Start of Semester Course Canvas Checklist

This checklist is a starting point for ensuring you’ve reviewed your Canvas settings and that your course is ready to go for student access at the start of a new semester.

Your Personal Settings #

• Set Up Account Notifications
  • To ensure you receive communication from Canvas, set up your Notification Preferences and contact method in your Canvas Account.
  • Note: Students can also customize their preferences and may choose to opt-out of certain notifications from Canvas.
• Organize your Dashboard
  • Customize which course cards are displayed on the Dashboard by “Favoriting” courses based on preference, current term, quarter, semester, etc. 
• Add or Update Your Profile Information
  • Update your Display Name, Pronouns, and Biography from the Account Settings.
  • Your profile can be a place where you reiterate your contact information and communication plans for students.

Your Course Settings #

• Simplify Course Navigation
  • For optimum course experience, hide unnecessary course navigation links.
• Review UMW Canvas Course Requirements
  • There are requirements for every UMW course around information you should be providing to students. This guide provides some tips on how to implement the Canvas requirements for courses.

• Set Up Grades
  • Verify the Gradebook is arranged according to your grading policy and your syllabus.
  • You can change your Total column to display as Points, if needed.
  • You can set Late Submission or Missing Submission policies

• Choose Home Page
  • The Home Page is the first impression of a course. Select the Home Page option that best fits the needs of your course.

• Publish Course and Content
  • Check the visibility of individual items and Modules as a whole. If you don’t see the green checkmark next to an item, it will not be visible to students. Don’t forget to publish your course.
  • You may want to use the Validate Links tool in your Course Settings to ensure there are no broken links.
  • Note: You can unpublish any Module items you don’t want students to see.
• Review Course in Student View
  • Review your course content from Student View to experience your course from a student perspective.
  • Note: Some third party tools may not have student view functionality and a course needs to be published to use student view.