Canvas Checklist for Harvard Professors

We’ve navigated many a Canvas course page in our day. And, let us tell you, some of them do not hit like others. If you’re a professor who wants a course page that slaps, especially now that everything has gone virtual, here’s what you need:

On the Front Page

• Emails and office hours of the course head and all TFs/CAs easily visible.

• Class meeting time(s) and location. (If the location changes post-shopping week please for the love of god update this. If we are confused about where we need to be at 9 a.m., we’re not showing up. You’re lucky we woke up to attempt to go in the first place.)

• Brief description/overview of the class.

• Maybe a fun picture?

• Honestly, give us the super important due dates so every time we open Canvas we see them.

• An embedded PDF of the course syllabus so we can scroll through it and don’t have to keep downloading it.

Separate Tabs

1. Syllabus

• Have a separate syllabus tab typed out (not in PDF form) with hyperlinks so we can easily access everything.

• On this note, please make it clear what your system is for assigning readings.

2. Discussions

• No one wants to have to go to a whole new website (*cough* Piazza) to access discussion questions we don’t want to come up with/answer weekly. Just make a Canvas discussion tab, please. And label each week with the date/theme, and the hour it’s due!

3. Files

• Make folders within this tab for the readings each week (i.e. “Readings for Week of Month/Day).

• If the readings aren’t online, we’re not reading them. Sorry not sorry. Link us to Hollis if you must, but going through the effort of copying and pasting the reading title into Hollis, Google, or Scribd? Forget about it.

• We know you know how to find readings for free online. And if a student tells you they’ve found a reading online, upload that to your files, and email the class about it, so people don’t have to buy readings/look for them on their own. Put in that effort and we will love you forever, or until you give us an EUM grade.

4. Assignments

• This is fairly self-explanatory. Give us the due date and the instructions/rubric/link to download the pset all in one place, please.

5. Resources

• This includes support for mental/physical health issues that students might experience during the semester, links to research journals they might not know about, and academic support.

We know you’re required to put up the Academic Integrity policy and some other fun things, but if you complete this checklist, you’re on your way to having an emptier inbox without emails of “Where is this reading?” and excuses of “Sorry I missed the discussion questions, I thought you meant pizza, not Piazza.”