Canvas Help

New Canvas courses are created with a default home page, consisting of an image and some generic text. You can easily customize this page by clicking the “edit” button and replacing the image and the text with content of your own.

Home Pages should contain a welcome message, a faculty bio, or a statement about the way in which you intend to use the course site. Your Home Page should not be a duplication of the syllabus. 

Sample Home Page

The Course Syllabus platform is the official repository for syllabi at the GSD. This platform is powered by a 3rd party technology called Simple Syllabus. Students can view the Course Syllabus by going through Canvas or by going directly to Simple Syllabus and browsing the syllabus library.

Video demonstration showing how instructors can use the syllabus editor

Failing to launch course syllabus due to browser issues

Course Syllabus provides the following benefits:

• Designated content from My.Harvard is automatically fed to your Course Syllabus
• Course Syllabus improves our digital accessibility posture
• Students can more easily navigate course selection when syllabi are easy to find and organized in a consistent way
• Faculty can import content from previously written syllabi

*Please avoid posting an alternative version of your syllabus to Canvas.

1. Log into Canvas and navigate to your course site.
2. From the navigation panel on the left, select “Manage Course”.  If this item isn’t visible, you may need to enable it in Settings -> Navigation.
3. Select “Manage People”, then select “Add People to your course”
   
4. Search for your TA by entering their official Harvard email address
5. When prompted to select a role, choose TA (this permission level does not include access to grades, comments or student submissions).
6. If needed, contact [email protected] for assistance

Please Note:

• Any individual you wish to add to your Canvas course as a TA must have an active role at Harvard
• If your TA is also an enrolled student in your course, please contact [email protected] for assistance (the instructions above do not apply)

Canvas is Harvard’s official course management system. However, Microsoft Teams can be a useful complementary piece, especially for sharing files and folders that exceed the storage capacity in your Canvas site. A shortcut in your Canvas navigation menu can redirect students to your Teams site, effectively linking the two. Contact [email protected] to request this menu item.

What is Microsoft Teams? Microsoft Teams is a customizable collaboration tool in the Microsoft 365 suite of apps available to all GSD Faculty, Staff and Students. Visit Getting Started with Microsoft Teams for more general information.

Watch this brief video to see how you can:
Create a Microsoft Teams site for your course

1. Click Zoom in the course navigation menu
2. Click Schedule a Meeting
3. Edit the title, description, and other details as needed.
4. A Canvas Calendar event is automatically generated with the meeting details

If you wish to record the meeting, choose the option to “Record to the cloud”. Once the meeting has concluded and the video finishes processing, the recording will automatically appear in the “Media” item in the course navigation menu (on the left side of Canvas). At this time, the recording will also be removed from the user’s personal Zoom account.

General considerations for video recording at Harvard

Downloading from Active Courses
If the course is active and you are an Instructor in the course, you can select an Assignment and access the “Download Submissions” link on the right-hand side of the screen. This will download all the submissions for that assignment. If you want to download specific student submissions, open the SpeedGrader and select the student whose submission you want to download. Click the Disk icon to download.

Downloading from Concluded Courses
GSD courses are normally concluded on July 1st.  When a course is concluded, extra steps are required to download student submissions.  Please contact [email protected] for more information.

Please Note:
FERPA protects student work. Should you wish to store student work outside of Canvas, you must adhere to HUIT’s data security guidelines for Level 3 data. Should you wish to keep or use student work for any non-GSD purposes, you must seek permission directly from the student/s.

Grading and assignments are intertwined. Assignments should have a value and grades should be relative to the value of the assignment. When grading is done correctly, canvas can calculate a total grade, students receive valuable feedback, and the school can remain in compliance with accreditation agencies. The following media items provide guidance on how to use the GSD Grading Scheme in your course site.

Video Overview | Written Instructions

For more detailed documentation on grading in Canvas, visit the links below or contact the GSD Canvas Team for more info.

• SpeedGrader Overview
• Using the GradeBook
• How grades are weighted
• Creating Assignments
• Adding Rubrics to a course

Canvas provides three different ways for instructors to communicate with their students. This article summarizes some benefits and limitations of each.

Announcements
In Canvas, Announcements are often used as a one-way communication tool (i.e. from instructor to class members). You can post an announcement spontaneously or it can be scheduled. Announcements can also be added to the Home Page if you wish to increase the visibility of your messaging. Announcements video overview

Course Emailer
Canvas provides a mailing list that you can use outside of Canvas, for example, in Outlook. You can find “Course Emailer” in your navigation panel (unless it’s hidden) and from here you can copy & paste the address into Outlook. Members of the class can also send to the mail list, but that depends on how you set the permissions. Course Emailer is a good option for teaching staff who are more comfortable communicating directly through Outlook. See course emailer documentation

Conversations/Inbox
Canvas provides users with a stand-alone messaging tool. This tool is in your global navigation panel (left of course navigation) and is also referred to as “inbox”. This messaging tool is useful for sending direct messages to individuals (or a small number of individuals) instead of the whole class. You can also filter your messages by course and keep your conversations confined to Canvas. Inbox video overview

Note:
Internal communications such as Announcements and Conversations would get forwarded to the students Harvard mailbox, if the student configured their notifications settings to forward mail; most students do.

This article summarizes the features in Canvas you can leverage to provide a digitally accessible online learning environment for your students. For more general information about digital accessibility please visit one of the following sites listed below under “Further Reading”.

Accessibility Dashboard
Provided by a 3^rd party technology called PopeTech, this item in the Canvas Navigation menu allows you to check your course to see if it meets digital accessibility standards. The checker does not fix accessibility issues. Instead, it provides guidance and suggestions to help you apply fixes. Read more about using this tool.

Media
Videos located in the Media item in Canvas are actually stored in a 3^rd party file repository called “Panopto”. The main accessibility benefit offered by Panopto is that it provides automatic video captioning for all videos viewed from this platform. However, since the captioning is automatically generated, it should be reviewed for accuracy. How to Edit or Delete Captions.

Course Syllabus
This item in Canvas is provided by a 3^rd party technology called Simple Syllabus. The template style format in the Syllabus Editor naturally creates a heading structure that makes it easy to navigate with screen readers. The syllabus editor also makes it easy to add Alt Text when inserting an image. See the Simple Syllabus and Accessibility whitepaper to learn more.

Further Reading

• • Digital Accessibility Overview
  • WCAG 101: Understanding the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
  • Harvard University Digital Accessibility Policy

If you want a general overview of Canvas, visit LinkedIn Learning at Harvard, and login with your HarvardKey credentials.  Once you are logged in, search for the course “Learning Canvas”.  This self-paced tutorial includes a table of contents that you can browse to find just what you’re looking for (sample screenshot below).

To request help, email [email protected]
Your email will be received by the GSD Canvas Team:

Hal Gould

Nico Hayes-Huer