Here are some things to remember about Canvas

The short list (No explanation, just the things to do)

• Overall tips

• Canvas is designed to provide content, information, resources etc. for your students to accomplish the tasks of meeting your teaching standards.  It is not just a gradebook program.  
• Canvas is based on content being entered prior to a due date.  For example, a Canvas assignment is posted on a Monday with content (i.e. instructions, notes, links to websites, videos, etc.) that pertain to and provide resources to the student to complete the given assignment.  The student will be submitting some work to indicate knowledge gained about the given topic or standards the student is asked to learn.  The due date could be Monday, Tuesday or any other future date.
• Remember, entering due dates in before they arrive allows the students to see what assignments in all their classes are due and when they need to be completed.  Putting in an assignment after the due date defeats this purpose.  
• Enter assignments before they are due.  The system works better in that mode.

• Assignment tips

• Make sure your assignment name is 30 characters or less
• Be sure to enter a due date for all assignments
• Make sure each assignment name is unique.  
• When creating any assignment or quiz, double check to make sure the “SIS box” is checked
• If you want Assignment Groups to corelate to Categories in Powerschool, make sure the Categories are setup in Powerschool and the name is exactly the same as the assignment group name. [Do not change the Homework category or the Quiz category in Powerschool gradebook]
• If you weight grades, see below.
• If you delete an assignment in Canvas AFTER you have posted that assignment to Powerschool, you will need to go into your Powerschool gradebook and delete the assignment from Powerschool gradebook.

• Submission Tips

• Students using iPads can submit multiple files for a single assignment.  However, all the files for the assignment need to be selected and submitted at the same time.  If a student submits one file then later submits a second file to the same assignment, only the second assignment will be visible for the teacher.

• Gradebook Tips

• When looking at assignments, mouse over the assignment name.  A little drop down arrow will appear in the lower right corner of the screen.  Clicking on this drop down arrow will provide the following options:

• Assignment Details -- Takes you to the screen where you setup assignments
• Speedgrader -- Takes you right to Speedgrader for this assignment
• Message Students Who… -- Allows you to send messages to those students that:

• Haven’t submitted the assignment yet
• Haven’t been graded
• Scored less than
• Scored more than

• This will automatically start a conversation message with all of those students that apply to one of the 4 selected areas above.

• Set Default Grade -- Use to set the default grade.  One use is to assign a “0” to all of those that failed to submit an assignment.  Be careful.  If a student has submitted an assignment yet it has not been graded, the system will usually assign a “0” to those that have submitted.

• Curve Grades -- Use at your own risk

• Download Submissions -- This will take all students submissions for the assignments and  put them into a single ZIP file and download them to your computer for offline access.  Each student submission is identifiable once downloaded

• Mute Assignment -- This disables the students from seeing their grades on this assignment.  This should be used on a temporary basis, only to hide grades while you are in the middle of grading the assignment.  Do not use this as a permanent way to hide a grade.  It affects what is displayed as the final grade in the gradebook.

• Boxes highlighted in pink are assignments that were submitted late.
• Boxes highlighted in a light yellow have a submission that has not been graded

• Extra Credit

• There are two ways to enter extra credit in Canvas.

• One is to create an assignment in Canvas worth 0 points.  Enter the amount of points you wish for the student to receive and then post assignment(s) to Powerschool.  These will show up in Powerschool with no problem.
• The second method has an extra step to it. This method deals with the case where you have extra credit attached to an assignment and thus the points possible could be a percentage greater than 100%.  Here is what you will need to do:  (In this example, we have an assignment worth 25 points with 5 points of extra credit)

• Create the assignment in Canvas and give it the points possible (25 points for our example).
• Post the assignment to Powerschool BEFORE entering any grades into the assignment.
• Once the assignment has been posted to Powerschool, go into your PowerTeacher gradebook and locate the assignment.
• Double click on the assignment to display the assignment options.  Underneath category, the points possible (25 in this case) should be displayed next to “Points Possible:”.  To the right of that, in the “Extra Points:” field, enter the extra credit points possible (5 in this example)
• Click on “Save” to save the changes to the PowerTeacher gradebook.
• Now you can enter grades into Canvas and post them in the usual manner.

• Quizzes with iPads

• The Canvas app for the iPad is not fully functional at the moment.  There are several things it will work for but there are limitations.

• The following question types are supported on the iPad:

• Multiple Choice
• Multiple Answer
• Fill in the Blank
• True/False
• Essay

• The following quiz types are unsupported:

• One-Question-at-a-time
• Passcode restrictions
• IP address restrictions

• If you use an unsupported question type or an unsupported quiz type, you may have to use the Safari browser on the iPad and use the web version of Canvas to take the quiz.

• Conversation tips

• When sending a message to your entire class or group, select the “Send individual messages” checkbox.  Not only will the student get a message that comes from you, their reply will be directed to you and not the entire class.
• Remember, clicking on the address icon to the right of the “To” field will bring up various sub groups of the class to send to.  Based on what you are sending, you could select just students, just teachers, or individuals.

• Grading Tips

• There is a way to delete highlighting, strikethroughs, etc. when using annotations (comment piece) in SpeedGrader.  For example, if you use the strikethrough tool to strike out a line of text and now do not want that there, click once on the affected text and press the Delete key.  You should get a confirmation about deleting the annotation.  Click on Yes and it should be removed.

The longer list (Explanation as to why things are functioning the way they do)

Posting grades to Powerschool from Canvas

• Character Limits -- Powerschool has a 30 character assignment name limit.  Canvas does not have that limit so you can create an assignment with a name larger than 30 characters.  When you go to post grades, Canvas runs a quick check to see if all assignment names are under 30 characters.  Any assignment that it finds with more than 30 characters will be flagged for you to change.  Make the changes to the names of the assignments when this box comes up.  You can change the names in the dialog box and the names will change in Canvas.  If you click on the “Ignore” button, any of the assignments with an error will not post.  Also, any assignment that does not have a name issue but is after the one that does will not post either.

• Example:  Let’s say you have 10 assignments.  The 4th assignment has a name that is too long.  The other 9 are fine.  If you click on “Ignore” when posting, the first 3 assignments will post. Assignment 4 and the six assignments after 4 will not post.  Only 3 assignments will be posted.

• Due Dates -- Powerschool has to have a date associated with each assignment.  It uses the due date from Canvas for its date.  Canvas will warn you when posting if an assignment is missing a due date.  Enter a due date if it is missing.  If you do not or click on “Ignore”, the assignment(s) will not be posted.

• Checkbox for SIS -- We have this set to be checked by default whenever creating an assignment.  However we have identified some areas when creating assignments where this does not get checked automatically.  Canvas is working on this problem.  In the meantime, when creating an assignment, double check to make sure this box about posting to your SIS is checked.  

• When creating an assignment using the “+ Assignment” button, the SIS box is checked.
• If you add an assignment through the calendar, the SIS box will NOT be checked unless you choose “More Options” when creating the assignment.  [This issue has been given to Canvas and they are working on it]
• If you add an assignment by clicking on the “+” sign to the right of an Assignment group, the SIS box will not be checked.

• Quiz unchecked for SIS by default -- We have this set to be checked by default for assignments.  However, we are not 100% sure it is automatically checked for quizzes.  Make sure to check this box when creating quizzes.

• In the Canvas gradebook, a (-) for a grade entry will transfer as a “0” when you post grades once the due date has been reached.  This is logical.  If a student is late turning in an assignment, they have a “0” until they turn it in and you assign the appropriate credit.

Assignment Groups vs. Categories

• In Canvas, in the Assignment section, you can make Assignment groups.  For example, a group for assignments, a group for Projects, a group for quizzes, etc.  Powerschool uses Categories.  There are 4 default Categories in Powerschool gradebook.  They are Homework, Quiz, Test, Project.

• Assignments in Canvas go to the category of Homework in Powerschool by default.
• Quizzes go to the category of Quiz.
• If you create an assignment group in Canvas and you want that to also be a category in Powerschool, that can be done.  Any assignment group you create in Canvas AND want to have in Powerschool, you must create the category in Powerschool.  (The name of the category in Powerschool must be EXACTLY the same as it is in Canvas)

Weighting

• If you weight your grades, you must setup category weighting in Powerschool gradebook in order for it to know to calculate the weights when the grades come to Powerschool.  Contact the TechDept for further information when weighting grades.  Weighting grades does require more work on the teacher’s part to use.

Extra Credit

• When you create an assignment that has extra credit possible in it, PowerTeacher is set to not allow one to enter points for a student that exceeds the maximum points possible.  It is a data safety control feature.  Therefore, you create the assignment in Canvas with the points possible, post the assignment to Powerschool, go into the PowerTeacher Gradebook and enter the extra credit points for the assignment.  Canvas has no restriction on how many points you enter for a particular student on any given assignment.  This procedure allows for the two systems to communicate scores properly.

Tips when entering assignments

• Be sure to use unique names between assignments, quizzes, discussions, etc.  Canvas allows for duplication of assignment names.  Powerschool does not allow duplications.  Be careful between assignments and quizzes.  It would not be too hard to create an assignment with a given name and use the exact same name for a quiz.  If you do that, only one will post.  

• Examples where duplication could be easy to do.  You have an assignment called Weekly Points.  This is an “assignment” every week.  If you call each week’s assessment of points earned “Weekly Points”, only one will post.  Differentiate the assignments somehow.  For example, Weekly Points 1, Weekly Points 2, Weekly Points 828, Weekly Points 904, etc.

• Remember, no more than 30 characters in the assignment name.  Try to keep your assignment names short but not too short.  You still want the name to convey what the task was about.