Canvas Insider Journal - Week Zero of an Academic Term

Trend-spotting client needs, and how I'm able to address them efficiently

This is a peek at what Week Zero, the week before the start of an academic term, looks like for a Canvas Admin at Western Washington University*:

Add/remove teachers to/from courses - Western’s Student Information System automatically adds a teacher to a Canvas course once they are officially added by the department. However, if another teacher takes over the course for their colleague the original teacher will not be auto-removed from the course. I’m able to remove the old teacher with my Canvas Admin superpowers in very quick time.

Combine/merge/cross-list courses - While teachers have the capabilities to cross-list courses into one mega-mega course, the process is not completely intuitive. This opens the door to various errors that could potentially overwrite course content. Even though online documentation and customized videos have been shared with faculty in the past, I realized it takes me 47 seconds to cross-list anywhere from two to five courses in Canvas. By using browser tabs and hyper-clicky mouse skills, I can offer a service to my teachers that saves them time in doing it themselves, and decreases the possibility of a stress spike if their attempts to cross-list don’t go as smooth as expected.

Extend access to courses for students fulfilling an incomplete - Even though online documentation and customized videos have been shared with faculty in the past, I timed myself: it takes me about two minutes to create a new section in the course for the teacher and student(s), specify the end date, and add the people to this section. Another service for clients to save a little bit of time without completely bogging down my workload.

Create non-academic lab courses for departments - Some departments have a lab component to their academic course which does not auto-create a course in Canvas. These departments may have undergrad/graduate TAs designated as teachers by the professor in charge, and they don’t want to have all the lab curriculum combined with the lecture content. By wielding my courses.csv, sections.csv, and enrollments.csv files, I can create numerous courses based on faculty specifications, add specific TAs to specific sections of courses, and add thousands of students into these non-academic courses behind-the-scenes in my Canvas Admin zone with no action needed by the student to accept the invitation to join a course. Takes me about 27 minutes to populate the three .csv files for SIS Upload, and saves TAs and teachers hours of time with course setup and enrollment.

Import course content for teachers - Similar to the add/remove and cross-list service mentioned above, while teachers can import their content into an upcoming term’s course, not only am I able to pinpoint the exact course to import via SIS ID, I also include a value-added step by “selecting specific content” and omitting prior-term announcements from being imported. Tons of teachers appreciate not having to delete all those old announcements when simply importing an entire course.

Students can’t see their upcoming course or syllabus - WWU give the teachers agency to publish their course whenever they’re ready, not on a specific deadline date. This doesn’t align with enrolled student expectations in some cases, and I get to professionally encourage them to exercise some patience while their professor makes last-minute adjustments to their course before making it available to them and their classmates.

New faculty hire needs to learn Canvas - This doesn’t happen in large numbers, but I often meet with new faculty to Western who may not have experience with Canvas, only a few days before the term starts. I understand their stress level with onboarding at a new institution, and offer to meet with them for an hour when our schedules permit virtually via Zoom (I’ve found sharing my screen and masquerading as their account provides maximum delight from recent feedback) or they can view some narrated screencasts of “Canvas Foundations” to learn about what is possible with their courses if they’re too busy during business hours, if they’re a night owl, or if they like having a back button to review what I said during a certain part of a video.

While you might think this post is a shameless humblebrag about all the coolness I do as a Canvas Admin, you would be mistaken. This is a bit of a “time capsule” post that might be referenced by a future Canvas Admin at WWU, whether it be a successor or a temporary fill-in while I am absent from office, either from taking vacation or after getting hit by a truck.

This will probably be a 10-part series as this upcoming Spring 2024 term begins. So if you don’t find much value with what I’m sharing, stick around…I’ll still be providing more videos sharing unique tips and tricks to improve your relationship with Canvas. Thanks for your time.

-Chris

*Western Washington University has about 15,000 students, 1,000 faculty, and about 2,000 staff...give or take. Western gives teachers of academic courses a large amount of agency in developing their academic courses without standardized blueprint or template courses. Western chooses to not require teachers to pass any formalized training before gaining access to their academic course(s). Teachers are able to rename their courses if they choose, and are permitted to add LTI Apps from the available selections in their course. Western’s faculty have the ability to cross-list their courses for an academic term, import content from a previous term, and are able to access prior-term academic courses with read-only rights. They are able to add other WWU personnel to academic courses in numerous roles, save for the student and observer roles. And many other permissions are given to teachers, but my brain is tired from a big lunch, and I figured you get the point about course autonomy by now.