, review information on how to submit final grades manually from the Office of the Registrar.

Access to past-term courses

For academic sites configured with the default settings, once a term ends, students and instructors may continue to view Canvas course sites but they are limited to read-only access for these past-term courses. The default term end date is the first day of the subsequent term. Instructors and students can find past term courses by reviewing Past Enrollments on the All Courses page in Canvas.

What can students do in a read-only Canvas site?

By default, once the term ends, students can view content such as their submissions (excluding quizzes), instructor feedback, and grades. Here are all the things that students can and cannot do in past-term courses with default access settings:

• Cannot submit assignments, participate in discussions or send/receive conversation messages

• Cannot view quiz questions

• Can download assignments they submitted

• Can view grades for assignments, quizzes and discussions

• Can download course documents from Files (if enabled) and from published modules

Instructors can request to have a Canvas site re-opened for students who have an incomplete and need to complete missing work in the course.

We recommend using default course settings, but it is possible to fully prevent students from viewing a past-term Canvas site in the settings for that individual course. Note that any changes to course settings must be made before the end date set for the course.

What can instructors do in a read-only Canvas site?

Instructors are also limited to read-only access for past-term courses. Here are the things instructors can and cannot do once the term ends:

• Cannot change grades, assignments or any other course information

• Can view and download files

• Can view assignments, quizzes, and discussions

• Can view grades and submissions for assignments, quizzes and discussions

• Can download the gradebook and individual student assignments

• Can import the course to a new Canvas site

Students will retain read-only access to all courses listed in Past Enrollments for as long as their OSU login is active. Instructors will retain read-only access to courses listed in Past Enrollments until the course site is archived.

Archived Canvas Courses

Since Oregon State University has been using Canvas for several years, the Past Enrollments list on the All Courses page in Canvas is becoming unmanageably long for many faculty. Additionally, course selection tool functionality (e.g., during the Course Import process) is negatively impacted when faculty have too many past-term courses on the list. Archiving past-term courses helps alleviate these issues.

The archiving process runs once a year around the end of spring term. Only credit-bearing course sites will be archived. Studio sites and Continuing Education sites are never archived. This means that instructors should have read-only access to past-term courses for the last two academic years. All other past-term courses are archived.

Instructors can request to have courses unarchived and restored to Past Enrollments on the All Courses page in Canvas.