First Steps

Start by cleaning your LMS closet. Before you set up your new Canvas course, take a critical look at the content in your current course materials and also how you'd like students to navigate them. Is the content still relevant to your learning goals, or do you need to think about new additions to your course? Is it easy for students to find what they need in your course? Have you provided opportunities for communication and collaboration? Is your content accessible? If not, this is a great opportunity to think about making PDFs and PPTs accessible. Once you’ve reviewed these materials, start with a blank Canvas shell and start building your new learning experience.

What’s Next?

• Create a Canvas course shell
• Adding multiple sections to one Canvas course

Learn How To Use Canvas

• Access Ready, Set, Canvas course, a self-paced course designed to help you get familiar with the basic need-to-know features to design and deliver a Canvas course.
• Follow the checklist for creating a new Canvas course to help you cover all bases before your Canvas course goes live.

Canvas How-to's

A complete Table of Contents of How-To Guides provided by Canvas.

• Design an Accessible Canvas Course.
• Set Up your Canvas Menu for Course Navigation.
• Use Course Settings to view and edit course details and to setup the way students will navigate your course.
• Add your preferred contact methods and set your Notification Preferences.
• View and use Global Navigation to provide quick access to your course content and features, set up Notifications to your students, and more.
• The benefits of the Course Calendar to add events and assignments.
• Publish your Canvas course to make your course visible to your students.

Organize

• Organize your course content using Modules to control the flow of your course, organize your content, and to create self paced instruction.
• Learn the differences between Canvas Pages and Modules and find out which feature to use for your specific course needs.
  • Create Modules to organize your course content assignments, and activities in one single convenient location.

Create and Add Content

• Find out how Pages store content and educational resources that include text, video, and links to files and other course or group content.
  • Create a new Page in a course.
  • Create a Syllabus Page
• Use Canvas Files to house course assignments, syllabi, readings, or other documents.
  • Use Files as an Instructor to store files and assignments.
    • Upload Files to a course.
    • Create a File Link in a page in a course.
    • Create a Folder in Files.
    • Move and Organize Files.
• Use the Rich Content Editor to add and format your course content.

• Use Student View to see how everything will look for students before publishing.
• Find and add students to your Canvas course.
• Use the People page to view and manage students who are enrolled in your course
• Publish your Canvas course to make your course visible to your students.

• Create Discussions to encourage online asynchronous discussions among your students.
• Enable multiple students to work together on the same document using Collaborations.
• Set up Groups to enable your students to collaboratively work on assignments and projects.
• Share important news will all of your students using Announcements.
  • Tip:  Use Delay posting Announcements if you’d like work on a draft version.
• Interact with your students in real time using Chat.
• Use Inbox as an instructor to send messages to students or groups from within Canvas.

Assessments

• Monitor Student Activity Performance using Analytics.
• Create Assignments to obtain student work online.
  • Tip:  Set due dates in your Assignments to .enable the Canvas Calendar and Notifications to commuicate timely information to your students.
  • Tip:  Mute Assignments to hold student grades until all assignments have been graded, and then release grades (Unmute) to all students at the same time.
• Enable Peer Review in Assignments to let your students provide feedback to one another
• Create a Rubric to set criteria and share your expectations with your students.
• Create student Outcomes in your course.

Grading and Monitoring

• What is the Canvas Gradebook?
• Use a Canvas Gradebook to manage your course grades.
• Take advantage of Speed Grader to evaluate individual student work in one place.
• Use Roll Call to monitor your student attendance.

Tests and Quizzes

• Everything you need to know about setting up Canvas Tests and Quizzes.

As you are creating or updating your online classes, it is important to follow policies and guidelines for sharing Zoom Recordings and uploading content to your online courses.

We've collected some guidelines and tips to help you follow best practices around student privacy and copyright restrictions. You can read them here.