Final Fall Canvas reminders

With Fall classes starting Wednesday…

 

Attached is a checklist (with corresponding links) to help your classes get off to a good start. And here is some information/reminders to help, too:

 

1. View Canvas faculty notes and tips. Below are some new tools and features that were introduced at the beginning of the summer session:
   
   
1. In the Gradebook, you can apply scores to ungraded assignments, including quizzes. This is done via Assignment Group columns or the Totals column. View video on how to apply scores to ungraded.
2. Also in the Gradebook, you can add emojis to comments. This can be done in the grading tray or in the Speedgrader. View video on how to add emojis to comments.
3. You can set a new default due time for assignments and quizzes. If you want your assignments to be due at, for example, 5 p.m., you can set that up in your Course Settings. Then, when you create an assignment and choose the due date, the time will default to 5 p.m. View video on setting a default due time.
4. You have the ability to add your own icons to Canvas with the new Icon Maker, which is found in the toolbar of the Rich Content Editor. Canvas gives you lots of options for designing icons, and it even has a bunch of images to choose from. View a video on using the Icon Maker.
   
   
   
2. The upgrade from ConferZoom to TechConnect Zoom is the only change being made at the beginning of the fall semester. There is also a “ChabotLibrary” link visible when you add an External Tool to a module, but please don’t use it. That tool was purchased for Chabot faculty only. If you teach at both colleges, you can use it in your Chabot course.
1. TechConnect Zoom integrates with the Canvas Calendar tool, so when you set up meetings, students can access them from their Calendars. When confronted with a screen to authorize the Calendar, click Authorize. Please note that copying meetings from one course to another—particularly from one semester to the next—will not work. You’ll need to re-create the meetings in the new course. It doesn’t matter which copying options you choose.
   
   
3. Panda Pros, a program run by Canvas to help instructors use its product, is back. You can schedule a free, 45-minute coaching session with a Canvas expert. Schedule a session.
   
   
4. Publish your courses by the beginning of the day your class starts so students can access them. To publish your course, go to the course home page, and click Publish.
   
   
5. If you are teaching a DE class, contact your students prior to the start of the semester, and encourage them to self-enroll into the Quest for Online Success Course in Canvas. This is a readiness course that prepares students to succeed online. Learn more about Quest. I notified DE students by email, and many have already self-enrolled. A reminder from you would be good, especially since students who added late did not receive the email notification. Here are instructions you can copy and paste for your students:
   
   

1. Go to https://clpccd.instructure.com/enroll/KDENL6. If necessary, copy and paste the URL (without the period at the end) into your browser.
2. Log into Canvas with your W number. Your password is the first 2 letters of your first name, followed by the first 2 letters of your last name (all lowercase), followed by the last four digits of your W number. If you have already logged into Canvas and changed your password, use that password.
3. Click the button "Enroll in Course".
4. Click the button "Go to the Course".
5. Complete the modules.

If you are not utilizing the Model Course Template and want to add Quest to the course navigation menu in your class, you will need to install the Redirect app (Settings – Apps – type “redirect” (without the quotes) in the text box. This app allows you to add the above web address as a link and rename the app.

6. If you are teaching a DE class and want to see how your course measures up to the quality standards set by the Online Education Initiative, you can compare it to the OEI Course Design Rubric. The LPC Academic Senate has endorsed the rubric as the standards to strive for in DE classes. View the Senate’s resolution. Examples that meet the rubric’s criteria can be found in the Online Course Design Resources course.
   
   
7. Make sure all of your content is accessible to students with disabilities. Everything you need to know about web accessibility, including “how-to” tutorials, is available in Module 5 of the OCDP course. If you don’t have access to the OCDP, you can get that same info in the Web Accessibility Course in Canvas.
   
   
8. All online, hybrid, and HyFlex courses must show evidence of an instructor’s regular and substantive interaction with students, as per Title 5 and accreditation requirements. Title 5 adds that regular effective contact must take place among students, too. For hybrid and HyFlex courses, both types of contact are required in the online portion(s) of the class. Read Hybrids @ LPC. It might be worth you time to read more about regular and substantive interaction. Also, view the CVC-OEI’s Student-Student Interaction Guide (contains concrete examples).
   
   
9. If you want to learn how to pronounce students’ names, you can create a Page and turn it into a wiki by allowing students to edit so they can phonetically spell their names.
   
   
10. If you need to give students extra time or extra attempts on a quiz in Canvas, use the Moderate Quiz feature. Too many instructors are editing their quiz and adding a student’s name under Assign To in the quiz settings while removing Everyone. The result is that only that one student’s score goes into the Gradebook, while the rest do not. Learn how to moderate a quiz. Also, when giving a student extra time on an Assignment, you can add the student’s name under Assign To in the Assignment settings, but do not remove Everyone.
    
    
11. If you want students to have access to your class before the first day of the semester, go into Settings, and for Participation, choose Course. Change the Start date, and click Update Course Details at the bottom.
    
    
12. The LPC Online Learning web site includes a link called Faculty Resources, which was created for you. It provides information and resources for instructors online learning at LPC. The section also includes the DE Handbook.
    
    
13. For financial aid and auditing purposes, you should record the last day of attendance for students who drop DE courses. This can be done easily in Canvas. In your course, go to the People page, click on the three dots on the right side for a student, and select User Details. This brings you to the student’s Profile page. Simply enter the date in the box under Last Day Attended. If a student dropped prior to Census, you can't enter the student's LDA into Canvas because that student simply disappears from the course. The best you can do is note the date elsewhere after monitoring your class roster in CLASS-Web.
    
    The last day of attendance is not the last day a student logged into your course; it’s the last day a student actively participated in class. Read Federal Title IV and Last Day of Attendance.
    
    Here is LPC’s DE drop policy:
    
    The instructor may drop students who miss the first meeting of a course. The first meeting of online or hybrid Distance Education courses is the first day of the class as specified in the class schedule listing. For these courses, instructors may drop students who do not log into their Canvas course and/or complete indicated activities by the third day of classes. DE instructors may drop students if they have not submitted work and/or accessed the class for two consecutive weeks. For Summer courses, DE instructors may drop students if they have not submitted work and/or accessed the class for one week.
    
    
14. If you need (or want) a banner for the home page of your course, the attached file is a template to use. Just open it in PowerPoint, modify it, save it as a .PNG file, then upload it into Canvas.
    
    
15. If you use the Hypothesis annotation tool in Canvas, make sure there is only one Hypothesis app in your course. You can check by going to Settings – Apps – View App Configurations. If you see a Hypothesis app with a cogwheel, click on it and hit Delete. Hypothesis is already enabled for every course. When you have multiple apps that are the same, problems will ensue with student submissions.
    
    
16. If you use the 3C Media app in Canvas to get videos captioned, it might be easier to use Canvas Studio for that purpose...unless you have a student with a documented Academic Accommodation Plan (AAP) who meets the priorities set forth in this State Chancellor's Office memo. If you have an AAP need that meets the requirements of the above memo, don't fill out the request form, but instead, email support@ccctechconnect.org. You will receive a response prompting you to supply the information needed to process your request. For this method, your video will first be auto-captioned, then any mistakes will be corrected by a human being.  If you complete the form within the app, your video will only be auto-captioned, and you will be responsible for correcting any mistakes. Learn how to edit your captions in 3C Media.
    
    
17. If you plan to use the online proctoring tool Proctorio, you need to understand how it works. View a faculty web page on Proctorio. You should put information about Proctorio into your welcome letter and syllabus. Here are links to an example welcome letter and an example syllabus. Both contain student language about Proctorio. Feel free to use it.
    
    
18. If you weight your grades and offer extra credit, do not set up an Assignment group called Extra Credit and give it a percentage of zero. Doing so will not calculate extra credit earned by students into their grade totals. Learn about extra credit options in Canvas.
    
    
19. If you let students use Canvas Studio for a discussion assignment and want to easily grade students in the Speedgrader, tell students to disable comments on their videos. This way, students are forced to reply by clicking Reply and typing a response. Then, in the Speedgrader, you will see all of a student’s posts when you grade that student. If comments on videos are enabled, you will have to hunt for comments while grading. But perhaps that is OK for you.
    
    
20. You might want to export your gradebook on a consistent basis, such as every week. Every week might seem like overkill, but you never know what can happen, and nobody wants to jeopardize student grades. One note: When students switch sections in the middle of a semester, their grades and assignments do not automatically move to the new section. Exporting the gradebook from the students’ old section helps mitigate this issue.
    
    
21. If you want to merge sections in Canvas and have not already done so, read the Merging Sections in Canvas page, and follow the instructions carefully. Read the other important info on that page, too, particularly about FERPA. Also, if you are teaching a HyFlex class, it is recommended that you not merge that class with another other course or section in Canvas. There are issues, such as attendance accounting, that are affected by merging.
    
    
22. Canvas offers a Training Services Portal that is available from the Help icon in the global navigation menu. Resources include live webinar trainings, recorded videos, and actual courses. Zoom also holds live training.
    
    
23. In every course, you will notice EvaluationKIT Course in the top box in Settings – Navigation. This allows the official faculty union student survey to be deployed to courses, so please do NOT disable it by clicking the three dots to its right or by dragging it to the lower box. Just ignore it. The link is not visible to your students unless you are being evaluated, and even then, it will only be visible for the duration of the evaluation. I wish the installation didn’t put the link there, but nonetheless, thank you for your cooperation.
    
    
24. Every once in a while, we get a user or two who exceed the user or course quotas set for them and their courses in Canvas. In response, the DE Committee developed the Canvas Course Storage Guidelines.
    
    
25. For the weeks of Aug. 15 and 22, Wanda Butterly will be available by email. I will not be available the week of Aug. 29.
    
    

Good luck with your courses!

Scott

 

Canvas students/Zoom update

Hello,

 

I wanted to let you all know that fall 2022 students are scheduled to be inputted into their Canvas courses Wednesday, Aug. 3 (probably in the afternoon). If you don’t want students to access your courses until the start of classes, please keep your courses unpublished.

 

Also, this is a reminder that the migration of the ConferZoom tool in Canvas to a new district Zoom account will take place Friday, Aug. 5. When it is finished, the ConferZoom link in the Canvas course menu will be replaced by a similar link called TechConnect Zoom. All instructor accounts are supposed to be migrated beginning at 10 p.m. that night, so you should be able to use the updated tool the next day.

 

Optionally, if you want to set up appointments in Canvas for students to book, you can use Tech Connect Zoom's Student Connect tool. This tool will not show up in your course menu by default; you have to enable it by going to Settings - Course Navigation. To learn how to use Student Connect, see the Canvas Student Connect Booking Guide.

 

If you don’t use Zoom within Canvas, you can go to the district’s new Zoom address of chabotlaspositas-edu.zoom.us, which should work by Saturday, Aug. 6. You will still be able to go to conferzoom.org as that address is supposed to redirect to the new address on or after Aug. 5.

 

A few other Zoom-related reminders:

• CCC TechConnect is recommending that faculty teaching in the fall not schedule meetings through the ConferZoom link in Canvas until after the migration is finished.

• If you use attendance reports in Zoom and want to retain them, they must be downloaded from conferzoom.org or from ConferZoom in Canvas before the migration.
• I have created a TechConnect Zoom web page for faculty on our Online Learning site that has information and resources, along with a video on what the tool will look like in Canvas. The student page will be updated next week.

 

Scott

 

Canvas maintenance update

Regarding the email I sent last week about Canvas maintenance June 16, that is not going to happen for us. Canvas sent a subsequent email stating that the maintenance got pushed back a week and only affects New Quizzes. Since we are not using New Quizzes, the maintenance will not affect us.

 

Scott

Canvas Quizzes maintenance June 16 (early morning)

Canvas will undergo maintenance from 1:05 a.m. until 3:05 a.m. on Thursday, June 16. During this two-hour window, Canvas says that the Quizzes tool will be unavailable for a few minutes, but might last for the two hours. Please plan accordingly.

 

Scott

ConferZoom in Canvas update for fall 2022

LPC faculty,

 

This is a heads-up that the current ConferZoom tool in Canvas will be migrated to a new district Zoom account at the end of the summer. According to CCC TechConnect, the state chancellor’s office unit that is overseeing the migration, this change allows our district to manage the Zoom system and user accounts. It says that the benefits to faculty are an interface in Canvas that looks and works more like Zoom, along with “more scheduling options, faster recording downloads, and applied Zoom updates.”

 

Apparently, the transition is supposed to be seamless. However, CCC TechConnect is recommending that faculty teaching in the fall not schedule meetings through the ConferZoom link in Canvas until after the migration is finished. The migration date has not been determined yet, but it is supposed to take place after the summer session and prior to the beginning of fall. If you already scheduled meetings in ConferZoom, you will be able to import them—along with any recordings—after the migration.

 

A few other changes:

• When the migration occurs, the ConferZoom link in the Canvas course menu will change to TechConnect Zoom.
• If you use attendance reports in Zoom and want to retain them, they must be downloaded from conferzoom.org or from ConferZoom in Canvas before the migration.
• Outside of Canvas, the Zoom web address will change from conferzoom.org to an address customized for our district. The old address will still work; it will just redirect to the new one.

 

The district and/or I will send more info (e.g. the date of the migration, the new web address) when it becomes available. In the meantime, I’m including links that CCC TechConnect sent to me after our meeting today:

 

Attendance reports in ConferZoom.org

Attendance reports in Canvas

Import meetings and recordings to TechConnect Zoom in Canvas

Guides for using TechConnect Zoom in Canvas

 

Scott

Final Summer Canvas reminders

With Summer classes starting Tuesday…

 

Attached is a checklist (with corresponding links) to help your classes get off to a good start. And here is some information/reminders to help, too:

 

1. View Canvas faculty notes and tips. Below are some new tools and features that will be made available in Canvas next week:
   
   
1. In the Gradebook, you can apply scores to ungraded assignments, including quizzes. This is done via Assignment Group columns or the Totals column. View video on how to apply scores to ungraded.
2. Also in the Gradebook, you can add emojis to comments. This can be done in the grading tray or in the Speedgrader. View video on how to add emojis to comments.
3. You can set a new default due time for assignments and quizzes. If you want your assignments to be due at, for example, 5 p.m., you can set that up in your Course Settings. Then, when you create an assignment and choose the due date, the time will default to 5 p.m. View video on setting a default due time.
4. You have the ability to add your own icons to Canvas with the new Icon Maker, which is found in the toolbar of the Rich Content Editor. Canvas gives you lots of options for designing icons, and it even has a bunch of images to choose from. View a video on using the Icon Maker.
   
   
2. Publish your courses by the beginning of the day your class starts so students can access them. To publish your course, go to the course home page, and click Publish.
   
   
3. If you are teaching a DE class, contact your students prior to the start of the semester, and encourage them to self-enroll into the Quest for Online Success Course in Canvas. This is a readiness course that prepares students to succeed online. Learn more about Quest. I notified DE students by email, and many have already self-enrolled. A reminder from you would be good, especially since students who added late did not receive the email notification. Here are instructions you can copy and paste for your students:
   
   

1. Go to https://clpccd.instructure.com/enroll/KDENL6. If necessary, copy and paste the URL (without the period at the end) into your browser.
2. Log into Canvas with your W number. Your password is the first 2 letters of your first name, followed by the first 2 letters of your last name (all lowercase), followed by the last four digits of your W number. If you have already logged into Canvas and changed your password, use that password.
3. Click the button "Enroll in Course".
4. Click the button "Go to the Course".
5. Complete the modules.

If you are not utilizing the Model Course Template and want to add Quest to the course navigation menu in your class, you will need to install the Redirect app (Settings – Apps – type “redirect” (without the quotes) in the text box. This app allows you to add the above web address as a link and rename the app.

4. If you are teaching a DE class and want to see how your course measures up to the quality standards set by the Online Education Initiative, you can compare it to the OEI Course Design Rubric. The LPC Academic Senate has endorsed the rubric as the standards to strive for in DE classes. View the Senate’s resolution. Examples that meet the rubric’s criteria can be found in the Online Course Design Resources course.
   
   
5. Make sure all of your content is accessible to students with disabilities. Everything you need to know about web accessibility, including “how-to” tutorials, is available in Module 5 of the OCDP course. If you don’t have access to the OCDP, you can get that same info in the Web Accessibility Course in Canvas.
   
   
6. All online, hybrid, and HyFlex courses must show evidence of an instructor’s regular and substantive interaction with students, as per Title 5 and accreditation requirements. Title 5 adds that regular effective contact must take place among students, too. For hybrid and HyFlex courses, both types of contact are required in the online portion(s) of the class. Read Hybrids @ LPC. It might be worth you time to read more about regular and substantive interaction. Also, view the CVC-OEI’s Student-Student Interaction Guide (contains concrete examples).
   
   
7. If you want to learn how to pronounce students’ names, you can create a Page and turn it into a wiki by allowing students to edit so they can phonetically spell their names.
   
   
8. If you need to give students extra time or extra attempts on a quiz in Canvas, use the Moderate Quiz feature. Too many instructors are editing their quiz and adding a student’s name under Assign To in the quiz settings while removing Everyone. The result is that only that one student’s score goes into the Gradebook, while the rest do not. Learn how to moderate a quiz. Also, when giving a student extra time on an Assignment, you can add the student’s name under Assign To in the Assignment settings, but do not remove Everyone.
   
   
9. If you want students to have access to your class before the first day of the semester, go into Settings, and for Participation, choose Course. Change the Start date, and click Update Course Details at the bottom.
   
   
10. The LPC DE Committee has developed recommendations, along with answers to frequently asked questions, that are intended to aid instructors—particularly new instructors—in determining how many students to add and when to add those students near the beginning of the semester. View the recommendations and FAQs. Keep in mind that when students add your class, it will take several hours, if not overnight, for them to show up in your Canvas course. It will not happen immediately.
    
    
11. The LPC Online Learning web site includes a link called Faculty Resources, which was created for you. It provides information and resources for instructors online learning at LPC. The section also includes the DE Handbook.
    
    
12. For financial aid and auditing purposes, you should record the last day of attendance for students who drop DE courses. This can be done easily in Canvas. In your course, go to the People page, click on the three dots on the right side for a student, and select User Details. This brings you to the student’s Profile page. Simply enter the date in the box under Last Day Attended. If a student dropped prior to Census, you can't enter the student's LDA into Canvas because that student simply disappears from the course. The best you can do is note the date elsewhere after monitoring your class roster in CLASS-Web.
    
    The last day of attendance is not the last day a student logged into your course; it’s the last day a student actively participated in class. Read Federal Title IV and Last Day of Attendance.
    
    Here is LPC’s DE drop policy:
    
    The instructor may drop students who miss the first meeting of a course. The first meeting of online or hybrid Distance Education courses is the first day of the class as specified in the class schedule listing. For these courses, instructors may drop students who do not log into their Canvas course and/or complete indicated activities by the third day of classes. DE instructors may drop students if they have not submitted work and/or accessed the class for two consecutive weeks. For Summer courses, DE instructors may drop students if they have not submitted work and/or accessed the class for one week.
    
    
13. If you need (or want) a banner for the home page of your course, the attached file is a template to use. Just open it in PowerPoint, modify it, save it as a .PNG file, then upload it into Canvas.
    
    
14. If you use the Hypothesis annotation tool in Canvas, make sure there is only one Hypothesis app in your course. You can check by going to Settings – Apps – View App Configurations. If you see a Hypothesis app with a cogwheel, click on it and hit Delete. Hypothesis is already enabled for every course. When you have multiple apps that are the same, problems will ensue with student submissions.
    
    
15. If you use the 3C Media app in Canvas to get videos captioned, it might be easier to use Canvas Studio for that purpose...unless you have a student with a documented Academic Accommodation Plan (AAP) who meets the priorities set forth in this State Chancellor's Office memo. If you have an AAP need that meets the requirements of the above memo, don't fill out the request form, but instead, email support@ccctechconnect.org. You will receive a response prompting you to supply the information needed to process your request. For this method, your video will first be auto-captioned, then any mistakes will be corrected by a human being.  If you complete the form within the app, your video will only be auto-captioned, and you will be responsible for correcting any mistakes. Learn how to edit your captions in 3C Media.
    
    
16. If you plan to use the online proctoring tool Proctorio, you need to understand how it works. View a faculty web page on Proctorio. You should put information about Proctorio into your welcome letter and syllabus. Here are links to an example welcome letter and an example syllabus. Both contain student language about Proctorio. Feel free to use it.
    
    
17. If you weight your grades and offer extra credit, do not set up an Assignment group called Extra Credit and give it a percentage of zero. Doing so will not calculate extra credit earned by students into their grade totals. Learn about extra credit options in Canvas.
    
    
18. If you let students use Canvas Studio for a discussion assignment and want to easily grade students in the Speedgrader, tell students to disable comments on their videos. This way, students are forced to reply by clicking Reply and typing a response. Then, in the Speedgrader, you will see all of a student’s posts when you grade that student. If comments on videos are enabled, you will have to hunt for comments while grading. But perhaps that is OK for you.
    
    
19. You might want to export your gradebook on a consistent basis, such as every week. Every week might seem like overkill, but you never know what can happen, and nobody wants to jeopardize student grades. One note: When students switch sections in the middle of a semester, their grades and assignments do not automatically move to the new section. Exporting the gradebook from the students’ old section helps mitigate this issue.
    
    
20. If you want to merge sections in Canvas and have not already done so, read the Merging Sections in Canvas page, and follow the instructions carefully. Read the other important info on that page, too, particularly about FERPA. Also, if you are teaching a HyFlex class, it is recommended that you not merge that class with another other course or section in Canvas. There are issues, such as attendance accounting, that are affected by merging.
    
    
21. Canvas offers a Training Services Portal that is available from the Help icon in the global navigation menu. Resources include live webinar trainings, recorded videos, and actual courses. Zoom also holds live training.
    
    
22. In every course, you will notice EvaluationKIT Course in the top box in Settings – Navigation. This allows the official faculty union student survey to be deployed to courses, so please do NOT disable it by clicking the three dots to its right or by dragging it to the lower box. Just ignore it. The link is not visible to your students unless you are being evaluated, and even then, it will only be visible for the duration of the evaluation. I wish the installation didn’t put the link there, but nonetheless, thank you for your cooperation.
    
    
23. Every once in a while, we get a user or two who exceed the user or course quotas set for them and their courses in Canvas. In response, the DE Committee developed the Canvas Course Storage Guidelines.
    
    
24. During the Summer, Wanda Butterly and I will be working Mondays through Thursdays due to campus closures on Fridays. Wanda will be on vacation June 1-13. I’ll be taking some time off in July, dates TBD. If you can’t reach us or don’t want to try, you can use the self-service page in the Canvas Help menu to access 24x7 chat, email support, and the knowledge base.

 

Good luck with your courses!

Scott

 

Canvas Spring 2022 semester wrap-up

Canvas instructors,

 

Hope the Spring semester has gone well. To wrap it up for Canvas and prepare for the next semester, please note the following:

1. Here's how course access at the end of a semester works in Canvas:
1. You will have full access to your course until June 10 at 11:59 p.m. After that, you will only have read-only access. However, you will be able to export your course. At that point, get to the course by clicking Courses – All Courses. It will be listed under Past Enrollments.
2. Students will have full access to your course until the term end date of May 27 at 11:59 p.m. (unless you have changed the Course end date and time). After the Term end date and time passes, students will have read-only access. They can get to the course by clicking Courses – All Courses. The course will show under Past Enrollments.
3. If you want students to have full access after the Term end date and time, go into Settings, and for Participation, choose Course. Then increase the End date and time, and click Update Course Details at the bottom.
4. If you don't want students to have any access to the course after the Term end date and time, go to Settings, make sure Term is selected for Participation, and check the box that says: Restrict students from viewing course after term end date. Then click Update Course Details at the bottom.
   
   View a video on course availability.
2. For each class, check the accuracy of your grades, then DOWNLOAD YOUR GRADEBOOK AND COURSE SEPARATELY!
1. For students who do not complete assignments by the deadline dates, manually give them zeros in the gradebook. If you leave their grade cells blank, those missing assignments won't count against them in Totals when they check grades.
2. Make sure you don't have any grade columns that show as hidden when they shouldn't be hidden.
3. If you incorrectly gave a student extra attempts on quizzes by adding that student's name under Assign To in the quiz settings while removing Everyone, you will need to add Everyone back in. You'd notice this in the gradebook if you have a quiz column with only one student's score while the rest of the students have no scores. Once you add Everyone back in and click Save, all of the scores will show.
4. When you are finished with grading, download your Gradebook by clicking Actions - Export. Keep your exported Gradebook on your computer and/or external/online drive.
5. To archive your course and save it for safekeeping (in case anything bad happens to Canvas…and it has happened!), go to Settings – Export Course Content – make sure Course is chosen under Export Type, then click Create Export. Once the process is finished, click New Export to download the file to your computer and/or external/online drive. Note that you cannot open the resulting .imscc file on your computer.
   
   Exporting, downloading, and saving your Gradebooks and courses are critical! We have had incidents in the recent past where entire courses and class grades were lost. Don't get caught without backups.

 

3. When moving from one semester to another, you can either copy a previous semester's course content or export the previous course and import it into the new course. You can do either of these by going to Settings and choosing Import Course Content. If you then select Copy a Canvas Course, you might have to check the box to "Include completed courses."
1. Learn how to copy a course.
2. Learn how to export a course.
3. Learn how to import a course.
   
   If you use the Hypothesis annotation tool, be sure to read Canvas Course Import and Hypothesis for special instructions. Also, do not install the Hypothesis app in your new course; it is already there. If you do, problems will ensue with student submissions.
   
   
4. Also when moving from one semester to another, do not remove assignments from within the Calendar. If you need to remove assignments, do this from the Assignments area. If you need to remove quizzes or discussions, do those from their respective areas, too. This pertains to both the course from which you are copying and the course into which you are copying.
   
   
5. Students have already been inputted into their Summer classes. They will be inputted into their Fall classes August 3.
   
   
6. If you are teaching online during the Summer or Fall, you should send a welcome letter to your students a week or so prior to the first day of classes. We offer a welcome letter template for your optional use, along with an online syllabus template, and an entire model course template.
1. Access the welcome letter template
2. Access the syllabus template
3. If you are interested in previewing or using the model course template, view instructions on accessing it.
   
   
7. If you are teaching a HyFlex course in the Summer or Fall, you can use the HyFlex Course Template, along with the HyFlex welcome letter and syllabus. View instructions on accessing these templates.
   
   
8. If you want to merge next semester's sections in Canvas and have not already done so, read the Merging Sections in Canvas page, and follow the instructions carefully. Read the other important info on that page, too, particularly about FERPA. Also, if you are teaching a HyFlex class, it is recommended that you not merge that class with another other course or section in Canvas. There are issues, such as attendance accounting, that are affected by merging.
   
   
9. If you want to see what is upcoming in Canvas, go to the Canvas Release Notes page.
   
   
10. During the Summer, Wanda Butterly and I will be working Mondays through Thursdays due to campus closures on Fridays. Wanda will be on vacation June 1-13. I'll be taking some time off in July, dates TBD. If you have vacation ideas for a boring, middle-aged (and somewhat cheap) man, let me know. 😆
    
    

Scott