Tips on how to provide basic support to faculty using Canvas.

1. PHONE SUPPORT IN
CANVAS
ALWAYS BE SMARTER THAN THE PEOPLE WHO CALL
YOU

2. WHY DO WE NEED PHONE SUPPORT
ANYWAY, ISN’T THERE A GUIDE FOR
THAT?
You can spend all the time and money you want on
writing and providing good documentation, but you
are still going to need to be prepared to walk people
through even the most basic steps in Canvas.
Humans just seem to be innately averse to any sort of
written instructions, even when they have a lot of
pictures.

3. WHAT TO DO FIRST
• Set up a blank course in Canvas to test things in
• See what your options are for Demo students in your
course
• Import or build some basic content in the demo
course

4. BENEFITS OF A DEMO COURSE
• A demo course gives you the ability to test features
without having to worry about breaking something
in a live course.
• Which means that when you get a call about how
a graded discussion works, you can quickly set up a
graded discussion without affecting live students in
a live course.

5. COMMON QUESTIONS
• Extra Credit
• Moderating a quiz
• Weighting assignments
• Adding TAs
• Giving extra points on an exam
• Viewing quiz results for the whole class
• Assigning a final letter grade
• Hiding items from students

6. EXTRA CREDIT
There are two ways to provide extra credit
depending on whether assignment groups are
weighted and whether the extra credit is from an
assignment or a quiz.

7. BASIC EXTRA CREDIT
To create an extra credit assignment, you simply
make an assignment that is worth zero points. Keep in
mind that this only works for assignments and not for
quizzes. This also only works if there are no weighted
assignment groups.

8. EXTRA CREDIT – WEIGHTED
ASSIGNMENT GROUPS
To have extra credit available in a course with
weighted assignment groups, you need to set up a
new assignment group and weight it above the 100%
total in the course. Most extra credit groups are worth
anywhere from 1%-5% of the grade.

9. EXTRA CREDIT QUIZZES
Extra credit quizzes are handled the same way that
weighted groups are handled. You put the extra
credit quiz in an assignment group that is weighted
above 100% of the total.