Learning & Teaching Collaborative Resources

To help you save time and get started designing your course in Canvas, the Learning & Teaching Collaborative has created course templates that you can choose to copy into your course. The templates provide a framework to help you to build a well organized course that will facilitate a smooth student experience. They also includes space, prompts, and sample language for some of the information that you would want to include in a course with a substantial online component. 

There are three versions of the template: The 15-week version is designed for full semester (Fall/Spring) courses, the 12-week version is for Summer Full session courses, and the 6-week version is available for courses in the Summer 1 and Summer 2 sessions. Aside from some minor tweaks to accommodate the different lengths, the three templates are otherwise the same.

What kinds of courses should I use these for?

The templates can be used for any course. They were initially created to help faculty who were developing online courses for the first time to save time building their courses in Canvas while incorporating some effective practices in designing for online delivery. However, the design is equally appropriate for face-to-face and blended/hybrid courses as for fully online courses. Whatever your course modality, you will need to make sure that you effectively communicate the details of how your course will operate and that you edit the template content to accurately reflect your course. 

What do they look like?

If you would like to look at the templates before adding one to your course, you can preview them: 15 weeks, 12 weeks, 6 weeks (you will need to log in to Canvas). You can also view a recording of a walkthrough of the template (the version of the template seen in the walkthrough is an earlier one, so it won't look identical, but the basic elements are the same).

Keene State College faculty can find the templates on Canvas Commons. First, click on the Commons link in the red Global Navigation menu on the left side of the page in Canvas:

Use the search bar at the top of the page to search for “KSC Canvas Course Template”. When you see the three template options in the results, click on the title to view the one that you want to use.

Then, follow these instructions to import the template into your course. Importing a template will not replace existing course contents, but may replace some settings. It generally works best if you import the template to a course before adding content. 

To also use content from a past course

If you will also be copying content from another of your Canvas courses, we recommend that you first import a template, then copy the specific content you need from your other course using the “Select specific content” option.

To use a template for more than one course

If you plan to use the template as a basis for more than one course, we recommend that you first import the template into one of your courses. In this first course, begin by making changes that you would want to appear in all of your courses (e.g., your bio and photo, office hours and contact information, adding dates to the weekly modules). Once you have done this, you can copy that first course into your other courses. In essence, you will be using that first course as the template for your other courses, saving you from having to make some of the same changes multiple times.

After you’ve imported the template you will need to add and/or modify content just as you normally would when building your course. The following are some specific points to keep in mind when you are building your course with one of these templates as a starting point.

• The yellow highlighted text in the template are notes to help guide you in customizing it for your course. Be sure to delete all of these notes before you make the course available to students.
• Be sure to review all of the pages that you plan to keep in the template to ensure that you have added or edited details to reflect the specifics of your course.
• If you are using the assignments and/or discussions built into the template, you will need to add due dates in addition to the content.
• Unpublish or delete any of the pages, assignments, discussions, etc. that you will not be using before you make the course available to students. Remove unneeded headers from the modules.