Learning & Teaching Collaborative Resources

This page includes some resources and recommendations for getting started setting up your Canvas site.

The Canvas Instructor Guide is your first stop and a very useful reference for learning--or refreshing your memory--how to use the tools and accomplish tasks in Canvas. 

The self-paced Orientation to Canvas Course is a valuable resource for everyone–faculty new to Canvas and those who have used Canvas for years. It demonstrates tools and effective strategies for building an engaging learning experience for any course. Participants will experience Canvas as a student using tools such as notification settings, assignments, quizzes, grades, feedback, and announcements. Activities include building a course Module using the tools and strategies learned while a student in the course and the course includes information you can share with students such as notification settings and how to find feedback on assignment submissions. Use this link to self-enroll in the course; if you have already enrolled you can use this link to go directly to the course.

Your Canvas shell has some basic settings and organizational elements preloaded by default. If you copy a previous course, some of the default settings may be overridden; you can use this list to confirm that you have the settings you want or modify as needed.

• Edit the course navigation menu (How do I manage Course Navigation links?)
  • Hide any menu items that you do not use in your course (e.g., Collaborations, Outcomes, BigBlueButton)
  • Hide Files and Pages from the navigation menu. Even if you use these, it is better practice to have students access individual files or pages through modules or links on other content instead of navigating to the full list of Files or Pages. 
  • Organize the remaining menu items to put frequently used items (e.g., Syllabus, Modules) at the top
• Show recent announcements on the home page (How do I show recent announcements in the course home page?)
• Make a course homepage (How do I change the Course Home Page? How do I set a Front Page in a course?)
• Use modules to organize content (How do I use the Modules page? See guides to other questions about using Modules here.) 

By default, your Canvas course shell now has some basic organizational elements pre-loaded. If you would like to start with a more fully developed structure to help you save time on designing your course in Canvas, Faculty Enrichment and Digital Learning have created a course template that you can choose to copy into your course. It provides a framework to help you to build a well organized course that will facilitate a smooth student experience. It also includes space, prompts, and sample language. The template was initially created to help faculty who were developing online courses; however, the template is equally appropriate for face-to-face and blended/hybrid courses as for fully online courses. Visit this page to learn more about the template and how to use it in your course.

Even if you do not want to import the full template into your course, you can use it to find models of some of the pages that you might want to include in your course (for example, you could use it for ideas for the kind of information to include on your home page or ideas for student help pages to include).