Professional Development: How Do I ...?

How do I best contact students before the start date of the course? 

Do students get emails and/or announcements prior to the Canvas start date of a course?

Can they see the home page, syllabus etc before the start date?

It's SO helpful to check in with students about a week before the class begins to say hello and let them know what they need to get off to a great start.  let them know when the course will be published and available in Canvas.

You can send announcements before the semester begins, just PUBLISH the course before you create the announcement. 

We also recommend that you send an email to students before the class begins - it's fine to duplicate the announcement.  See How to send emails through WebAdvisor Links to an external site..

ANNOUNCEMENTS.

How do I import announcements into successive semesters with no “U” next them?

I used to be able to show or hide certain announcements instead of deleting them. How do I do this now? It only gives the option of deleting.

Imported announcements will always have the "U".  The only fix is to copy and paste into a new announcement and delete the old one.

You can't hide announcements, but EDIT the announcement and  use the Delay Posting option to set the announcement date.  Set if for after the end of the class to "hide" the announcement from students.

WHEN TO START THE CLASS.

How do you decide when to start class?  Does an earlier start access allow them to see the home page, syllabus etc? 

Many teachers start the class before the semester officially begins.  This lets students get off to a good start. When to start is entirely up to you as a teacher. 

If you are not quite ready, you could just publish an orientation module and the syllabus and let them know when things will be ready.

Your students will see your course once it's published UNLESS you go to settings, set the start and end date, and select the options under the date under the dates.

BACKING UP.

Is there a way to save the content of all the Pages in a course in Word or pdf format? I'd like to have this as a personal back-up. 

There's no way to back up every page as a Word or PDF doc all at once within Canvas. 

What you can do:

• go to Course Settings and choose Export Course Content to save the whole course to a file.
• Save an individual page using print to pdf or the Adobe Acrobat browser add-on (or copy and paste into a Word doc).

RICH CONTENT EDITOR CUSTOMIZING

Is there a way for me to adjust the order of the icons on the Rich Content editor toolbar? I'd like to have features that I use more often (such as the equation editor) appear first and features that I don't use (such as apps) in the minimized section.

There's currently no way to customize the RCE toolbar. 

CONFERZOOM.

How do I use Zoom from within Canvas, as opposed to setting up a meeting in ConferZoom and simply putting the invitation in a page within a Canvas module. It appears there is an attendance feature in the Canvas app, but I have no idea how that works.

I used ConferZoom in Canvas last semester and really liked it - I just told students to use the ConferZoom button in Canvas to join meetings.  It was easy to set up meetings in Canvas and you can also check attendance there.  See setup instructions to get started.

Attendance works automatically.  Just go to ConferZoom, click Attendance, and View Attendance List.

By the way, you can also see a list of Zoom conference participants at ConferZoom.org -  just go to Reports and search for the meeting.  You'd just need to make sure the correct student names are used.

I want to have a different time frame for DSPD students.  how do I do that?

You can change due dates and end dates for different students.  For details, see How do I assign an assignment to an individual student? Links to an external site. 

You can request features in Canvas.  Just click the Canvas Help button and choose Submit a Feature Idea Links to an external site..  Features requests are voted on, so popular ideas bubble up.