Teacher

Canvas has several integrated features that facilitate online learning for any course taught at FAU.

Below are a few resources including Canvas modules to import into your course(s) and links to guides for the tools available for you to conduct your course fully online.

  • FAU Canvas Quick Start Template: This small template imports organized modules and pages with short descriptions and videos of Canvas features intended to rapidly get a course up and running. To bring these items into your course(s), follow the steps shown in this document.
  • Canvas Virtual Teaching & Learning Modules: These Canvas modules include links to both the faculty and student resources found on this site. To bring these modules into your course(s), follow the steps shown in this document .

Guides

Communicate

In a case where you find yourself teaching remotely, it's important to let your students know how and when you are going to be teaching your course. With Canvas, are two main categories of messaging that you are able to do as a teacher: (1) sending direct emails to your students and (2) using course tools which send out notifications to students. Below are explanations of both these types of communication along with a few sample announcements that you can customize for your course.

Sending Email Messages

Canvas Inbox

Using the Inbox tool within Canvas, you can create and reply to conversations between yourself and users enrolled in your courses. When composing a message, you choose a specific course that you want to communicate with and can then view recipients by sections, student groups, or roles. Here's a document from Canvas on how to manage and create conversations within the system.

Take note that the Canvas Inbox tools is not full-fledged emailing platform. It can handle basic user-to-user and user-to-group messaging very well, but when you begin attaching larger documents and other files, or depend on it to handle complex messages that include HTML, it may not perform as expected. For things like this, you might want to seek an alternative route by way of an actual emailing system.

Regular Email

As a teacher, the People page can be used to filter and search through a list of all available users in your course. You are able to view everyone's email address and role, and you can click on their names for other information. If your goals is to send larger documents and formatted messages to groups of students, you could copy these addresses and create a contact group for your course using your favorite email platform (Outlook, Office365, OwlApps, etc.). Messaging students this way will establish a feature-rich conversation between you and your class in an environment you are already comfortable with.

You can attain a list of emails in the form of a spreadsheet from your gradebook. Click here to learn how!

Canvas Course Tools

Canvas accounts are set up to notify users- via email or push notifications via the mobile app ( see this article )- of almost any change/update to the course. On the student side, notifications can be generated by announcements, assignment creation and grading, new discussions/posts, and anything else that causes a change to what the student sees in Canvas. Instructors get similar access to notifications including flags for when assignments get submitted (on time or late). Below are two articles that explain how to customize notifications in Canvas:

It's important to note that you will not be able to set push notifications unless you download and install the Canvas Teacher or Canvas Student apps onto your mobile device. 

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Zoom Meetings

Zoom is a web-conferencing tool that can be used to enhance and expand classes with powerful collaboration tools, including video breakout rooms, multi-sharing, polling, and group chats. To learn more about Zoom, the Instructional Technologies training team will host Zoom workshops. Information and dates can be found at techevents.fau.edu. You can also schedule a personalized appointment.

Zoom FAQs

  • Where can I access Zoom?
  • What features do we have access to?
    • Faculty and staff can host meetings with up to 300 participants for unlimited duration.
    • Students can host meetings with up to 100 participants. Meetings are limited to 40 minutes for 3 or more participants.
  • How do my meeting recordings work?
    • Faculty and staff may record to the shared cloud space. Recordings will expire after 150 days. To keep recordings longer than that, please download and move them to Mediasite, OneDrive, or any other storage method. Please note FERPA restrictions apply to all recordings.
    • Student accounts cannot record to the cloud but can record locally (to their own computer0 if the meeting host allows.
    • Recording (cloud or local) is not available to HIPPA users.
  • Can non-FAU users participate in Zoom meetings?
    • Only users with FAUnet IDs may host meetings. Other users can participate as an attendee and can be given presentation privileges during a meeting.
    • Please note: With the default settings, user who do not authenticate with FAU need to be admitted manually by a meeting host (to prevent Zoom bombings). You can admit these users from the participants list after launching the meeting.
  • Where can I get help/learn more?

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Record Lectures

The Mediasite Desktop Recorder (MDR) is an application for recording, uploading, and distributing lectures straight from your computer. If you find yourself having to teach your course remotely and have a few windows of time to put together materials, MDR facilitates the creation of accessible videos that can be embedded into any part of your Canvas course. In just five steps, we can get you set up to distribute your lectures:

  1. Meeting the system requirements. Note that for lecture recordings, you'll need a microphone and/or webcam connected to your computer. A simple webcam will solve both of these requirements. Even though most laptops come with built-in webcams/microphones, double-check them to make sure they function properly.
  2. Log into Canvas and access the My Mediasite course. *All* official instructors on record at FAU have access to this course. It gives you access to your presentation library and to the tools you need to create new recordings.
  3. Download, install, and register MDR with your computer. The steps in this document only need to be done once on any computer where you want to use MDF.
  4. Create a presentation with MDR.
  5. How to Get Usage Data for Presentations and Class Recordings.
  6. Watch our tutorial videos. You'll need to have access to the My Mediasite course in Canvas in order to view the videos (step 2 above).

For help with or questions about My Mediasite, fill out the Help Desk request linked here .

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Online Coursework

The following links were put together to guide you through a simple online course setup in Canvas. In the event that you unexpectedly need to transfer your course materials to an online environment, Canvas is ready to accept your assignments and activities to keep your students engaged and participating in the class. Since your Canvas course(s) are automatically populated with your students, it's just a matter of communicating to them how your course is going to change, and then putting together online materials that make up for what you would have done in person.

For any questions or specific issues with Canvas, fill out the Help Desk request linked here.

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FAU Alerts

In the case of an actual emergency, it is imperative that everyone at FAU stay informed as much as possible. FAU Alerts are the quickest way to receive up-to-the-moment information on any emergency situations effecting the FAU community. Below are a few links to get you set up:

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