Are you posting announcements in Canvas and are not sure if your students saw them?  Do you send messages to students through Canvas, but you don’t know if that message was sent out?

Canvas uses Notifications to push copies of Announcements and Messages to faculty and students.  If you want to receive copies of your announcements or messages to your St. Edward’s email you can set a notification to do that.  All messages and announcements are automatically saved as part of the course, but it may be helpful to see when a message is delivered and what the formatting looks like.  Be aware that students can change their notification preferences so they may be receiving text messages on their phone rather than email notifications.

To add a notification for instructor generated announcements or messages

• Go to Settings in the upper right corner next to your name
  

• Click on Notifications from the left menu
• In your list of notifications, set up email notifications by selecting ASAP–by clicking on the checkmark icon, next to the “Announcements Created By You” and “Conversations Created by Me”. These notifications are delayed by one hour in case an instructor makes additional changes, which prevents you and your students from being spammed by multiple notifications in a short amount of time. Note: Each set notification preference will automatically apply to all of your courses. They cannot be set individually.

If you have additional questions about notifications or using Canvas, please contact Instructional Technology at instcom@stedwards.edu.

Canvas gives instructors the ability to add Teachers, TAs, Designers, Non-Grading TAs, or Supplemental Instructors to their courses.

Roles

• TAs  and Designers can access, add and edit all content.  They can also grade items and access all items in the gradebook.
• Non-Grading TAs can access, add and edit all content.
• Supplemental Instructors can access all content and participate in class conversations and discussions.

How to Add a Teachers, TAs, Designers, Non-Grading TAs, or Supplemental Instructors

1. Go to your course in Canvas
2. Click on “People” from the Course Menu
3. Click on “+People”
4. Enter the St. Edward’s email address for each person you want to add.  Add one email address per line.
5. Change the role to Teacher, TA, Designer, Non-Grading TA or Supplemental Instructor
6. Click on “Next”
7. You will see a listing that shows the first and last name of the person to be added next to their email address.  Please verify the correct person is being added.  If it is not the correct person, or if the first and last name field is blank, click on “Start Over” and make corrections.  If it is correct, click on “Add Users”.
8. The TA will receive an email notification inviting them to join the class.

Canvas is new for students as well as faculty.  Based on the survey we did with students in the Spring 2015 Canvas pilots, the majority of students find Canvas easy to learn.  You can make it even easier by adding Canvas Training materials to your Canvas course.

Instructional Technology has curated a module of content, with videos and text, that you can import into your Canvas class.  Topics covered include

• Setting up Notifications
• Editing your profile
• Accessing mobile apps
• Uploading files to assignments
• Checking grades
• Using discussions

To import the Student Training module into your course

1. In Canvas, click on Commons in the top menu
2. On the Commons page, click on “Shared with” and select St. Edward’s University
3. Select the Student Training module and then click on “Import into Class”
4. Select the class you would like import into.  The import process will begin.

To access the Student Training module in your course

The imported module will be listed in the “Modules” section of your course as ” Students: Canvas Orientation”.  There are two pages in the module.  We recommend linking to this module on the home page of your course.  To link to the Students: Canvas Orientation module from your home page:

1. Open the Home Page and click on Edit
2. Click on the location on the Home Page for the link.  In the Right Side Bar menu select “Modules” and then “Students: Canvas Orientation”
   

All courses in Canvas have Start Dates and End Dates.  By default, these dates reflect first day and last day of class as entered in Banner.  If the current date is outside those dates, students will not be able to access the course, even if it is published.  The course will also appear in the course list as either “Future Enrollment”, if the start date has not been reached, or “Past Enrollment”, if the end date has been reached.

To change these settings:

By default all courses in Canvas are named with the convention of Course Code-CourseNumber-Section.  For example, CISC-1301-01.  Canvas associates each class with a Term (Fall 2015) but does not display that term as part of the name.  If you teach the same course several semesters you may find it difficult to distinguish between courses when sending messages to your students or combining class sections.

To append the term to a course

• Click on Settings in your course menu
• The first field in Settings is Course Name.  We suggest adding the term to your course name, for example, CISC-1301-01-FA2015, to make it easy to distinguish your current course in a list.

Do you have questions about Canvas?  Need some help getting your courses set up?  Please contact us at instcom@stedwards.edu.

The Syllabus in Canvas can be used to post a link to your syllabus or to display the content of your syllabus.  In addition, the syllabus page displays a schedule of assignments, a link to the course calendar and, grades by weight, if you weight your grades. Any course assignment or event will automatically be listed in the bottom half of the Syllabus page with the undated items appearing at the bottom. Changes to these dated events can be made in both the Assignments and Calendar features and will be automatically updated in the Syllabus. The sample syllabus below contains faculty contact information, links to the course overview and policies and a list of assignments and class events.

Sample Course Syllabus

The syllabus description is where you can post your course description, a brief introduction, class guidelines, weekly reminders, and other important information. You can copy content from Word documents directly into the Rich Content Editor or create original content inside of the Rich Content Editor. You can also link to your Syllabus by uploading it into Course Files as a PDF and linking it in the content selector. Canvas will automatically create a preview of your document so your students don’t have to download it before reading it.

More information about using the syllabus may be found in the Canvas Guide on the Syllabus or from this video:

https://vimeo.com/78942602

If you have questions about using the Syllabus in Canvas or need additional assistance, please contact Instructional Technology at instcom@stedwards.edu.