012 | Canvas LMS: 10 Tips to Optimize your Workflow

Are you a teacher struggling to navigate the complexities of Canvas LMS? Do you find yourself spending hours trying to organize your course content, grade assignments, or troubleshoot technical issues? As educators, we often face unique challenges when it comes to leveraging technology in our classrooms. But what if there were simple strategies to make Canvas work for you, rather than against you?

In this episode of the Productivity for Teachers podcast, we're exploring ten game-changing tips to help you master Canvas LMS. Whether you're a Canvas veteran or just getting started, these strategies will help you save time, streamline your workflow, and create a more effective learning environment for your students.

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Transcript

Hi teacher friends. Dr. Sarah here. Thank you for joining me today. I'm so glad you're here. Today we are going to take a deep dive into the Canvas Learning Management System, or lms. Canvas is the LMS that I use at my school and even though I will not be Talking about other LMSs today, I don't think it will be a waste of time for you if you don't have Canvas at your school. Hopefully some of the things that I mentioned today will give you an idea of some things that you could look into even if you use, say blackboard or Moodle at your school. But if you are a Canvas user, then this episode is definitely for you. So today I am going to talk about my top 10 strategies and tips to make Canvas work better for you by saving time and effort. So let's jump in. My first tip is to use the Undelete feature in Canvas. This is a little known little trick that is really, really handy if you've just deleted something in Canvas and you want to get it back. We've all done that before, right? And so the Undelete feature is really handy. So in Canvas, in your course, navigate to your home page and then in the URL after the slash after your URL for your course, type in Undelete. So don't change your URL, just add undelete to it and then hit Enter. And now Canvas will bring up a whole list of things that you've recently deleted and you, you can find the thing that you need to get back. So that's tip number one. Tip number two is how to restore previous versions of Pages in Canvas. If you are like me, you hopefully use modules to organize your Canvas. In my opinion, it's the best way to organize things in Canvas for your students. And the main content holders in Modules are pages. And sometimes we do things in Pages. We add something or change something and then we realize, oh gosh, I really wish I could get the previous version back. So to restore a previous version of a page in Canvas, in that page, go to the three little dots in the upper right hand corner of your Canvas page. There is no need to click on Edit. So just in the page click on the little three dots in the upper right hand corner and then go to view Page History. And from there you will see all the different versions that you have created before this current version in your page and you can select the one that you would like to restore. All right, my third tip for Canvas is using the grade history function. I don't know about you. But sometimes I enter a grade and then I realize it's incorrect, but I can't remember what the previous grade was. Or maybe a student says, I think that grade changed and I think you need to fix that or something. So, so being able to use the grade History function is really handy. So in your gradebook, and this is the new gradebook version which I think probably most of you are using by now. But this grade history function is not available in the old gradebook version. So if you don't see it, maybe ask your canvas administrator if they can activate the new gradebook for you. I think you'll really like all of the features in it, including this one. So in the new gradebook version, in the upper left corner above student names, you'll see a blue gradebook and right next to it a little drop down arrow. If you click on that drop down at the very bottom, you'll see gradebook history. And when you click on that, you will see all of the grade changes that you have made. The list can be quite long, right? Because if you've been entering grades all day, there will definitely be a lot of changes there. But you can, at the top you can filter by student or by the person entering the grade or by the actual assignment or you can even put in a date range. So if the list that you get is pretty overwhelming, just use those filters and you'll be able to narrow it down to the information that you need. So if you for instance filtered it by student, you could see all of the grades that you've entered for that student and any changes that you made. All right, number four is the Redirect tool. So the Redirect tool is an app that you can add. To add it we're going to go to Settings on the menu across the top there you'll see apps. Click on apps and then search for Redirect tool and it is kind of a blue arrow that is curved to the right and then click on Add app to add the redirect tool. And what you're going to be able to do now is add a link to your course navigation. I use this to add my textbook website to the course navigation from for my students. That way they don't have to go somewhere else to get to our textbook website. Canvas really can be a one stop shop for them. So to add an external tool you would click Add app and then you'll have a pop up window that appears and you'll see that the name says redirect tool. So we're going to change the name to whatever you want the link to be called. So for me it's it would be the name of my textbook. And then in the window below that it says URL redirect and go ahead and put in the URL that you want. So for me that would be my textbook URL. And then you'll see that the box is already checked for force, open in a new tab that is definitely the way you want that. And then also add show in Course Navigation and then click Add App. And all of a sudden you will now have a link available in your course navigation. So you can use the Redirect tool to add more than just one link. So I have one to my course textbook for my students. I have one to Quizlet for my students because they use it a lot and things like that. When you add the link in the Redirect app and click Add App after you've entered all the information, if it doesn't show up in your navigation right away, click on Navigation now in the you're still in settings. So click on Navigation across the top and then scroll to the bottom and click Save. And now that new link should show up while you're in navigation. You can drag that new link towards the top if it's at the bottom so that your students can see it. And speaking of navigation, here is tip number 5. Use the navigation tool to hide apps and links that your students do not need. The more streamlined your navigation menu on the left is, the better. So go to Settings if you're not already in there. And then across the top you'll see one of the options is navigation, and the top part of navigation are the things that are available to students or available to you. Some things are never going to be available for students to click on. We'll come back to that in a second. And then the bottom part of the course navigation window, here are things that are not available that are disabled. So for instance, if you use modules exclusively for organizing course content, then one thing that you can get rid of is files. For instance, you can drag it from that top window, things that are available for students, down to the bottom window where things are not available for students. You, your students will still be able to access the files that you put into modules, but they won't be able to go digging around in your files in Canvas. Similarly, you can drag things like discussions to the bottom part of the navigation. If you don't use discussions, you can drag other apps that are installed down to the bottom. If you're not going to use them if you don't use attendance features in Canvas, drag that to the bottom. There are all kinds of things that you can drag to the bottom part of navigation so that your students can't click on them. For instance, I also drag quizzes to the bottom portion where it's not available for students because I'm going to put quizzes in my modules anyway. They'll be able to access them there. So it can get just a little confusing knowing what students will actually be able to see and what they won't be able to see. Because like I said, in this navigation menu you are able to drag things to the top part or the bottom part that are never available to students. So when in doubt, go ahead and click Save. So whenever you're messing around with navigation, you do need to scroll all the way to the bottom and click Save and then go to Student View. So if you want to check to see what really is available for students to see now and what's not available for them to see, go to your homepage and then click on View as Student and you'll see that several things are available to you that are not available to students. So in my Canvas setup and of course you have to adjust it to what you want, I have obviously home is always available modules and then announcements and then I have the two links that I've added to my textbook, website and quizlet and that's it. Everything else I put in modules so my students don't need to be clicking around on that anyway, I add it to modules and so my navigation on the left hand side is very streamlined. Now when I leave Student View, I can still see quizzes, I can still see new analytics, I can still see rubrics, all kinds of things like that, but my students can't. So when in doubt, just click on View as a student and if they can still see things that you don't want them to see, go back to Settings, click on Navigation and keep dragging things from the top part to the bottom. And then don't forget to click Save. My sixth tip is also in Settings. So scroll to the bottom of your navigation and click on Settings. And then on the right hand side you will see at the bottom of the navigation menu on the right you'll see something called Validate links and Content. So when you click on that and then click on Start or Restart link validation. It's also up to you here if you want to check the box, show links to unpublished content or not, that's up to you. Do you want it to check all of your unpublished content? I usually do. I want to know either way though. Once you've decided whether you want it to check published or unpublished content, now click on Restart or Start link validation and Canvas is going to check every link that you have in your course. This includes internal Canvas links and it includes external links. This is particularly handy at the beginning of the year when you're importing content from an old course into a new course. But I highly recommend every once in a while just running your link validator and seeing if all of your links are still valid. It will bring up a list of things that you can click on to see where those links are broken. If you don't have any broken links, Canvas actually gives you confetti, which feels very rewarding indeed. My seventh favorite Canvas tip is using keyboard shortcuts in Speedgrader. When you are in Speedgrader, you can use J to go to the next student. So instead of having to go to the drop down at the upper right and clicking the drop down arrow and selecting the next student, that all takes a lot of time. If you just hit J, you will go to the next student. If you need to go to the previous student, you could do K. So J forward K back and then instead of having to mouse around and get your cursor active in the grade window, you can just click G to enter a grade. So those are my three favorite Speedgrader shortcuts. J next student, K previous student, and G to enter a grade. Speaking of speed grader, my eighth Canvas tip is to use the Speedgrader Comments library. So when you are grading something in Speedgrader above the comment window, you'll see a blue little speech bubble. And if you click on that, if you have no comments there, the only thing you will see is add comment to library. So you can go ahead and put in comments that you use all the time. So something I have in there, for instance, is you did not follow the directions. So you type that into the window at the bottom and then once you're done typing, click Add to Library and then keep adding your favorite comments. For instance, for me as a language teacher, you need subject Verb agreement. That's another favorite one of mine. I have that in there. I have Great job in there. I have. Please come see me about this in there. As a German teacher, I have all nouns need to be capitalized. That's one of those funky German things that my students tend to forget about. So those things that you say over and over again, enter those each as separate comments into the library. And then when you are grading in Speedgrader, all you have to do is click on that speech bubble again and select the comment. You just click on it and it enters it into the comment window for you. And then all you have to do is click Submit. Saves you a lot of time. My ninth Canvas tip is to use Student View to look at how your assignments are set up and to actually practice submitting something in Canvas occasionally to make sure that you have things set up the way you want to. So you may or may not know the first time that you click on View as a student in Canvas, you will now have a test student at the bottom of your gradebook. And this test student can be kind of annoying because the test student doesn't ever submit any work unless you actually practice as a test student. So that's what I'm talking about here. I highly recommend submitting something every once in a while as a test student just to see what the submission experience is. Particularly if you're using online submissions directly in Canvas. You could also take that opportunity to do a quick screencast to show your students how to do it if they're struggling. So that is my ninth tip is to use the View as Student function to actually practice being a student instead of just looking at what things look like as a student. And by the way, we when you are in View as a Student mode, you have that pink window around Canvas, right? To remind you that you're viewing as a student. But if you want to Leave Student View, you click on it seems obvious Leave Student View on the bottom right, but you can see there's also another option there that says Reset Student. If you click on Reset Student instead of Leave Student View, that actually deletes that test student who hangs out at the bottom of your gradebook and never submits anything. So you have an option there to get rid of Test Student if you would like. And finally, my tenth tip for Canvas is to sort things in Speedgrader. When you are grading in Speedgrader, the default is for your students to be sorted alphabetically and either by section if you have different sections of the course, or you can also select to grade by all sections, meaning that all your students are now sorted alphabetically. That all happens in the drop down arrow next to the student's name in the upper right hand corner. But you can also ask Speedgrader to sort things a little differently. So in the upper left hand corner is the settings wheelie next to the assignment Title. If you click on that and then click on options, you'll see a window that opens that says sort student list. And like I said, what it does automatically is sort by student name. But you can also ask Speedgrader to sort by the date that they submitted the assignment or by submission status, meaning that things that need to be graded are going to be at the top. That saves you a lot of scrolling. You can also ask Speedgrader to randomize students or randomize students with submission status. So you have five different options there, the top one being the default. I love to ask Speedgrader to sort by submission status, meaning that the students that I still need a grade are at the top. And once you've selected one of those options, notice that you can also then ask Speedgrader to hide student names. And then you also have a couple of options here below that, and it says default discussion. View options, show replies without discussion content, or show replies in context. That obviously only applies to discussions, and you can click on either of those to see how that changes your view in discussions. And then don't forget to save settings. And now you'll see once you've done that, that things in Speedgrader are sorted differently based on your selections that you just made. Made. So, my friends, Those were my 10 tips for canvas. So my friends, I hope this was useful for you. As you know, we always try to recommend one thing that you can do to get started to kind of help you get going for the week. So for this week, I would recommend practicing with those Speedgrader keyboard shortcuts. So make a little post it. Note J for next student, K for previous student, and G to enter the grade. I think you'll be amazed how quickly you'll be able to grade just using those keyboard shortcuts. So my friends, thank you for joining me today. Remember to take it slowly, be gentle with yourself, and don't forget that small steps add up to big gains over time. I would love to hear from you in my social media, which is linked in the show, notes how things are going for you. And if you are a Canvas user, if you have any other tips that you'd like to share with people, we would love to hear from you. That's it for this week. I'll see you next Tuesday.