Resources to Help Prepare Your Canvas Sites

Preparing your Canvas site is an important step in ensuring your subject is ready for teaching. This guide brings together the key processes, resources and support available to help you update your Canvas site, review your learning materials, and ensure your subject is ready for students.

Copy-Forward

To populate Canvas sites for the coming semester, BEL+T will copy forward content from the most recent iteration of each subject. If you’d like to opt-out your subject from the copy-forward process—or if you’d like to specify a different past iteration of your subject for us to copy-forward from—please let us know at abp-belt@unimelb.edu.au roughly a month before the semester start date. If your Canvas site for the coming semester has already been populated (subject coordinators can choose to self-manage the subject copy-forward process) we won’t overwrite it.

Auto-Publication

Standard Canvas sites will be automatically published to students 10 days before the start of semester. If you’d like to opt-out your subject from the auto-publication process, please let us know at abp-belt@unimelb.edu.au at least 3 days before the semester start date. If your subject is opted out, you will need to manually publish the Canvas site before teaching begins by selecting Publish from the top-right corner of the Home page.

Learning and Teaching Consultations

BEL+T offers consultations with subject coordinators in the weeks leading up to the start of the semester.  If you’d like to have an open-ended discussion about your subject—or if you’d prefer something more focussed, targeting new modes of assessment, learning design, technology support, multimedia production, or virtual site visits—please book a time by contacting us at abp-belt@unimelb.edu.au.

Resources are also available to help populate your subjects' Canvas sites.

Simple, Effective, Accessible Design

The Teaching and Learning Innovation (TLI) team have published a thorough checklist and a set of frequently asked questions.  They've also published a guide to designing a simple and effective Canvas site . It emphasises the importance of scoping your work and keeping your design choices legible, robust, and accessible.

In designing your learning resources, consider applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to help engage and motivate every student in your cohort and to avoid the need for duplication of effort down the track. For further information, see TLI’s guide to creating accessible subjects in the LMS.

For guidance on setting up your assessments in Canvas, see BEL+T’s guide on how Canvas weighs and calculates marks, and see TLI's guide on working with Canvas' updated rubrics.

Subject Outline and Late Penalties

BEL+T have produced an updated, expanded version of the Faculty's subject outline template, designed to help deliver what's recommended and required by the Faculty and the University's policies.

In working through the template, please note that there are currently no Faculty or University default late penalties or attendance requirements. Instead, late penalties should be set by your subject's board of examiners and published in your subject outline. Any other requirements—around attendance, assessment weightings, and hurdles—should match what's been approved and published to students via the Handbook.

Providing Readings and Lectures

Uncertain about how to share readings with your students in a way that's copyright compliant? Readings Online is your best option, and the Readings Online team are ready to assist. Note that the platform is being updated for Semester 2 -- find out more at the library systems update page.

If your subject has a timetabled lecture class in a lecture-capture enabled venue, it will be recorded and livestreamed. If required, you can opt-out of livestreaming, with approval from the Associate Dean Education. Lecture recordings should remain visible to students via the Lecture Capture tab in the left sidebar.  You can use the room search resource to determine if your class is in a lecture-captured enabled venue.

Generative AI in Learning and Teaching

Subject coordinators are asked to determine and communicate how (if at all) their students are authorised to use AI in each of their assessment tasks. To assist in this, the University has published guidelines for allowing student generative AI use in assessment, including a palette of specific use-case statements from which subject coordinators can choose to draw.

To support students in correctly acknowledging AI use (where permitted), Re:cite now includes guidance on how to cite and reference AI.

For guidance on academic integrity around AI, please see BEL+T's guide to student academic integrity, or the staff resources on the University’s academic integrity site, or reach out to ABP's academic integrity contacts.

Interested in incorporating generative AI in to your subject's curriculum, or using it in developing learning and teaching materials?  TLI's generative AI hub has guidance and examples.

NB: the University has published guidelines on the use of AI in preparing teaching materials requiring acknowledgement, and guidelines on the use of AI in student feedback and assessment requiring approvals.

Please also reach out to BEL+T at abp-belt@unimelb.edu.au about AI in learning and teaching -- we'd love to hear what you're up to, and to support where we can!

Final Checks

Before publishing, we recommend that you preview your subject’s Canvas site using student view. Check that navigation is clear, content is available, and assignments are correctly configured. You can also check that that site is displaying correctly on the Canvas mobile app.

And if there’s anything else we can do to help, please don’t hesitate to let us know!