This course makes extensive use of several features of Canvas which you may or may not have worked with before. To give you the best experience in this course, this video will briefly describe those features and the best way to access them.
When you first access your course on Canvas, you will be shown a homepage similar to this. It contains quick links to the course announcements, modules, people, grades, and discussion boards. This is handy if you just need to jump to a particular area.
Let’s walk through the options in the main menu to the left. The first section is Announcements, which is where you’ll see any announcements related to the course. You’ll notice that several of the common menu items in this course are disabled, such as Files and Assignments. This is to simplify things for you as students, so you remember that all the course content is available in one place.
The second section is Modules, which is where you’ll primarily interact with the course. When you first arrive at the Modules section, you’ll see all of the content in the course laid out in order. If you like, you can minimize the modules you aren’t working on by clicking the arrow to the left of the module name. I’ll do so, leaving the introductory module open.
As you look at each module, you’ll see that it gives quite a bit of information about the course. At the top of each module is an item telling you what parts of the module you must complete to continue. In this case, it says “Complete All Items.” Likewise, the following modules may list a number of prerequisite modules, which you must complete before you can access it.
Within each module is a set of items, which must be completed in listed order. Under each item you’ll see information about what you must do in order to complete that item. For many of them, it will simply say view, which means you must view the item at least once to continue. Others may say contribute, submit, or give a minimum score required to continue. For assignments, it also helpfully gives the number of points available, and the due date.
Let’s click on the first item, Course Introduction, to get started. You’ve already been to this page by this point. Many course pages will consist of an embedded video, followed by links to any resources used or referenced in the video, including the slides. Finally, a rough video script will be posted on the page for your quick reference.
While we cannot force you to watch each video in its entirety, we highly recommend doing so. The script on the page may not accurately reflect all of the content in the video, nor can it show how to perform some tasks which are purely visual.
When you are ready to move to the next step in a module, click the Next button at the bottom of the page. Canvas will automatically add Next and Previous buttons to each piece of content which is accessed through the Modules section, which makes it very easy to work through the course content. I’ll click through a couple of items here.
At any point, you may click on the Modules link in the menu to the left to return to the Modules section of the site. You’ll notice that I’ve viewed the first few items in the first module, so I can access more items here. This is handy if you want to go back and review the content you’ve already seen, or if you leave and want to resume where you left off. Canvas will put green checkmarks to the right of items you’ve completed.
Continuing down the menu to the left, you’ll find the usual Canvas links to view your grades in the course, as well as a list of fellow students taking the course.
We have also enabled the discussion board feature of Canvas.
If you wish to pose a discussion topic to you classmates, you should use the discussion feature in Canvas.
Please note that asking a question on a discussion forum is not the same as emailing the course help email.
We will certainly monitor the discussion channels, but not with the same speed as the “help line”.
Please read and adhere to the guidance on Netiquette in the syllabus for all electronic communications.
Now, let’s go to a Module with a Codio component and load up one of the Codio projects. To load a Codio project, there will be a button to click, which opens Codio in a new browser window or tab.
Once Codio loads, it may give you the option to start the Guide for that module. You’ll definitely want to select that option whenever you load a Codio project for the first time.
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