Welcome New Instructors to Cal Poly Canvas
Welcome to Cal Poly. Cal Poly uses the Canvas Learning Management System to support teaching and learning for face-to-face, hybrid, and online courses. You may be new to Canvas or have used it before. Each Canvas system can be very different based on individual campus settings. Please see the below information for an introduction.
Getting Started
Information & Announcements
Access your Canvas Dashboard for current support announcements. This changes often to reflect current questions, issues, and needs.
Cal Poly Canvas information is also sent in the CTLT newsletter. All teaching staff should get the newsletter each week.
Canvas - Instructure, runs updates/changes each month. If you want to learn more about the updates, please see our Maintenance page.
Getting Ready for Fall 2024
- Course Copy
- Canvas Check-List - provides a list of steps/items you want to complete before your course is available for students.
- One-Stop Shop page for tips, tricks, and gotchas you don't want to miss.
- Delete OLD Zoom meeting links that were copied from your old courses.
- Default Grade Policy = missing assignments 100% (meaning students will get an A for not doing the assignment). Change your Grade Policy.
- Cross-listing sections - merging Canvas sections so you only have to manage one Canvas course.
- Save ALL your ScreenPal videos to their Cloud storage so they will have captioning. Captioning is required.
- Zoom Recordings (Cloud storage) older than 180 days will be deleted from the Zoom Cloud. Captioning is required.
- Fall 2024 courses can be Published anytime after Sept. 6, and students will have access without the instructor needing to change the course or section Start dates.
- Messages: Students will not receive messages until they Accept the course after Sept. 6 and the course must be Published.
- Please check the One-Stop Shop page for all the Tips, Tricks, and GOTCHAS in Canvas.
How to Reuse Quizzes with Export / Import
DO NOT use the Copy to / Import options since the quiz will OVERRIDE the quiz with student answers/grades. Quizzes are identified by a number (https://calpoly.instructure.com/courses/16454/quizzes/475) and not by name, so even if you rename the Quiz it will still override. It is better to Export the quiz as a QTI file and then Import the QTI into the other course.
NOTE: You can Copy to / Import, IF NO students have taken the Quiz yet.
Export:
- Open old/other course, click on the Settings navigation link on left
- Click on the Export Course Content button on the right
- Find the quiz and choose the Click here to download link (the top most current export name of your course)
- Pick Quiz, then the quiz name(s)
- Click on the Create Export button
- Download by clicking on the New Export link. Should be a QTI file (.ZIP) that it exported.
NOTE: Is this from a Classic or New Quiz - you will need to choose which one you want when you import. Classic to Classic or Classic to New.
Import:
- Open current/new course, click on the Settings navigation link on left
- Click on the Import Course Content button on the right
- Choose Content Type: QTI .zip file
- Click on the Choose File button (to find file download to your computer before)
- Locate file and click on the Open button
- Options: Click on the box for Import Assessment content as New Quizzes IF it is a NEW quiz and DON'T click box if Classic Quiz.
- Select question bank to upload QTI questions into
- Click on the Import button.
NOTE: The quiz will have the SAME name, but a different number. If you click on the quiz and look at the URL, the last number is the quiz identifier. Look for the "highest" number and that is the NEW imported quiz. ONLY change the newly imported quiz name so YOU know which is which.
DRC Accommodations
Read the support site instructions carefully before you give a Quiz with extra time for DRC students. Steps must be done correctly, or students will get kicked out of the quiz before their accommodated time.
Are My Grades Correct?
Many courses may still have the Late Policy set to 100%, which means your students are getting A's for work they did NOT submit. If you change the Late Policy to 0% now, the OLD assignments will NOT adjust - you will have to manually give students 0 pt for all those assignments.
VIEW Ungraded as 0: This allows instructors to view student grades as if all ungraded assignments were worth zero points. (which is a visual change only and does not affect any grades - so you still need to manually give students 0 pt).
Turn it on: Grade book > View > View Ungraded as 0.
Audio & Video
Many of you may have already heard about creating accessible content within Canvas. http://canvassupport.calpoly.edu/accessibility
- Information technology resources and services need to be accessible to all users (EO 1111, Code Memo AA-2013-03)
- Faculty are legally required to make electronic course material accessible via captioning (Section 508)
Use Zoom and Screencast-o-Matic cloud system's built-in captioning tools. YouTube and Microsoft Stream also has great built-in captioning. All three of these can be embedded in Canvas. Please see our support page for more information.
Support
Canvas: Instructure 24 / 7 / 365 Support
We understand that teaching virtual/online/hybrid/face-to-face courses requires 24/7 support and we want the best for our users. Faculty can use the Canvas (Global Navigation - left bar) HELP > Chat for Canvas help anytime.
Cal Poly Canvas Support hours are M-F, 8-5 (excluding holidays). You can email canvassupport@calpoly.edu or schedule a consultation.
Video Tutorials and Training
We have many resources available online for training.
- Our self-paced online courses help with learning Canvas as well as showing examples of how Canvas can be organized to support learning.
- We also have templates you can use to get a head start on your course design.
- Play, pause and rewind one of our many video tutorials.
