For those of you teaching this summer,
To wrap it up the Summer session and prepare for Fall, please note the following:
- Here’s how course access at the end of a semester works in Canvas:
- You will have full access to your course until Aug. 14 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 listed under Past Enrollments.
- Students will have full access to your course until Aug. 6 at 11:59 p.m. (unless you have changed the Term 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.
- If you want students to have full access after the Term end date and time, go into Settings, increase the Term end date and time, then check the box that says: Students can only participate in the course between these dates.
- If you don’t want students to have any access to the course after the Term end date and time, scroll down in Settings, and check the box that says: Restrict students from viewing course after end date.
- You will have full access to your course until Aug. 14 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 listed under Past Enrollments.
- For each class, check the accuracy of your grades, then DOWNLOAD YOUR GRADEBOOK AND COURSE SEPARATELY!
- 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.
- Make sure you don’t have any grade columns that show as hidden when they shouldn’t be hidden.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
- 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."
- Also when moving from one semester to another, do not remove assignments from 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.
- Students have been inputted into their Fall 2020 courses.
- If you are teaching during the 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.
- These new features will be enabled in Canvas on Aug. 15:
- The Section column can be hidden from students in the People page when more than one section exists in the course. This change prevents students from viewing sections for other students when they have access to view the People page. This can be particularly beneficial if you have merged a non-credit section of a course with a credit section, and you don’t want students to see who is in the non-credit section. To do this, go to Settings in your merged course, click More Options in Course Details, then check the box in front of Hide sections on the People page from Students. Click Update Course Details at the bottom.
- Multiple pages can be deleted at one time in the Pages Index page. Multiple pages can be deleted at one time in the Pages Index page.
- If you want to see what is upcoming in Canvas, go to the Canvas Release Notes page.
Scott
