COLLEGE PARK, MD (September, 2014) 聳 The two biggest areas of change in Canvas this fall semester are the ability to publish/unpublish courses and course content, as well as a change in the automatic creation of independent study course spaces (faculty will now have to specifically request those spaces). If you have any questions about Canvas in general or these changes in particular, please contact our Learning Technology Specialist, Rosalia Webb.
Publishing in Canvas
Previously, once an instructor published their course, an option was not available to unpublish the course. This has recently changed. In addition, this feature is available throughout the course.
Once you publish your course, a notification is sent out to students indicating that the course is ready and is made available in their course listings.
This icon is in the form of a cloud and will be marked as green for published or gray for unpublished. You cannot unpublish a course once students have submitted an assignment.
In addition to the ability to publish or unpublish the entire course to the student view, that level of control has been extended to pages, modules, assignments, discussions, and quizzes within courses. As shown below, to the right of the list view, there is an icon of a cloud. It will be either green for published or gray for unpublished.
Independent Study courses are no longer automatically created.
Previously, any course that was in Testudo had a course space created automatically in ELMS/Canvas. This caused thousands of unused independent study spaces to be allocated, negatively impacting Canvas performance. All regular courses still have space created without any action on the part of faculty; however, you will need to use the Elms Management Tool (EMT) to request independent study spaces in ELMS/Canvas.
Please view the following link for instructions:
http://elms.umd.edu/sites/elms.umd.edu/files/webfiles/documents/Create_Independent_Study_Spaces_in_ELMS_Canvas.pdf