General Tools for Course Management
Canvas has built in tools to help you organize your courses and keep track of your communication with students. This page highlights how to customize your dashboard and provide quick overviews of the Calendar, Inbox, and notification tools.
Course Management Tools
Courses
When you select the Courses icon in the Global Navigation Menu, Canvas provides quick links to the courses that appear on your Dashboard as your "All Courses" list. This option is the quickest way to jump from course to course if you have multiple courses.
You can also use the "All Courses" list to customize which courses you see on your Dashboard. View the "Customize Your Dashboard" video to learn more:
Calendar
The Canvas calendar reflects all events and assignments you build into each of your courses. You can also use the Calendar to set up appointments and even have students sign up through that system. We will explore how the tools in Canvas, including the Calendar, are integrated later in this module. For now, know that you can use the Calendar feature to view or add assignments, events, or appointments within all of your courses and that any event, assignment, or appointment with a due date will automatically appear within your Calendar.
Inbox/Canvas Conversations
The Canvas Inbox is not intended to replace your email, but its functions are similar to email. Although you access your Canvas messages by going to your Inbox, Canvas' messaging tool is called Conversations. Canvas Conversations makes it easy to manage your course-related messaging by course, by section, by group and/or by student without having to know their email addresses, without having to mix your course email in with your other email, and without having to create course distribution lists.
Here are some of the reasons to consider using the Conversations for course-related correspondence:
- You can send messages to an entire course, just a section, or a single student.
- You will know exactly which course a student is enrolled in when they email you.
- Conversations are threaded and kept organized by student name.
- You will see student profile pictures (if they have one) when you read their messages.
- Your messages can be written in text or you can record and send a video or audio message.
- All messages sent via the Gradebook are archived in your Conversations Inbox.
- All SpeedGrader assignment comments are archived in your Conversations Inbox.
Manage Notifications
You will receive notifications anytime changes or updates occur in your Course Activities, Discussions, Conversations/Inbox, Calendar, Groups, and Administrative Alerts! Manage your notifications by setting up preferences for where your notifications will go and how frequently you will receive them.
Where do you want your notifications to go?
By default, your notifications are sent to your UNC faculty email. You can add additional email addresses in your Account Settings to control where your notifications go.
How frequently do you want to receive notifications?
Choose how frequently you receive notifications for either all of your courses or per individual course. You can also set the frequency of each notification: immediate notification, no notifications, or a daily or weekly digest of what is occurring in your course.
Announcements
Announcements let you post announcements in your course to notify students of upcoming changes or significant course items or events.
Select the information icons in the below Announcements Redesign Navigation Interactive to learn where certain features and functionality options are located.
Reflection - Part I Complete
You should now be ready to go into your own Canvas account and try out these tasks for yourself while they are still fresh in your mind.
- Navigate throughout your dashboard (Review: Orientation to the Global View)
- Personalize your photo and biography (Review: Personalizing Your Canvas Account)
- Customize which courses you see on your Dashboard (Review: current page)
When you are ready to move on, we will look at a specific Canvas course and how you can facilitate Student-Instructor engagement and establish instructor presence.