eClass Support
Knowledgebase: LMS Transition (Canvas)
Creating Credit Courses on Canvas
Last modified on 06 September 2024 04:27 PM

Instructors are now able to request their credit courses for Canvas at https://cc.cloud.eclass.ualberta.ca/. This process uses the same system and is analogous to what instructors have used to create courses on eClass. The request system allows instructors to combine different section types (lectures, labs, seminars, etc) and terms (fall, winter etc) to meet their needs.

This process must be completed for every course and for every term the course will be delivered.

As this is the first release of the request system for our new LMS, instructors should ensure they check the latest known issues below and report any issues encountered to eClass support. 

System Details

Any U of A faculty or staff with a valid CCID can request courses on Canvas; students are not able to use the system. (If an instructor or staff member has a recent student Bear Tracks enrollment using their CCID account, they will need to contact eClass support to be permitted to make requests.)

The request system is populated every two hours with the latest course and section information in Bear Tracks. If users cannot locate a section they are trying to request, they should consult with their department to check if or when it was added to Peoplesoft. If a section is not in Bear Tracks it cannot be requested in Canvas.

Instructors accessing the system will see any sections where they are officially enrolled as instructors in Bear Tracks pre-populated for easy selection. Note however that sections can only be requested a single time to maintain enrollment mappings so users may encounter the following alert beside a section:

This commonly means that there has been an instructor change in Bear Tracks after the section was initially requested. If this occurs during a request, please contact eClass support as we can contact the original requester and resolve the issue. 

Requesting Courses

Instructors need to select the term, course letter code, course number/name, and then click on the desired section 9r mouseover and click enter to select it:

Once one section is added, it will appear below the search box as the student enrollment source for the new course:

Additional sections can be added to create a combined course by going back up into the drodown boxes, re-sorting to a different course if necessary, and then selecting those. They will then appear in the course enrollments list:

Once all required sections have been added, the next screen allows instructors to make any required name changes to the course and can either elect to copy content from one of their existing Canvas (a sandbox or staging course) or select a course containing the U of A custom-designed template that they can begin adding content to:

Note: If you have created multiple sandbox courses and you wish to copy content from one, it may be hard to distinguish one from the other. If so, you can click on the Settings link at the bottom left of your sandbox course, and on the Course details page, alter the Name: field to something easier to identify (e.g., change 'dlaurie Sandbox' to 'dlaurie Sandbox for ANTHR 110').

On the next 2 screens, instructors can add any additional instructors or TAs, and then set the dates the students will gain and lose access to the course. These settings can also be changed directly in Canvas after courses are created. The dates set here are the ONLY mechanism available to control student access to courses - there is no need to Publish courses credit courses are created in a published state.

Once requested, instructors will receive a course that should appear on Canvas, typically within 15 minutes. Student cohorts are added to courses during the next enrollment sync run which runs every 5 hours. Course enrollments are updated for students adding or dropping courses every subsequent sync run.

To begin working in Canvas, we recommend instructors:

Known Issues

Issue/Problem Summary Known Workarounds
Copy content course list truncated When copying content, instructors can only see 10 or fewer courses to copy content from Resolved.
Instructor Bear Tracks enrollments Instructor's Bear Tracks course enrollments are not automatically pre-populating when they are making requests. This feature has been added to the backlog. Instructors can use the term, subject, course, and section dropdowns to locate the specific section they require.
Full course content search  When adding content to courses, it is not possible to search all courses. This feature is being reviewed. 
Term start and end times are wrong 

The fall term start time and winter term close time are offset by an hour and are being set to 1:00AM instead of 12:00AM on the specified date.

Resolved.
Erroneous alert on default winter term course end date

An alert displays that the winter term course close date is not after the end of the winter exam period (when it in fact is.)

Resolved.

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