Educational Technology at Brevard College: Blog

Getting Started Collection

Publishing Your Course

For your students to have access to your courses on Canvas, it's crucial to ensure they're published. If you haven't done so already, you can easily publish your course by going into the class and clicking the publish option on the top right.

Copying Old Courses

Canvas offers a seamless process for transferring content from previous courses. It can adjust due dates automatically, and it even provides the flexibility to modify a course that previously met on one day of the week to another day. Here's a step-by-step guide:

1. Navigate to the settings within your new course.
2. On the right, click 'Import Course Content'.
3. Select 'Copy a Canvas Course' as the content type.
4. Search for the old course by name or select it from the dropdown list.
5. Decide between copying 'all content' or 'specific content':
   • All Content - this option duplicates everything, including announcements.
   • Specific Content - this option allows you to choose specific items to copy after initiating the import.
6. Adjust the due dates if needed.
   • For most courses, it's best to check the box by "Adjust events and due dates" and leave everything else alone
   • If your course meeting days have changed (like last time you met Mondays and this time you meet Tuesdays), you can use Shift Dates to adjust. 
7. Click the 'Import' button to finalize the process (If you've opted for 'specific content', click the blue "Select Content" button and deselect any content you don't want to import into the new course.)
8. After importing, remember to delete the old "End of Course Evaluation" assignment and validate all links to ensure they are functional.
   1. Go to settings.
   2. Select 'Validate Links in Content'.

By following these steps, you'll ensure a smooth transition of content from one semester to the next, with minimal adjustments needed.

Adding People to Your Class

Canvas allows you to manually add TAs and co-teachers to your course. Here's how:

1. Go to your course and click on the 'People' link in the navigation panel.
2. Click on '+ People' button located at the top.
3. Select the desired role (e.g., Student, TA, Teacher).
4. Enter their email (If they don't show up as an option, click the SIS ID option and put in their student/faculty ID)
5. Click 'Next' to review the list of invitees and then 'Add Users' to complete the process.

After sending the invitation, the person will receive an email notification prompting them to join the course.

Crosslisting

If you're teaching multiple sections of the same course or wish to merge two courses into one, crosslisting is the solution. Crosslisting lets you manage multiple class sections from a single Canvas course so you don't need to create the same assignments twice.

1.     Start in the course you want to finally house all of the cross-listed sections.
2.     Look at the URL at the top. It'll be "brevardcollege.instructure.com/courses/XXXX". The 'XXXX' is the course ID.
3.     Write down the course ID.
4.     Now, navigate to the course you want to cross-list.
5.     Click 'Settings', then 'Sections'.
6.     Choose the section to cross-list.
7.     Click 'Cross-List this Section' on the right.
8.     In the pop-up, enter the course ID you wrote down.
9.     Click 'Cross-List This Section'.
10.     Confirm the section is now in the new course.

Create Your Weighted Gradebook

It can be cumbersome to work out exactly how many points to make one particular assignment in order to have all of your participation assignments add up to about 20% of the students' final grade. It's much easier to just use the weighted groups feature that's built into Canvas. Here's a guide to set up your weighted gradebook in Canvas:

1. Within Canvas, go to the Assignments section.
2. Click "+Group" to create whatever assignment groups you'd like.
3. Drag assignments into their appropriate group.
4. Click the kebab (3 dots) on the top right next to the +Assignment button.
5. Select 'Assignment Groups Weight'
6. Check the 'Weight final grades based on assignment groups'
7. Assign the desired weights