• Canvas

    Canvas Transition: Adding Teaching Assistants to Your Course

    Reading Time: < 1 minuteAs you’re getting your courses off the ground for the semester, you’re probably going through your standard course prep. For some instructors that means making sure your teaching assistants are added to your sections. Thankfully, Canvas makes it easy for you to accomplish this task yourself. Check out Canvas’ information on how to add users to a course. When assigning a role, you’ll want to give your assistants the “TA” role defined in our system. As you’re working through this process, remember that you have Canvas Support available to answer your questions and help you if you get stuck! You can access chat support through the…

  • Canvas

    Canvas Transition: Do All Your Links Work in Your Course?

    Reading Time: 2 minutesYou’ve brought your course over to Canvas from Moodle, and you’ve finished preparing it for the upcoming semester. In previous semesters, you’ve either had to check each link in your course manually to ensure it works or wait until a student finds a broken link. But you don’t have to do that anymore with Canvas. Canvas’ built-in link validation feature will search the content in your course for invalid or unreachable links and images. The link validator has some limitations and can turn up results that Canvas can’t view but students still can. For example, in our online courses, we embed each syllabus into the course using…

  • Canvas

    Canvas Transition: Top 3 Tips to Prep for the Semester

    Reading Time: 2 minutesAs this semester ends, we’re going to start looking toward setting up courses for future terms. You’re probably familiar with past Moodle tasks and idiosyncrasies. Canvas takes these tasks and makes them easier for you to accomplish. Instead of submitting requests to combine sections of your courses, you now have the ability to create a combined section without assistance from IT or the CTL. In addition, we’re also going to review how to add your syllabus and assignments to a Canvas course. 1. Combine multiple Canvas sections into one In previous semesters, the process to combine sections of your course was more complicated. You would submit a…

  • Canvas

    Canvas Transition: Top 3 Tips to Overcome the Learning Curve

    Reading Time: 2 minutesA faculty member walked into my office this week and proclaimed, “the change to Canvas energizes me — I love the challenge!” Another faculty member admitted concern with the change, but they appreciated how faculty are being empowered and supported. Another said they never used Moodle and were apprehensive about using Canvas. Yet another made a tutorial video for importing Moodle courses into Canvas. While the overall response from faculty, staff, students, and administration is positive, it is proper to recognize that there is a learning curve for everyone. Regardless of where you find yourself on the Canvas learning curve, there are three things that will reduce…

  • Canvas,  Project Features,  Teaching & Learning

    Welcome!

    Reading Time: 2 minutesWelcome to FOCUS: the hub of teaching and learning at Cedarville University, brought to you by the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL). This blog is designed to be a resource, your go-to place for teaching and learning strategies, learning management system (LMS) best practices, as well as tips and tricks from the CTL and your fellow faculty members. This blog will foster community and provide a central location to find resources. What can you expect? Here, you’ll find teaching best practices backed by research, tips and tricks for using our learning management system, CTL project features, and much more. You’ll see posts authored by CTL staff,…