Overview/Introduction
The purpose of the Canvas learning management system (LMS) is to provide students, faculty, and staff access to course materials, instructional resources, communication channels, and other relevant information.
This policy applies to all Ursinus College faculty, staff, and students who use Canvas). In addition to these policies, LMS users must adhere to the College's Information Technology Policies.
Details
Course Creation
- Course shells are uploaded to Canvas approximately one month before the start of the semester.
- Faculty and staff who want to have a course manually created in Canvas for them should contact Instructional Technology. Once the course is created, the instructor can add students to the course manually or they can ask Instructional Technology to do this.
Course Enrollments and Access
- Instructors are given access to their Canvas courses once they are officially assigned as the instructor through the Registrar’s Office.
- Students gain access to Canvas courses by registering for the course. Add/drop changes should be done through the Registrar’s Office and these changes will automatically sync to Canvas within 12 hours.
- Courses are only accessible to students in Canvas if/when the instructor chooses to publish it.
- Instructors can manually add additional instructors, teaching assistants, or observers to a Canvas course or they can ask Instructional Technology to do this.
- Instructors should not manually add students to their courses (the exception is if the course was manually created for them and the course is not tied to automatic student enrollments). Contact Instructional Technology and/or the Registrar’s Office if a student is missing from your course that should be in there.
- Instructors who are working with high school students under the age of 18 may request that these students be added to their Canvas courses only after they have secured the appropriate clearances. Contact Human Resources for more information.
- Faculty and staff who want access to another instructor’s course materials need the instructor’s, Department Chair’s, or Dean’s Office approval. The same is true for students requesting access to course materials after the course has been concluded.
Course Combine
- Instructors who want to combine two or more class sections into one Canvas course should submit a request to Instructional Technology before the start of the semester.
- Course combine cannot be undone without losing any content the instructor(s) has uploaded and any work the students have submitted. Consult the Canvas Instructor Orientation course for more information on course combine.
Course Conclusions
- Canvas courses that are tied to a fix term are automatically concluded approximately one month after the semester ends. The courses are archived in a Past Enrollment Section in Canvas. Instructors can access their coursework after this date, but students cannot. Instructors, however, can choose to extend their course end date to give students longer access if they wish.
Integrating Apps into Canvas