📋 To copy from a prior course, click “Import Existing Content” on the right, then select “Copy a Canvas Course” from the dropdown menu. Or, feel free to start from scratch with this minimalist template we’ve built for you.
🏠 By default, Syllabus is set as your course homepage. Recent Announcements automatically appear at the top (you can turn this off in Settings).
🧑🏫 Use this text area to display your course expectations, policies, etc. Click “Edit” to modify/replace this placeholder text and then click “Update Syllabus” to apply changes.
✅ When you have an assignment ready for students, publish it with a due date – it will appear not only in the auto-populated, chronologically arranged Course Summary below but also in the students’ Dashboard and Calendar.
👀 The only other pages students see are Modules and Grades – all others are hidden to minimize distraction (feel free to modify under Settings > Navigation). Important note: Even though the Assignments, Quizzes, Files, etc. pages are invisible to students, you can use them as the teacher and students can access any assignment, quiz, file, etc. housed inside a published module.
📚 Organize course content using Modules. Think of Modules as your table of contents. From this one page, you can create and organize all course components.
⚖️ If you’d like to employ a grade weighting scheme, create Assignment Groups and assign weights.
💯 To encourage mindful posting practices, the Academic Department Heads have asked that Canvas courses default to manual grade posting. You may change this under Gradebook settings if you prefer automatic grade posting.
🙈 We strongly recommend you Hide Unpublished Assignments in your Gradebook view options.
🧑🎓 To add your students to the course, click “Email All Students” in ChoateSIS, copy the list, open People, click “+People” and paste the list. (If you teach multiple sections, specify the correct section!)
🚀 Once you are 100% ready to launch, click “Publish” and your students will receive their course invitations.
🧑💻 Any questions? For technical issues, email helpdesk@choate.edu or message Lisa McGloin on Teams. For pedagogical inquiries, ping Morgan or Viva on Teams.
