Canvas templates

Why a template in Canvas?

By making the design of course rooms more uniform we hope it will ease for students to get started in new courses and in that way be less stressful. We see this request from students in course evaluations. It also aims to help teachers and administrators when setting up new courses. It also targets to connect to resources outside Canvas for an improved student experience. 

Template content

Today the template consists of one announcement, six pages of which one is a start page and one start module. With a common start page the student will find the course team with e-mail, the course period, the schedule and at the bottom a register to navigate to the desired Canvas module. In the common start module ”ℹ About the course”, at the top, the student can always find a page with a link to the course page on the student web with the syllabus, literature list, course evaluation as well as pages for grading criteria and information about examination. All in one place regardless of course.

We know that courses have different needs for how the course and its material is organized in Canvas. At SLU we can see a great variation of courses. It spans from short courses, sometimes practical, to courses ongoing for 18 months hence with lots of student material.
What they share is using the same learning management system but they will most likely need to be organized differently. We encourage a discussion within programs and institutions where this is emphasized. Please contact the department for Learning and Digitalisation for support.

When

Templates are present in all courses for autumn 2023. This only applies to courses that are in Ladok, not manually created courses in Canvas. To use templates in manually created courses or in courses with other terms:

• For one course: State course code-admission code-term (BI1234-34567-VT2023) in an e-mail to canvas@slu.se.
• For all courses at an institution: State institution and term (Department of Economics-VT2023) in an e-mail to canvas@slu.se.

Canvas templates - Start

Currently, the template pages do not make any changes to the course's settings. Selection of the start page is a setting in the course and therefore needs to be done manually.
How to change the start page in Canvas.

1. The course name is always shown at the top of the Home-page. The name is in the course settings and not contained in this Start-page. The course name is transferred from Ladok and should not be changed since the connection to Ladok may change it back.
   
   
2. Instead use this text to express if the course has an alternative name or to inform if this course-room is used for more than one course (joint courses).
   
   
3. Here we can write a short course description. As a welcome-text we recommend using an announcement instead since it is probably only relevant in the beginning of the course. We then recommend showing the 3 most recent announcements on the Home-page.  
   
   
   
   
4. Here we can see the course start and end dates which are transferred from Ladok.
   
   
5. Here we can see the course team which also is transferred from Ladok. The row for student representative can be removed if not needed.  
   
   
   
   
6. Schedule – Opens by default Timeedit and shows the course reservations. The link can be edited to another source, for example a file.
   Study support – Opens a page on the student web designed to support students in their studies. The content of this page will expand to show relevant student information over time.
   Ladok Student – Provides a link to quickly logon to Ladok Student. The button aims to ease communication with students if they for example shall self register for the course or sign up for an sitting exam.  
   
   
   
   
7. Here we aim to give the students a quick way to navigate to the desired Canvas module, like a index of content. Not always but in a lot of courses the modules are many with much content which leads to a lot of scrolling on the module page. With this we hope to provide students with a fast track. If you only have a few modules you can of course just link to the first module of the course.  
   

Canvas template - The other Pages and the Module

1. Design objects to use -From here design elements can be copied and used in the course.
   
   
2. Examination - Is the page for clarification about exams. The page contains a link to "sitting exams at SLU" on the student web.
   
   
3.  Grading criteria - Here we add the grading criteria for this course. Remember to use the Accessibility Checker before publishing the page.
   
   
4. Start - This is the recommended page to use as the course home page.
   
   
5. Syllabus, Litterature list & Course evaluation - This page contains a link to the course page on the student web. Edit the text if you like to point out specific content of the course page that are extra relevant to this course.
   
   
6. To Teachers and Administrators - contains a description of these templates.

Module

Out of the six pages above three of them are placed in the module "ℹ️ About the course".

1. The link on the start page takes you to this module.
    

Canvas templates - Announcement

At last there is an Announcement with a sample text that describes how we communicate in the course and a short description of the start page. Edit it as you like.

Many choose to use Announcements within the course. It is then recommended to show the most recent announcements on the start page. This setting is activated under course settings. It is found at the bottom after clicking "more options".

Then the option to show announcements on the start page is visible.

Finally a tip on how to restore a previous version of a page. Can be used if editing of a page did not turn out as expected.