Overview

Canvas is a very user friendly program that is used to manage all parts of instruction.  Students can submit work, interact inside discussions, review feedback, and see in-progress grades.  Canvas lets instructors share instructional materials, score assignments, and calculate grades.  Instructors can seek assistance when using Canvas in new, complex, or unusual ways.  These include troubleshooting complex problems, revising sites to increase usability and accessibility, building new course or event sites, creating new activities, and setting up complex or large sites for new semesters.

Details

• Troubleshooting - Canvas has many integrated tools and functions.  If you or your students see that canvas is not doing what you expect, let our experience find the elusive settings for you so you can focus on teaching.  We also work with Academic Technology Support Services (ATSS) to resolve program bugs and develop new functionality as needed.
• Build New Activities or Sites - The initial build of a Canvas site can be time consuming, and it takes experience to know the best ways to organize sites to make them useful and intuitive for users.  Consult with us to develop your organization and layout, then we can create the site while you focus on gathering the content and creating assessments.
• Revising Sites - Instructors begin using Canvas as a place to drop resources for students, but much more effective ways to present content, assess student learning, and encourage interaction are available.  Consult with us to explore ways to make your site more usable to students and more efficient for you.
• Setting up Courses for New Semesters - Large courses create additional setup work to manage attendance, assignments, and settings inside Canvas.  Other courses may contain complexity that is also difficult to reset for a new semester.  Pass this set up to us so you can focus on preparing yourself and the content for the first day of class.

Getting Started

Email cbs-rlt@umn.edu with your questions or to request a consultation.  You are also welcome to directly contact a CBS-RLT Academic Technologist that you have worked with on your course.

Limitations

• Does not including writing new code or developing functionality for Canvas.
• Does not include support for Learning Management Systems not supported by OIT.
• Instructors are responsible for all content, assessment, and resolution of any student grade issues.
• Instructors are responsible for the accuracy of student grades and the Canvas gradebook.

Costs

This service is available to any CBS faculty, staff, TAs, and students at no cost.

Lead Time

Please contact us as soon as possible for troubleshooting.  

For all other work, please contact us at least one semester before the course begins.  Time to complete the work will depend on its complexity and scope as well as other requests in progress.  

Shorter notice may still be possible depending on other requests in progress.

Guides

• 6 Core Canvas Skills
• Canvas Instructor Guides

Related Information

• Many resources are available on the internet, and can be found by including 'Canvas Instructure' in your search terms.  Instructure is the company that built Canvas.
• The Canvas community has more than guides.  You can ask specific questions to which you cannot find answers.  You can join groups to stay informed on canvas features and uses or write blogs to share your own experiences.