You did it! You made it to the end of another (hopefully wildly successful) quarter at Spokane Colleges. Your all-too-brief break between quarters is on the horizon, which you should definitely use to relax and refresh and not do any of the work that you put off all term.

But before you do that, here are some steps that you can take to ensure a smooth transition from the end of this term into the beginning of the next. Please feel free to reach out to an eLearning team member if you have any questions about any of the tools or settings listed in this document.

End of Quarter Check-List

✔ You do not need to do anything to conclude your Canvas course (assuming you haven't changed your course Participation settings!)

Your course will automatically conclude one week after the end of the term. You and your students will continue to have access to the course in the Past Enrollments section of your course list.

The course will be in a "Concluded" state, which means that you will not be able to make any edits to the content of the course, and your students will not be able to interact with any assignments or discussion boards, even if they haven't been given a closing "Until," date.

Students will be able to view their grades, feedback, discussion posts, and their own assignment submissions.

They will not be able to view their quiz attempts, or the quiz questions or answer keys.

▢ (Optional) If you need to give a student an Incomplete, and the student needs to continue working in the concluded course...

Please do not change the participation term dates for the course. This would keep the class open for all students, and will leave it on their Canvas Dashboard and potentially cause confusion.

Instead, when filling out the college's Incomplete Request Form, make sure to indicate that the student requires extended access to Canvas. eLearning will be notified of this request, and will move the student into a separate course Section with its own term participation dates.

You'll still need to extend the student's access to any incomplete assignments or activities!

▢ (Optional) Export your course content

In Canvas, you can export your course as a package so that you have an exact archive of your content. To do this, go to Settings, then click Export Course Content in the left-hand sidebar. Select Export Type “Course,” then click Create Export. This will let you download a .zip file that contains all course resources and settings, and can be imported back into future courses at CCS or elsewhere. If you want to take your Panopto lecture recordings with you, you’ll need to download them separately as video (mp4) or audio (mp3) files. Make sure to review Canvas' guide on exporting your course before beginning.

▢ (Optional) Export your gradebook

Canvas makes it easy to export your gradebook in a format that can be viewed and calculated in Excel. To do this, go to Grades, then click Export, and then choose Export Entire Gradebook. It may take a few seconds to download the .csv file, depending on the size and complexity of your Gradebook. Before exporting your grades, you will want to enter zeros for ungraded assignments if you haven't already done so. For more in depth instructions, review Canvas' guide to exporting your Gradebook.

▢ Take time to plan any course changes or updates before the next term

In the middle of teaching a course we often notice small mistakes that need to be corrected, or we think of things that we’d like to do differently next time. But sometimes the best laid plans slide after the term ends, and by the time we’re getting ready for the next term we’ve forgotten everything we wanted to change. While those ideas are still fresh, you may want to write down some notes for what needs updating and tweaking, or copy your course into a Sandbox course shell where you can work on it without modifying the original.

Start-of-Quarter Checklist

✔ Your new course shells will be created automatically

As soon as you’re officially listed as the instructor of record for a course section, the corresponding course shell should automatically appear in your Dashboard under Unpublished Courses.

By default, course shells will be unpublished and set to the upcoming term.

▢ (optional) Update your course favorites

If you're using the Favorites "Gold Star" option to organize your Canvas Dashboard, you'll need to update your favorites for the new term or else your newly created courses might not show up correctly. How to customize your course list in the Dashboard.

▢ (in very specific circumstances) Request course merges

Currently by default, courses that are listed as Lecture and Lab are given a single course shell in Canvas, so no need to request a course merge in that situation!

Generally, it's a violation of FERPA student privacy rules to merge courses that have different rosters of students. There are other specific situations where it might be appropriate and helpful to merge class sections, like cohort programs, IBEST class sections, and a few other situations. View detailed course merge guidelines and the course merge request form here!

▢ Verify course names, numbers, dates, and rosters in CTCLink

All live, for-credit courses and enrollments in Canvas are automatically generated from data provided by CTCLink. It's a good idea to double-check that everything looks correct on the CTCLink end, and ask your department chair or executive assistant if you notice any discrepancies.

If you think you should have access to a course for the new term and it's not showing up on your Dashboard, double-check your course rosters in CTCLink. If a course is not showing up in CTCLink, consult your department chair or executive assistant.

▢ Copy course content

There are several different workflow options for copying course content from one class into another, but the easiest, "safest" way is to go into the new, empty shell for the upcoming quarter, then click Import Existing Content.

For Content Type, choose to copy from an existing Canvas course. When copying a Canvas Course, search for the course by name, then you can choose to copy the entire course at once (usually the preferred method) or select specific content to copy.

(You can also copy from a Canvas Course Export Zip file that you downloaded earlier, for example if you're an adjunct instructor teaching at more than one college!)

For those new to the process or looking for some tips and tricks, Tom Gibbons our LMS admin gave an in depth demo of how to copy your course in between terms.

For written instructions, review Canvas' guide on how to copy course content in Canvas.

▢ Provision your Panopto Recordings by clicking the navbar link

Panopto does not automatically provision a video file directory for new courses until the first time you access Panopto through the new course. Until you do that, any videos hosted in Panopto for that course won't be available to your students. To do this, you just need to click the Panopto Recordings link in your course navigation and allow everything to load.

Provision any publisher intergrations

▢ Clear, Shift, or manually change assignment dates

While copying course content, you have the option to Adjust events and due dates. Checking this option allows you to either remove all due dates, start dates, and end dates from all assignments, content, and calendar events, or you can shift them all forward from the previous term to the upcoming term. Date shifting is not perfectly accurate, but will usually get you close to your desired class pacing schedule.

For more granular control of your dates, you can go into Assignments, click on the three-dots menu, and click Edit Assignment Dates. This will allow you to bulk-edit dates on all of your activities without having to edit them one at a time!

▢ Update your Syllabus

If you've built your syllabus either in the Syllabus tool or as a Canvas Page, making updates is a snap! Just click Edit, make any needed changes, and click Save.

If you've built your syllabus as a Word document or other file, you'll need to download a copy of the last version of the syllabus to your computer. Then make edits to that file, save it as a new copy (it's usually a good idea to put the term and year in the file name) and re-upload it to Canvas. You'll also need to delete the old version of the syllabus from Canvas, and remember that simply removing an item from the Modules does not delete the file! You'll need to go into Files, find the old syllabus, and delete it there.

▢ Provision Respondus Lockdown Broswer by clicking the navbar link

If you are using the Respondus Lockdown Browser or Respondus Monitor on your quizzes, you need to "nudge" the tool at the beginning of the term to connect the integration with the Canvas course. To do this, you simply need to click the Lockdown Browser link in your course navigation and allow everything to load. Make sure to do this before opening the first quiz that requires Respondus.

▢ Run Link Validator and test links to ensure they're still valid

There are many reasons a link might break in between terms, but usually we catch the mistake when students start reaching out! The link validator tool in Canvas can help get ahead of those issues! If you haven't used it before make sure to look through Canvas' guide on How to use the Link Validator.

▢ Run the Ally Accessibility Checker

You can check and correct basic accessibility problems using the Ally Course Report. If Ally is not in your course navigation bar, you can enable it from Settings>Navigation. Not familiar with Ally? Review Accessibility Checkers in Canvas for more information. As always, you can contact eLearning if you’d like any help interpreting or taking action with Ally!

▢ Verify your student roster

Once a student enrolls and shows up in your roster in ctcLink, they will be added into your student roster in Canvas. It can take an hour or two for enrollments to make it from ctcLink to Canvas. If a student appears in the course roster in ctcLink but hasn't appeared in the Canvas roster, reach out to eLearning and we can investigate further. If you haven't checked your Canvas roster before, review Canvas' guide to using the People page.

▢ Consider publishing the course syllabus/welcome message/intro module early

One of the most common support calls we get from students at the start of term is that their course is missing or empty. If you aren't ready to publish the entire course or the first weekly module yet, it's a good idea to publish your course syllabus, an intro module, or even just a welcome message prior to the term start date!

▢ Publish the course!

Remember that as soon as you hit Publish on a course, it will appear on students' Dashboards and any published content within the course will be visible to them. Everything in the course will be in "read-only" mode for students until the start date of the term, regardless of any availability dates on individual items. Need a refresher? Review Canvas' guide to Publishing a Course.

▢ Review your course using Student View

Make sure to check upcoming announcements and materials using the student view tool. In some case, materials that may be broken or inaccessible will only show in the student view. This is also a great way to check that your course navigation is working correctly! If you haven't used it before, check out Canvas' guide on Using Student View.