Canvas Teaching Benefits

Canvas provides a robust and flexible solution to creating, distributing, and collecting curriculum, content, and activities.

Efficiency

By leveraging Canvas tools, you can almost eliminate the questions of:

"I missed class yesterday, what did we do?"
"Why did I miss these points on this assignment?"
"I can't find: the assignment instructions, due date, my homework..."

If you put your course materials in Canvas, the answer to these questions is always "Check Canvas." Students will quickly learn to check for themselves.

Feedback

Discussions and Assignments make providing feedback fast.
Add separate feedback based on students' quiz responses.
The Media Recorder allows students and teachers to leave video messages.
Peer feedback lets students learn from each other.

Simplicity

Integrates many external tools, i.e. Soundtrap, SeeSaw, StudySync, MH, Houghton Mifflin, etc.
Google assignments and docs connect with course assignments.
The Dashboard page quickly summarizes assignments, announcements and other relevant information for all your courses.
Provides easily accessible tools for student data analysis.
Helps make learning accessible to all (Screen reader, accessibility checker etc.).

Pedagogy

Collaborative Spaces and Groups provide a virtual space for students to work together on documents and discussions, with changes immediately visible to everyone.
Differentiate learning by individually assigning work to certain students or using Mastery Paths to create branching paths through material.
Easily share content with other teachers, or find pre-made activities from within CCS or around the world with Canvas Commons.

Communication

Built-in messaging system (Inbox) connects to regular CCS email.
Gives family access to student progress through Observer Accounts.
Display announcements on the course Home page so students see them. Use them for weekly teacher communication to parents.
Use the Calendar and To Do list to alert students to future events.
Notifications: Instructors and students can get alerts via email, text message or social media.
Canvas maintains FERPA compliance by securing all correspondence between students and teachers. Canvas maintains the privacy of each student's grades.

Continuity

Copy last semester's course, make some edits, adjust due dates automatically, and you have your updated course. This maintains course consistency, and simplifies preparation.
Old courses remain archived so that old assignments and communication with students can be retrieved.