There are many tasks involved in preparing a course. Please see our recommended steps below for preparing a course. Please see this page for a list of important dates for your Canvas course.
Developing Your Course in Canvas
Put together your syllabus. As the framework for your course, you may want to develop your syllabus first. You can find CTI’s syllabus guidance in Create a Student-Centered Syllabus.
You can add a syllabus to Canvas in a number of ways. The two most common methods are to use the Syllabus tool in Canvas or to embed the syllabus on a Canvas Page using the Rich Content Editor.
Plan your course layout. There are many ways to organize content in Canvas. You will want to determine whether/how you will use Modules, what areas you want available from the Course Navigation menu, and what option you will use for your Home page.
Simplify course organization for students and be sure to explain to them how the course is organized. Use the naming of materials to help add clarity.
Import content from an existing course. If you have used Canvas when running the course before, you may want to import existing instructional materials, activities, and more.
It’s possible to copy an entire Canvas course or to just copy select content.
It’s recommended you unpublish imported material until you’ve verified the details of each piece of content is accurate for the current semester (dates, instructions, etc.).
Check the due and availability dates of activities and assessments. Due dates should appear in chronological order on the Course Summary section of the Syllabus tool. Any activities without a due date will appear at the bottom of this list.
Build instructional materials. There are a number of tools in Canvas that are useful for displaying instructional materials. You can share presentation videos via Panopto. You can also share files or add content directly to Pages.
If you need to apply extra credit, you can use an assignment in a special Assignment Group and then add a weight to that group that pushes the total over 100%.
Build activities and assessments. Using Canvas Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions, as well as other learning technologies that have been integrated into Canvas (Ed Discussion, Gradescope, Poll Everywhere, etc.), you can provide students a diverse number of activities, practice assessments, and assessments.
Check the due and availability dates of activities and assessments. Due dates should appear in chronological order on the Course Summary section of the Syllabus tool. Any activities without a due date will appear at the bottom of this list.
If you have built content in Canvas Assignments, Quizzes, and/or Discussions, you should use the Accessibility Checker that is built into the Rich Content Editor to test the accessibility of the content. For files and images added to Canvas, you will need to use Ally to check accessibility.
Build communications and opportunities to communicate. Whether it be synchronous Zoom sessions (office hours or lectures) or asynchronous discussion forums (Ed Discussion or Canvas Discussions), it is important to provide students opportunities to communicate with you and each other. You may also want to pre-build some Announcements to provide students scheduled reminders of important dates or course details.
Announcements cannot be delivered and Discussions cannot be used until a course is published. As such, pre-built announcements should be set to release at a future date.
Preparing Your Course to Launch
Publish the content. All content within Canvas needs to be published. This includes the publishing of Modules that contain content. You can leave content or modules unpublished if you plan to manually release them at a later date or want to keep them hidden.
When you publish a module, the content within will become published. If a module is unpublished, the content within will be unavailable, even if the content is published.
Release dates and/or prerequisites with requirements to release modules will not work unless the modules are already published.
Check hyperlinks. From the Settings page, you can select the Validate Links button to check that all of the hyperlinks in your course are functioning properly.
Links to images or materials that are stored in other Canvas courses will come up as broken. If the courses in which they are stored are visible to the institution or publicly, this will not be a problem.
Check Student View. Use the Student View button at the top right of the course to make sure that content students should be able to access is published and works properly. This includes checking the links available in the Course Navigation menu on the left.
Using Student View generates a Test Student that can be used to test activities and grading within the course. It is recommended that you return to this feature after the release of any new material or grading.
Adjust course dates and availability within Canvas. From the Settings page, you can adjust a course’s Start date, choosing to allow students access to the course before the course has officially opened, either in a read-only version or to allow activity before the term start date.
If you do not check the box next to Students can only participate in the course between these dates, you cannot allow activity before the official term dates.
Publish the course. Once you are sure everything is ready for students, you will want to publish the course to provide students with access.
Even if a course is published, students will not see the course until enrollments have been synced with the registrar (shortly before the term begins) and the term date (a day or two before classes begin). The term date can be overridden by a course start date, as listed above.
Course Announcements and Inbox messages cannot reach students until a course is published.
Manually enrolled students will not receive an invitation to the course until it is published.
Reusing Your Course from a Previous Semester
Update course materials. After importing material from a previous semester, update files, announcements, activities, and assessments as necessary to accommodate any curriculum or schedule changes.
When building new course materials, be sure to keep accessibility in mind.
Use Canvas’ bulk assignment date changing tool to update availability and due dates en masse for activities built with Canvas Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes.
Check for accessibility. Use Ally to find accessibility errors in your uploaded files in Canvas and Canvas’ Accessibility Checker to check content generated in Canvas.
To learn more about accessibility, check out Accessibility & Accommodation.
Check hyperlinks. From the Settings page, you can select the Validate Links button to check that all of the hyperlinks in your course are functioning properly.
Links to images or materials that are stored in other Canvas courses will come up as broken. If the courses in which they are stored are visible to the institution or publicly, this will not be a problem.
Verify the Canvas Gradebook. Go through the Gradebook and ensure everything looks as it should, as students can access it whether it is turned off in the Course Navigation or not.
You can manage what shows in the Gradebook via hiding of total columns and using the Grade Posting Policy to determine if grades are posted automatically, manually, or a combination of both. For ensuring proper grade weighting, use Canvas Assignment Groups.
Publish the course. Once you are sure everything is ready for students, you will want to publish the course to provide students with access.
Even if a course is published, students will not see the course until enrollments have been synced with the registrar (shortly before the term begins) and the term date (a day or two before classes begin). The term date can be overridden by a course start date, as listed above.
Course Announcements and Inbox messages cannot reach students until a course is published.
Manually enrolled students will not receive an invitation to the course until it is published.
