Faculty Hub
Canvas Faculty Hub
Welcome to the Canvas Faculty Hub. This hub space was curated for OHIO instructors to learn more about the transition to Canvas and to maximize its features for a modern, intuitive teaching and learning experience.
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Learn About the Transition to Canvas
Find out more about the timeline and process for academic units to transition to Canvas. -
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Set Up Your Course
Develop a great Canvas course using your existing instructional material or new content you create in Canvas. -
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Get Help with Canvas
Canvas is here to help all users 24/7. -
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Log In to Canvas
Visit Canvas to explore features and work on course set-up activities.
Ohio University faculty, staff, and students selected Canvas, by Instructure through a robust evaluation process to improve the teaching and learning experience for students and faculty. Canvas provides a modern, accessible, and intuitive learning management system (LMS) and is available for all OHIO faculty to explore and set up courses. The material in this Canvas Hub was developed collaboratively by the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, the Office of Instructional Design, and the Office of Information Technology. The goal of this collaboration is to encourage campus-wide adoption of Canvas in order to 1) create a sense of community and a common OHIO experience; 2) support student time management, study skill sets and meta-cognition; and 3) promote teaching effectiveness and efficiency.
About the Transition to Canvas
The first group of “live” courses was taught in Canvas during Spring Semester 2024 as part of Phase 1 of the Canvas launch. Additionally, current Phase 1 students and faculty are providing valuable feedback on their experiences through regular surveys. This feedback will incorporated to ongoing support and communication activities to support the launch of Canvas. Academic units will formally transition all courses in a phased approach throughout the 2024-2025 academic year. We are working with all units to identify a timeline to move instruction to Canvas to minimize disruption to students. A high-level transition timeline is available on OIT's Canvas page. For instructors who have questions or ideas about transition timelines, we recommend talking with your department chair or program director for more information. We highly recommend that instructors transition to the Canvas platform in alignment with college and department plans to support a consistent student experience.
Before getting started, we recommend to review information about the differences between Blackboard and Canvas, and ways your third party integrations (e.g. publishers) will work in Canvas. Phase 1 faculty praised Canvas as an improvement to managing their course, as compared to Blackboard. With all publisher and third party integrations, course-level analytics, this tool has many features to support student engagement.
To Get Started Teaching in Canvas, Follow These Steps
- Request a manually created course: Familiarize yourself with the functionalities of Canvas and adapt them to your specific needs by requesting a manually created course. These courses are not term-based and can be used as a exploratory spot to test features of Canvas. Once you submit a request, OIT will add these course(s) to your Canvas account.
- Log In to Canvas: Visit canvas.ohio.edu and use your OHIO email and password to log in.
- Apply an OHIO template: Review the OHIO course templates and apply one to your course using Canvas Commons. OHIO course templates are pedagogically sound, efficient for instructors, and provide a consistent and cohesive experience for students.
- Design your course: Build new material, move content from Blackboard, and set up your Canvas Course Syllabus.
Recommended Features
In addition to templates, we strongly recommend that all faculty use the Canvas Syllabus, and Course Calendar features. Using these functions will help students maximize the utility of the calendar and to do list functions, both of which appear on the homepage for students. If faculty use these features, students can see all of upcoming assignments, other due dates, and more in one easy-to-navigate space.
Finish building your course by developing modules, adding assignments, importing content, and linking Panopto videos and other media.
Students will not be able to access your course content until you publish it. This is equivalent to making your course available in Blackboard. To help students know which LMS their course will be taught in, send them an email or other outreach to let them know how to access the course. You should contact them prior to the first day of class to help them prepare.
Course Templates
We encourage all instructors to use an OHIO Canvas template as you set-up your Canvas courses. Course templates are efficient, user-friendly, pedagogically sound, sleek, and professional. The use of templates will help students experience a predictable organizational structure and consistent visual feel across their Canvas courses. OIT has guidance for how to apply a template once you review the options.
Get Help with Canvas
Support for Everyone
- 24/7 Canvas Support: All students, faculty, and staff have access to a 24/7 Help Desk in Canvas by selecting "Get Help”. Canvas Support can help with any Canvas-specific issue through chat or phone support. Canvas will connect customers with OIT support if support is requested for a non-Canvas issue.
- OIT Help Desk: OIT will continue to support all users with issues relating to passwords, access to any platform, single sign-on, requests for new products or features. Additionally, OIT creates manually created courses for faculty (also called test, sandbox, dev, or prime courses).
Instructor Resources
- Canvas vendor-led trainings: Trainings and workshops presented by Canvas will be available throughout the summer covering a wide variety of topics. Visit the CTLA's GivePulse website to learn more and register.
- Faculty Canvas training (pre-scheduled and by department/unit request): Led by OID with support from OIT. Trainings address everyone from the the basics of Canvas to using external tools and developing assessments.
- Self-paced training course: Instructors of record will be automatically enrolled in “Growing with Canvas”, a self-paced, optional introduction to the platform.
- Individual consultations: Work with an instructional designer to design and prepare to teach your course in Canvas.
- Individual consultations and help material : OIT offers written help material, consultations with instructional technologists, and more to help you navigate and maximize Canvas.
- New Faculty Welcome: Resources for new faculty to support teaching excellence. This will included content updated over time to highlight upcoming events.
Graduate Student Instructor Resources: General material and information about upcoming events to help graduate students prepare for a successful teaching experience
Student Resources
When students reach out to you with questions, please remind them of the below support available for them.
- Self-paced training course: Students can self-enroll in the optional, self-paced training course “Passport to Canvas” to explore the platform and learn about its basic functions. Instructors are also welcome to self-enroll in this course to explore training material available to students.
- Access Canvas through Go OHIO: Students can log into Canvas directly at canvas.ohio.edu and also through the Go OHIO app. They also have the option to sign up for Canvas notifications through Go OHIO to stay up-to-date on new Canvas updates and information.
- OIT help material : Student-focused help material developed to address common student questions in Canvas. OIT will continue to add to these resources as additional feedback is received from students.