Lisa Ciardulli of Academic Technologies has decided to create a short bi-weekly newsletter about Canvas to post announcements and answer questions that are coming into OpenCampus. “Canvas Clues and Cues” will always contain the following three small sections:
- Your Questions Answered – the most-received questions from faculty and students
- Feature Focus – a particular tool or feature that you may not know how to use or even know exists
- What’s New – Canvas rolls out new releases almost every three weeks. Many times these releases contain small things like bug fixes or slight improvements and you won’t even know that they happened. However, if there are any significant upgrades or other important announcements, they will be called to your attention here.
“Canvas Clues and Cues”
Installment 1 / Wednesday, June 3
Your Questions Answered
- Why do we have to log into Canvas via eStaff and eSantaFe?
There are two ways to authenticate users when they sign in: SSO (single sign-on) and LDAP (I have no idea what the acronym means). Canvas allows one or the other, but not both. The method we are currently using, which requires you to login first to eStaff/eSantaFe is SSO. The method where you could login directly into the Canvas website is LDAP. Unfortunately, the student LDAP has a lot of issues right now, especially for any student who is also a current or was a former SF employee. Some students this term had to wait almost a whole week before they could get access to their classes using LDAP. That’s a long time for a short-term summer session class. Until LDAP issues can be resolved, I’m afraid we will have to continue to use the SSO method.
- Do I need to enable pop-up windows to log into Canvas?
This was an issue for a short time after SSO was executed, but that issue has been resolved, so enabling pop-ups should no longer be required. However, if you do get a message to enable pop-ups, there are directions for how to do this for each browser type at http://www.sfcollege.edu/opencampus/index.php?section=login_directions.
- How do I make sure I logged out of Canvas so no one can log back in as me?
There have been a few instances of students logging out of Canvas and then someone using the same computer and once logged in, find themselves still logged in as the previous user. Information Technology is working on this, but for now, after logging out of Canvas and eSantaFe/eStaff, you should be sure to close all browser windows completely (common browsers are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari). If in a lab environment, the most secure way is to shut the computer down completely.
Feature Focus
Many people have asked how to give individual students extra time to take a quiz or allow them to have more attempts at a quiz. The answer to this can be found in the Canvas guides at
http://guides.instructure.com/s/2204/m/4152/l/50753-once-i-publish-my-quiz-how-can-i-give-my-students-extra-time-or-extra-attempts. By the way, Canvas uses the term “quiz” to mean any type of test, regardless of how long it is or how many points it is worth. So in Canvas, the term quiz is synonymous with test, exam, midterm, final, assessment, etc.
What’s New?
By the end of summer or early fall, Canvas expects to release some much-anticipated improvements to the tracking system, including the ability to track attendance. We’ll be sure to let you know when this is available.
If you have any questions or suggestions about what to include in future installments, please contact Lisa Ciardulli at 352-395-5817 or lisa.ciardulli@sfcollege.edu.