Canvas FAQs

All Canvas courses should be published the day before classes begin, ideally no later than 11:59pm the evening before, or as required by your school. To publish a course, click the ‘Publish’ button on the course card from your Canvas Dashboard, or navigate to the course homepage and click the ‘Publish’ button under ‘Course Status,’ located in the upper right corner of the home page.

CETL is unable to copy a Canvas course or course content for you. If you need access to another instructor's course in order to initiate the copy, please contact CETL at canvas@reynolds.edu with that instructor's or Dean's permission. Please follow the instructions as outlined in the following instructional guides:

Canvas: Import Course Content / Course Copy ( Video | Google Doc )

Please take extra caution and follow the outlined steps completely. Failure to abide by all steps will result in duplicated or missing content, including overwriting critical course blueprint settings pertaining to the current semester, adding extra work to prepare your Canvas course.

If you would like to request your courses be combined into one Canvas course site you must first email your Dean for authorization. They will then email canvas@reynolds.edu with their approval. All requests to combine courses should be received no later than 10 business days prior to the start of the regular session, 15-week courses. Shorter semester sessions, 7 and 5-week courses, typically should be received no later than 7 business days.

More than likely a course copy was initiated in your course, but the due dates have not been adjusted yet. There are several ways to adjust your due dates. We recommend either using the Canvas calendar to drag and drop the assignments to their proper due dates, or use the batch ‘Edit Assignments Dates’ option from the Assignments index page.

These dates vary per academic calendar, but generally Fall course sites are created the week of the Fourth of July holiday, Spring courses are created around November 1, and Summer courses are created during Spring Break.

In order to help ensure a consistent experience for our students limited modifications to the course menu have been approved. Adding publisher content such as McGraw-Hill, Cengage, etc., or other approved LTIs may be added to the course menu. Please contact canvas@reynolds.edu if you have specific questions.

In order to ensure that you will properly see your courses in Canvas, it is imperative that you verify your ‘Preferred Email Address’ and confirm it is your @reynolds.edu address in the Student Information System (SIS). Failure to select your @reynolds.edu address as your preferred email will result in not being able to see your courses listed in Canvas. If you would like to add an additional email address as a contact method in Canvas, please follow these instructions.

To display active courses on the Canvas Dashboard students must favorite, or star, their courses from the ‘All Courses’ list. From the Global Navigation, click the ‘Courses’ link, then click the ‘All Courses’ link. To favorite a course, click the star next to the course. Courses with filled stars show the course is a favorite and will appear on the Courses link and Canvas Dashboard. More information and instructions can be found in the following guide.

If the student has done this and you have verified that the student is ‘active’ in your course under the ‘People’ link please have the student contact canvas@reynolds.edu. If the student is showing as ‘inactive’ under the 'People' link in your course, please have the student contact Enrollment Services.

Instructors should first confirm with their program head that they are listed as the 'instructor of record' in SIS.

To display active courses on the Canvas Dashboard instructors must favorite, or star, their courses from the ‘All Courses’ list. From the Global Navigation, click the ‘Courses’ link, then click the ‘All Courses’ link. To favorite a course, click the star next to the course. Courses with filled stars show the course is a favorite and will appear on the Courses link and Canvas Dashboard. More information and instructions can be found in the following guide.

Classic Quizzes: Use ' Moderate Quiz ' located under ‘Related Items’ on the quiz to give a student or multiple students extra time.

New Quizzes: Use the ‘ Moderate’ tab on the New Quiz to give a student or multiple students extra time.

Classic Quizzes: Use ' Moderate Quiz' located under ‘Related Items’ on the quiz to give a student or multiple students an extra attempt.

New Quizzes: Use the ‘ Moderate’ tab on the New Quiz to give a student or multiple students an extra attempt.

By default, Canvas will assign your assignment to everyone in your course. To assign a different due date to an individual student, click the ‘+Add’ button at the bottom of the ‘Assign’ field on the assignment settings page, then type or search for the student’s name. Review the ‘Assign to Student’ section of the following instructions for more details.

As long as the proper paperwork has been filed for an 'I' grade and the 'I' grade has been added in SIS and you do not have an End Date under course settings, the student will still be able to access your course.

Your course homepage was built by CETL as a part of the Reynolds Canvas blueprint. It has been designed with consistency in mind, aiding students in locating important course content across all their courses at Reynolds. Instructors should not edit or alter the course homepage in any way. However, you are encouraged to apply your creative course design skills to the rest of your courses, particularly to course pages, assignments, discussion, and assessments.

Student enrollment is turned on approximately one week prior to the course start date to allow for revisions in student schedules. You can see your official course roster in SIS.

Please report any issues or modification requests to canvas@reynolds.edu.

In order for a student to be added they must actively enroll in your course through the normal enrollment process. If you would like to add another faculty member as a teacher or TA you can email canvas@reynolds.edu and request they be added.

In Canvas Studio, uploaded media includes auto-generated captions by default. The automatic tool uses technology to transcribe media file language with 85% accuracy. Once you have added/uploaded media to Studio, follow these instructions to request automatic captions. Instructors are strongly encouraged to review and edit their captions as necessary in order to assure accuracy, masking audible content accessible to people who can’t hear, and more comprehensible to everyone.

You can add alternative text to an image via the Rich Content Editor when editing a page. Select the image then ‘Image Options’ to open the menu. Enter the alternative text in the ‘Alt Text’ field. By default, the alterative text field displays the image file name, which isn’t accessible. If the image is decorative and does not require alt text, select the ‘Decorative Image’ option.