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Beginning of Course Canvas Checklist

Table of Contents

The Beginning of Course 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 course term.

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.

Course Settings #

  • Simplify Course Navigation
  • Review UMW Canvas Course Requirements
    • There are a couple of requirements for UMW courses around information you should be providing to students. We have a guide to provide some guidance 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 visibility of individual items and Modules as a whole. 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 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.
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