Fall courses in Canvas are scheduled to be created on August 5th. It is critical that each and every faculty member teaching this fall logs into Canvas and checks their Canvas Dashboard to see if their courses have been created. Your Canvas Dashboard now shows published and unpublished courses separately. This is a new feature since late July. Look for your new fall sites in your unpublished courses section.

It is imperative you check whether your courses have been created correctly as there have been many changes to the fall semester schedule of courses. We are aware in some situations that not all sections may be combined as expected. Here’s how to check your Canvas course(s).

The Canvas team has from August 5th to August 31st to make changes manually. Once the fall term starts on September 1st, changes can no longer be made.

Change request process

Changes can include combining sections you expected to see combined into one site (i.e. sections 194 and 195 were not combined into one site) and separating out sections that were combined (i.e. an 080 Honors section that needs its own site).

To request a change you must complete the Canvas@UD Course Combination Change Request form. Please do not email anyone directly with a request, you will be sent to the form. The form will first go to the Registrar’s Office for their approval of your request. If approved, IT Academic Technology Services (IT-ATS) will manually make the adjustments. We will be doing these change requests on a first-come-first-served basis, so please do not delay in completing the form if changes are needed. It is better to continue development in your staging sites and wait until your final Canvas course sites have been created. Otherwise, please back up your site(s) by exporting your Canvas course content. This can be done through Settings>> Export course content.

The form is necessary because it will inform Phase II of the project of automated Canvas course creation. It will help us identify unique situations where the combinations of labs, discussion sections and even lectures may need to be changed. The data will help the Registrar’s office work with departments to make sure the information in UDSIS is entered correctly. The data will provide information to IT for course combination scenarios that can be coded and then automated in the process. This will ensure that course sites created in Canvas meet FERPA guidelines which provide a secure learning space for our faculty and students.

Getting ready for fall

If no changes are needed, or if the manual course site adjustments have been completed, you can complete the development of your course for fall. You can copy content into your course site from an existing staging site or a course from a previous term. You can also start new. If starting new, there is a Canvas fall template out in the Canvas Commons that you may want to consider reviewing. It may help give you a framework or structure in your Canvas course to begin working.

Canvas Commons is a digital resource repository that enables educators to find, import, and share Canvas resources. A digital library full of educational content, Commons allows Canvas users to share learning resources with other users as well as import learning resources into a Canvas course. The UD Fall 2020 template has 14 content modules aligned with the fall calendar. The template offers a set of Canvas Pages customized for the University of Delaware. Each template provides a starting point from which instructors can edit and build their own course. Instructions are located in the first module.

To find, preview and download the template, click on the Commons link from the blue global navigation bar on the left (you should have already logged into Canvas). The UD Course Template is right there. Click on it to preview. Download or import it from the blue link on the right of the preview page if you would like to add it to your course site.

Couple of reminders

  • If you are already using the template in your staging site, no need to download again, just copy your staging site to your course.
  • Students are already enrolled in your site. As long as you do not publish your site, they cannot see anything.

Do not hesitate to reach out if you have questions in your course preparations. We have several staff (instructional designers, educational technologists) that can help you. The Faculty Commons virtual welcome bar is open Mon-Fri, 8:30-4:30.  Join using Zoom on your computer: https://udel.zoom.us/j/3028310640

You can also reach the LMS team directly with your Canvas questions by emailing:  canvas-info@udel.edu.