Semesterly Workflow
FAQ
Where are my Canvas courses?
All courses you have access to are available through your Canvas "Courses" area. Your favorited and/or current courses will appear on your Canvas homepage (called the "Dashboard"). There are four types of courses in Canvas: sandbox courses, instructional courses, professional development, and continuing education. Sandbox courses - also called "blank" or "master" courses - are not connected to SIS and do not contain students. These are for instructors to develop their courses and experiment with new ideas without fear of messing anything up for students. Instructional courses connect to SIS, which populates them with students. These are the "live" courses where teaching and learning happen. These appear in the instructor's dashboard 75 days prior to the start of the semester. Professional development courses are where members of the UWGB community can offer trainings for each other. Continuing education courses are public facing and open to anyone (think Extension and Continuing Education and Community Engagement). (See "Canvas Cloud" chart below for more information.)
When will my "real" courses appear in Canvas?
Instructional courses will appear on the instructor's Canvas Dashboard 75 days before that semester starts. Until then, instructors can prepare their offerings in one of their sandbox courses and import them into the instructional course once they appear. The sandbox courses have all the functionality of instructional courses. If you'd like more sandbox/blank courses, instructors can create their own through the Help button in the lower-left corner of the Global Navigation Menu in Canvas and select "Create a Sandbox Course." You can learn more about creating a sandbox course in this guide.
Canvas Workflow
SIS generates courses in Canvas 75 days prior to the start of the semester. This means that instructors should prepare their classes in one of their "sandbox" courses (also known as "master courses" or "blank courses"). Once the "instructional" course appears in the Canvas dashboard, instructors may copy their courses from the sandbox copy to the instructional copy.
The practice of using sandbox courses gives instructors a place to create a clean version of their course which they can copy from semester to semester. Also, the Sandbox courses are not connected to SIS, so instructors can feel free to make changes and test things out without worrying that students will get confused if their course changes mid-semester.