Category: Canvas

Canvas Information & Resources

Canvas by Instructure

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 link to log into Canvas at the top right hand side of the campus website www.miracosta.edu. See below for many great resources to help you learn to use Canvas, and earn MiraCosta Flex credit along the way.

Top Canvas Resources for Faculty

  • Canvas Instructor Guides – comprehensive step-by-step tutorials on all Canvas features for instructors.
  • Canvs Student Guides – comprehensive step-by-step tutorials on all Canvas features for your students.
  • 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
  • Do you think Canvas might be down or experiencing errors? Check the Canvas Status website.

Canvas Flex Workshop Recordings

For accessibility-specific workshops, please see “Canvas Accessibility Workshops” section below..

Flex Credit is available for viewing MiraCosta workshop videos. 

Canvas Accessibility Workshops

Please refer to the following resources to assist with Canvas accessibility:

Tour a MiraCosta Canvas Class!

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!

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).

More Faculty Resources

  • Full instructor guide from Canvas
  • Canvas at MCC – A collection of MiraCosta-specific tutorials & articles
  • Canvas Community Resources – Resources, examples, and strategies for learning and exploring Canvas
  • 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 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 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.

Tech Help, Report a Problem

You may also review recent and upcoming updates to the Canvas system, as well as submitting or voting on feature additions and changes you’d like.

Key LTI Tools Available in Canvas

  • Turnitin – originality checking, online grading and peer review
  • Zoom – Live web conferencing using Zoom
  • Studio – Create, manage, and engage with video
  • 3CMediaSolutions – Integrate videos you’ve saved in CCC’s 3C Media Solutions tool
  • NetTutor – Connect students to live online tutors (only for use in online and hybrid classes)
  • Google Drive – enabling tighter integration between Google apps and Canvas
  • Various publisher tools – click to learn more
  • 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.

How did MiraCosta get to Canvas?

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.

Filtering your Roster List by Role in Canvas People

By default the People tool will display all users enrolled in your Canvas course. You can filter the users by role to obtain the count of users in that role as well as Last Activity and Total Activity.

From within a Canvas Course:

  1. Click on People
    people-1
  2. Click on All Roles
    people2
  3. Select the specific role. The count will be displayed to the right of the role name.
    people3

 

Validate your course links in Canvas

It is important to verify that all links are working throughout a course. The course link validator tool can help make this task easy for faculty designing and teaching courses.

The course link validator tool searches through course content and returns invalid or unresponsive external links in both published and unpublished content.

The link validator also includes deleted links. Deleted links are links that are still in the course, but their linked content has been deleted (such as a course files or pages).

Note: Some links flagged as unresponsive are inaccessible by Canvas servers and will still work for students.

From within a Canvas Course

Open Settings

Canvas Settings

Select Validate Links in Content

Validate Links in Content

For additional directions refer to the Canvas guide: How do I validate links in a course?

Canvas 24/7 Faculty & Student Support

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 campus support is unavailable, including evenings and weekends, Canvas provides 24/7 technical support for instructors and students at the following phone numbers and via live chat.

📞 Instructors: 1- 833-345-2890 
📞 Students: 1-877-884-1673
📲 Live chat with Canvas 24/7 Support

Instructors and students can also create a helpdesk ticket for Canvas support from within Canvas by clicking on the Tech Help icon and then selecting Report a Problem.

Tech Help. Report a Problem.

You may also review stay up to date with changes happening within canvas.

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