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Canvas How-To Tips
Here are two Canvas tips that you might not have heard about:
1. Create a student sign-up sheet with Appointment Groups
Are your students expected to sign up for presentation slots, or instructor-student conferences, or any other course events during the semester? You can easily manage that process using the Calendar tool in Canvas!
Read about appointment groups
2. Track attendance in your course
Whether online or in-person, many instructors need to track student attendance for grading purposes. Canvas has a basic Attendance tool for doing this.
Read about Attendance
3. Rename a course for ease of use
Sometimes it can be hard (or impossible) to tell courses apart in various menus of Canvas when you've taught the same course repeatedly. Or, the official name of the course isn't necessarily the best way to describe how you're teaching it. Or, sometimes you just want a custom name/nickname that only you see. All of these things can be done in Canvas!
Change the name or Course Code of a course: Open Settings and edit the Name (and/or Course Code) fields. Scroll down and click "Update Course Details" to save the changes. Everyone in the course will see the new name wherever they can see the course. The Course Code displays at the top of the course when you're in it.
Create a nickname for a course: On your Dashboard, click the 'three dots' menu on the course card to open the options menu for the course. Input the nickname you want and click "Apply". The nickname will be visible only to you and will show on the Dashboard and other places within the course. Learn more about nicknames.
Note: To prevent old courses from showing up in various menus in Canvas, be sure to close them as soon as possible after the term in which they're taught.
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Canvas Start of Semester Information
Instructors are in charge of publishing their Canvas shell when they're ready for students to begin accessing it. Simply click the "Publish" button on the home page - that's it! Instructors are in full control over the availability of their courses at the beginning and end of semesters. Contact oatsupport@csustan.edu if you have questions about opening and closing courses.
Communicating with Students via Canvas
There are two easy ways to communicate with your students at the start of the semester:
- Use the Canvas Announcements tool in the course to create a welcome announcement. This message will be relayed to the students via a course notification, which is most often received via email.
- Use the Canvas Inbox tool to send a welcome message to your students. Inbox is located in the primary left-hand Canvas menu. These messages are relayed to the students via a course notification, which is most often received via email.
Canvas Help Resources
There are three resources instructors can use for how-tos on Canvas topics.
- Official Canvas Instructor Documentation (topics in alphabetical order)
- Office of Academic Technology Canvas Documentation (topics in left-hand menu)
- 24/7 Chat and Phone support: Click the "Help" icon in Canvas to access chat support and a phone number for additional support with Canvas
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Classroom PC Security Reminder
Instructor PC Security - Protect Your Account
Be sure to log out of the Instructor's PC in the classroom before you leave the room. Use the Sign Out function on the lower left pop-up menu to close out your session. Leaving the room without logging out of your account is a security risk as the next user could access your personal account information, including email, browser, Canvas, etc. Faculty are responsible for any breach of security resulting from leaving an instructor PC signed in. If you have questions, please contact the Technology Support Desk for more information.
New Classroom Technology Resources - Classroom Training Videos
OIT Learning Services published a new resource for faculty. The Classroom Training Video page includes new, updated, and existing video resources and print materials for easy access. Let us know if you have any questions or ideas for new content by contacting the Technology Support Desk.
You may reach the Technology Support Desk by calling (209) 667-3687, emailing techsupport@csustan.edu, or submitting a ticket on the OIT Client Portal.
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Virtual Fall Institute Highlight Reel
During the recent Virtual Fall Institute (Aug 8-12), instructors from a variety of campus departments engaged in workshops and presentations on a variety of daily topics around the themes of Content, Interaction, and Assessment. Below are two highlights from the week: 1) a presentation about using GoReact for assessing student video presentations in Canvas and 2) a presentation of the Outcomes tool and the Learning Mastery Gradebook in Canvas, and how it can be used by instructors and departments to gather data for a variety of assessment needs.
Introducing GoReact
Presented by Matt Short, GoReact
August 10, 2022
Additional Resources
Learning Outcomes in Canvas
Presented by Dr. Glenn Pillsbury
August 11, 2022
Additional Resources
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Update to Canvas New Quizzes Time Line
As previously announced by OAT, Instructure intended to enforce two deadlines for the migration from Classic quizzes to the New Quizzes format in Canvas. The first deadline was set to happen in June 2022 and the second in June 2023.
Instead, Instructure has now put out a single deadline by which all quizzes in Canvas must use the New Quizzes engine: June 1, 2024. Classic quizzes must be converted to New Quizzes by that date in order to remain usable, and after that date quizzes can only be created with the New Quizzes tool. Currently, instructors are welcome to try out the New Quizzes engine with a new quiz or to convert an existing quiz.
OAT will have more information about this transition in the coming months.
More information about New Quizzes
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Panopto Instructor Survey
Panopto has been the video delivery service at Stan State since Fall 2020, and OAT is interested to know how it's being used (or not being used). Please complete our (very short) survey to help us better plan training and support offerings. Thank you!
Open the survey (Note: a university sign-in is required, but your responses are anonymous)
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Turnitin Improvements Now Available in Canvas
An additional method for using Turnitin with Canvas is now available. Called "Plagiarism Framework," the new method is not a replacement for the existing External Tool work flow (both options exist side by side), but it is a more direct interface between Canvas and Turnitin for those instructors who wish to use it.
The following comparison provides an overview of the main differences between the two options:
| Using the Plagiarism Framework |
Using the External Tool |
| Plagiarism checking can be enabled for "text entry" Assignment submissions in addition to uploaded files |
Plagiarism checking in assignments can be enabled only for uploaded files |
| All settings can be configured right on the Assignment settings page |
Requires additional configuration via External Tool interface |
| Submissions are read and evaluated using standard Canvas SpeedGrader only |
Submissions can be read in SpeedGrader or in Turnitin's full Feedback Studio |
| Peer review uses standard Canvas peer review feature |
Peer review possible via Turnitin's Peermark feature |
| Annotations cannot be reused on other papers; comment library is only for overall comments |
Annotations can be stored and reused in your personal Turnitin comment library |
| At-a-glance view of submission originality scores available in main Canvas grade book |
At-a-glance view of submission originality scores available in Assignment Inbox, as part of the Canvas assignment. |
| Easily set up and use standard Canvas rubrics for assignment grading in SpeedGrader |
Rubrics only available in SpeedGrader via non-standard multi-step setup process |
| Easily roll over assignments to the next semester without additional instructor action required |
Rolling over assignments to next semester requires instructor to open the Assignment Inbox to activate it in the new course. Students will encounter an error trying to submit if this isn't done |
Resource
Usage instructions for Turnitin
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Accessibile PDFs
Supercharge accessibility scores for your Canvas courses!
Now that the Fall semester is rapidly approaching, now is the perfect time to have our Document Remediation team make your PDF files accessible!
- Were your PDFs created by scanning printed pages?
- Is the image quality of your PDFs less than ideal? (e.g., skewed pages, handwritten notes)
- Is the PDF your only copy of the content?
If your answer is yes to any of the above questions, the PDFs are a perfect fit to submit to our Document Remediation team!
- Submit a document remediation work order: Select Accessibility Work Request in the Request Type drop-down menu, and Make my document accessible for me in the Service Type section
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