1. basic training Quick & easy steps to build your best course site ever!
Please log into your computer, open a web browser & log into

2. Session Overview Importing content from Blackboard and other sources
Configuring your profile, communication, and notification preferences
Handling video and media
How to use Assignments, Discussions, Files, Pages, Gradebook, Quizzes, & Syllabus

3. Global Navigation
Edit your profile, settings, notifications and access your
Files and ePortfolio. Also Logout of the system from here.
Activity stream, upcoming items, and select courses – this
is your login welcome screen
Shows all courses (even unpublished)
Show week, month, agenda & appointment scheduler
Send and receive (conversations)
Digital library of shared learning resources (LOR)
Search the Canvas Community for help

4. Common Setup Tasks Account -> Profile Account -> Notifications
Add a photo, secondary , register 3rd party integrations
Account -> Notifications
Change and push notification settings
Account -> Files
Bulk Upload content items to be used in your courses system-wide
Courses -> All Courses
“Star” preferred courses to be displayed in Dashboard
Calendar -> Calendar Feed
Copy feed URL to integrate with your Outlook calendar
Inbox
This is Canvas’ system. Copies of s are sent to your WPI Exchange and can be replied to in Exchange as well.

5. Notification Preferences
Canvas has “default notification preferences”
In Account -> Notifications, you can customize yours to your liking!
Choose from: ASAP – Daily – Weekly – None
Push (to mobile device) notifications can be enabled here

6. https://wpi.instructure.com/courses/14/
Interface Overview
Dashboard
Left side – Global Navigation – shows account, courses, groups, calendar, , and help
Center – Favorite Courses and Activity Stream – list of active courses “starred” from Courses -> All Courses, and feed of recent activity.
Course Site Interface
Extreme left - Global Navigation – it’s always there for you 
Left side - Course Navigation which is similar to Blackboard
Top - Breadcrumb Navigation to navigate back to where you’ve been
Right side – Sidebar provides mini-activity stream of upcoming events, assignments, and messages
Center – Main Content Area

7. Building Your Course Site: Course Navigation
All materials and activities are organized into types
Shows you all course elements of a certain type no matter where it fits in your course sequence (ex. Assignments, Files)
For Example, Clicking on “Assignments” will show you every assignment in the course
May open possibility of students viewing “out of sequence”
Optimize your site by curating these raw materials into Modules!
You may reorder and hide these links from student view, but you cannot change their names or functions (this is not like Blackboard)
Settings -> Navigation to hide or reorder navigation elements within your course site
Unlike Blackboard where you could put whatever you wanted in Assignments & Course Materials, or add new folders to store whatever you want- Canvas is more regimented. Your creativity and customization will really come into play once you begin creating Modules. “Modules” is like the Course Materials folder, and you can create Pages or upload PDFs into the Modules area.

8. Building Your Course Site: Introduction
Before you start anything!
It’s time to purge! Do some “Spring Cleaning” of your Blackboard sites.
If you don’t have your course files stored on your personal computer or shared drive space, contact to get your Blackboard course site(s) exported & archived (or do it yourself!)
To archive your course site in Blackboard yourself, go to Control Panel -> Packages/Utilities -> Export/Archive Course -> Export Package OR Use Content Collection to download a .zip package of your Files
To start fresh or import…that is the question.
Many faculty have found it easier to start fresh and clean in Canvas
Canvas has a neat bulk import feature to import folders from your computer into your course site – we’ll talk about this on the next slide!
Importing your old Blackboard course site may require additional “cleaning up” in order to be show ready

9. Building Your Course Site: Handling Audio and Video
Do you use video (Camtasia) or audio content in your course site?
WPI has its own streaming video server Ensemble – there’s no need to upload or copy your old videos to your Canvas course site.
Contact Sophie Jagannathan to get an account for our media server and move your videos over!

10. Building Your Course Site: Importing Content
Importing your content – Method 1
In Canvas, go to Account -> Files -> Upload
Select the file or files (or folders!) to be imported
Make sure it goes into the correct Course Files folder
Importing your content – Method 2
In Canvas, go to your course site
Open Settings in your course navigation menu (way at the bottom)
In the Sidebar, click Import Content into this Course
Select your Content Type from the drop down (Unzip .zip file into folder for content from your computer, OR Blackboard 6/7/8/9 export .zip file for an old Blackboard course)
Fill in the rest of the form fields as applicable (do not select videos-contact the ATC!)
Click Import
Pro tip: You may adjust events and due dates for your course in bulk to correspond with the current term. Do it during the import! If you don’t you’ll have to do it piece by piece later. This is your only chance!

11. Building Your Course Site: Using Files
There are 3 kinds of file repositories. In Blackboard, this is similar to Course Materials or Content Collection
Personal Files are private cloud storage – they can be shared with others if desired
Course Files can be accessed via “Files” menu in Course Navigation
Group Files is a private file exchange storage area between group members
Click the Cloud icon next to your file to manage privacy of the file.
Published – Visible to all users. Default setting for Course Files.
Restricted – "Let students download or view the file if I link to it, just don't show it in the file listing for students” (doesn’t show up in list)
Unpublished – Only teachers and TAs in the course can view.
Canvas has an effective system for managing your uploaded materials. They all live in one area of your site, called Files. From files, items you’ve uploaded can be placed on Pages within Canvas. If you’d just like to have a repository of resources for your students, you may just upload items to Files, and you’re done! But if you’d like to organize your items into units for students, you’ll be accessing Files later when we begin to make Pages and Modules. These files uploaded into your Course folders can be used throughout your courses.

12. Building Your Course Site: Adding Your Syllabus
Open Syllabus from your Course Navigation menu
Click the Edit button
Edit your Syllabus using the Rich Content Editor, or upload a PDF or Word document from the Content Selector in the sidebar
Click Update Syllabus
Pro tip: A “Syllabus Table” will be automatically generated based on Assignments, Quizzes, and Events within a course. It can only be changed by editing or deleting the Assignments or Events.

13. Building Your Course Site: Introduction to Pages
Pages are where you put content or resources that are part of your course, but don’t belong in an assignment or are referred to in multiple assignments.
-> Think of each Page as a page in a wiki, or a web page – link pages together, incorporate files or outside sources, add multimedia, etc.
What can I use pages for?
Create links to other parts of your course
Include original textual or multimedia content
Use the Rich Content Editor and Content Selector in the sidebar to quickly add text, images, media, links and/or other files into the Page.

14. Building Your Course Site: Building Pages
Create a new page by clicking on Pages in your Course Navigation menu
Click View All Pages
Click the + Page button
Type a name for your page.
Use the Rich Content Editor to create content and use the Content Selector in the sidebar to add links, files, and images.
Edit your page settings and click Save (to save draft) or Save & Publish to make the Page available to students

15. Building Your Course Site: Introduction to Assessments
Assignments (Uploads/Dropboxes)
Discussions (Can be graded or ungraded)
Assessments (Quizzes or Surveys)

16. Building Your Course Site: Building Assignments
Click on Assignments in your Course Navigation menu
Click on + Assignment button
Type the Assignment title in the Assignment Name field.
Use the Rich Content Editor to add images, text, links, equations, or insert media.
Use the Content Selector in the sidebar to link to or upload course resources, including files and images.

17. Building Your Course Site: Building Assignments
Enter point value in the Points field, and select Assignment Group from the drop-down menu.
In the Display Grade as drop-down menu, select the method you want to use for grading.
In the Submission Type drop-down menu, select the type of submission you want to accept for the assignment.
No Submission
Online
On Paper
External Tool
Pro tip: There is no functional difference between an On Paper assignment and a No Submission assignment. This is simply to differentiate to your students that a graded assignment is due on paper “in class” or that an assignment is graded, but no actual submission is required either in Canvas or in class.

18. Building Your Course Site: Building Assignments
In the Assign to field, choose who this will be assigned to (by default Everyone is selected)
Create a due date in the Due field
Set Available from dates
Click +Add to add additional custom due dates or groups
Click Save (for draft) or Save & Publish

19. Building Your Course Site: Building Quizzes
Open Quizzes from your Course Navigation menu
Click on the + Quiz button
Click on the Settings tab and enter the name of your quiz.
Use the Rich Content Editor to write or record instructions
Want to create an anonymous survey? Select Graded or Ungraded Survey from Quiz Type and then select Keep Submissions Anonymous
Customize the rest of your quiz settings
To add questions, click on the Questions tab
Click the + New Question button
Enter a unique name in the question text field
Select a question type from the drop-down menu
Fill in the question and answers (if applicable)
Click Save (do not click Save & Publish until the quiz is complete!)
Use Preview to see what students will see when they take the quiz.

20. Building Your Course Site: Building Discussions
Create threaded or focused discussion
Threaded is for more complex hierarchical discussions (many posts and related comments for each post)
Focused is for quicker, simpler interactions (one single post and related comments)
Click on Discussions in your Course Navigation
Click on + Discussion to add a new discussion
Use the Rich Content Editor to create content and use the Content Selector (right side) to add links, files, and images.
To create a threaded discussion, click the Allow threaded replies checkbox. By default, all discussions are set to focused.
Fill in the rest of the discussion options
Click Save or Save & Publish if you’re ready for students to see it

21. Using the Gradebook Open Grades from your Course Navigation menu
You may switch between Default Gradebook and Individual View
Default is the traditional spreadsheet view
To sort columns, click the heading of a column and use the arrow to sort content in ascending or descending order
To view individual Grades, click on the student’s name
New columns are added every time you create a graded activity
You may manually add columns by downloading the Excel file, adding a new column, giving it a title, and re-uploading
Default view allows you to see all students and assignments at the same time, like a spreadsheet.
Individual view allows instructors to assess one student and one assignment at a time and is fully accessible for screen readers. You can switch between views at any time.

22. Navigating the Gradebook
Click the gear on the top right to specify settings that apply to the entire gradebook
Click Export to download the whole gradebook to Excel, and Import to upload back into Canvas

23. Navigating the Gradebook
To view options for an individual assignment, hover over the column header and click the blue arrow
Pro tip: By default, Canvas allows students to see grades as soon as they are graded. Use Mute Assignment to hold off releasing grades to students until all assignments have been graded

24. What is SpeedGrader?
Allows instructors to quickly view and grade assignments in one place.
Some features of SpeedGrader:
Sort by student and hide names for anonymous grading
Navigate quickly from student to student
Use rubrics to assign grades
Leave feedback for students directly within the submission
Track your progress and hide grades until grading is complete
Create text, video, and/or audio commentary for the student
Can be accessed from Gradebook or directly from the assignment

25. Publishing Your Course
Like in Blackboard, when you had to “Make Your Course Site Available” to students at the beginning of the term, you have to do it in Canvas too!
Unlike in Blackboard, it’s really easy to do! Simply click Publish from your course home page to make your course available.

26. The devil is in the details…
Need some fine tuning? Want to learn best practices in Canvas? Check out our blog The ATC is here to help! Contact us to set up a 1-on-1 consultation and we can help you perfect your course site. ->More advanced and thematic trainings are coming soon! Want to venture out on your own right now? The Canvas Guides are an excellent place to start.

27. Thank you!