Hello!
Today I’m going to show you the basics of Canvas, the Learning Management System used
at Case Western Reserve University.
To start, log-in to Canvas by going to canvas.case.edu in your web browser.
While any browser should work, we’ve noticed the best success with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
When you log-in for the first time, you will need to accept the Terms of Service for Canvas.
Once you accept, you’ll be taken to the Dashboard page in Canvas.
The Dashboard page lists all of your Canvas courses, important updates, and things that
need your attention.
Each course gets its own course tile.
You can set the color for the course tile by clicking on the small edit button at the
top of the course’s tile.
You can also give the course a nickname to better organize your dashboard.
If you are an instructor and don’t see any courses listed here, you’ll need to create
your first Canvas course.
You can do this by using the Canvas Wizard; take a look at our tutorial that walks through
the course creation process using the Wizard for more information.
Go ahead and create a course now so you can better follow-along with this video.
If you are a student and don’t see any courses listed on the Dashboard, there’s a chance
none of your courses have Canvas sites created yet.
Please check with your instructors to see if they plan on using Canvas for their courses.
Because we leave the decision on whether or not to use Canvas up to each instructor, some
of your courses may be listed on the Dashboard while others may not be listed.
If you don’t have any courses listed, you can still follow along with this video for
a basic overview of navigating the system.
Along the left side of the Canvas window, we have the Global Navigation menu.
This menu stays on every page you navigate to within Canvas, so you always have quick
access to what you need.
Let’s take a look at each area more closely.
The first area is your Account.
This is where you can add a profile picture, change your notification settings, and logout of the system.
Clicking on Profile will show you more details on editing your information.
This is the page where you can add a profile picture, add a biography for other users to
see, and add links to external websites.
If we click on the next area of the Account section, Settings, we can add contact information and integrations.
If you want to connect Google Drive with Canvas, this is where you’ll need to set-up the integration.
You can also add additional contact methods, such as an extra email account or a phone
number for text messages.
These contact methods determine where your Canvas Notifications are sent.
If we move to the Notifications area, I’ll show you want I mean.
Notifications are alerts sent by Canvas informing you of events that have happened in your Canvas courses.
Adding additional contact methods on the Settings page lets you choose where you receive notifications.
There are lots of events in Canvas that can trigger a notification; from a new announcement
being posted to a new calendar event being added.
You can customize when and where you receive these notifications by clicking on the icons
next to each item.
Selecting the checkmark will send the notification to you immediately; the clock will send a
daily email of notifications; the calendar will send a weekly summary; and the X will
turn off notifications completely for that item.
You can always come back to the Notifications page and change your settings according to
your preferences.
The next item on the Global Navigation menu is the Dashboard button; this is where we
started this overview, with all of your courses being displayed as colorful tiles.
The Courses area is up next.
Clicking on the Courses button will give you a flyout menu of your current courses.
This makes it easy to switch quickly between your Canvas courses.
To enter into a course, simply click on its name.
You can also click to see all of your courses, including courses from previous semesters.
The Groups area is something you may or may not see.
The Groups area becomes available if you’re enrolled in a group within a course, so you
probably won’t see it immediately.
Once you’re enrolled in a group, you can click on the Groups button to easily see all
of your groups across courses.
The Canvas Calendar is a powerful tool that lets you manage events in Canvas.
Everyone in Canvas has their own personal calendar, and each course within Canvas gets
its own course calendar.
Whenever a due date is added to an item within a Canvas course, such as an assignment or
test, it is added to the calendar for that course.
Anyone enrolled in that course can then see the event.
You’ll notice that the colors here correspond with the course color on the Dashboard, making
it easy to keep track of which course events are for.
The second-to-last area on the Global Navigation menu is the Inbox tool.
The Inbox lets you send messages to users within your Canvas courses.
Sending messages in the Inbox tool will generate a notification to users, which will then be
sent out according to the user’s notification settings.
By default, messages are set to be immediately sent to CWRU email addresses.
Users can then reply directly to this notification and a copy of the message will be sent and
saved in Canvas.
The Help area is the place to go if you need help with Canvas.
Clicking here not only gives you easy access to the CWRU Canvas Wizard and information
page, but it gives you contact information for Canvas Support.
You can get 24/7/365 help with Canvas via online chat, on the phone, or through an email ticket.
This support is from Instructure, the folks who make Canvas, so they know what they’re
talking about to help you get the best out of Canvas.
While you can always contact the CWRU Help Desk for support, reaching out to Canvas Support
will get you an immediate answer to your Canvas questions.
Now that we’ve gone through the basics of the Global Navigation menu, let’s go into a course.
I’m going to click back to the Dashboard.
To enter into a course, simply click on its tile.
The first page you land on is the course home page.
By default, this will show any recent activity in the course.
This page can be customized, so your course may have a different page here.
To navigate within the course, you can click on the links on the course menu.
Let’s start by taking a look at the Announcements tool.
Announcements let instructors post messages to students with information about the course.
Posting an announcement generates a Canvas notification, which will be sent to users
based on their notification preferences.
The next area on the course menu is the Syllabus area.
The Syllabus area does a few things in a course.
First, it gives instructors a place to upload their syllabus file, such as an existing Word
or PDF document.
Second, it collects due dates entered into the system and generates an automatic course
summary of things to do.
This makes it easy for students to see current, past, and future assignments and activities in the course.
The Syllabus page also displays a calendar of these events and any weights that are used
to calculate the student grades.
The next area on the course menu is Modules.
Modules is the main organizational area of your Canvas course, where all sorts of materials can be posted.
Course materials, videos, external links, assignments, tests, and discussions can all
be posted in Modules.
A course can have any number of modules created with a variety of arrangements; content might
be arranged by topics, type of material, or weeks in the course.
Content is then added into these modules and can be indented as a form of visual organization.
Instructors can quickly drag-and-drop items to rearrange them, or even make items unavailable
to students with one click.
Up next is Assignments, which serves a few purposes.
First, assignments let instructors create places for students to submit their work online through Canvas.
Assignments that do not allow for online student submissions can also be created . In addition,
creating assignments is how columns are added to the gradebook.
Finally, the Assignments page is where weighted grades are set-up for the gradebook using Assignment Groups.
Quizzes is next on the menu, which provides access to online quizzing within Canvas.
Canvas offers a pretty straightforward quiz tool, allowing instructors to create practice
or graded quizzes and surveys for their students.
After quizzes, we have Grades.
Grades is where instructors can input grades and view student submissions to assignments and quizzes.
For students, Grades shows their current grades and any feedback given to them by instructors.
For more information on using the gradebook as an instructor in Canvas, check out our overview video.
The next area is the People page.
This is where you can see everyone who is enrolled in the course, the section they’re
enrolled in, and their role in the course.
Instructors can also add people to their course on this page.
The People page is also where groups are created.
Groups can either be manually or automatically set-up, and allow the group of users to have
their own collaborative space within the Canvas course.
The Discussion area of a Canvas course provides discussion boards for the class.
These follow a pretty standard web forum set-up, allowing for replies to an initial post or other comments.
Discussions can even be set-up using the post-first format, which requires students to make a
post before they can see what their peers have written.
Pages gives users a place to build content within Canvas.
Essentially, users are given a big text box where they can embed content, link to materials, and write text.
These pages can then be placed into Modules to make a really robust Canvas course.
Collaborations is a very cool feature, which lets you create and share Google documents
right from within the Canvas course.
Starting a collaboration here lets you pick the collaborators for your document from the
list of users enrolled in the course, so you can quickly set-up docs for groups or projects in the class.
Up next are two tools I’m not going to go into too much detail about in this video.
Outcomes is a tool to help track mastery of standards or rules in a course.
Conferences is a built-in web conferencing tool available through Canvas.
CWRU has other options available for web conferencing that may meet course needs better than the Conference tool.
Files is the next area, which simply lists all of the files you’ve uploaded into a course.
Files can be uploaded here directly for use in other areas of a Canvas course.
You can even upload an entire zip folder of items into the Files area, making it easy
to bring large amounts of content into your course.
Finally, we have the Settings area.
While there are a lot of options available here, there are three I want to highlight.
First is the Student View button.
Clicking on this button puts you into the course as an actual student, as indicated
by the bright pink frame on the screen.
Student View lets you preview the course as a student would see it.
You can go in and complete assignments or tests, see what grades look like, and even
post to discussions.
When you’re ready to leave student view, you can either reset the student to remove
everything you did as the test student, or simply leave.
Leaving Student View keeps the data you created, meaning you can then grade it as the instructor in the course.
Also in Settings is the Navigation area.
This is where you can customize the layout of your course menu and change the availability
of tools to your students.
Finally, I want to point out the Import Content into this Course button.
This tool lets you import materials from Blackboard into Canvas.
It’s also how you can copy materials from one Canvas course into another.
For more information on this tool, check out our video tutorial for importing content into Canvas.
And that’s Canvas in a nutshell!
We covered the basics of logging-in to Canvas, the global navigation menu, and getting around a course site.
Take a look at the rest of our videos for more detailed information on Canvas and its tools.
For any questions or concerns, please contact either Canvas Support through the Help button
in Canvas, or the CWRU Service Desk at 368-HELP or at help.case.edu
Thanks for watching!