What are we doing here? The goal of this introduction is
to step through a number of things that you will or may want to do
with a Canvas course that you have for a course you are teaching.
These include importing a (template, or other)
course, updating information in the course
site, importing grades, and creating a student
group.
First, where is Canvas? You can always find it from the link at,
yes, canvas.umich.edu (look
at the top right of the page). Or you can go directly
to umich.instructure.com.
From the Canvas site, select your Sandbox course to play with.
You can do all of the following to that; when you have a regular
course site, you can work with that instead.
- Importing
a Course
- You can download a template course export file here:
general
math course template
- Go to Settings, and look on the right sidebar for
"Import Content Into This Course."
- For Content Type select "Canvas Course
Export Package."
- Select the course export file you downloaded
for Source.
- For Content, select "All Content."
- Click "Adjust events and due dates."
- And then click "Import" (and wait a moment).
- Updating
Syllabus Information
- Click "Syllabus" on the left side bar.
- Click "Edit," above the calendar on the right
side-bar.
- And update the obvious information...
- Updating Settings
- Click "Settings" on the left side bar.
- Scroll through the course details
information to see what you can update there.
Click the "more options" at the end. There are two
options that you may want to select:
- "Hide totals in student grades summary":
This will make it so Canvas doesn't calculate a "total
grade" based on assignment scores. You should definitely check it if
you're teaching 105/115/116 so
students don't think this number is giving them their
overall course grade. (Course scores include additional components and are
more complicated than this.)
- "Hide grade distribution graphs from students":
If you don't check this box, students can see average,
high, and low scores. In a perfect world, we'd
be able to turn off the low score part, but we can't,
so we highly recommend that instructors check this box. Note that
if you do, then students can no longer see average
scores for assignments either, and you'll have to tell
them the average yourself.
- Click the "Navigation" tab. Note that you can move
applications around in the course navigation, and hide
items from students. To find out what the different
navigation items allow you to do in your course,
enroll
in the Canvas at Michigan Canvas course, and see
this
resource page.
- Managing
Students and Other Users
In general, you will not need to add users to your course, as
the course enrollment is managed by Canvas and the
University. If you want to add other users, which for the
purposes of this session you do want to do:
- Click "People" on the left side bar.
- Click the "+People" button.
- Add the people at your table as students to your
course.
- Importing
Grades
If you have assignments in your course which you have graded
by hand (e.g., quizzes or homeworks), you can create an assignment under Assignments, and then go to the Gradebook to enter scores. You can also upload
scores if you have them saved in another spreadsheet. To do this..
- You need to upload an appropriately
formatted CSV
file; this
csv file is a template. Change Assignmentname
to the name of the assignment, Last, First to
the student's name, uniqname to her/his uniqname,
and score to her/his score. Add more student rows
for additional students.Get CSV file, change name and add
students and scores. Create entries for an assignment
for the people you added in "Managing Students" above.
- Then click "Grades" on the left sidebar of your Canvas
site, and then "Import."
- Select the file, and click "Upload Data."
- Select "new assignment" for the "Assignment in
Question."
- Click "Continue."
- Click "Save Changes."
- Student
View
Finally, have the people you added as students view the site
to see how things appear. Note that you can also look at the
site as a student—click "Settings" on the left sidebar,
and then "Student View" on the right.
Where to go from here?
The Canvas at
Michigan site has a bunch of information.
ISS provides support for
Canvas, including drop-in and one-on-one support. Or ask your
fellow instructors!