Canvas: Tips and Troubleshooting

Tool-by-tool in alphabetical order

Analytics

It is necessary to hide grade distribution graphs from students. Canvas courses include analytics that show the distribution of student grades for each assignment. Because students, as well as instructors, can see* the high, low, and mean grades, it may be possible for them to figure out the grades of classmates in very small classes.

To protect student privacy, we recommend that in very small classes, e.g., <10 students, you hide this feature from students. To do this:

While in your course site, click Settings at the bottom of the left-hand navigation.
Click more options, which is at the bottom of the “Course Details” page. (Just above the Update Course Details button.)
Check the box next to “Hide grade distribution graphs from students.”
Click Update Course Details.

* If not hidden, students can view grade distribution graphs by clicking their own grade to the right of an assignment.

Announcements

There are no section-specific Announcements.
Students manage their own notification preferences, which can include auto-blocking messages sent from Canvas. If you are concerned that some may have opted out of receiving announcement notifications you want to send an email to students, you can use the Inbox feature in the upper-right corner of the screen to send an email to all students. In addition, the MCommunity Directory automatically creates a Google Email Group for your course. A nice side benefit is that this group can also be used to share Google docs with your entire course. Read more about Google email groups.
Creating a delayed announcement
You can get an immediate confirmation that you sent out an announcement or assignment.

Click Account in the left-hand navigation menu.
Click Notifications.
Hover over the area to the far right of Announcements Created by You and choose the checkmark.
Choose the checkmark to the right of Due Date if you want a confirmation that you sent an Assignment out.

Read more about notification preferences.

Assignments

Students sometimes need to scroll down to view comments from the instructor. You may want to remind your students about this.
Students are able to resubmit assignments until the Available Until date, even past the due date or after the instructor grades it.
There is no “draft mode”.
Resubmitted Assignments stack with previously submitted.
Students who do not submit an assignment by the "Accept Until" date can no longer see that assignment.
Students need to click "Submit Assignment" before they can enter their assignment content.
Instructors can hide assignments grades by default in the Gradebook and in Speedgrader.
Non-Canvas-administered Assignment data can be uploaded via csv directly to Assignments by first downloading a blank csv from Grades, then using Grades/Settings/Upload Grades csv.
Canvas has several different assignment submission types, including rich text, file upload, media recording, and Box.com. While students can submit only one type of assignment at a time, they can submit an assignment more than once.

For example, if your assignment requires both an uploaded file and a media recording, your students can upload a file the first time they submit the assignment and then resubmit the assignment with a media recording. (You would enable both submission types when you create the assignment.)

Note that students can also use the comment feature to include additional information with assignment submissions.
You can get an immediate confirmation that you sent out an announcement or assignment.

Click Account in the left-hand navigation menu.
Click Notifications.
Hover over the area to the far right of Announcements Created by You and choose the checkmark.
Choose the checkmark to the right of Due Date if you want a confirmation that you sent an Assignment out.

Read more about Notification Preferences.

DocViewer

Canvas DocViewer is a tool that allows annotations on online assignment submissions in Canvas. You can use DocViewer to view annotated feedback in the assignment details section of the sidebar from your instructor or from other students in peer review assignments.
When you open a submission, DocViewer will automatically save any annotations made to the submission file for 10 hours. Canvas will display a session expiration warning at 9 hours 50 minutes, followed by a 5-minute and 1-minute warning until the 10 hour limit has been reached. You can restart a DocViewer session at any time by refreshing the submission page.

If your browser includes a built-in PDF viewer, select the option to view the PDF in the system viewer.

Files

It is not possible to create an item in Files that is simply a link. However, there are a few workarounds for this.

Groups

Instructors who create groups should check for new students enrolling in the course until the drop/add period is over. Students added to the course during the drop/add period must be manually added to any previously created groups.

Grades and Gradebook

More on assignment groups.
Students are automatically notified of their assignment grades: Instructors cannot schedule the release of grades for a future date. You can hide the assignment to prevent this behavior.

Read more about Grades and the Gradebook.

Home Page

Changing your Home Page

Modules is the course default home page.
To change your home page from Modules, follow the instructions at How do I change the Course Home Page? on the Canvas website.

Modules

If a page is used in more than one module and one of the modules is not published, students will see the page title but they will not be able to open that page in a module that is published.
Canvas Modules that are migrated from Lesson Builder will automatically be published in Canvas
A file that is included in both a published Module and an unpublished Module will be invisible to students in both.

Notifications

Students manage their own notification preferences, which can include auto-blocking messages sent from Canvas. If you are concerned that some may have opted out of receiving announcement notifications you want to send an email to students, you can use the Inbox feature in the upper-right corner of the screen to send an email to all students. In addition, the MCommunity Directory automatically creates an MCommunity Google Email Group for your course. A nice side benefit is that this group can also be used to share Google docs with your entire course. More on course groups.
You can get an immediate confirmation that you sent out an announcement or assignment.

Click Account in the left-hand navigation menu.
Click Notifications.
Hover over the area to the far right of Announcements Created by You and choose the checkmark.
Choose the checkmark to the right of Due Date if you want a confirmation that you sent an Assignment out.