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Faculty Hub

Canvas Faculty Hub

Welcome to the Canvas Faculty Hub. This hub space was curated for OHIO instructors to learn more about the transition to Canvas and to maximize its features for a modern, intuitive teaching and learning experience.

Ohio University faculty, staff, and students selected Canvas, by Instructure through a robust evaluation process to improve the teaching and learning experience for students and faculty. Canvas provides a modern, accessible, and intuitive learning management system (LMS) and is available for all OHIO faculty to explore and set up courses. The material in this Canvas Hub was developed collaboratively by the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, the Office of Instructional Design, and the Office of Information Technology. The goal of this collaboration is to encourage campus-wide adoption of Canvas in order to 1) create a sense of community and a common OHIO experience; 2) support student time management, study skill sets and meta-cognition; and 3) promote teaching effectiveness and efficiency.

About the Transition to Canvas

The first group of “live” courses was taught in Canvas during Spring Semester 2024 as part of Phase 1 of the Canvas launch. Additionally, current Phase 1 students and faculty are providing valuable feedback on their experiences through regular surveys. This feedback will incorporated to ongoing support and communication activities to support the launch of Canvas. Academic units will formally transition all courses in a phased approach throughout the 2024-2025 academic year. We are working with all units to identify a timeline to move instruction to Canvas to minimize disruption to students. A high-level transition timeline is available on OIT's Canvas page. For instructors who have questions or ideas about transition timelines, we recommend talking with your department chair or program director for more information. We highly recommend that instructors transition to the Canvas platform in alignment with college and department plans to support a consistent student experience. 

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Set Up Your Course

Before getting started, we recommend to review information about the differences between Blackboard and Canvas, and ways your third party integrations (e.g. publishers) will work in Canvas. Phase 1 faculty praised Canvas as an improvement to managing their course, as compared to Blackboard. With all publisher and third party integrations, course-level analytics, this tool has many features to support student engagement.  

To Get Started Teaching in Canvas, Follow These Steps

  1. Log In to Canvas: Visit canvas.ohio.edu and use your OHIO email and password to log in.
  2. Locate your test course: All instructors have one test course automatically created in their Canvas account. A test course can be leveraged to explore Canvas features or used to build content for future “real” courses. Your test course should appear on your Canvas Dashboard and in your Courses tab in the left navigation menu. The course name will include “Instructor Test Course” and your OHIO ID.
  3. Apply an OHIO template: Review the OHIO course templates and apply one to your course using Canvas Commons. OHIO course templates are pedagogically sound, efficient for instructors, and provide a consistent and cohesive experience for students.
  4. Design your course: Build your course assessments, activities, and content.  

Recommended Features

In addition to templates, we strongly recommend that all faculty use the Canvas Syllabus, and Course Calendar features. Using these functions will help students maximize the utility of the calendar and to do list functions, both of which appear on the homepage for students. If faculty use these features, students can see all of upcoming assignments, other due dates, and more in one easy-to-navigate space.

 

Finish building your course by developing modules, adding assignments, importing content, and linking Panopto videos and other media.

Students will not be able to access your course content until you publish it. This is equivalent to making your course available in Blackboard. To help students know which LMS their course will be taught in, send them an email or other outreach to let them know how to access the course. You should contact them prior to the first day of class to help them prepare.

Course Templates

We encourage all instructors to use an OHIO Canvas template as you set-up your Canvas courses. Course templates are efficient, user-friendly, pedagogically sound, sleek, and professional. The use of templates will help students experience a predictable organizational structure and consistent visual feel across their Canvas courses. OIT has guidance for how to apply a template once you review the options.

 

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Explore OHIO course templates

Example of Custom Template

Basic in person template example

Example of In person template

Custom Template Example

Templates enable you to auto-populate announcements

Home page demonstrating how recent announcements automatically populate

Get Help with Canvas

Support for Everyone

  • 24/7 Canvas Support: All students, faculty, and staff have access to a 24/7 Help Desk in Canvas by selecting "Get Help”. Canvas Support can help with any Canvas-specific issue through chat or phone support. Canvas will connect customers with OIT support if support is requested for a non-Canvas issue.
  • OIT Help Desk: OIT will continue to support all users with issues relating to passwords, access to any platform, single sign-on, requests for new products or features. Additionally, OIT creates manually created courses for faculty (also called test, sandbox, dev, or prime courses).

Instructor Resources

To get started with Canvas on your own:

  • Self-paced training course: Instructors of record will be automatically enrolled in “Growing with Canvas”, a self-paced, optional introduction to the platform.
  • Individual consultations and help material: OIT offers written help material, consultations with instructional technologists, and more to help you navigate and maximize Canvas.
  • Frequently Asked Questions: For more information, please visit the Frequently Asked Questions page.
  • Canvas Experts Corner: The Canvas Experts Corner blog is your weekly dose of inspiration and expert guidance to elevate your Canvas experience. Going beyond basic how-to's, we'll dive into advanced features and explore innovative teaching strategies to help you create an engaging learning experience for students.

To access workshops, seminars, and consultations:

  • Canvas vendor-led trainings: Trainings and workshops presented by Canvas will be available throughout the summer covering a wide variety of topics. Visit the CTLA's GivePulse website to learn more and register.
  • Faculty Canvas training (pre-scheduled and by department/unit request): Led by OID with support from OIT. Trainings address everyone from the basics of Canvas to using external tools and developing assessments.
  • Individual consultations: Work with an instructional designer to design and prepare to teach your course in Canvas.
  • New Faculty Welcome: Resources for new faculty to support teaching excellence. This will include content updated over time to highlight upcoming events.
  • Graduate Student Instructor Resources: General material and information about upcoming events to help graduate students prepare for a successful teaching experience.

Accessibility

Ohio University is committed to providing cutting-edge information technology that provides our students with an accessible and exceptional user experience. Canvas and OHIO have both created resources to ensure your Canvas course content is accessible to each student you teach:

Student Resources

When students reach out to you with questions, please remind them of the below support available for them.

  • Self-paced training course: Students can self-enroll in the optional, self-paced training course “Passport to Canvas” to explore the platform and learn about its basic functions. Instructors are also welcome to self-enroll in this course to explore training material available to students.
  • Access Canvas through Go OHIO: Students can log into Canvas directly at canvas.ohio.edu and also through the Go OHIO app. They also have the option to sign up for Canvas notifications through Go OHIO to stay up-to-date on new Canvas updates and information.
  • OIT help material : Student-focused help material developed to address common student questions in Canvas. OIT will continue to add to these resources as additional feedback is received from students.

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