Manually Created Canvas Courses

The primary purpose of Canvas is to support teaching and learning activities related to credit-bearing courses. Its features and workflows are optimized for the structured environment of a formal academic class. While flexible, it is not intended as a general-purpose intranet, file-sharing platform, or long-term collaborative workspace. 

Reasons a Canvas Course Might Work Well:

Manually created Canvas course requests will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis by the Instructional Technology Group (ITG) to determine if Canvas is an appropriate fit. A manually created Canvas course needs to have all of the following:

1. Clear Ownership: There must be a clearly designated person or team responsible for the course's content, ongoing maintenance, and all enrollment management.
2. Participant Accounts: All enrolled participants must have active Emerson College faculty or student accounts. Staff do not get automatically-created Canvas accounts, so if staff are being taught, Workday Learning is usually the better platform.
3. Commitment to Accessibility: If ITG creates a course for you, you are responsible for following the instructions on the Ally Course Accessibility Report and the Teaching Guidelines for Making Courses Accessible. ITG will be auditing large-enrollment courses.
4. Limited Scope: The course is intended for a limited amount of time and a limited number of participants.

A manually-created Canvas course would be a good fit for the following needs:

1. Structured Collaboration: There is a need for a structured social space that includes discussion forums where participants can collaborate, and the specific functionalities of Canvas discussions are required over alternatives like Google Groups or Slack.
2. Participant Submissions: Participants are required to submit assignments, projects, or other deliverables that need to be collected and managed.

Reasons that a Canvas Course Would Not be a Good Fit: 

A manually created Canvas course may not be appropriate if any of the following issues will be a problem:

1. Administrative Overhead: All enrollment (add/drop) is manual, creating a significant administrative burden for the course owner.
2. Lack of Search: Canvas lacks search functionality, making content difficult to locate.
3. Limited Storage: Each Canvas course has a limited storage capacity of 524 MB.
4. Limited Editing Control: Canvas courses are designed with a limited number of instructors/designers. If many people need to edit content collaboratively, other tools are better suited.
5. Participant Inability to Unenroll: Participants cannot easily unenroll themselves from a manually created course once added, leading to unwanted course clutter on their dashboards. The last thing we want is for manually created courses to make credit-bearing classes less visible!
6. Notification Fatigue: Canvas generates a high volume of notifications. Widespread use of manual courses for non-academic purposes can lead to severe notification fatigue, making academic alerts less effective.
7. Information Is Available Elsewhere: Manually-created Canvas courses should not be used as a substitute for established web services or content management processes. If the primary need is for a simple webpage or information repository, there are more suitable web publishing platforms available at Emerson.

Alternative Solutions

Please consider these alternatives for common needs:

• File Sharing, Storage & Collaborative Editing: 
  • Google Drive (for collaborative document creation, file storage, and sharing)
• Discussions & Communication:
  • Google Groups (for email lists and basic discussion forums)
  • Slack (for real-time chat, team communication, and project-based discussions)
• Websites & Information Sharing:
  • emerson.edu (for official department or institutional websites)
  • websites.emerson.edu (for personal or project-based websites)
• Student Groups & Organizations:
  • emConnect (for student organization management, events, and communication)
  • websites.emerson.edu (for student group public-facing web presences)
• Faculty, Staff, or Student Employee Training:
  • Workday Learning (for training that needs to go on faculty, staff, or student employee records)

Procedure for Requesting a Manually Created Course

Requests for manually created Canvas courses should be submitted to Instructional Technology Group (ITG). Each request will undergo a review process to ensure it aligns with the criteria outlined in this policy and that Canvas is the most appropriate tool for the intended purpose.