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Beginning of the Semester Canvas Reminders

PLEASE READ THESE REMINDERS BEFORE EACH SEMESTER

PUBLISHING YOUR COURSES

  1. In addition to publishing your content (via the grey cloud buttons), you must also publish the course itself so that students can see it. To publish your course, simply click on the "Publish" button at the top-right hand side of your course homepage.
  2. If you are teaching an online course you will need to change the start date to 5-7 days before the course begins. You may also need to adjust your end date further out if you plan to do any late grading, or if you need to allow late student submissions after the default end date. A tutorial for adjusting the course start and end dates can be found here: Changing Your Course Start and End Dates
  3. Do NOT use the "Conclude this Course" feature in your course Settings menu. Your course will conclude automatically based on your course end date.
  4. Lastly, if you have multiple sections of a course and would like to combine them into one course, you must submit this form BEFORE adding content or publishing each section: Canvas Course Merge Request Form

ACCESSING YOUR OLD COURSES IN CANVAS

  1. Your old courses in Canvas will be archived and will go into read-only mode for the students and faculty in the course once the course end date has been reached. What does this mean for you and your students? You will be able to access old course content for new courses. However, your students will also be able to see most content from old courses. This includes assignments, files, and discussion boards - they can be viewed but not submitted. Quizzes cannot be viewed after the course has ended, however. If you want to block student access to any aspects of old courses, you will need to unpublish or delete that content before the course end date. To unpublish content, simply click on the cloud icon to the right of it so that the icon turns grey.
  2. You can see all of your old courses by clicking the "All Courses" button at the bottom of your courses list in Canvas. If you are still seeing an older course in your Courses drop-down menu and would like to hide it, you can select exactly which courses will display in that menu by clicking the star to the left of each course in your "All Courses" list. Even if you hide a course from the Courses drop-down menu, it will always be available after clicking the "All Courses" button, as outlined above.

GETTING HELP

  1. For getting Canvas help at anytime, we recommend using the 24/7 support line we have with Canvas. That number is 855-778-9967. You can get Canvas help anytime at that number regarding your courses, general how-tos, and technical questions. You can also speak with a Canvas support representative anytime over live chat by using this link: Canvas Live Chat Support
  2. Many faculty have used Canvas support already and have noted that they were very helpful and timely with their responses. Students and faculty can both use these options as well, or contact the Xavier help desk at x4357.
  3. There are also several help options available by clicking the "Help" button at the top-right hand corner of Canvas. Our personal favorite are the Canvas guides, as they are very easy to follow and you can literally find a guide on how to do anything in Canvas with just a simple keyword search.

CANVAS BASICS FACULTY TRAINING COURSE

The Canvas Basics for Faculty training course has been designed to familiarize you with the Canvas learning management system (LMS) and its main features, and give you an overview that will help you start working on your own Canvas courses.  This course can be found under your Courses menu in Canvas and is an excellent resource for learning how to do anything related to Canvas.