Canvas at UoL: History & Useful Terminology
Canvas has been the University of Liverpool's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) since 2021.
In addition to support from the Centre for Innovation in Education (CIE) and IT Services Links to an external site., you can find detailed support resources via the Instructure Community Links to an external site. - Instructure being the company that built and own Canvas VLE. In addition to the resources within this course, we recommend the following pages as excellent resources to support you in using Canvas effectively for your teaching:
- Complete Canvas Guides Links to an external site.
- Canvas Instructor Role Guides Links to an external site.
The first thing you'll notice when you log-in to Canvas are the two vertical menus on the left hand side.
The menu furthest left branded with the UoL logo (1) is your own personal navigation bar. This can't be edited but holds useful links:
- Account - this is where you can personalise your profile in Canvas.
- Dashboard - you can control what courses you want to see or hide.
- Courses - where you'll see all the courses you're enrolled on.
The second white menu (2) will appear when you open a course, this will be the course navigation area. You can edit this menu through Settings>Navigation to disable or reorder the menu. More information on how to do this here Links to an external site..
For hosting content, there are 3 areas to create content:
- Modules - this is Canvas's own terminology and will replace the folder structure you're used to in BlackBoard.
- Files - this is where staff can upload their materials to and link to. If available for students, they can use the search box to filter for content.
- Pages - this is where you can create content that links to more than one resource in one area. Will be useful for linking multiple files and multimedia.
Introduction to Canvas Staff Guide
For a full introduction to Canvas, you may wish to read the Introduction to Canvas Staff Guide Download Introduction to Canvas Staff Guide