Faculty Course Template
This template structure was created through the work of Learning Experience Design staff with faculty
developing courses in Canvas. The use of this type of template in an online/hybrid course helps faculty
ensure that the key elements of a quality assured course are included. It also guarantees an easy
navigation for students and a consistent appearance and use of resources throughout the course. However,
Canvas allows faculty to customize this template as needed. The following sections describe the main
features of the template.
Opening Page
The template provides an opening page with a placeholder for a banner that is a graphic representation of
the program in which the course is being taught as a program ‘brand’ for that course. There is also a
placeholder for a graphic representation for the course itself. These graphics provide visual interest and a
means to quickly determine which course site the student has opened.
The opening page in this template also provides a location for linking to the current module for the course
as it progresses. This is an option for quick navigation for students and to keep them on track, but must
be maintained as the course progresses. Finally, the opening page of this template provides a link to a
discussion forum for general questions and concerns as well as discussion on general topics related to the
course and not on specific or assigned lesson topics.
Navigation Menu
The navigation menu on the left of this template provides the alignment of navigational links that was
determined in practice to be one of the easiest for students to navigate and locate important information
quickly. It begins with the ‘Home’ and then provides ‘Announcements’, ‘Syllabus’, ‘Modules’,
‘Discussions’, ‘Assignments’, ‘Quizzes’, ‘Grades’, ‘People’. There are other items, ‘Outcomes’, ‘Pages,’
‘Files,’ and ‘Conferences’, that can be removed, based on the needs of the instructor. While ‘Outcomes’
are important, they are articulated in the Syllabus and these outcome are created to be associated with
assignments. Providing student access to ‘Pages’ and ‘Files’ can be confusing as they are faced with a
long list and can access information that faculty may not yet wish for them to see. For these reasons, this
elements have been removed access by students. Of course, the order of and access to the navigation
links can be changed as desired.
Syllabus
In the ‘Syllabus’ section of this template, there is a sample syllabus for review and wording for several
consistent elements that should be contained within a syllabus. As part of the features of Canvas, an
automatic reminder of due dates is included by default in the bottom part of this section, as soon as the
instructor adds assignments or assessments in Canvas. Students can access them directly using the links in
that section. These reminders include every assessment or assignment, EXCEPT practice quizzes and
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ungraded surveys. For this reason, this location in Canvas is not really a place to paste the entire syllabus.
The recommendation here is to use this location to link to a page or pages with syllabus information and a
separate topical schedule so that the auto-generated schedule is visible quickly and easily.
Modules
There are several modules created in this template. The first is a recommended ‘Welcome and Getting
Started’ module with an example for review. For this module, faculty are encouraged to provide a
checklist and steps that students need to follow to get ready for the course. In addition, there is a section
named Major Assignments that faculty and students use as a “dropbox” type of tool to submit and share
documents.
The second module provides an example of how you can use a module to house not only weekly lessons
or groups of lessons but quick access to the major assessment assignments for the course. These often
span several weeks and don’t fit neatly into any weekly module.
There are two alternative module layouts provided in the template. The first structures the module
according to best practices and from a student-centered perspective. It contains placeholders and
examples to guide faculty in this structure. It begins with a file that can be downloaded and referred to
offline for each lesson/module. This requires that faculty created the lesson in Word as file to be
downloaded and is recommended practice. It also contains:
· A link to a discussion forum for questions, concerns, etc. about the topic, material, activities of each
lesson/module.
· A page with an overview of the module (copy/paste from the document for viewing online)
· A sub-page with links for all materials and resources for the lesson/module
· A page for an activity check list for quick reference for students completing the activities associated
with each lesson/module
· An example of how you can use the ‘header’ feature to directly list the items in the checklist as an
alternative to the page mentioned above
· A page for links to submit assignments for the lesson/module
The second module structure strives to recreate the Scholar Lessons look for those who are used to that
structure. It uses Pages to reduce the need to drill down through the Modules. An instructor who wants to
go with this type of interface may hide the modules completely and only put a page like this front and
center for his students to see each week. However, faculty choosing this layout would still of course need
to create the underlying modules according to the regular structure in Canvas – this is just a different way
for people to navigate it.
The template then provides a placeholder for sixteen modules (weekly structure for 16-week semester)
and places them in reverse order so that, when published, the most recent (current) module is at the top of
the page.
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Discussions
The next section of the template gives examples to faculty of the types of discussions that can be used in a
course. Students can be asked to introduce themselves, answer specific questions, comment on issues, or
faculty can use ongoing discussion threads for general questions or comments.
Assignments and Quizzes
The next two sections focus on assignments and quizzes. The main difference between them is that
assignments are more appropriate for the submission of work or when students need to collaborate. It
allows students to upload materials, based on the due dates established by the instructor. Also,
assignments allow students to do peer reviewed work. Quizzes actually allow instructors to create tests
and quizzes that can be automatically graded by Canvas. This quizmaker tool gives several options to
create a quiz, such as multiple-choice, fill-in-the blanks, short answers. Similarly to assignments,
instructors set their preferences to allow student take these assessments during specific timeframes.
Grades
All the assignments and quizzes are automatically added to the Grades section. Grades are displayed there
as students take quizzes. Instructors can also manually insert grades for assignments that Canvas does not
automatically grade.
People
In this section, everyone who is involved in the course will be listed with their contact information and
their roles in the course. As enrollment takes place, this place will be automatically populated. The
instructor has the option of manually granting permissions or changing roles.
VT Library Help
This section provides easy access to the VT Library Help Center for students to request help or access
resources.
Settings
Finally, in the Settings section instructors can manage all the features of their courses. This allows them
to copy courses, import or export courses, add external applications and software, make courses available,
delete them, and others.