Once you have decided to deliver some (or all) of your course content with Canvas, we can turn our attention to the initial set up: What will your course look like? How will you organize the content? How do you want your students to interact with the content? These, and other key questions will be explored here.

Be mindful, the official Canvas course shell for your time-table course is automatically created approximately two months before the semester begins. If the course exists, and you are designated in SIS as the instructor, the Canvas course shell will automatically appear on your Canvas dashboard.

If the course shell has not yet been created, you will need to do the development in a temporary course shell, called a Sandbox course. Click here to request a Canvas sandbox course. All course content and development can be easily transferred to the official course shell, once that shell has been created.

sCanvas course shell has been created,

Building Your Canvas Course

The following are the most common Canvas objects you will use to build out your course. The object titles are hyperlinked to the respective online Instructure support documentation.

Files

Use Files to conveniently share any file with your students. You can upload one gigabyte of files into each Canvas course shell. If the files you wish to share require more than one gigabyte of storage, we recommend you leveraging your Box and Google Drive accounts.

Pages

A Canvas page is similar to a blog, or any custom webpage. It is often used to elaborate on complex topics, to provide a overview of material to be covered in a day, or a week. Some instructors create a Canvas page to capture frequently asked questions (FAQs). In short, if you want to create a "document" actually within your Canvas course, (instead of just uploading files) this is a great way to do it.

Assignments

Usually, assignments are associated with "submissions", like papers, written exams, or homework exercises. More broadly, assignments are used for any evaluation event that is not a quiz or graded discussion (both, addressed below). This includes attendance, class participation, extra credit, presentations, speeches, group work, rough drafts, etc.

Quizzes

As the name suggests, a Canvas quiz gives you a chance to evaluate your students' learning. You can choose from 11 question types, compose as many questions as you like, and employ several administrative options to control the behavior of the quiz.

Discussions

Online discussions provide students with a platform to respond (publicly) to some prompt, or probing question. At your control, students may be able to respond to other students' responses. Canvas also allows instructors to turn discussions into a graded event, that will generate a column in the gradebook.

Modules

Do not neglect modules! The sole purpose of modules is to create order for all the above-mentioned objects. Instead of having students navigate to all those different locations in your course, a module (very like a "folder") allows you to put all those objects into logical groups (weeks? chapters?) and to put them in a logical or optimal sequence. Thus, reducing student confusion (and your stress answering questions!).

Announcements

Use Canvas announcements to broadcast to your students important deadlines, or time-sensitive news. Maybe, you need to cancel class this morning... or, there's a speaker coming on campus next Thursday... or, you want to remind students that they need to submit their rough draft on Monday.

Course Organization & Management

In addition to creating content, (above) you will likely wish to consider several administrative options and parameters concerning how to arrange that content and set up your Canvas course shell. All with the primary purpose in mind of giving your students the best online learning experience.

Publishing Your Canvas Course

By default, students cannot see your Canvas course. You need to intentionally publish it. Also, be mindful: most of the individual Canvas objects mentioned above also have a "publish" feature. So, you have multiple layers to control when students will see course content.

How Do I Publish a Canvas Course?

What Are the Different States of a Canvas Course?

Managing Course Navigation

Every Canvas course has a course navigation bar along the left side. That navigation bar can contain over 20 items, if you wished. However, it is recommended to keep that list of options as short as is reasonable. Too many options may overwhelm students, or just give them ways and areas in which to get lost. If you have used modules to organize the several and various objects in your course, you could conceivably hide "Files", "Pages", "Assignments", "Quizzes" and "Discussions" from your Canvas course navigation bar.

How Do I Manage Course Navigation?

Establish a Grading Scheme

Canvas courses come preloaded with a default grading scheme. This scheme is not consistent with UW-Madison's grading policy. You will need to create your own, and enable it in each course.

What are grading schemes?

How do I add a grading scheme in a course?

How do I enable a grading scheme for a course?

More

Beyond these primary topics, visit View all Canvas Course Setup-related instructor guides for more information.

Technical Support & Consultation Requests
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Additional Resources Online
Learn@UW Website with Guides & More Information • at.doit.wisc.edu/learn-uw
Learn@UW KnowledgeBase • kb.wisc.edu/luwmad