Introduction
CourseWorks (Canvas) is Columbia University's learning management system. Your CourseWorks site can serve as your virtual classroom, a home base to communicate and build community with students, engage students, and also a tool you can use to assess and give feedback to students.
Note: You will often hear CourseWorks and Canvas used interchangeably. Canvas is technically the brand name of the learning management system. CourseWorks is Columbia University's name for its specific setup of Canvas.
Logging In
Setting Up Your UNI
Your University Network ID (UNI) is a unique identifier assigned to all university employees and students. Your UNI is attached to your Columbia email address, as well as all other systems you will use at CBS. You will need your UNI to log into Canvas and to participate in most training activities. Further, you are expected to use your Columbia email for internal communications. Please visit the link above to learn about mail forwarding and to request your UNI (if you do not currently have one). You can also reach out to your department for more information.
Logging Into CourseWorks (Canvas)
You can log into CourseWorks using your Columbia UNI and password at courseworks.columbia.edu. Once you're logged in, you'll be taken to your dashboard, where you can see all your courses. You can also access your courses through the My Courses or Courses buttons on the left-hand navigation.
Communication and Community Building
Consider what you want to communicate with your students and how you might use various tools to do so. You might consider how the learning environment you are building in Canvas facilitates and encourages communication and collaboration among instructor and students.
Home/Syllabus
By default, the CBS Homepage links to the Syllabus tool in Canvas. The syllabus is a detailed outline of expectations and subjects covered within a course. It is a valuable resource for both you and the students. Ideally, a syllabus is a formal document that acts as a contract between the students and the instructor and a reference guide for all components related to the course.
You can use the Syllabus Template as a starting point in developing your syllabus before putting it on your course site.
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Announcements
The Announcements tool allows you to send class-wide updates, ideal for reminders or changes in plans. Students will receive notifications when announcements are sent; how they receive these notifications depends on their individual notification settings. Announcements also appear on the Announcements page, which is hidden when there are no announcements.
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Mailtool
Mailtool allows instructors and TAs to send emails through CourseWorks to individual students or the entire class. Mailtool was developed by CUIT, and is not a native tool to Canvas. Using Mailtool to send emails to your class is preferable to the native email tool in Canvas (Inbox) because with Mailtool, students receive the email regardless of their individual notification settings. There is also a record of emails sent by all instructors and TAs in the course.
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Discussions
The Discussions tool allows students to engage with each other in an asynchronous manner. Students can reply directly to the prompt or to other students. Discussions can be graded or ungraded.
Tip: While most people type text into discussions, students can also upload video or audio. This is something you may want to encourage, as it may be easier or more natural for some students to contribute using those formats.
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Groups
The Groups tool in Canvas can help foster student collaboration. By organizing students into groups, they can engage in focused discussions and collectively submit assignments. Group creation and management can be conveniently handled through the People page. Whether assigning groups manually, employing CourseWorks' automatic sorting feature, or enabling students to choose their own groups, the flexibility caters to various instructional needs.
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Assessment and Feedback
Great courses should have a mix of diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments.
Diagnostic: Diagnostic assignments are for you to "diagnose" benchmarks of skill, readiness, and understanding.
Formative: Low-stakes assignments carry little-to-no grade. They are meant as checkpoints to resonance and application of the material. Additionally, completing formative assessments yields meaningful and specific feedback from the instructor prior to completing a higher-stakes assessment.
Summative: Evaluation of student learning at the completion of a major instructional unit (usually at the midterm or conclusion). Usually, the work is compared against previous work (on the subject) for reinforcement or mastery.
Below are some tools you may use to create these types of assessments and give more effective, engaging, and timely feedback.
Assignments
Canvas Assignments is a great centralized location in which to collect student work. Students can submit work in a variety of formats and assignments can be graded or ungraded. Instead of receiving digitally completed homework in the form of individual emails from each student for each assignment, you can create a Canvas Assignment to collect the work of all students. You can utilize Rubrics, the Speedgrader and annotation tools to grade assignments and give feedback. You can also set up group assignments and peer reviews.
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Quizzes
The Quizzes tool in CourseWorks serves well for formative or summative assessments. Some available question types include multiple-choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, or others where there's a single correct answer. CourseWorks can automatically grade quizzes structured with these question types. You can also utilize the quizzes feature to design exams with essay-style, short-answer questions, or file uploads. Quizzes can be used as formative assessments as you can give feedback to students at a question level.
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- Create a Quiz Canvas Guide (please be sure to use Classic Quizzes)
- Quiz Options Canvas Guide
Speedgrader
Speedgrader is a Canvas tool that allows you to grade assignments, quizzes, and discussions in one place. You can leave comments and annotations for students and submit their grades to the Gradebook.
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Rubrics
Rubrics help instructors clarify expectations for student work and provide consistent, transparent feedback. When well-designed, rubrics enable fair and efficient grading across assignments, exams, projects, and other assessments.
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Gradebook
The Gradebook, called "Grades" in CourseWorks, enables instructors to easily view and enter grades for students. The grade display options include points, percentages, complete/incomplete, or letter grades. Only graded assignments, graded discussions, graded quizzes, and graded surveys that have been published display in the Gradebook.
Keep in mind that the default Grade Posting Policy for the Gradebook is "Automatically Post Grades." We recommend changing this to "Manually Post Grades" so you can control when students see their grades (and not before you've finished grading).
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Content and Organization
Organizing your content and having streamlined course navigation improves the overall learning experience and promotes learner success by allowing students to focus on the course content rather than getting bogged down in navigational challenges. It enhances usability by making materials and resources easily accessible, supports learner orientation within the course structure, creates consistency and predictability to reduce cognitive load, improves accessibility for diverse learners, and aligns with instructional design principles like chunking and scaffolding for logical progression through the content.
Course Navigation
You can edit the left-hand course navigation to streamline what students see. It is helpful to consider what tools you want students to see. Navigate to Student View to see what students see and to know what tools are hidden by default from student view.
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Files
Files can serve as a central repository to house course files such as syllabi, excel spreadsheets, PDF files, PPTs and readings. Files can be placed as links in Modules, Assignments, Quizzes and Pages. Files and folders are arranged in alphabetical order and cannot be rearranged.
You can set restrictions and manage access to files. CourseWorks courses have a size limit so we recommend storing video files in Echo360 rather than in Files.
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Pages
Pages allow you to write your own text and provide information to your students. In addition to text, you can include images, videos, and links to other content.
When creating pages, keep the formatting simple and keep in mind accessibility standards.
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Modules
Modules are organizational units that allow instructors to group and structure course content into units or topics. They help students understand relationships between content and easily locate relevant information. Modules can house various types of course materials such as assignments, discussions, pages, and quizzes.
An Introduction module in your course can help students orient themselves to course expectations and navigation.
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Getting to Know Your Students
It is important to get to know the students you are teaching. By understanding your students, you can tailor teaching methods to their unique needs, fostering a supportive learning environment where they feel valued and motivated to engage with the material, ultimately promoting academic success and well-being.
SeatGEN
SeatGEN is a tool that can be used to build and print seating charts and print class rosters, student profiles, flash cards and tent cards for all students enrolled in a particular course. Note: Students must opt-in to have their photo and background information shared on SeatGEN. During Orientation, students are strongly encouraged to opt-in and are given instructions on how to do so within their CampusGroups profile.
SeatGEN is one option for tracking attendance and participation. Faculty, TAs, and divisional staff may access the "New seatGEN" tab within the Canvas course navigation menu. Students do not have access to SeatGEN.
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Photo Roster
The Photo Roster tool is a Columbia-created tool for Canvas and only individuals with the roles of Teacher or Enhanced TA may access this tool.
From the Photo Roster, you can view and print all enrolled students’ photos, view students’ advisor information and email, and view the class roster as a series of flash cards. You can also export the student roster as a .csv file.
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You@Columbia
You@Columbia is a tool built by Columbia University that allows students to record their name pronunciations and pronouns.
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Additional Support
Please contact [email protected] if you would like additional training or have any questions related to teaching with Canvas. Each course is also overseen by a relevant division and can often be your first point of contact.
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- Divisional Chairs and Administrators
- Course Administration FAQs
- The CBS Classroom: This page contains resources that can help faculty who are teaching the first time at CBS, such as links to the syllabus template.