SJSU iSchool Canvas Instructor Tutorials

Post

Welcome to the tutorials page for learning how to use the Canvas learning environment.

About the Tutorials

This area contains a curated list of tutorials taking you through the various parts of a course site in the Canvas learning environment.

Getting Started
Overview of Canvas
Provides a broad overview of the Canvas environment for Instructors		 Canvas Instructor Guide
Course Setup Information
Custom Navigation Link
This tutorial will walk you through the process of creating a custom external navigation link in your Canvas course navigation.		 View Tutorial
Files
Files are where you upload course files, syllabi, readings, or other documents. Instructors can lock the folders so students cannot access your files. Files can be placed in Modules, Assignments, or Pages. Files and folders are put in alphabetical order and cannot be rearranged.		 View Guide
Homepage
The Course Home Page is the first page that students see when they click the Home link in their Course Navigation. As an instructor, you decide what you want students to see on the Course Home Page.		 View Guide
Create a Custom homepage
This tutorial will walk you through how to create a custom homepage complete with an announcement feed widget.		 View Tutorial
Import Tool
The Course Import Tool makes it easy to extract course content, assignments, and quizzes from previous semesters and quickly import them into existing courses. The same tool is used to import course materials from different Learning Management Systems.		 View Guide
Modules
Modules allow you to organize your content to help control the flow of your course.		 View Guide
Navigation
Course Navigation is a series of links on the left side of your screen that help you get to where you want to go inside of a Canvas course.		 View Guide
Notification Preferences
Notification Preferences allow users to select how and when they want to be notified when various events occur within a course.		 View Guide
Pages
Pages are where you can put content and educational resources that are part of your course but don’t necessarily belong in an assignment, or that you want to refer to in multiple assignments. This is a place where you can include text, video, and links to your files. You can even make links to other pages. Pages are essentially wikis with a more usable interface.		 View Guide
Profile & User Settings
Visit this guide to get started on setting up your profile. This includes setting a default email address for all Canvas notifications to be sent to.		 View Guide
Rich Content Editor
Canvas has a simple, yet powerful, word processor that is available anytime for creating new content (assignments, announcement, discussions, blogs etc.) within Canvas. Although clean and streamlined, the Rich Content Editor is sophisticated enough to support embedding any video content, math formula, and other rich media.		 View Guide
Setup Checklist
The first few times you create a new course in Canvas, it’s a challenge to remember all of the steps required. The Course Setup Checklist exists to help you remember to cover all your bases before the course goes live.		 View Guide
Statistics
Course Statistics give you a glimpse into which content Pages are engaging students and what might be improved in the future. It will also help you to detect which students are not participating to the fullest or have started to fall behind the rest of the class.		 View Guide
Status
Canvas courses have three essential states: unpublished, published, and concluded. This tutorial will go over each state.		 View Guide
Areas of a Course
Analytics
Create and view personal events as well as view and control the display of various types of events, including course events		 View Guide
Announcements
Announcements allow you to communicate with your students about course activities and post interesting course-related topics.		 View Guide
Assignments
Assignments include Quizzes, graded Discussions, and online submissions (i.e. files, images, text, URLs, etc.)		 View Guide
Dashboard
The Dashboard is the first thing you will see when you log into Canvas. The Dashboard helps you see what is happening in all your courses and allows you to figure out what to do next.		 View Guide
Discussions
Canvas provides an integrated system for class discussions, allowing both instructors and students to start and contribute to as many discussion topics as desired. Discussions can also be created as an assignment for grading purposes (and seamlessly integrated with the Canvas Gradebook), or simply serve as a forum for topical and current events. Discussions can also be created within student groups.		 View Guide
Grades
Grades can serve as a communication tool between students and instructors and allow instructors to track the progress of students. The Gradebook provides a way to easily input and distribute grades for students that can calculate weighted grades, and you can organize assignments into groups for weighting as well.		 View Guide
Groups
Groups are like a smaller version of your course and are used as a collaborative tool where students can work together on group projects and assignments.		 View Guide
People
Allows you to view a roster of participants in the course and provides easy email access to participants.		 View Guide
Student View
Allows you to view the course as student.		 View Guide
Syllabus
Syllabus is the area in which students will know exactly what needs to be done for the course.		 View Guide
Quizzes
Allows you to take online assessments for the course created by your instructor		 View Guide
Web Services
Connecting to web services outside of Canvas. Services such as: Google Docs and Diigo		 View Guide