When a canvas shell is created for your course it will have several default settings that you may wish to adjust prior to the start of your course. These can be accessed by going to "Settings" located at the bottom of your course navigation menu. The settings screen has five tabs where you can adjust your course details, sections, navigation, apps, and feature options.
Course Details
From this menu, you can add a course image, change the course name or course code, change the dates that students can access the course, and set rules for how students interact with the discussion boards, grades, and announcements.
More Options
Near the bottom of the Course Details screen, you can access extra settings by selecting "More Options" located under the course description box.
From here you can access the following options:
- Let students self-enroll by sharing with them a secret URL
- Show recent announcements in course home page (choose how many announcements are shown on home page)
- Let students attach files to discussions
- Let students create discussion topics
- Let students organize their own groups
- Hide totals in student grades summary
- Hide grade distribution graph from students
- Disable comments on announcements
- Only teachers can create, rename, and edit course pages by default
After you have updated all of your desired course settings, be sure to hit "Update Course Details" to save your work.
Best Practices for Course Settings
- We recommend changing both the name and course code to something that is more specific and easy to identify. Fox online classes use the following format for consistency with our online courses:
- Name: Course ID - Term - Section (ex. MSOM 3101 - Spring 2020 - Section 701)
- Course Code: Course name - Term - Section (ex. Operations Management - Spring 2020 - Section 701)
- It is recommended that you make your Canvas classroom available to students for two weeks prior to the start of term and at least 5 weeks after it ends. We do this by adjusting the start and end dates for the course in Canvas settings and selecting the box that says "students can only participate in the course between these dates."
- Under More Options, you can designate whether your recent announcements will be displayed at the top of your course home screen. You can toggle this option on, then change the number of announcements you want to be shown. We usually arrange for only the last announcement to be shown on the home screen (set number to 1).
- The default course navigation panel in Canvas may not be what you need or want for your course. You can customize your course navigation by selecting the Navigation tab and placing only the Canvas features you want students to see in the box at the top of the screen. Check to make sure you have your course navigation set up correctly by checking it in Student View.