Organizing Your Course in Canvas

• Put all your course material and activities (except announcements and the syllabus—see tips 4 and 5 below) in the Modules section of Canvas.
• You can create most of your course within Modules! Click the plus button to the right of a module title to create any sort of item (assignment, quiz, file, page, discussion, link, external tool) and have it added to the module.
• You can also use the plus button to create a “text header”. This is a text label that can help you organize your course.
• We recommend hiding most of the sections in the left-hand navigation menu from students. This simplifies things for students significantly: it makes Modules the one place they can go for everything they need. The SAS Course Template (see tip 6 below) is already set up with other sections hidden. Students will still be able to see those items when you add them to Modules.

• This makes it easy for students to find where they are in the course and see what they need to do, right next to all the relevant resources.
• One popular option is to create a module for each week of the semester, and then create text headers to mark specific topics or course meetings.
• If your schedule or plans change mid-semester, you can easily drag items to re-order them or move them from module to module.

• This should link to the Rutgers Learning Centers’ How to Succeed in an Online Course resource.
• This is also a great place to introduce yourself, and place a course-wide Q&A discussion forum where students can ask questions about course logistics, etc.
• The SAS Course Template in Canvas Commons includes a basic "Getting Started" module.

• Some instructors like to create announcements ahead of time and schedule them to go out at the same time each week.
• You can link to other parts of your course (assignments, discussions, quizzes, modules, etc.) in your announcement. This will help students go directly to content that you refer to in your announcement.

• This is the place to put your actual syllabus file.
• This section also includes a “Course Summary” that provides a chronological list of everything that has a due date in Canvas. (This includes assignments, quizzes, and even discussions if you choose to add a due date to a discussion. This list auto-populates as you build your course!)

 We’ve created an SAS Canvas Course Template to help you implement some of these recommendations. You can import it into your course from the Canvas Commons.

• To find the template first log into Canvas, then click the "Commons" link on the left navigation bar in Canvas, and then search for "SAS Course Template."
• The template is streamlined so that students will only see the Syllabus, Announcements, Modules, and Grades.
• The template has a sample "getting started" module (including a link to the Rutgers Learning Centers’ How to Succeed in an Online Course resource) and a sample module for course content.
• To make a module or item visible for students, it has to be “published” by clicking the green check mark. This allows you to draft items before students can see them. It also lets you hide materials until later in the semester, if you choose.
• To create additional modules, click the “+ Module” button at the top right of the Modules page.
• To re-order or move items from module to module, click and drag the six-dot icon left of the item’s name.
  • Some instructors like to drag each week’s module to the bottom of the page when they complete the week, so the current week’s module is always at the top of the modules page.