Chapter 1: Getting Started with Canvas

Welcome to the updated Canvas LMS Course Design! This revised edition will guide you through the world of Instructure Canvas as a Learning Management System. This book covers the use of Canvas as a powerful and revolutionary tool for education, both in the traditional classroom and in virtual and hybrid learning environments.

The chapters in Section 1 explain how to set up your Canvas experience, from setting up your personal profile to designing and building your first course. Section 2 focuses on teaching you about the tools and features Canvas offers to meet the needs of educators, students, and guardians. With all the skills you will have gained over the course of these two sections, Section 3 will provide you with additional resources for any questions that may arise, as well as practical ideas for ways to cultivate many of the skills necessary for contemporary learners to succeed. As a product, Canvas has been designed to meet the unique needs of its users within contemporary education. As a powerful educational tool, Canvas opens the door to countless possibilities for you and the students you teach as citizens of the digital age.

As we begin our exploration of Canvas, we will cover the two main instances (or versions) of Canvas that exist and how to access or create your Canvas account for each instance. First, you will learn how to navigate the layout of the site. Once you know your way around, you will learn how to set up your Canvas profile, enter your contact information, adjust your general settings, and configure your notification preferences.

Next, we will learn how to join a course that your school has created for you in an institutional instance of Canvas or how to create a Canvas course yourself. Once we have created a course, we will be ready to move on to building a course in the next chapter.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Reviewing instances of Canvas
• Accessing Canvas and creating your account
• Navigating Canvas
• Adjusting your profile, settings, and notifications
• Creating your Canvas course