Canvas Faculty FAQ

Here is a brief video introducing how to use some of these features:

Faculty user accounts have been created. They use the same authentication that your Google accounts use to access your MECA&D email. To access your Canvas account, visit: https://canvas.meca.edu/ and click the big orange button labeled “Log in with @meca.edu email.

Faculty can update user profiles with individual photos or avatars and information by following these simple steps. For a visual guide with step-by-step instructions, including screen-shots of where to click, visit here: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-26280-how-do-i-add-a-profile-picture-in-my-user-account-as-an-instructor

1. Log into Canvas at canvas.meca.edu
2. Click “Account”
3. Click “Settings” in the “Account menu”
4. Click the profile picture icon
5. Click “Upload a picture’ and choose a picture from your device
6. Use the corner dots to click and drag the crop-screen to crop your image
7. Click “Save”

Alternatively, you may choose to take a photo directly from your Canvas App. See more information at the link above.

Your course home page comes preloaded with some content to support your course structure. During our first iterations of Canvas use, these are locked and we ask that you all use these as your home pages. We will meet with faculty user groups later in the semester to determine how to improve on this design, but for now we are all using the same structure for ease of use. Each home page will come ready-made with a course banner unique to your discipline crated by our marketing department based on the Be Seen campaign. To edit your home page and replace the Lorem Ipsum text, follow these instructions:

1. Log into Canvas at canvas.meca.edu
2. Click on the course you wish to update
3. Click “Home” in course navigation on the left
4. Click the “Edit” button toward upper middle right
5. Click your mouse into the Course Description section of the Home page and replace the Lorem Ipsum text with your course description. Note: You MUST use the Department-approved course description in this portion of your course site. You may NOT change this language. We are unable to automate the process of bringing your course description over to the home page, so we do need you, the faculty member, to please paste in the description in this portion of the page. 
6. Click your mouse into the Faculty Introduction section and introduce yourself. Include an image of yourself and your contact information so your students can easily reach you
7. Quick Access is pre-populated with content for your students
8. Review the Communication section for yourself. Delete the bold-text designated just for you, the instructor. The remaining text on the home page is for your learners.
9. Click “Publish” to finalize your home page changes
10. Note: you may choose to ADD to your home page, including images, but please do not delete content designed to make course navigation easier for our learners. Also, please leave this as your home page. Thanks!

You can easily upload your syllabus or any course document to Canvas by following these simple instructions. You may follow the instructions at this link https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-12958-415241537  You can also follow these instructions:

1. Log into Canvas as canvas.meca.edu
2. Click on the course you wish to update
3. Click on the “syllabus” button in your course navigation
4. Upload a PDF version of your Syllabus
5. Click Publish

Canvas automatically creates a calendar of due-dates for your students whenever you set your Assignments, Discussions, or Tests/Quizzes to have a specific due date. Students are then able to self-select a view of your course site based on the schedule of due-dates you have assigned to each item in your course. Please note that this is not the same thing as the "availability" date. In short:

• A DUE DATE: creates a notification flag for both student and faculty that there is something the student needs to do by a certain date and time. For example, every time I set a due date on a discussion or assignment, I'm creating a way for online students to organize their timeline based around what they have to do and when. If I set an assignment to be due at 11:59 PM on October 3, and later, I set a quiz to be due at 9:00 PM on October 1, Canvas will automatically re-order the student's due date notification list to show the quiz comes before the assignment.
• The AVAILABILITY DATE: refers to the date range in which a particular item in your course site is viewable to students. In other words, I may set a module to be available between November 1 and November 15, and thus my students won't be able to see that module at all until 11/1 rolls around. I can put an additional end date on that availability. This might be useful if, say, I have a big exam students need to study for--I could set the study-guide materials to be available right up until the test is due and then disable access to the study materials during the test.

Click this site to learn more about the difference between due date and availability date.

Note: You must enter a Grade value for your assignments, discussions, and quizzes. If you are not going to use your Grade Book in Canvas to calculate final scores, then I recommend you simply hide the Grade Book from student view. Having said that, you will need to include at least a single point in the "Graded" section of assignment, discussion, or quiz in order to trigger the system to notify you when someone submits and also to create the course calendar.

For a Quick Guide to Canvas Grade Book, click here.

That’s great news! We want to help you develop your first online or web-facilitated course. Please contact your Associate Dean (Paul or Araminta) to learn more about how to use Canvas and how to design your first course. Because we  want to help everyone have a successful online implementation, the Dean’s Office will review your course site before you publish your course for student-access. We use a checklist based on International standards for course design called Quality Matters.

For a copy of the checklist, please visit this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aT1jVVwYJIKe3n09NUxFEUwTFKOtPiOpVR3ykK1V8hQ/edit#gid=158197077

Please note that our current policy is that all courses must be built out with up to two weeks of content (minimally) at least two weeks prior to the start of the course for our review. This allows us plenty of time to support as many people as possible in the design and development of Canvas resources.

Canvas Included Conference Tool is BigBlueButton:

Canvas offers a free video-conferencing software called BigBlueButton as part of the Canvas suite. You can use this to create conferences (or online class video sessions in real-time). BigBlueButton allows you to stream your video, webcam, computer screen, or powerpoint to your students. You can also whiteboard, which is when you use your mouse or your finger-on-a-tablet to "write" on the web-screen (useful for, say, a math problem or circling a part of an image for attention or annotating something on the screen). This software also allows students to text-chat with you and each other and create a shared notebook of notes during your lecture.

The major limitation of BigBlueButton is that the video is one-way only. The instructor/s (single or plural) are the only people who can project video. to the group. Student webcams do not work in this software, so you will not be able to see them. They will see you, however--just not each other. Many faculty have elected to use Google Meet instead, which is a freely available video-meeting technology that comes with our Google Suite for Education. You can link your Meet events with your Canvas site by embedding a calendar in your site and creating calendar events with recurring Meet sessions, for example. Another option faculty are using is Zoom. Zoom is not freely available for our needs, so you will need a license to use this tool.

BigBlueButton Resources:

For information about BigBlueButton, check out this entry in Canvas's Community Forum about Conferences. Or try...

How do I create a Conference in my Canvas Site? (BigBlueButton)

How do I record a Conference in Canvas? (BigBlueButton)

How do I moderate and present content through Conference in Canvas? (BigBlueButton)

Would You Rather Use Meet? Google Meet Resources: 

How Can I use Google Meet (formerly Hangouts) in my Canvas Site? (Google Meet)

How do I Embed a Google Calendar into a Canvas Page? (Google Meet using Google Calendar Events)

Hint: You can set up a Google Meet link to recur, as well. A Google Meet event is just a URL. When you click that URL, it takes you to a video-conference space on the web. That means you can copy-and-paste the URL for any Meet you create and share that link with others. For example, if I want to host a committee meeting and we meet at different times, I can create one Google Meet event in my Google Calendar and "add meet" to the event. Then, I right click on the "join meet" button in the event, and hit "copy" (or "save URL," etc. Language varies by browser). I now have copied the link to my Google Meet event. Now I just need to paste it. I pop into Canvas, create a Canvas page with some instructional context, and paste the link. Et voila! A recurring video classroom is born.

Do You Have a Personal Zoom Account? Zoom Suggestions:

Note: If you do have a license to Zoom and wish to use Zoom in your Canvas site, you would need to do this manually. Simply schedule the Zoom call as you normally would and copy the invitation to the meeting link. Then, in your course site, create a page that offers some instructional context (like: "This course will meet every Thursday at 9:00 AM. Please use the following Zoom link to join that course session."), paste in the Zoom invitation link, and then highlight/insert the link to make it clickable-hypertext.

Hint: If you set a Zoom link to be "recurring," you can use the same link for more than one class session. 🙂

We have detailed instructions for how you can record and share media for your courses, including demos, lectures, 1-take videos, paper-slides, lessons, and studio-tool how-to’s. We also have a variety of repositories you can access to curate a set of ready-made videos you may elect to use in your course site, as well. Contact your Associate Dean or your ID facilitator for more information.

During the pilot session of our Canvas training with faculty, Siobhan Haggett of Continuing Studies provided us with a brief demonstration of recording, hosting, and embedding video in Canvas. Just remember to organize your content when you embed it on your course site. Check out the video recording of this session:

During the pilot session of our Canvas training with faculty, Shiva Darbandi of the JoAnne Waxman Library provided us an overview of using the MECA&D blueprint, adding content to our course sites, editing content already there, adding and grading discussions, and using the Commons. This is one quick-start guide for using Canvas. Check out the video recording of this session:

Another option for getting started with Canvas is this short, all-inclusive video from Canvas directly. This video will show you virtually everything you need to know to set up your course site and begin teaching with Canvas asap.

DUE AUGUST 15, 2020

As a reminder, all courses being offered through Maine College of Art & Design will have a course website in Canvas, the college's learning management system. For each course website a faculty member has been assigned, please minimally do the following tasks by August 15.** Instructions for these four expectations were sent by email and will soon be available on our website for quick reference. 

1. Update your Canvas Profile and add a photo of yourself (or an avatar) to your Canvas account (this need be done only one time when first logging into Canvas. You do not need to repeat this step for every course site)
2. Upload your Syllabus to the “Syllabus” button in your Course Site at least two weeks prior to the start date of your course
3. Edit your Home page with YOUR unique course description, faculty bio and contact information, and how you will use the course site.
4. “Publish” your course site at least 24 hours before your course is due to start.

**Note: This date is the latest date for courses scheduled to begin August 25. The August 15 deadline allows us time to troubleshoot any errors in the course delivery. It is critical your course sites are ready for review by this date, please. Thank you!

DUE **24 hours before your course is scheduled to begin (ex: August 24)

Please note that your students will not be able to access your course until you publish it. We recommend you do NOT publish your course until immediately before your course is set to launch in August or September. 

We recognize that many of you will complete your minimum expectations (profile, syllabus, and home page edits) early and want to publish your course website immediately. Others may need more time to develop content, assignment links, discussion boards, and other instructional materials in Canvas. Either way, please know the following critical information: 

• Students cannot see your course until YOU publish the course site 
• Publishing your course site is different from publishing an individual page on your course site--it is still possible to add hidden content to your course site even after you publish the course for student access
• Instructors see their course sites differently than students do--use the student preview option (by clicking the eye-icon in the upper right) to view your site as a student

To Publish Your Course Site: 

1. Log into your Canvas account at https://canvas.meca.edu/ 
2. Click on “Courses” in the left side navigation
3. Click on the image tile for the course you wish to publish
4. Click “Publish” in the upper right corner (Note: if your course is unpublished, the “publish” button will be red. If your course is published, it will be green.)
5. Please publish your courses no later than 24 hours before it is scheduled to begin. 

Need more help? Try Canvas' resource here: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-13030-how-do-i-publish-a-course 

Canvas's Peer Review Assignments are an excellent way to offer digital critiques and workshops between students in the course. The best part is that Canvas will automatically generate the peer revision groups so that you don't have to. All you need to do is set up the Course Assignment so that it includes peer review. Tell Canvas how many peer reviews you want each student to complete with one another, and Canvas will get to work creating those matches for you! You can set a Grade value and have students peer-grade one another, too!

Here's how it works for students. If you are using the Peer Review Assignment feature, please share this tutorial with your students. Note: it is also available on the Student Online Support page.

We are working to help you prepare for distance learning. The following resources are available to you in varying stages of development.  From August until January 31, 2021, we had a grant-funded Instructional Designer (Eleni Margaronis). She did an excellent job onboarding faculty to Canvas, and she has now moved onto new roles at other institutions. We miss her. In the interim, you can get instructional design support from the Associate Dean of Graduate and Professional Studies (as capacity allows), Araminta Matthews, by emailing her at amatthews@meca.edu.

An Instructional Designer (ID) is an expert professor in at least one discipline, an expert teacher in terms of pedagogy and teaching/learning theories, and an intermediate to expert web developer all rolled into one. An ID can help you:

• think through your course delivery in hybrid or online formats,
• identify the best aspects of Canvas (or other software) to meet your and your students needs and to ensure you get the support you need while using them (such as ADA compliance, copyright-compliance, or tutorial-support if needed),
• develop your course site so it is instructionally sound and won't overload students,
• develop your course site navigation so that it is user-friendly,
• test different strategies for web delivery or software integrations with our lms,
• teach you how to use the lms,
• help you shine as an instructor whether you are teaching on the web, on video-conference, or face-to-face,
• demonstrate best practices in eLearning and provide evidence-based resources to support you,
• and much, much more!

Tier One Supports from Canvas: 

When we obtained our new learning management system, we also purchased “Tier One Support,” which provides 24/7 customer support services to all MECA&D Canvas users--yes, that includes both faculty and students!

You or your students may call Canvas directly for support: 888.965.3645 

Additionally, a 24/7 Live-Chat option exists in our Canvas Navigation Window. Just click "Help" in your Canvas Navigation.

Canvas-Direct Instructor Resources:

• Professional Learning Network: Canvas offers a learning community you can join here: https://community.canvaslms.com/ 
• Text-based Support Guide: Canvas learning guide (PDF): https://s3.amazonaws.com/tr-learncanvas/files/pdf-guide/CanvasBasicsGuide.pdf 
• Canvas Course Basics Video: (one-stop-shop, 1-hour video to get started: https://instructure.instructuremedia.com/embed/eeb8c54d-be4b-4f83-8d4d-ca5ef11fd6ef-269 
• Free/Online Canvas Conference for Educators: CanvasCon 2020: https://www.instructure.com/canvas/blog/canvascon-online-2020-agenda-live 
• Canvas Video Training Repository: This is a full-stack list of Canvas tutorials in video: https://vimeo.com/canvaslms

Canvas Area of the MECA&D website: 

Araminta is developing an area of the MECA&D website under information for faculty and staff related to these FAQ’s about Canvas. We will update content there as new processes and information develop. When the link is published, you will find it at: https://dev.meca.edu/academics/canvas-faculty-faq/

Training Recordings from MECA&D Sessions: 

A small group of faculty have been working with the Canvas implementation team to develop skills and a training path for using Canvas. Two of these sessions were recorded and include demonstrations. These videos are embedded above, but for your short reference:

• Overview of Setting Up Your Canvas Site (including editing your home page): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiMnamu-Lfw&t=355s 
• Overview of Creating, Hosting, and Embedding Video Content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGv4nts-J-s 

Future Plans for Support: 

• Nico Jenkins has agreed to develop a Colloquia Series of sessions devoted to best practices in Canvas which we will roll out in a few weeks. 
• Araminta Matthews will continue to curate resources on the new MECA&D webpage and send out periodic Canvas-news emails (like this one) to support your development
• The Deans Office (Ian, Paul, and Araminta) will be reviewing your course sites using the checklist starting August 11th and will get back to you with web-design revision suggestions and resources to make those revisions.
• Is there something else that might help you? Don’t see what you are looking for? Reach out to Araminta at amatthews@meca.edu and let me know how we can better support your Canvas integration. 

Integration with Google Suite for Education: 

Google Suite for Education is an integrated app within Canvas. This means you can easily use your Google documents and calendar right inside Canvas:

• Accept Google doc submissions from students
• Use Canvas’s Speedgrader to grade Google docs your students submit 
• Automatically change Google doc content into Canvas content everywhere you go--Announcements, Discussions, Assignments
• Embed a Google Calendar right in your Canvas course site

Web Conference with Big Blue Button and Whiteboarding App:

Canvas offers a freely-available web-conferencing tool called BigBlueButton at no extra charge to us. This tool is defaulted to 60 minutes, but you can change the length of your conference to any length you want. You can schedule a conference right in Canvas and all your students are already invited to join. The tool comes with a whiteboard application (an ability to “draw” on the screen). Learn more about this tool here: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-create-a-conference-in-a-course/ta-p/1156

Dynamic Discussion Board for Ongoing Engagement:

One great way to get your students engaging with one another outside of class is to use the discussion board feature in Canvas for dynamic, asynchronous discussions. You can host a weekly discussion around big questions in your discipline, you could use discussion boards as a way for students to demonstrate participation, or you might use discussions as a way to keep class going while you or your students are off-campus for quarantine. When you set up a distance discussion, just remember to offer an engaging question as your prompt and declare at least two deadlines: one for students to respond to the topic and another for students to respond to one another. Learn more about this tool here: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-create-a-discussion-as-an-instructor/ta-p/1029 

Quick Updating with Course Announcements:

You can use the Announcements feature in Canvas to set quick announcements, such as changes to the course site or additions of new lessons or handouts to the course content feed. Announcements can be shared with all sections of your course, or just posted to one course site/section. They can also be set up to allow students to comment. These are not automatically emailed. To learn more about announcements, check this resource: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-add-an-announcement-in-a-course/ta-p/1194 

Sharing Content (Lessons, Demos, Handouts):

One of the most useful features of any learning management system is the ability to quickly share thematic content with your students. Canvas calls the area where you store and organize content a Module. A module can be a theme, a week in the calendar, a project in the studio, a unit of study, or just the collection of content for the course. It is best practice to break your course down into units of some kind. Within a module, you can then create a Page where you design your own webpage or upload a file. If you design your own simple webpage, you can easily embed a video you have made from, say, Youtube or Vimeo, attach a stack of files you have stored on your hard drive, link to a series of websites you want students to visit, and more! Learn more about sharing content here: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-add-course-content-as-module-items/ta-p/1157