Managing Your Course

After creating and publishing your course, you'll need to manage ongoing communication and grading of assignments. If you find you need additional options because you must move your course completely online, see If Your Class Can't Meet in Person.

1. Basic Course Creation
2. Managing Your Course
3. If Your Class Can't Meet in Person
4. End of Quarter Tips for Teachers

1. Get to know your students

Your students are visible in Roster Photos, which also includes their preferred pronouns and name pronunciation, if they've set it up in NameCoach. Learn more about Roster Photos + NameCoach

2. Make announcements

Announcements are sent to students' preferred email or phone.

Tip! Clicking Save actually sends announcements. If you're still drafting it, delay posting Announcements to go out at a future time to continue working on it. 

3. Set your notifications

Set your Notifications and remind students to do so. There’s now an option to set course level notifications.

4. Get to know your grading options

Use  SpeedGrader (Use Chrome browser) to grade assignments and quizzes and give feedback online, even audio or video feedback. You can manually enter and edit grades in the Gradebook. Third party tool Gradescope is also an option if you have handwritten homework or exams. You may even calculate final grades in Canvas.

5. Foster collaboration with Groups

Create Groups (in the People tool) that students can self-join. Unlike a section, a group has special capabilities such as the ability to maintain a subsection of your course site or submit an assignment as a group.

Next: If your class can't meet in person

Still need help?

Visit the Instructors section of this site to learn about additional resources or Contact the Stanford Canvas Team.

More topics

Teaching with Canvas is a self-paced course in Canvas that gets into these topics in more detail, plus third-party tools, class communication options, and grading.