Canvas K12 End of Year Best Practices | April 2022 Webinar

GUIDES AND RESOURCES

FOR ADMINS:

FOR INSTRUCTORS:

Other Resources:

WEBINAR Q&A

Q: Can you clarify what is viewable in a course that is in Past Enrollments for teachers and students?

A: Once concluded, courses enter a read-only state for all those enrolled. However, student access will depend on your account-level access restriction settings for students (Students can access courses before/after course start end date, etc…). LIkewise, once a course is concluded, if a student does have read-only access, they will continue to only be able to see published course material. This FAQ doc (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xA7jb1m3BSAbfWcWB12OuxSVe68MktHE4RVwv8lIYyg/edit) does a great job of outlining what to expect at the end of term!

Q: I have several students that transfer in during the school year. Is there a way to apply a "transfer grade" to all grades in the gradebook for a student in bulk? Who do other schools handle this? Right now we are just putting the percent grade from the school they are transferring from in every assignment completed before the student transferred.

A: Are these students using Canvas where they transfer from? If so, grades can be exported from Canvas, but they will still need to manually be added to the other course in Canvas as assignment names do not always match 100%. If it varies, I do not believe there is an easy way to accomplish this, as there isn’t always a 1:1 match of the assignment name from one course to another. They could use a CSV file to import them into their gradebook using this guide, if they feel comfortable: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-import-grades-in-the-Gradebook/ta-p/807

Q: Do term available dates affect the grade sync dates or is that set by sis? Can they send grades as long as term is “available”

A: Yes your SIS would control this as these dates only affect Canvas. We recommend matching the Canvas dates to your SIS dates for consistency.

Q: If you allow access to past courses for students, is this just a read only access?

A: Yes - it is view only access.

Q: I noticed that Instructure purchased Badgr. Will that be a paid option or included with Canvas?

A: There will still be a free version and a paid version like the former Badgr and Badgr “Pro”. Stay tuned for more details on that from our team!

Q: Re: Access to past courses, what is the setting so teachers can decide whether or not to make it visible

A: It’s in the Root level settings toward the top - “Restrict students from accessing courses after end date”

Q: Do teachers still have access to archived terms?

A: They have view-only access.

Q: If you archive all past terms where do teachers see/access them?

A: They’ll be able to access them under “Past Enrollments” in their “Courses” tab. This guide should help! https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-view-all-my-Canvas-courses-as-an-instructor/ta-p/704

Q: Any suggestions for identifying manually created courses that are still open (esp, for teachers who leave the district)?

A: You can run a courses provisioning report and see which courses are associated with the term and then manually change them as appropriate.

Q: Question, our teachers enjoy recreating their courses from the previous years materials. Would it be possible for them to transfer their content to the new year before archiving or pull from archives?

A: Teachers will still be able to access their courses even if they are organized in an “archived” term. They will still see those courses under “All Courses” in their navigation

Q: Can a teacher copy/import an archived course and if so from where do they find that archived course to do so?

A: Yes, they can go into their course settings and import course content, including content from completed courses.

Q: Please clarify: Does the teacher's access for the "term end date" have to match the 'grading period access end date' have to match for the grade passback to work after the term ends?

A: Grading Period Close date should match the Teachers can access until end date.

Q: How does a teacher copy content from a course they created from a different district and moved to our district?

A: They can export the entire course, and then import it into their course in your institution.

Q: Do you recommend that we move all prior concluded courses to an archive sub account for cleanup annually and if this is done are those courses available to the teacher to import into a new course as they have moved to a different sub-account?

A: Please check out this video for archiving terms best practices. https://k12csm.instructuremedia.com/embed/67cc3b0a-134c-4576-a85e-ab4cdd39ba9f. And yes, teachers will be able to import content from those courses into new courses, as long as they still have a teacher enrollment in both courses. Under the Import Content area of Course Settings, be sure to check “show completed courses” setting in that process.

Q: Does anyone deal with teachers wanting to use Canvas for summer school courses? We try to communicate no Canvas access, but admin/leadership overrides that and requests we create Canvas summer courses - sigh. Any suggestions?

A: This depends on if your district is using your SIS for summer school. If they’re not, you will have to allow teachers the ability to make manual courses on their own or work to co-create the courses. This is definitely more of a manual process if you don’t have a SIS import for your summer school courses.

Q: So you can move all our SIS Sub-Account for each high school into one high school sub-account?

A: Yes, that is correct!

Q: Is it possible to copy manual changes to term dates and copy them to other terms instead of having to manually change each user type each term.

A: This is a manual process to change each term.

Q: If a teacher leaves and we don't know, we can always access-export their courses to the new teachers once we know that hire? Unsure if other schools have the similar issue of more teachers than normal leaving... thanks pandemic.

A: If you are an account level admin in Canvas, you should be able to see all courses, regardless of if the user leaves. In the Commons as well!

Q: We have changes for students with names by marriage or gender transition. By doing so, it changes their email address or username. Is there work being done on eliminating the sticky fields when importing the nightly export from the SIS which has the most up to date information... without having to manually upload CSVs?

A: If data is edited in Canvas it is sticky in this case, but you can reach out to SIS Support if you need to make sure a user's name is changed in Canvas, simply put in a ticket so that it can be updated from the data in your SIS.

Q: If we archive past terms, how I'll that affect the teacher's view of past enrollments?

A: They will still be in their past enrollments, just with a different Term name (that you all gave it) - the term dates will still keep it in past enrollments.

Q: Is there a way for Admin to push desired course settings to all courses for a new term instead of asking teachers to do all those clicks?

A: A course template is a great way to provide teachers with a premade course shell that they can customize to their needs.

Q: Can I use a template with courses created by the SIS import process?

A: Yes, this is possible.

Q: Do we have to rollover to the 2022-2023 school year courses before we begin using our summer or 2022-2023 school year classes? it seems like students can access the content before the rollover.

A: If your summer courses are associated with the 22-23 SY data, you would need to set your rollover date to stop pushing this year’s data before summer school starts. If the data for summer school is associated with the 21-22 SY data, it should be there in Canvas already and maybe your SIS team will send it shortly closer to summer school start? Summer school data can be tricky, depending on how it’s scheduled in the SIS.

Q: So if my SIS sends courses to a sub account, will the template I use for that sub-account be used?

A: Yes, any courses created within your sub-accounts that have a template enabled will be created with that template.

Q: We plan on having teachers build their new year courses by manually copying content from a prior year. Any way to automate this process?

A: There isn’t necessarily a way to automate this process. Your teachers will need to import the content they want from previous courses into their new courses manually through the course settings. This is the guide to show them how to do this, if you need it: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-copy-content-from-another-Canvas-course-using-the/ta-p/1012

Q: Are we able to continue to process grade passback to the 2021-2022 school year AFTER we rollover to the new 2022-2023 school year?

A:No, once you rollover to the new school year Canvas will sync with the 2022-2023 data from your SIS.

Q: Is an easier way to delete graduated students on the road map?

A: This is something that typically varies from institution to institution. Generally speaking, users, enrollments, etc… are all based on the information that is being sent to Canvas via SIS or CSV. Largely, keeping student accounts in Canvas is a reflection of the need to keep those accounts/enrollments within Canvas for historical purposes. That said, we do not believe there have been any recent developments on Canvas’ side to change this process.

Q: Is there a way to change the term access dates for each term all at once?

A You can use the terms.csv file upload: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Admin-Guide/How-do-I-format-CSV-text-files-for-uploading-SIS-data-into-a/ta-p/216

Q: Wait! Navigation settings stay in templates! Include instructions in notes please!

A: Course Templates Release Notes 2021-05-15 [Canvas]

Canvas Course Navigation Menu [University of Wisconsin System]

Content Distribution Comparison [Canvas]

Q: Do we have to rollover to the 2022-2023 school year courses before we begin using our summer or 2022-2023 school year classes? It seems like students can access the content before the rollover.

A: If summer school is part of your 2021/2022 school year then you will complete the rollover after summer school has concluded. If it’s part of your 2022/2023 school year then you will complete the rollover before summer school begins.

Q: Are there plans to allow customized term dates for sub-accounts? Our High Schools need extended access dates for students and teachers for credit retrieval.

A: Sub-accounts can select Grading Periods that have been created within the main account, which fall within a Term that has been made in the main account. If you have term start and end dates that are pushed into Canvas by your SIS then we do not recommend editing them for any of your accounts. For more guidance, please contact your CSM team.

How do I add a new term in an account?

How do I add grading periods in an account?