Faculty Notes & Tips

Support

1. Teaching and Learning Center staff provide daytime support for faculty on Canvas issues. For support during nights and weekends, faculty can call Canvas directly at 1-833-300-3467. 
2. There is also a Search the Canvas Guides link in the Help menu. You might want to use these before seeking support.
3. All Canvas-related emails are posted to the LPC Online Learning updates blog as a reference for you to use, if needed.
4. The main Canvas page on the Online Learning site has resources for students that you can link to from within your courses.
5. LPC’s online tutoring system, NetTutor, is integrated into Canvas. It appears as a default item in each course’s navigation menu. Please encourage your students to use NetTutor. If your students need NetTutor technical support, tell them to click the Customer Service Request link within NetTutor, and fill out the form. They may also call the NetTutor Customer Support Team at (813) 674-0660 x204. The direct email is support@link-systems.com.
6. If you teach a hybrid course, read Hybrid Courses @ LPC. Note that the online portion of your class must include regular, effective contact with, and among, students.
7. If you are experiencing issues using the CCC's webconferencing system, ConferZoom, within Canvas, contact ConferZoom Support. Make sure you have created an account at the ConferZoom web site, not at the Zoom web site.

Course preparation

1. If you have students who want to add into your online course, follow these recommendations for adding students into DE classes.
2. You will need to publish your course before students can access it and before you can email students.
3. Use the Validate Links in Content tool in the Settings of your course to check for broken links.
4. 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 have a link to a file within the Rich Content Editor, do not copy that link and paste it into a new course. The text will be copied, but the link will point to the course you copied from, and students in your new course will not be able to access it. If you insist on copying a link to a file from within the Rich Content Editor, you will need to upload that file into your new course and re-link that file.
5. Hide the navigation links in your course menu that you are not going to use. If you use Modules to present content, good links to hide include Assignments, Files, Pages, and Quizzes.
6. It’s good practice to group your assignments, particularly if you weight grades or drop the lowest score.
7. Beginning with Fall 2019 courses, you can merge sections by following the instructions on the Merging Sections in Canvas page.
8. Make sure you understand how Canvas assignment due dates and availability dates work. You have the option of allowing students to submit assignments late or not. If you don't allow late submissions, the simplest thing is to make your due dates and Availability Until dates the same. Learn more about due dates and availability dates.
9. When setting your Notifications, make sure to turn on Submissions Comments. This ensures that students' comments about their submissions get to you.
10. Since all DE courses must show evidence of regular effective contact, you should use the Canvas Inbox for all of your email correspondences with students. The Canvas Inbox will automatically save the emails. Emails sent from Outlook will be archived, but they will not be available from a central location.
11. If you are using ConferZoom, note that it is not in your course navigation menu by default. You can place it there by going to Settings – Navigation.

Technical

1. Bookmark the Canvas login page, so you don't have to rely on the LPC web site to get to it. That way, if the LPC site goes down, you can still get to Canvas. Tell your students to do the same.
2. Chrome is the preferred browser for Canvas.
3. Make sure any images in your courses can be seen by students. Your images might be cached, or saved, on your computer. If you see broken images, obviously, neither you nor students will see them. If you see images just fine, check them by clearing the cache, or history, in your browser, and try to view them again. If the images are broken, you will need to add them back in. Another way to check is to copy the image URL, open a new tab in your browser, and paste that URL in there. If the URL is brief and is in this format, it’s good: clpccd.instructure.com/courses/30/files/2345.
4. The Canvas Teacher mobile app lets you manage your courses via an Android or iOS device. Learn more about the app.
5. Canvas workshops are listed on the Workshops page. You can register for a workshop or appointment.
6. Since Canvas is cloud-based, bug fixes, enhancements, and new features can be easily added. Our system will be updated with them every three weeks. There’s a link on the Canvas Training page, under Other important resources, called Canvas release notes that will keep you updated.
7. Apps from major textbook publishers are installed at the global level, so you won’t need to do this in your course.
8. If you use a Canvas Page as your home page and want to display announcements on it, go to Settings (the Course Details tab), and click “more options” at the bottom. Choose to display announcements on your home page.
9. If you want to use journals in Canvas, you can use Google Docs because Canvas doesn’t have a journals tool.
10. When emailing your class from the Inbox, hover over each listed class to see the class name class expanded. This ensures you are emailing the correct class.
11. The Attendance Roll Call app in Canvas gives you the ability to take attendance. You can enable it by going to Settings – Navigation and dragging Attendance from the hidden table below to the table above to activate it.
12. There are two ways to give extra quiz attempts to students, via Student Quiz Results and via Moderate Quiz. The latter, which is preferable, also allows you to give extra time to students for timed quizzes. This is helpful to DSPS students. Learn how to use both tools.
    
    Do not try to give an extra attempt by 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. 
    
    
13. If you need to make an assignment available to just one student, edit the assignment, scroll to the bottom, click Add, then choose the student and set the due and availability dates.
14. For students who do not complete assignments by the deadline dates, manually give them zeroes in the gradebook. If you leave their grade cells blank, those missing assignments won't count against them. Canvas has a feature in the gradebook settings called Treat Ungraded as 0. If you enable it, you will get the students' true scores, but the students won't get it when they check their grades. In other words, the zeroes are only reflected in the totals in your view, not theirs.
15. If you need to print anything in Canvas, do it from within Chrome; it seems to come out pretty good.
16. If you want to verify a student's claims he that took an exam when Canvas shows that he never attempted it, go to the test, then hit Moderate Quiz. Canvas shows all of the students in the class. Those who hit Start Quiz will have their names linked, and once you click a link, there’s another link called View Log. That log will show everything the student did (or didn't do) with the exam. Because Canvas is in a cloud environment, all actions are recorded once the student hits the Start Quiz button.
17. If you accidentally delete an item from your Canvas course, you can restore it by using the “undelete” command. Learn how to restore a deleted item.
18. 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.