EdTech

Canvas FAQ

Canvas FAQ

Canvas

Faculty, Staff, and Students can access Canvas via the Canvas icon in the MySMC portal page. 

Yes, one of the strengths of Canvas is its mobile apps for students and teachers. Students commonly use the app to get notifications of assignments due or graded. While best practice is to use the web site for most teaching tasks, most can be accomplished via the teacher app.

Canvas Studio is a great communication tool that allows instructors and students to actively collaborate through video and audio media and integrates seamlessly with Canvas. 

The Instructional Design Team currently offers two Canvas course templates, each of which provides a unique standard for design and format. With the increase in online course offerings and use of Canvas to enhance face-to-face learning environments, adoption of these templates can save faculty time on course development and supports the effort to ensure that courses at Saint Mary's College of California are accessible to all learners. Each template also aligns to a globally recognized set of quality standards for online courses,Quality Matters Rubric. 

Template 1: The Gael Template. This Canvas template has a simple design approach. This template's 'Home Page' includes a brief introduction, instructor contact information, office hours, and steps on how to start the course for easy navigation. This template includes text headers and module content is broken down into 1 simple page for lecture materials, readings etc. Whether you plan to create a repository of resources or an interactive online learning community, this template provides structure and essential elements to support students. Recommended modality use for face-to-face courses and hybrid courses.

Template 2: The LaSallian Template: This course template contains many of the same pedagogical elements as The Gael Template, however it contains more enhanced features and requires more technical skills. It varies from the other template in a couple ways. First, The 'Home Page' is a welcome page that introduces the students to the course and instructor. The Welcome Page offers navigation buttons to easily access different sections of the course. Second, the 'Start Here' and Module pages are longer and are separated into pages for each category of content to reduce the amount of information on each page, which helps students retain the material more efficiently. Recommended modality use for online asynchronous, online synchronous, or online blended courses.

For more information on course templates, check out the SMC Quickstarts - Course Templates Guide.

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