The Canvas Calendar allows students to schedule appointments within defined time periods. Scenarios can range from individual students choosing a time to meet in your office, all the way to sign-up sheets for who wants to attend a field trip event.
The Scheduler is a tool within the Calendar which allows the instructor to set up days and times when students can make reservations. For the official description check out “What is the Scheduler?” The Scheduler is an optional tool that we do have available here at MiraCosta College.
Set up office hour time windows, and allow students to reserve one or more half-hour appointment times.
Set up a scheduled event, and allow up to twenty students to reserve seats at that event.
For the first scenario, you’d want to set up your appointment group with wide time periods, such as from 10 am until 4 pm on Friday. Then you’d want to tell the appointment group to apply to any number of your courses, so that all your students will be able to reserve into the same appointment group. (This will ensure no dual bookings!) Finally you would tell the appointment group to divide into equal slots of 30 minutes. You’d probably want to limit students to attend a single session, else you could end up with a student reserving multiple time slots in a row.
For the second scenario, you’d set up your appointment group for the times of the event, such as from noon to 2 pm on Saturday. If this event is at an odd location be sure to specify that in the Location field. If this event can only support twenty students, set the Limit each time slot to 20 users.
In each of these scenarios, once you have the appointment group set up, students would follow the same procedure to reserve time. They can go into the Calendar in Canvas, and click the Scheduler button, then click on the appointment group, and finally click on the time slot they want to attend. This process is also detailed in “How do I sign up for an appointment using the Scheduler?”
And if you want to message students about signing up using the scheduler, you can go into your appointment group, copy the address from the address bar of your browser, and send that link to your students. If they click the link, they’ll be prompted to log in to Canvas, and then should be taken directly to the appointment group. But of course they can always navigate to the Calendar and click the Scheduler button too.
MiraCosta’s Canvas system may be accessed at miracosta.instructure.com – faculty and students log in with their SURF username and password. You’ll also find a button to log into Canvas at miracosta.edu/online. See below for many great resources to help you learn to use Canvas, and earn MiraCosta Flex credit along the way.
MiraCosta Canvas tutorials – locally created guides on key Canvas features and how Canvas works with SURF
24-7 Canvas hotline for faculty: 1-833-345-2890
Questions about how Canvas works specifically at MiraCosta? Contact Karen Turpin, Online Instructional Technologist: kturpin@miracosta.edu / 760-795-6787
Do you think Canvas might be down or experiencing errors? Check the Canvas Status website.
Canvas Course Design (video, 50 min.) 1/13/17 In-person workshop presented by Billy Gunn
Flex Credit is available for viewing MiraCosta workshop videos. This is a pre-approved activity (in the Other Activities category Conferences and Presentations).
Canvas Accessibility Workshops
Please refer to the following resources to assist with Canvas accessibility:
What does a Canvas class look like? Well, there are a number of approaches to designing a class in Canvas. Check out some short videos by MiraCosta faculty. And then go behind the scenes – in Canvas – to learn more!
Canvas Student Orientation – this open Canvas course can also be a good way for faculty to introduce themselves to Canvas from the student perspective. Faculty are also welcome to link directly to this resource within their own Canvas classes to help their students learn key features of Canvas.
Flex Credit is available for time spent engaging with any of the above resources. This is a pre-approved activity (in the Other Activities category Conferences and Presentations).
And often starting with a Google search is the quickest path to finding something really useful!
Again, Flex Credit is available for time spent engaging with any of the above resources.
Canvas Faculty and Student Support
MiraCosta’s Online Education department provides support for faculty using Canvas, and MiraCosta’s Student Help Desk provides support for students in Canvas classes.
When local support is unavailable, including evenings and weekends, Canvas provides technical support for faculty and students at the following phone numbers.
Faculty: 1-833-345-2890 Students: 1-877-884-1673
Canvas has excellent “Getting Started” guides for faculty and for students. See above for more faculty training resources.
Faculty and students can also create a helpdesk ticket for support from within Canvas by clicking on the Tech Help icon and then selecting Report a Problem.
Many other LTI tools (“Apps”) are available – some have been made available institutionally and you can see those in the Navigation tab of Course Settings; others can be enabled by faculty individually; you can see those in the Apps tab of Course Settings. See the Canvas Guide on the App Center to learn more.
Workarounds
Canvas does not have a dedicated journaling tool. It is possible to use Canvas tools to provide students with a place to submit their writings or reflections at various points throughout the semester. This is done by creating a series of assignments within the same assignment group.
MiraCosta College took on a comprehensive Course Management System evaluation in spring 2016 that led to the selection of Canvas. The college then transitioned away from Blackboard and Moodle and to Canvas during 2016-17 and 2017-18. Starting in summer 2018, Canvas is the sole supported course management system for MiraCosta classes.
One of MiraCosta’s early Canvas adopters, music professor Christy Coobatis, says this about using Canvas in spring 2017:
Has been an extremely successful semester because of it!
Both students and I loved the program.
I have more and clearer communication than ever before!
Another, Adult High School professor Julie Cord, says:
I am in LOVE with Canvas and I truly feel it has helped support my students and my teaching already in very substantial ways.
Hello! You are among over 130 faculty who have published courses in MiraCosta’s Canvas system. I hope the semester is starting well for you and your students, and just wanted to reach out to you with a few items.
Faculty Support Resources
Hopefully you are well aware of all the resources linked at https://tic.miracosta.edu/campus-teaching-technologies/canvas/. In particular, our Canvas Transition Team faculty are making themselves available in the TIC multiple times over the first few weeks of the semester – check out their schedule at the top of the TIC Canvas page. Feel free to drop in and chat about any questions/challenges you may have.
We’re also hearing good things about the 24×7 Canvas support available at 1-877-884-1673. Remember, this comes directly from Canvas, so they don’t necessarily have all the answers when it comes to MiraCosta-specific questions (such as how students get added to your class). But they are great for any general questions and guidance about the use of Canvas.
Student Support Resources
Please recommend the Student Help Desk to your students. They can provide live support that is very MiraCosta-specific. When the Student Help Desk is not available, students may also use the 24×7 Canvas support number. Also, please reinforce with your students the ease of access to these resources simply by clicking the Help item at the bottom of the main Canvas menu (the blue menu at far left once logged into Canvas). There are also two more Canvas-specific MiraCosta student success workshops this semester:
Today (Feb. 2), 5-6 pm in CLC 133 – Student Help Desk introduction to Canvas (by Jesse Leon)
Monday, Feb. 6, 12-1 pm in OC 1201 – Student Orientation to Online Learning in Canvas (by Jim Julius)
Student Names in Canvas
Please note that unlike Blackboard and Moodle, students are not able to customize their first name from within Canvas. If a student wishes to have a different first name displayed in Canvas for any reason, they just need to stop by A&R and fill out a “Preferred Name Change” request.
Your Feedback
As you are among the first MiraCosta faculty to use Canvas for a class, your feedback is very valuable – as is your students’. Please feel free to contact me at any time with any feedback you may have about Canvas – positive, negative, or anything in-between! I’m especially interested to hear what support resources have been of greatest value to you as you’ve been learning to use Canvas, and what suggestions you have for adding to/improving MiraCosta’s workshops and support offerings.
MiraCosta’s Online Education department provides support for faculty using Canvas, and MiraCosta’s ITS Help Desk provides support for students in Canvas classes. When local support is unavailable, including evenings and weekends, Canvas provides technical support for faculty and students at the following phone numbers.
Faculty: 1- 833-345-2890
Students: 1-877-884-1673
Canvas has “Getting Started” guides for faculty and for students.
Faculty and students can also create a helpdesk ticket for support from within Canvas by clicking on the TechHelp icon and then selecting Report a Problem.
The Canvas faculty Transition Team is offering three more Canvas workshops before break.
Workshop: All Hands on Canvas
This workshop is designed to give you open time to work with Canvas in a supported environment. A faculty member who has taught with Canvas will provide a very brief overview of Canvas in the first 10-15 minutes, and from there the time is open for you to become more proficient in your use of Canvas, and to work on developing a class in Canvas, with the support of experienced Canvas users. In addition, attendees may benefit from exploring Canvas resources found at https://tic.miracosta.edu/campus-teaching-technologies/canvas/ .
You may also be interested in watching a recording of a recent workshop Sean Davis and Robert Kelley offered which included faculty and student perspectives on the experience of transitioning to Canvas.
January – Flex Week
Friday, January 13th will include a full day of Canvas workshops. The day will open with brief presentations/overviews of Canvas from the perspectives of several MiraCosta faculty. Each of those faculty will then lead hands-on workshops on various aspects of Canvas during the day, and the day will end with a facilitated open lab session for those who want to get to work with Canvas.
Tuesday, January 17th will feature a full day of 1.5 hour Canvas open lab sessions with the support of experienced MiraCosta faculty and staff. Attend as many as you like.
Thursday, January 19th we will offer one final hands-on Canvas workshop focusing on page design, an important skill for those who wish to explore possibilities for Canvas use beyond the basic approaches most typically used with Canvas.
Sign up for these via MyFlex when PDP releases the spring Flex schedule!
