Canvas at UIW

Once you're familiar with logging into Canvas via Cardinal Apps, start by downloading and reviewing the Canvas Highlights and Best Practices document below. Within, you'll get a glance at the most important aspects of building and managing a course in Canvas.

• Canvas Highlights and Best Practices (PDF)

What is a Sandbox and why do you need one?

A sandbox is a new, empty course shell created solely for you that nobody else can see. Sandboxes are self-contained, so there's no stakes involved and no reason to worry about messing anything up.

Use your sandbox to learn, experiment, or build an entire course along with other pieces of learning content. At any point, you can copy any and all of your work to your live course. Use the link below to submit a ticket and request a Sandbox in Canvas.

Request a Sandbox

Personalize the UIW Blueprint is an asynchronous training course designed to walk you through the minimal use requirements expected of all Canvas courses at UIW. It’s the perfect companion to learning Canvas the first time or as a refresher next time you set up your course.

Use the link below to access the course. Once you've finished with Personalize the UIW Canvas Blueprint, move on to to next course in the tile below.

• Personalize the UIW Canvas Blueprint: An intro to UIW's consistent format and features for all courses.

Are you learning Canvas without building a course using the UIW Blueprint? Maybe you've completed the Personalize the UIW Blueprint training and need a refresher on how Canvas features work? This training is for you! Review the basic features and practice along in your Sandbox course.

Use the link below to access the course. Once you've finished with The Canvas Basics, move on to to next course in the tile below.

• The Canvas Basics: Introductory Training and Refresher Resources

Once you have a basic understanding of using Canvas, this asynchronous training takes you through the steps to building a robust, online course experience. Additionally, there are accompanying companion guides for each topic in the course. You may find these guides below, as well as within the course in the appropriate areas.

Use the link below to access the course. Once you've finished with How to Build a Canvas Course, you will be finished with the asynchronous guides provided by UIW. Please, explore the rest of the resources found on this page.

• How to Build a Canvas Course: A complete guide for building a robust course experience.

The Canvas mobile app is a version that helps you stay current with your courses anywhere you go. It's FREE and offers some convenient functionality such as...

• Grading assignments on the go
• Send messages/announcements to your classes from anywhere
• Edit pages, files, and upload content to your course

Download the Teacher app on your desired platform with the links below!

• Download the Canvas Instructor App for iOS
  • Canvas Teacher for iOS guide

• Download the Canvas Instructor App for Android
  • Canvas Teacher for Android guide

Canvas Studio is a built-in media tool that allows students and instructors to upload, create, edit, manage, share, and discuss with audio and video files. Existing files can be uploaded, or new videos can be created with Studio's capture and editing tools. For recording purposes, some notable features are as follows:

• Video recordings can be created with screen capture, webcam, or both.
• Users can upload existing video files to their studio library.
• Automatic closed captioning and transcripts for uploaded video content.
• Videos can be embedded or shared with a link.
• Canvas Studio has a robust set of tools for adding captions, which can be added in multiple languages.
• The quiz tool exists to insert questions into your videos, which can be graded items that push right to the grade book.

To learn more about Canvas Studio, you can view the entire guide on Instructure's website. For more specific guides to get started:

• What is Canvas Studio?
• How do I use Canvas Studio in a course?
• How do I record my screen with Canvas Studio?

What is cross-listing? Why cross-list?

To save time and effort! Instead of teaching multiple sections of the same course separately, you can create a single course and combine all your sections into a single teaching space. This process, called cross-listing, allows you to place all your student enrollments into one "parent" course, allowing you to teach all your students in a single online space rather than in multiple separate sections.

• Cross-listing multiple courses in Canvas

Once you've built a course, save time by copying content over from a sandbox or blueprint instead of starting from scratch.

• How to Copy Course Content in Canvas (PDF)

The Office of Teaching, Learning, and Technology house many useful resources to provide to students. Whether you include them within the introduction module of a course, or simply distribute throughout the semester.

• Available Software for Students
• Learning Online at UIW
• Canvas for UIW Students: A one page guide to accessing and getting help with Canvas (PDF)
• Getting started with Zoom at UIW
• Getting started with Microsoft Teams at UIW

Respondus LockDown Browser is a custom browser that locks down a student's testing environment so that they are unable to navigate to other web pages or open other applications on the device they are taking the exam on. Quizzes in Canvas can be set to require the LockDown Browser to ensure a safe testing environment.

Instructor Resources

Instructors may follow the resources below to learn about the LockDown Browser, best practices, and how to turn it on for Canvas Quizzes. It's highly recommended to deploy a practice quiz prior to your first exam, so students can make sure they are familiar with the environment and have devices that work properly. Leave the quiz available for the duration of the course, with unlimited attempts, so students can access it again if they use a different computer.

• Understanding the Respondus LockDown Browser for Instructors (PDF)
• Learn more about the Respondus suite of services, such as exam proctoring, recording, and study materials.

Student Guides

Students will have different experience depending on whether the quiz in Canvas is a Classic or New quiz. If student's experience issues, they should contact Respondus support directly or the UIW Help Desk.

• Student guide to Respondus for Classic quizzes (PDF)
• Student experience for Respondus in New quizzes

Love Canvas and want to stay on top of new features? Canvas Release Notes maintain a current list of features and other customer-impacting changes that come to the platform. These release notes update on the third Saturday of every month, so check out what's new by viewing the release notes below.

Canvas Release Notes

Written Guide

Any documents or images you want to show students in the course get uploaded to the Files menu. It works just like saving files to your computer or OneDrive.

• How to upload a file to a Canvas course

Each Canvas course has a limit of 2GB. Canvas courses are only ideal for storing Word documents, smaller PowerPoint files, PDFs, and images. To save space, store larger files and videos elsewhere then link or embed them in your course. (See the 'What to do about large files' below).

Additionally, each student has around 52.4MB of storage for a course. Files that students upload for a graded assignment are stored in their files area, but do not count against their storage limit. However, if students are uploading a file as an attachment to, say, a discussion thread, these attachments will count against their storage limit as Canvas does not consider an attachment as an uploaded assignment.

Examples of larger files will be items like long recordings of audio, video, and larger PowerPoint files. Microsoft Stream, Echo360 for Health Professions, or YouTube, are for storing and sharing videos. Short videos 5 to 10 minutes long can also be stored in Canvas Studio. OneDrive is great for larger PowerPoints, PDFs, or Word files.

What to do with videos

Videos tend to be larger files, which can be stored elsewhere and either linked or embedded into your course.

• Get started with Microsoft Stream 
  • Learn how to share content from Stream
• Get started with Echo360 for Health Professions 
  • Learn how to share video content from Echo360 to your Canvas course menu.

What to do with large files

It's recommended to store large files within your OneDrive, which is nearly limitless online storage provided to you by UIW.

1. Learn how to upload a file to OneDrive
2. Learn how to create a sharing link for files in OneDrive - This is the link you would then share in your Canvas course.