TILLING THE SOIL

The first submenu within Course Settings is the Course Details menu, which will allow you to manage the course identification details, course Dashboard image, course visibility, course format, and other options available for the course.

PLANTING AND PRUNING

Please begin by watching the video below.

Some of the more important options to pay attention to in the Course Details tab of the Settings menu are:

Course Image: It is best practice to update your course image to be one that reflects you and/or your subject matter. This helps your students quickly and easily identify your course on their Dashboard. This can even be an animated GIF!
Course Name and Course Code: We recommend using both the name of your course AND the school year/semester in both of these boxes. Students have the ability to overwrite the course name on their own Dashboards by assigning a nickname, but they cannot change the course code, which is why we encourage you to put this pertinent information in both places.
Start and End Dates: By default, your course will abide by the Term dates set at the admin level, so you will not need to do anything to this field. However, if you need your course to begin before the officially designated date or end after the officially designated date (i.e. a first-semester AP course that needs to stay active until the AP exam in May), you can choose to use Course Dates (as opposed to Term Dates) and enter custom dates here.
Default Due Time (NEW 04/22): This you to adjust the Default Due time for all graded assignments, normally set for 11:59 PM, to fit your course’s needs.
Language: If you are an upper-level World Languages teacher, you can choose to have your entire Canvas course, including all menu items, appear in your target language for all participants of your course.

There are also several important feature options you can access via the More Options link at the bottom of the Course Details page, including:

Self-Enrollment: This is a great option if you are creating a Canvas course for a student club, sports team, or optional organization so you don't have to manually add all of your students.
Announcements on Course Home Page: It is good practice to show recent announcements on your Course Home Page to make sure your students have seen them. We recommend setting this between 2-3 announcements.
Let students attach files to Discussions: We do recommend that you enable this.
Let students create/edit/delete Discussion posts: In a K-12 environment, we recommend that you do NOT enable these options for your classes.
Let students organize their own groups: In a K-12 environment, we recommend that you do NOT enable these options for your classes.
Hide grade totals: We do not recommend that you do this, as this prevents students from seeing their full average.
Hide grade distribution graphs: This is personal preference, but you can feel free to disable this.
Hide sections on the People page: We will discuss more about Sections in an upcoming component. If you do NOT want students to see which section they are assigned to, you can disable this.
Disable comments on Announcements: If you leave this enabled here, you can always choose to disable comments on an announcement-by-announcement basis. Disabling this feature from Course Settings will not let you enable announcements on an individual basis.

It is important to remember to click Update Settings at the bottom of the Course Details page to save any changes you may have made!

DIGGING DEEPER

Need more information? Check out this Canvas Guide!