Frequently Asked Questions

Canvas FAQs

The first thing you will see after logging into Canvas is the Dashboard. By default, your dashboard will show your courses, global announcements, and a sidebar with other items. Users may elect to display their recent activity and notifications on the dashboard rather than their list of courses. You can return to your dashboard at any time by clicking the Dashboard link in Global Navigation menu.

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3. How do I get assistance with Canvas?

Baylor subscribes to Instructure's Tier One Support option to provide 24x7 support for all faculty, staff, and students. Canvas support is available 24/7 by phone, live chat, or email through the Help menu within Canvas after you have logged in. If you are unable to log in, please contact the Baylor ITS Help Desk at 254-710-HELP or helpdesk@baylor.edu for assistance.

5. I don’t see all of my courses. Is something wrong?

At the beginning of each semester, all new courses are unavailable until they are published by the Instructor. To see if a course is published or not, open the All Courses list located at the bottom of the Courses global navigation menu to view your full course list.

If you recently enrolled in a course, you may need to wait up to 24 hours for your course to appear in the All Courses list.

All courses and users for the current semester should be automatically loaded into Canvas. If you are a new student or employee and have just registered for courses or just been assigned to teach courses, you may have to wait for 24-hours while your account is updated. If you still receive a message that your account does not exist, please contact the Baylor ITS Help Desk at (254) 710-4357.

7. How do I make a feature request or suggest an improvement?

Faculty FAQs

1. What are notifications?

Notifications allow faculty and students to select their preferred communication channels for course activity. Canvas includes a set of default notification settings you can receive for your courses. However, you can change the default settings by setting your own notification settings. These settings only apply to you; they are not used to control how course updates are sent to other users.

NOTE: Faculty cannot control how students elect to receive notifications. By default, notifications for course announcements and conversations will be sent to a student's Baylor email address, but a student may disable these notifications. Make sure your students understand how you intend to communicate with them throughout the semester.

Canvas does not have a "Send Email" function, so it cannot be used to send emails directly to students. Instead, Canvas has its own built-in communication system accessed through the Inbox link. You can use this tool to send Canvas messages to all students in a course or to individual students within your courses.

If the recipient has not changed their notification settings, they will usually receive a copy of that message as a notification to their Baylor email address in addition to the Inbox messaging tool in Canvas. However, because each individual user in Canvas can customize their own notification settings (or opt-out of notifications entirely), the only guaranteed way to send an email to your students is to do so through Baylor's email system and not from within Canvas.

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3. Where do I put my course content?

Modules allow instructors to organize content to help control the flow of the course. Modules can be used to organize course content by weeks, units, or a different organizational structure. Modules essentially create a flow of what students should do in a course.

Each module can contain files, discussions, assignments, quizzes, and other learning materials. Module items can be added to the course from existing content or new content shells within the modules. Course content can be added to multiple modules or iterated several times throughout an individual module. Modules can be easily organized using the drag and drop feature. Elements within the modules can also be reorganized by dragging and dropping.

5. What does Publish mean?

Publishing is the way Canvas allows you to make your course available to students. Students will not see your course until it is Published.

In addition to publishing your course as a whole, you can choose to publish or unpublish various elements of your course - including Assignments, Pages, Quizzes, etc. - at any point in the semester. You cannot unpublish the entire course once students have submitted work, but you can unpublish anything within the course.

Canvas provides instructors with an easy way to import content from their previous courses into their current or upcoming courses. You can copy course content such as assignments, modules, pages, and discussions from previous Canvas courses into existing courses. To import content from another course, go into your new course and open the Settings menu, select Import Course Content, and then select Copy a Canvas Course from the drop-down menu. Then choose your original course and decide if you want to import everything or just specific content.

Note: You can only copy content from courses in which you are also enrolled as a Teacher, TA, or Designer. If you are trying to copy a course from another instructor, that instructor will need to add you into their course in one of these roles first.

The easiest way to share content with another instructor is to add them into your course as a Designer which will give that person the ability to see your content and use the Import Course Content option from within their own course.

Another option without providing direct access to your course is to create an export file and share that file with the other instructor.

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8. What are the course roles in Canvas?

In Canvas, you can easily add new users into your course in addition to those that are added automatically. Use the +People button on the People tab and select what role you want the user to have.

Students have the ability to submit assignments and interact with the course. Students have restricted permissions, but they have enough permissions to use Canvas.
Teachers are course admins and have full control over the course.
TAs have very similar permissions to teachers, but TAs do not have the ability to add or remove Teachers, TAs, Designers, or Graders.
Designers have access to create and edit course content, discussions, announcements, assignments, quizzes, and other content features. Designers cannot access grades. If users also need access to input grades, they should be listed as TA instead.
Graders have access to grades and assignments within a course, but will not have access to modify other course content. If users also need to access or modify course content, they should be listed as TA instead.
Observers are non-participating guests that can be added to a course. This role allows a user to see course content without allowing the user to participate in the course.
Communicators have the ability to manage communication within a course. They can send messages to the entire class, post announcements, and moderate discussion boards. This role can be added to an existing role like Student to provide select class leaders with greater responsibility within the class.

Baylor faculty can request Canvas login credentials for non-Baylor users like guest speakers or supervising instructors outside of Baylor. Once the requested guest account has been created, it can be added to any course by the instructor of that course.

Canvas guest accounts will not be created for new or existing faculty, staff, or students who should access Canvas using a Bear ID secured with DUO. Departments with newly-hired adjunct faculty who do not yet have an active Bear ID should work with HR for the new employee to be added as a Pending Worker in order to gain Canvas access before their start date. For guests who need access to systems other than Canvas, a department sponsor will need to request a guest Bear ID from ITS.

IMPORTANT: By requesting a guest account, you are responsible for ensuring that your guest follows the Baylor Technology Systems Usage Policy and Baylor Password Policies. You are also responsible for ensuring that the purpose of the requested guest account and the role which you assign to the guest within your course complies with Baylor's guidelines pertaining to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA). In most cases, guests should not have a course role higher than Student or Designer.

Baylor Technology Systems Usage Policy
Baylor University Password Policies
Baylor FERPA Guidelines

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10. How can I ensure test integrity and deter cheating on quizzes using Canvas?

In many cases, locking down a quiz as much as possible (ex: not allowing students to review what they got wrong on a quiz) can hinder student learning, so be sure to think through the positives, negatives, and the goals of the quiz before securing it. There is no way (in class or online) to guarantee that students aren't cheating, but to maximize quiz security there are various options you can apply your quiz settings and availability such as setting a time limit, shuffling answer choices, or creating questions groups.

Although not recommended for most online quizzes, Respondus LockDown Browser and Monitor is a proctoring solution available for Canvas quizzes.

Respondus LockDown Browser and Monitor is a proctoring solution available for Canvas quizzes. Students use their own computer and a webcam to record assessment sessions, all without leaving Canvas. Powerful analytics are used to detect suspicious behaviors during an exam session. Video segments with potential exam violations are flagged for the instructor with an overall risk level assigned to the exam session.

For smaller courses or when you prefer to have everyone complete an online quiz at the same time, Instructor Live Proctoring uses Respondus LockDown Browser to prevent cheating on the computer itself while the instructor watches students via video conferencing on platforms like Zoom or Microsoft Teams.

Cross-listing allows you to move section enrollments from individual courses and combine them into one course. This feature is helpful for instructors who teach several sections of the same course and only want to manage course data in one location. Instructors can allow students to view users in other sections or limit them to only view users in the same section. Section names do not change when they are cross-listed; the section is just moved to another course.

Cross-listing should be done while courses are unpublished. Coursework is retained with the course, not with the section enrollments, so if a published course is cross-listed, all cross-listed enrollments will lose any associated assignment submissions and grades.

Note: If you change your mind about cross-listing or accidentally cross-listed the wrong section into the wrong course, you cannot de-cross-list your own courses. A Canvas system administrator can do that for you by contacting the ITS Help Desk. Any group memberships may have to be re-established, but everything else should return to the state it was in prior to the cross-listing.

Scheduling a Zoom meeting in your Canvas course allows your students to join the meeting through your course. Your students will be able to view and join your created meetings in the Zoom tab of your course directly through Canvas without needing to login to Zoom separately.

To add Zoom to your course navigation menu, open Settings from the course menu, and click on the Navigation tab at the top. Then simply drag Zoom into the list of active course menu items, and click Save at the bottom of the screen.

We can increase specific courses from 500MB to 1000MB upon request. However, we encourage you to take advantage of the following options for additional courses:

For large files or a large quantity of files, Box provides unlimited file storage and can be linked to from within Canvas very easily. Box is fully integrated with Canvas so you can select files and folders to add as External Tool links in modules. For videos or media files, Kaltura is integrated into Canvas as Media Gallery. For scanned articles or journals, Leganto from the University Library is available through Canvas as Reading List. Digitized articles can be placed online for you allowing the library to take care of obtaining copyright permission if needed on your behalf.

15. How do I change the start and end dates for a course?

Students will only be able to access your course or receive notifications for your course if you have published your course and it is within the course start/end date range. Even if you have published your course, it will still be inaccessible to students if the current date is outside of this date range. The default start date set by Banner is 7-days prior to the official first day of class, and the default end date is 10-days after the official last day of class.

If you would like to change the default participation dates for your course that are set by Banner, you are welcome to adjust the start and end dates for your course as desired. To change these dates, simply open the Settings menu for your course to edit the Participation options on the main Course Details tab. It is not necessary to switch to the Sections tab to modify availability dates for individual sections. Next to the Participation heading, make sure Course is selected in the drop-down box, and you can easily enter a new start date or end date for your course before saving your changes using the Update Course Details button at the bottom of the page.

If you'd like all of your students to maintain access to your course after the default end date, you can easily adjust the main Course end date for your in Canvas under Settings. However, if you'd like to give just one student (or a few students) access to a prior course, you must first create a new section in your course with unique start dates and end dates. Section dates override your main course dates, and you can create as many unique sections with separate dates as needed.

17. What textbook publisher platforms have been integrated with Canvas?

Canvas has been integrated with most of the major textbook publisher platforms. For more information about each platform, please contact your the representative from your publishing company. Each publisher will provide you with their own setup instructions, support, and training necessary to use their service within Canvas.

Note: If the publisher asks you to configure the LTI integration and provides a consumer key and shared secret codes, this part of the process has most likely already been completed for you at Baylor. Please inform your representative that the LTI setup has already been completed so you can proceed to the next steps with using their tool.

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