10 Canvas Favorite Tips

I have posted a sheet of tips that I currently use with Canvas and have updated this fall. Some of these are old but some may be new to you. I have attached the link to the document to keep this post to a minimum. After each tip there are a few labels that you can look for on the 99 and will take you to a previous screen cast on the subject.
10 Canvas Favorite Tips White paper only, no video here.

Speed Grader Specific Class Selection

When you wish to change from "view all classes" in Speed Grader to a specific class you have to move your curser very fast or the gap between drop downs will cause the specific class selection window to disappear. It can be a little frustrating if you don't move fast. Check out the clip on this post for a quick demo.

Update! It looks like Canvas has patched this problem but you never know if it will rear its head in the future.

Speed Grader Class Selection

Dashboard Course Card Color Overlay

For quite some time we have been able to place an image onto our course cards in Dashboard mode. The problem has been that each image had to have a color tint overlay. I just noticed yesterday that we now have an added option of turning that color overlay off so that the image is clear and free of the tint. Students will still have the option of turning on or off the color tint overlay as it is machine specific. Click the gear at the upper right and also click on or off the overlay. The image below on the left has the overly on and the image to the right has the overlay clicked off. You can still control the color of your class name by clicking the three dots at the upper right of each course image.

Importing Modules - Update

Hey there. I hope your summer is still in full swing and still awesome. Sorry, there is no video in this post. I was noticing that the 2016-2017 courses have been moved and the "controls" taken off. In case you have not yet moved your course or modules into a safe place for this next school year, fear not. It appears that while your courses have been moved out of your "favorites" section they are still, at this time, available in your "all courses" section. You just have to figure out which ones are from last year. You can still import modules or even entire courses normally as I mentioned in my June 20 post. Have a great rest of the summer.

Saving Canvas Content for Next Year

I was just thinking to myself if I had moved my Canvas course content from the completed year into my template so that when headquarters makes access to 2016-2017 unavailable I could still get to it. The answer is that I am moving content as I write this.

Below is a quick step by step, in case your forgot, way to move all your course content into your template for easy access and editing for this fall. Access may not be halted but there is always a chance and I don't want to take that chance. These steps are very easy and take no time at all to complete. Also, if you do not have a "template" you can email the help desk and they will make one up for you with the title that you request. They will not touch "template" titled courses when they archive.

This procedure has not changed. I am just listing it step by step for anyone not remembering how to pull this off.

Start in your course, from this past year, and edit each module title by adding the year of your choice. You may want to add 2016-2017 or what ever you will recognize as coming from last year's course when it gets imported to your template as they will be added to the template and not be replacing any modules. You will want to do this to each module. Also, if you like your home page, edit that page's title (by clicking edit on the page) in such a way that you will recognize it in the tons of pages that you now have created such as "home page for year 2017" or something like that. This is necessary because using this method will import all your pages as well and they will join or even duplicate any that are already in your template.

Open your template course and click settings.

On the right margin click Import Content into this Course.

Content Type: Copy a Canvas Course

Select a Course: Select the course from this last year in which you want to import. You will have to do this to as many course that you wish to import one at a time.

Content: Select All content. You usually check the Select specific content throughout the year.

Options: You can shift dates or remove dates. I would choose remove dates as this will eliminate assignment due dates. I have seen conflicts in setting new dates if the old dates are not removed.

Click Import.

This process should take quite some time depending on how much content you have.

The final step, which I usually wait for until I am ready to import at the start of the new year, is to delete any module that has an old date next to it as the years go by. These modules with old dates can remain it is just that when your template course gets rather large it take forever for it open or even load when you want to look through it for items throughout the following year.

This entire process should have taken you less time than it did to read through this.

Google Drive "Force Copy"

If you have been struggling with students continuing to submit documents that are blank due to their inability to determine which document they actually wrote on, this may be your solution. By sharing your hyperlink in a "force copy" condition students will be forced to make their copy initially and then place it into the proper folder for later retrieval. Thanks to a discussion with Duke Lines I learned how to pull this off. After posting your hyperlink you can go into the URL for that document and replace the term "edit" with "copy." This does not change the "sharing" permissions in the original document it only changes the order to make a copy without sharing the blank document. For this reason the document hyperlink URL has to be posted somewhere first before you change it to "copy."
Google Drive Forced Copy
Forced Copy Part 2

Speedgrader Tips

This post is about the Canvas Speedgrader. There are a couple of settings that might come in handy. One is that if you want to really fly you could set up a rubric at the start of your assignment build and click the box that says you want to use the rubric score as your final score. That appears at the lower left of the rubric setup and needs to be checked before saving. That way, when you click the rubric and save in Speedgrader, the score will appear in the score box automatically saving you a couple of clicks. All you have to do is click the arrow for the next student. Another tip is to set your gear settings at the upper left of Speedgrader and choose how you want your students to be organized. The choices are alpha, by date, and who needs to be scored yet.
Speedgrader Tips