Planning your course

Getting Started

Whether you're teaching an online or hybrid course, or just enhancing your traditional course with Canvas, it's good to plan out how you're going to use Canvas. This is similar to what many faculty already do when they plan their course schedule for their syllabus.

How to Get Started

The first thing to consider are the learning goals and objectives of your course and then how you can use Canvas to accomplish these things. This may vary on the type of course you are teaching, but in general online and hybrid courses should include multiple types of learning materials and assignments in Canvas. Traditional courses may use fewer features in Canvas, but many Instructors find themselves adding more and more of their content and assignments into Canvas as they continue to use it.

Time Requirements

Keep in mind that in a traditional course students spend anywhere from 2-5 hours in the classroom per week (depending on the course credit hours)! This doesn’t include the number of hours students should spend outside of the classroom studying each week; the recommendation is 2-3 hours outside study time for every credit hour. For example, for a 3 credit hour traditional undergraduate course students should spend at least 6-9 hours reading the textbook, working on assignments, and doing additional studying. Check with your department manager regarding your accreditation requirements for seat time. In an online or hybrid course it is very important that instructors include enough assignments and readings in place to account for the total number of hours the students should be spending working on the course.

Learning Materials

The learning materials for your course should prepare the students for their assignments and to meet the overall outcomes and learning goals of the course (per your syllabus). Learning materials are a vital part of an online course, but can also be important to include for hybrid and enhanced courses. Students need direction as to what they should be studying and what they should be learning from the course content. Providing learning materials to students can also save faculty a lot of time (just add it to Canvas, then no need to email it), printing budget (much more cost effective to post it in Canvas than copy it for an entire class of students), and hassle (students who missed class asking for copies of what they missed).

Types of Learning Materials


Type of Learning Materials	How to use Canvas to provide these materials/information to your students:
Handouts	Upload the file in your Canvas Modules, add/embed the file anywhere with the Rich Content Editor; you can even set access state so students can't access the file until a certain date/time. This way students can't lose it and will be able to access it even if they miss class!
Lecture Notes	Upload the file in your Canvas Modules, add/embed the file anywhere with the Rich Content Editor; you can even set access state so students can't access the file until a certain date/time. This way students can't lose it and will be able to access it even if they miss class!
PowerPoint	Upload the file in your Canvas Modules, add/embed the file anywhere with the Rich Content Editor; you can even set access state so students can't access the file until a certain date/time. This way students can't lose it and will be able to access it even if they miss class!
Assigned Readings	Upload the file in your Canvas Modules, add/embed the file anywhere with the Rich Content Editor; you can even set access state so students can't access the file until a certain date/time. This way students can't lose it and will be able to access it even if they miss class!
Assignment Directions	Upload the file in your Canvas Modules, add/embed the file anywhere with the Rich Content Editor; you can even set access state so students can't access the file until a certain date/time. This way students can't lose it and will be able to access it even if they miss class!
Video	Add the video URL in your Canvas Modules, embed the video directly on a page in Canvas, or upload the video straight to Canvas. There are lots of options of how to easily provide video materials to Canvas.
Website	Add website URLs in your Canvas Modules. This provides easy access to students throughout the semester.
Recent News	Add article URLs in your Canvas Modules. This provides easy access to students throughout the semester.
Blogs	Add Blog URLs in your Canvas Modules. This provides easy access to students throughout the semester.

The above list is not exhaustive and only meant to illustrate some of the different types of learning materials that might be used in a course and how they can easily be added to Canvas. How to add these different types of learning materials to Canvas will be covered later in the Training Course.

Assignments

Assignments are used to see if students are learning the course content and meeting the goals of the course. The number of assignments in your course are dependent on the content and purpose of your course you, but online and hybrid courses should have at least one discussion forum each week, as well as some other type of assignment. This could be a longer writing assignment, part of a larger semester project, rough draft of a paper, or some type of assessment (quiz or exam). These assignments should directly relate back to the learning materials and goals/objectives of the course. **Please note that Instructors can still use the Canvas gradebook if they choose to have students submit their assignments in person.**

Types of Assignments

Types of Assignments	How Canvas can be used to
Quiz/Exam	Canvas allows for almost all types of assessment questions. Questions can be added manually or using Respondus. Check with your department manager to see if you have access to Respondus. There are a number of quiz settings for faculty to choose from (allowing students to see feedback/not see feedback), timed, multiple attempts, etc.
Survey	Survey questions can be entered similar to quiz and exam questions, but for a survey there is no right/wrong answer and Instructors can choose to make it anonymous.
Short writing assignments	Canvas allows for all types of writing assignments. Instructors can choose whether to have students type directly into Canvas or upload a file.
Long writing assignments	Canvas allows for all types of writing assignments. Instructors can choose whether to have students type directly into Canvas or upload a file.
Peer Review	Instructors can set it up so students can peer review each other's writing assignments.
Group work	Instructors can create student groups in their course which provides studenets with a private group space to collaborate in, as well as submit assignments and discussions as part of a group.
Collaborative work	Students can collaborate with each other (in pairs, groups, etc) directly from within Canvas using Google Docs.
Discussions	Instructors can create a discussion in Canvas for students to discuss different quetions or issues. Discussions can be set-up so that students can't see what other students wrote until they post their initial reply to the discussion.
Digital Projects Links to an external site.	Canvas allows for all types of digital projects. Instructors can choose whether to have students upload these projects as Assignments or post them in Discussions.

The above list is not exhaustive and only meant to illustrate some of the different types of assignments that might be used in a course and how they can easily be added to Canvas. How to add these different types of assignments to Canvas will be covered later in the Training Course.