Canvas Guides

This page will be updated periodically with new instructions and demonstration videos on how to use Canvas features. For now, it includes a guide on copying a canvas course from a previous term, and guides about some features you can use to make sure that your course is ready to publish. 

If you have any questions about these guides, please email me at brandon.miller@pit.edu.

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Videos

Uploading Videos into Canvas Studio and 
Embedding Studio Videos in Courses

Teachers are only allowed 2 GB of files per Canvas course, which is really not much, and often not enough for an entire term's worth of lecture videos.
There are a few solutions to this, but usually the best solution is to upload videos to Canvas Studio rather than to course files. There is no limit on file storage in Studio, so you can upload as many videos as you want. You can also keep your library of videos in Studio to use for all of your upcoming terms.
Once videos are uploaded or recorded in Studio, they can be easily added to a page or module in any course you want, as shown in the guide on the right. 

Importing Content into a Canvas Course

Copying a Canvas Course

Use this option when you have a course from a current or previous term that you would like to copy over to an upcoming term. 

Start by going to the course that you would like to copy the previous course into, then follow the guide below. 

Make sure to adjust the dates of the Canvas course (steps 6-7 of the guide below). Doing this will automatically update the deadlines for assignments so that they correspond with the new 11-week term. this saves you a lot of work and also ensures that students are not locked out of any assignments. 

Preparing to Publish a Course

Accessibility Checker

Canvas has a built-in "Accessibility Checker" that can scan each individual page of your course for accessibility issues. 

You can use this feature when you are editing content in Canvas. When you are in editing mode, the Checker appears as a small icon of a stick figure, as shown below:

Image of the Canvas Accessibility Checker icon circled in red

Clicking on this icon will show you all the identified issues and give you suggestions for addressing them. You will need to check each individual page of your course; the Checker can't scan the entire course at once. It's a good idea to keep an eye on the Checker icon as you build your pages, so you can proactively fix any issues as they come up. 

The two most common accessibility issues that the Checker finds are: 

  1. Images not having alt text
  2. Contrast ratio

For a list of the issues that the Accessibility Checker is able to spot, look at this Canvas Community guide. 

For general accessibility guidelines for Canvas, see this guide. 

Validating Course Links 

Rather than checking for broken links individually, Canvas allows you to validate all of the links in your course with one click. To do this, go to Settings > Course Details, and then click on "Validate Links in Content" on the right-hand side. The tool will list any broken links along with the pages where they can be found. 

The tool works for external links and internal course links (e.g. to an Assignment or Discussion board). 

Student View

Student View allows you to see a course from the perspective of a student. You can switch to Student View from almost anywhere within a Canvas course by clicking on "View as Student," as shown below. 

Before publishing a course, make sure you have gone through all of it in Student View. 

Student View is helpful for: 

  • Identifying content that needs to be published for students to access
  • Identifying content that is visible to students that you do not want to be visible (e.g. a Teacher's Module)
  • Seeing the left-hand side Navigation Menu from the Student's Perspective
    • For example, maybe the "Files" link is visible to students when you don't want it to be