Preparing Fall 2024 Courses in Canvas

Greetings Faculty!  

As previously announced, Fall 2024 course shells have been created in Canvas. You’ve been enrolled as a teacher in your Fall 2024 shells and now have access to those shells and a self-paced online tutorial called UM Canvas Essentials. To access the Canvas site go to the UM Canvas Login page, select the Net ID login option, and login with your Net ID. The Fall 2024 shells should be listed in the Unpublished Courses section of your Dashboard in Canvas and should remain unpublished until you are ready to make them visible to students. 

Please read the following important information carefully for next steps for working in the UM Canvas site and courses. 

Canvas Training 

To get started with using Canvas, complete the self-paced, UM Canvas Essentials Course, which will provide the basics for working in Canvas and using the UM template that has been applied to your Fall course shells. Please do this training prior to participating in the live trainings, particularly the Canvas Course Building Workshops. The additional live trainings are posted on Griz Hub, or you can watch recorded webinars and review our set of Tip Sheets. 

Accessing Migrated Moodle Courses 

Although Moodle courses going back to Fall 2021 have been migrated to Canvas, to keep your dashboard clear of courses you may not currently need access to, for now, you will just see migrated courses from Spring 2023 through Spring 2024. If you need to access a course that goes back further than Spring 2023, please submit a request via IT Solutions Center and a support tech will get you access as soon as possible. You will have “view-only” access to migrated courses, so that these courses serve as an archive of your Moodle courses and cannot be edited. After looking through the migrated course, the next step will be to import the content into your Fall 2024 course shell, where you will have full editing ability. 

Importing Course Content from a Migrated Course  

Your Fall 2024 course shells currently only have the UM Canvas template applied to them. Again, the content from previous Moodle courses have been migrated into Canvas to an archive folder, which you can view only and import into your Fall course shell. Note: Spring 2024 courses are still in the migration process with our migration partner, so please wait until after June 7 to view or import content from Spring 2024 courses into a Fall 2024 course shell. After you have viewed the migrated course and are ready to import it, carefully follow the steps outlined in the Importing Moodle Course Content Tip Sheet. Once imported into your Fall 2024 course shell, you will have full editing ability. If you need further assistance with importing, you can watch our Webinar on Importing Course Content, or email canvas.umt@umontana.edu to request help. 

Message to Students about Using Canvas 

Students will be notified via Campus Communications about where to access the Canvas login and how to access a student tutorial called UM Passport to Canvas. (You might consider going through the tutorial, as well, to get the student user perspective.) If you email your students prior to the semester start, it would be helpful if you also let them know that UM will be using Canvas instead of Moodle this fall. Here is a message you can use or adapt in a welcome email to your students and in your syllabus, which includes a link to the student Canvas tutorial:  

Starting Fall 2024, the University of Montana is using the new learning management system, Canvas, for all online and blended courses and for any course supplements for face-to-face courses. To help orient you to Canvas and learn how to navigate, engage in activities, check grades and edit your Canvas profile, please complete the UM Passport to Canvas tutorial for students. No special login is required for the tutorial. To access your courses, login to Canvas at the UM Canvas Login page using your Net ID login. Once our course is open, you will see our course link on your Canvas Dashboard.  

The remainder of this message lists action items based upon individual course needs. Please review each action item to determine which apply to you.

Teaching Assistants or Secondary Instructors 

If you are working with a TA or Secondary Instructor and need them added to your courses, please make your request via Solutions Center using the Canvas Help Request link. You will need to provide the course CRN, their first/last name, university email, and 790#, and indicate if they are a TA or instructor. Please clarify if your TA or secondary instructor should not have editing permissions. Our Canvas Admins will create their account and will enroll them in your course. 

Panopto 

Panopto videos used in Moodle will automatically be moved from your Panopto Moodle account to your Panopto Canvas account in mid-August—more information will be coming about this later. If you want to access your Panopto videos prior to August 15, contact UMOnlineIDs@umontan.edu to move your videos for you.  

LTIs (Third Party Tools) 

As always, if you use third party tools outside of the LMS (such as Cengage, Pearson, etc.), make sure they have been previously tested for accessibility, and that you can find those tools in the Canvas environment to avoid delays in adding them. All third-party tools must be checked for accessibility by Accessible Technology Services (ATS). Please allow sufficient time prior to the start of the semester (at least 4-6 weeks) for testing. If you are uncertain if a third-party tool has been tested, contact UMOnlineIDs@umontana.edu.

H5P 

The transition to Canvas resulted in a new partnership account with H5P. All Moodle H5P content will need to be moved to Canvas for you and managed by UMOnline IDs. If you use H5Ps, email canvas.umt@umontana.edu to request that your H5P content is duplicated into the new UMOnline H5P account. An ID will be assigned to your H5P migration and will keep you informed on the data transfer and when content will become available. While you can no longer create H5P content directly in the LMS, you can build using a free H5P manager like Lumi for Education. An ID can help provide advice on how to manage H5P resources going forward.  

Thank you for your action on the items listed above and your continued engagement as we navigate these new waters together. We're excited to begin working with you on your Fall 2024 courses. If you have questions, please email canvas.umt@umontana.edu and a member of the Canvas Implementation Team will help you. 

Best regards,
The Canvas Implementation Team